Changes related to lists of Papers, Books and Movies

As you can see, I have been unable to keep posting what I am reading/watching in the last month. I have realized I was using a time consuming format for this end. I have just decided to try twitter to list whatever I'm consuming as soon as I'm consuming it, so if you want to know what I am reading or watching please use the tweet box at HambrientosVagabundos.org or follow me in twitter: @BMRodriguezLara

Here, I will keep posting my unpredictable rants and even more unpredictable musings. Sometimes, when I find a paper/book/movie that really amazes me, I will post about it here.

Thank you

\B

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb deals with the impact of the highly improbable—the actual subtitle of the book—in the real world. The title comes from the fact that one single event is enough to prove a theory wrong; in this case the European theory that all swans were white previous to the discovery of Australia and black swans.

I really hated/loved the book. The mean reason for the first was the introduction of an example in the person of a writer—which I couldn't find in Google—that made me believe that Dr. Taleb was some kind of literary conman creating a fake narrative to advance his ideas. I felt betrayed. I like confidence games but I don't like being conned by an author while dealing with a serious topic. Good thing is that later, in a footnote, it is made clear that the author/example was mere fiction, a gedankenexperiment. Then, I came to love the book: It is an anecdotal narrative denouncing our weakness and inclination for anecdotal, causal narratives that blinds us from the skeptical, empirical analysis of events in economics, history, sociology and other human endeavors to understand our  non-ideal selves, societies and surroundings. I think I can construct another paradoxical phrase like the latter: In parts, t is a name dropping exposition denouncing name dropping expositions. 

I found many things to like from the manuscript—a flowing prose filled with real and imaginary examples, an ample reference and bibliographical section (almost one third of the electronic version)—and just one to dislike: I felt the first two parts became repetitive.

The ideas are sound, our actual knowledge does not allow us to simulate realistic scenarios to provide accurate predictions and, most probably, you and I will be long dead when, if, such an exercise becomes feasible—think about Assimov's psychohistory in Foundation *wink*.

Is there a way to predict the future when it comes to phenomena that belong to the so-called Extremistan (most of the modern real world)? No.

Then, what's the use of knowing that? Awareness, there are infinitely many things we don't know that could affect us, but one we can try to control: our actions and, thus, our exposure to those unknown.

It's a great book, try it. I even see it as a kind of philosophy of life. I am really thankful to my brother Andre for suggesting it to me. I think that I would not have picked it up by myself.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Snuff is the 39th novel set in the Discworld written by Sir Terry Pratchett. It belongs to the Sam Vines' (The Watch) story-arc. As every other Discworld novel, it is a treaty on humankind (read philosophy) in the form of comic-fantasy—or is it comic-fantasy in the guise of philosophy? 

In Snuff, Vimes is forced to take a vacation to the countryside where young Sam Vimes discovers the pleasures of naturalism—becoming a poo expert—and old Vimes finds himself in the middle of a murder case where he's the prime suspect. Of course, this changes immediately to old Vimes chasing the clues and upsetting a band of high-born tobacco troll drugs smugglers cashing on the status quo of rural Discworld and the perception of goblins as vermin to be enslaved and not worthy of human rights—a vision changed, in the end, by the diplomatic efforts and connections of Lady Sybil Vimes who introduces to the world the music of Tear of a Mushroom, the best student of "Where's my cow" author Miss Felicity Beedle. In this tome, Willikins—Vimes' gentleman's gentleman—plays a major role as a kind of lex-talionis-justice complement to Vimes ideal-justice and reign of the law conception of the discworld.

I am a big fan of Sir Pratchett's penmanship, it is refreshing and his books flow without any effort. More important, with his Discworld saga, he has describe many facets of historical and modern humanity exploring a great deal of the practical philosophy—including both lofty and not-so-exalted ideals—that plays a role in constructing a barely holding social weave.

I hold dear the character of Samuel Vimes, I see this know-thyself fighting-the-self-darkness hero as the embodiment of Nietzsche's aphorism #146 from Beyond Good and Evil:

"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

In any case, if you have never tried a book by Sir Terry Pratchett, this new year may be a good year to pick one from your local library or bookstore and give it a try. 

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

In this the fifth installment of the Dark Tower series, Mr. King takes Roland's ka-tet closer to the Tower in a Seven Samurai (or Magnificent Seven) Mid-world spin including Dr. Doom look-a-likes armed with lightsabers and snitches while trying to figure out how to protect the rose in 1977 New York. 

Mr. King's penmanship gets the main story arc advanced and manages to twist it with a remnant from Jake's entrance to Mid-world: Suze is in troubles an developing a new personality as a consequence of her mating with the demon guardian. Also, the cast of players related to the main story arc gets larger with Calvin Tower and Deepneau's role in the story increasing as a result of Tower's family being related to the rose; and Father Callahan from  Salem's Lot becoming a part of the gunslingers ka-tet. 

Again, the book is an intertwined collection of stories. The main one being the defense of old western town Calla Brym Sturgis from the Wolves that every twenty years or so kidnap one of each set of twins to deliver them back ruined: stupid and gigant; second in importance is the storyline developing in New York 1977 where the rose is in danger as the servants of the dark try to make a grab on the vacant lot; a third important arc is the developments in Susannah Dean's life that lead into the next installment of the series. A significant part of the book is filled with Father Callahan story during and after Salem's Lot.

The novel is a page-turner as all other installments in the series are. The confluence of all of Mr. King's worlds into the Dark Tower multiverse becomes stronger with the introduction of Father Callahan and the tales of his wandering through multiple worlds. Again, I have to tell that Mr. King's is making a better job than Mr. Heinlin did in consolidating all his stories into a single multiverse; oh, he even introduces himself into the story citing Salem's Lot. Also, he cites Mr. Heinlin's The Door into Summer—a nice self-recreation time travel paradox based story (one of Mr. Heinlin favorite topics) and a must read, I guess the idea of projecting into the future thanks to cryogenic storage came out ot this one. 

Anyway, as you, my five readers, know, I have become somehow addicted to Mr. King's Dark Tower series. That's why Wolves of the Calla was my first ebook purchase ever (I got it from Kobo Books alongside their Kobo Touch ereader). I managed to get through it during my daily commute for the last three weeks and I cannot wait to get the next installment sometime next week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

When I started reading the windup girl, I thought 'yeah! cyberpunk!' It only took me a few pages more to realize that Paolo Bacigalupi just constructed something that I have learnt to call biopunk; that is, a cyberpunk derivative where the focus is the effect of gene-hacking—instead of cyber-hacking—in a world that has been taken over by mega-corporations.

The novel is an exploration of human nature in a world filled with biological threats produced by the unethical practices of biotechnology companies in their dog-race for profit and market monopoly. Peculiar, though, I perceived all characters as anti-heroes motivated by personal or corporate gain. Even the one driven by the love of his people dwells in a grey region far from the archetypal hero.

The story centers around the fate of the self-isolated Kingdom of Thailand and its seed-bank. It is told, mainly through Anderson Lake, an american cover operative for a biotech corporation, Hock Seng, a Malay Chinese refugee who barely escape ethnic/religious cleansing in the Malay peninsula,  Jaidee/Kanya, a captain and his right arm at the Ministry of the Environment of the Thai Kingdom, and Emiko, a genetic mashup created by the Japanese to be the perfect assistant, lady in waiting. It is through these characters that Bacigalupi explores different angles of ambition/desire/attachment in this apocalyptic setting where all decisions are made under pressure or, even, duress. The author's conclusion seems to be that human nature is immutable when it comes to ambition/desire/attachment.

I like the way Bacigalupi weaves the story going from one to another character. In the process, one gets to know each of them a little bit more as pages turn. It happens slowly, through their actions, fears, desires, attachments, and ambitions. Also, the author did his homework in researching the actual culture and environment of the Thai Kingdom and Southeast Asia.

I got the feeling that Bacigalupi's penmanship is still developing. Sometimes, the narrative seems choppy; a kind of stutter-step motion. Nevertheless, the story flows at a great pace and delivers some interesting visions of a what if world that may overlap with our future.

I highly recommend this novel. If you are living in this part of the world— South Pacific Asia—, it is a must read.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

This was my first encounter with the pen of Haruki Murakami—translated by Jay rubin—and I read most of the novel while traveling back to Singapore from my vacations in Mexico. It was out of pure curiosity that I took the book from the shelf of a  convenience store in Mexico City International Airport—Mr. Murakami is very in fashion in Mexico, you can find his books everywhere and all the intellectual hipsters at the Feria Internacional del Libro seemed to be talking about him and his work. Then, the back cover got me by promising an elegiac romantic—almost erotic—coming of age novel. Well, it didn't lie.

This was also my first encounter with contemporaneous Japanese literature of the novel type—my previous incursions where mostly short stories by Nobel prize winner Professor Kenzaburo Oe.

Norwegian woods is a coming of age, slightly erotic, novel written in an autobiographic style. It tells the story of Toru, mostly his life around his 20th. birthday, in the Japan of the 60s, student movement included, where he explores pain, joy, love, sensuality, depression, vacuity and fulfillment during his first year at college. Mr. Murakami penmanship is alluring, the story is told through short, overwhelming phrases that flow one into another seamlessly. It was weird for me to find so crude, and refined at the same time, descriptions of  places, people and, most important, feelings. I guess that through the main and secondary characters we get a study  of the young adults society of Japan in the 60s embedded with a nostalgic and mournful feeling, while the faceless masses of irrelevant characters that appear just as idiotic leaders of the student movement leak a somehow acrid feeling.

In short, it is an very good read, while I don't care about Mr. Murakami's demons and surely miss all the symbols in the manuscript, Mr. Murakami's penmanship left me feeling the grass on the field, as well as Nagasawa, Reiko, Naoko and Midori's different gazes upon the world; it somehow stopped the clock, opened my mind's eye and allowed me to gaze into the soul of another human being.

The Dark Tower (1-4 of 7) by Stephen King

Five months ago, I found this beautiful boxed set containing the first four volumes of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Mixing equal parts of science fiction, fantasy and western from King's pen, the Dark Tower saga is meant to be epic by birthright. 

I must confess that these four books were my first encounter with Mr. King's penmanship and I'm already a fan. His style is sober and delicate. Reading these volumes makes you realize that he possesses a refined technique and the knowledge of what moves people's guts. He's a storyteller and, in my opinion, one of the best storytellers alive alongside Gaiman and Pratchett.

The first four volumes of the Dark Tower saga are:

• The Gunslinger. Introducing the main character of the saga, Roland, and his quest for the Dark Tower.
• The Drawing of the Three. Introducing the first set of Roland's ka-tet, a group that will play the leading role in the development of the story.
• The Waste Lands. Introduces the second part of Roland's ka-tet and King's universe. This is the one volume where King's cosmology is revealed.
• Wizard and Glass. Complements the story of young Roland, whose rite of passage was told before but this feels more like a true coming of age story, and, I believe, serves like a parting point for future developments—this is my guess from the fact that the ka-tet is complete, the past has been told and the intrigue has just been crawling in the dark between lines.

I need to read more of Mr. King's work, in particular those science fiction volumes like The Stand; but I get the feeling that Mr. King is masterfully getting to that point where he's telling us that all his stories belong to this dark multi-verse that is defined and interconnected by the Dark Tower. I said masterfully because, in the past, Robert A. Heinlein set himself up to that task, managed to do so, and, then, screw things up—again, in my very personal opinion—making a cartoon out of it by capturing all the evil doers in a Klein bottle. So far, Mr. King is far from such heroic but buffoonish decision. 

In the end, I realize that the Dark Tower epic diverges from Mr. King's well known horror pen. In general, I'm not a big fan of horror, unless it is the romantic pen games exploring the human soul of Byron, Polidori, Shelley and Stoker, the primeval and insane Lovecraft mythos, or Bloch's explorations of the warped human psyche, but I'm a big fan of romantic epics—romantic in the romanticism sense, that is, an aesthetic experience derived from strong emotions.

I strongly recommend the Dark Tower series, each volume is a beautifully connected series of stories that could be novelettes per se. I cannot wait to get my hands on the last three volumes.

Codex Alera by Jim Butcher

The Codex Alera is many things, first of them is a six volume saga belonging to the realm of fantasy, it is also a coming of age, lost legion, militaristic, epic. I'm glad that it was this heroic saga that brought me to the mark of 250 books read, or so my Shelfari account  says.

Jim Butcher is a great storyteller—I came first to his work through the Dresden Files tv series, based on his homonym series of novels. His characters are polarized heroes or villains that remain solid and human, as great fantasy characters should be. In each novel of the series, He manages to interweave at least three stories that support and enrich the story arc of the codex in such a way that I most of the time I found myself unable to just leave the book and go to sleep—I guess, this is the reason  why I managed to finish the six books in nine weeks.

The Codex tells the story of Tavi, covering his life from late childhood to young adulthood, and his close family as they find themselves involved in the succession intrigues of Alera—a continent where humans have a close link to natural forces, called furies, hence being able to control and use them—and an apocalyptic plague.

Aleran society is based in the Roman model—actually, in the story, the Alerans are the descendants of a lost legion—a First Lord rules the land and feudal Lords and Ladies control cities and counties, while a Senate, conformed with the best of the citizenry, oversees the state of law. In this scenario, status is related to furycrafting, that is, the ability to control furies, the most powerful your ability, the highest in the ladder of citizenry you will land. In the bottom of the ladder are freemen and slaves, with little proficiency at furycrafting.

The novels are entitled:

1. Furies of Calderon.
2. Academ's Fury.
3. Cursor's Fury.
4. Captain's Fury.
5. Princeps' Fury.
6. First Lord's Fury.

They are a great read to relax and enjoy pure action and intrigue. Two thumbs up! 

Cantar de Mio Cid

The Poem of the Cid is an epic Dark Ages Spanish  masterpiece written in verse and prose both. It narrates the life of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, who is exiled by the King Alfonso VI after years of faithful and loyal service to the crown.

This is one of the first books I remember reading. It was an old version, belonging to either my Grandfather or my aunt Eda, with old Spanish on the left page and modern Spanish on the right page. I guess that this was the cause behind my reading of the "El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha" and "La chronique de Rains" before I was 15.  I guess it turned out good, it the end I don't think I am such a big pain in the neck of people who care for me like the fictional Alonso Quijano was to family and friends.

Two days ago, I found myself reading again "El cantar del mio Cid."  I quote,

De los sos ojos tan fuertemientre llorando

tornava la cabeça e estávalos catando, 

vio puertas abiertas e uços sin cañados, 

alcándaras vazías, sin pielles e sin mantos 

e sin falcones e sin adtores mudados. 

Sospiró mio Çid, ca mucho avié grandes cuidados, 

fabló mio Çid bien e tan mesurado, 

-Grado a ti, Señor, Padre que estás en alto, 

esto me an buelto mios enemigos malos.- 

Allí piensan de aguijar, allí sueltan las riendas, 

a la exida de Bivar ovieron la corneja diestra 

e entrando a Burgos oviéronla siniestra. 

Meçió mio Çid los ombros e engrameó la tiesta, 

-¡Albriçia, Álbar Fáñez, ca echados somos de tierra!-

Mio Çid Ruy Díaz por Burgos entrava, 

en su conpaña sessaenta pendones, 

exiénlo ver mugieres e varones, 

burgeses e burgesas por las finiestras son, 

plorando de los ojos, tanto avién el dolor, 

de las sus bocas todos dizían una razón, 

-¡Dios, qué buen vassallo, si oviesse buen señor!-

I love the epithet closing the third verse. I guess that's why I like militaristic fantasy and science fiction, they are always epic and portray polarized, morally upright or downright characters that belong to realm of fiction inside our heads, that gives plenty of space for epithets.

The Age of Odin by James Lovegrove...

I came to The Age of Odin after finishing reading the other two books of the trilogy written by James Lovegrove, The Age of Ra and The Age of Zeus. I enjoyed the book. 

For starters, the switch from third-person omniscient narrative to first-person narrative was refreshing. Lovegrove's really found a compelling human voice for this story. 

Also, I find his fantasy style to be more honed than his science fiction attempts. In reducing the science fiction elements to a few constructions by the end of the book, and changing the focus from character development from campaign description to character development through human interaction, Lovegrove manages to entertain and fulfill his role as storyteller. 

The novel is good; it kept me interested and I almost didn't realize that he was  using here the same well defined sectioning that he used in the previous deliveries of the trilogy. Furthermore, I really loved the way how he opens up his hand and delivers all the subtleties of the story twists through character interaction; I failed to put one plus one together and predict them.

In short, it is a good fast read. The best of the trilogy. I hope you enjoy as much as I did reading it.

Thank you Mr. Lovegrove for these hours of entertainment.

The Age of Zeus by James Lovegrove...

As you, my four readers, already know, last weekend I got my lazy derrière all the way up to Page One in Vivo City and got myself "The Pantheon Trilogy" written by James Lovegrove.

After finishing the first of the trilogy, "The Age of Ra," I was a little dispirited but I started with the second book of the trirlogy, "The Age of Zeus," as soon as possible in order to finish with what I thought will be an ordeal. I am very happy to say that "The Age of Zeus" was a better read, all in all, and I do not regret buying all the trilogy at once.

The age of Zeus is a kind of militaristic science-fiction story set up in an alternate version of our earth. Note, that it is not militarisctic-science-fiction any more. Now, this book is proper scifi with powered robotic armor and genetically engineered humans in almost every page. But it remains a "kind of militaristic" as the description of strategy and tactics still lack that flow and feeling of military novels.

It seems that Lovegrove favors a very well defined three sections structure, with the introductions made in the first, again a hundred and something pages, the plot developed in the second reaching the climax by its end, now a three hundred and something pages of compact short stories dealing with well defined operations, and the third bringing the great finale, again a hundred and something.

This book is neither a prequel nor a sequel of Age of Ra. It is set in an alternate earth and only shares the motif with Age of Ra.

All in all, "The Age of Zeus" is a good, fast and no-brainer read, it took me some ten hours of bus and before-bed time, with a couple of interesting twists that you can imagine and figure out but they are not so plain, simple and clear as in "The Age of Ra."

Go and get your copy, you will enjoy it.

Metropolis by Thea von Harbou

I was introduced to Metropolis back in my undergraduate days; it was Rintaro's Metropolis anime adaptation of the manga with the same name. A few months after this first encounter with the topic, I was lucky enough to be in a screening of Lang's Metropolis, the German silent film based on the original novel. It was with great pleasure that I found the original topic more interesting than the loose Japanese fanzine---I did like the anime.

Yesterday, I just finished reading the novel written by Thea von Harbou which was the source for the screenplay made by her and Fritz Lang, her husband at the time. I got the electronic version through feedbooks a few weeks ago. Truth be told, even after reading the novel, I can barely remember a few scenes from the silent film; but the novel is a swift good read. The writer uses repetition more than I like it but to a good effect.

Metropolis is a science fiction novel that deals with a industrialized futuristic dystopia where the gap between the rich and the poor is so large that the simile used for the labor masses is "food for the machines." The main thesis is that "the heart is the mediator between hand and brain;" promoting a non-violent mediated solution to the clash of the classes.

As expected by the main thesis, there is a good share of love, fidelity, and loyalty stories that help unfolding the main plot.

While I do not agree with the main thesis---reason and common law based on reason are there to give structure to society, not emotions---, as I said before, it is a swift read, with one of those happy endings, Gothic cathedral swashbuckling and redemption of the astray dictator included.


Other books I've read

The Man by Bram Stoker

Last weekend, I finished reading The Man by Abraham "Bram" Stoker. I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg. The quality of the text was excellent; it has happened to me, a few times in the past, that suddenly some undecipherable typos show up on these versions, but this time the few ones that showed up were quite simple to decipher.

“I would rather be an angel than God!” I guess Firmin would classify this as a great first line! The book lives up to the expectation of such an awesome first line. I'll be honest; this is the first Stoker's book, after "Dracula"---which is also public domain and you can download at Project Gutenber; as far as I know, Stoker's grandchildren just published a sequel trying to recover the rights of "Dracula" for the family---, that I read. I might be completely and utterly wrong, but the last part of the book read as a "Pride and Prejudice" without Zombies nor too much Prejudice, just enough.

The novel uses a romantic drama to deal with personal values, both classical and modern at Stoker's times, embodied in a series of characters, mainly two young people, a male and female, and a cohort of secondary characters appearing here and there, in a setting that has a late-XIX century feeling.

It is a fluent, entertaining and good read. Stoker's narrative takes you to places in England, shows you the magnificent view preparing the setting for well defined characters that you get to know more deeply as the pages turn. It is a long read, around three-scores chapters, but it doesn't feel so.

In summary, I highly recommend this book; and it's for free.


Other books I've read

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

As I needed to recharge batteries, I spent this weekend reading, another free and good short novel by Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom; released under the creative commons copyright license, you can download it for free.

The novel deals with a good many things from philosophy of the self to political manifestos. What really got me is reading about the once hot topic of science fiction: life eternal. It might be that I have not been reading science fiction lately and I have lost my bearings, but it seems that the 20's to 60's fascination with life eternal somehow got diluted in contemporaneous science fiction.

I also liked the way the author presents a political/economical/cultural scenario through the exploration of change at the personal level. In the future, there might be a thousand ways to help us cope with feelings, emotions, change and all those things that take us away from the narrow path of logic and rational actions, but what about living with the lack of them?

Anyway, I imagine that this work can be read in many different ways. I'm waiting to hear about your opinion.



Other books I've read

Overclocked by Cory Doctorow

Last week, I bought myself a small android pad; so far, I have used it to read free books. While almost all the jewels of classic literature belong to the public domain, look for example at Project Gutenberg, it is hard to find good and free modern literature. Enter Cory Doctorow.

Overclocked by Cory Doctorow is a collection of five short science-fiction stories published under the creative commons copyright license. In short, you can download, distribute and generate derivative works if you follow the rules. When I started reading, I got the feeling that I would like the book; all the stories carry the name of an already famous science fiction story. After the second page, I realized I have already read the book and, most probably, it is gathering dust in my bookshelf at my mother's house. Nevertheless, I read it again and revisited Doctorow's views on copyright, sentience, netiquette, utopias, dystopias, and, of course, apocalyptic futures.

If you have a few hours to spare, each story is just a few scores of pages, please go to the Overclocked download site and give them a try. You will not regret that well spent leisure time.



Other books I've read

The Door into Summer by Robert Anson Heinlin

I have just finished reading "The Door into Summer" by Robert A. Heinlein, one of my favorite science fiction writers. This is a time-travel novel written in 1956. It is set, mainly, in a fictional, at the time, California of 1970 and 2000. It deals with one of the paradox on the flow of time and multiple personae; what if you somehow step out of the time-line for a while, in this case by means of cryogenic sleep, and then, after waking up, manage to go back to the time before you step out, avoid mixing with your former self, step out again and then reintegrate to the time-line before you woke up the first time? I cannot write more about it as I'm already confused.

This novel is quite different from what I have read by Heinlein, that is the Lazarus Long saga, the novels where any of the Rolling Stones appear somehow, Starship Troopers, et cetera. It shows a most grounded engineering side of Heinlein and seems to be written in quite a nonchalant mood. It reads pretty easily and smoothly flows.

I actually recommend it if you have nothing to do on a rainy weekend or a long trip. You can easily finish it in less than 8 hours.

This book is still under copyright law and not part of the public domain. You have to get a copy or an e-copy. Mine cost $290 TWD, which was around $8.50 USD at the time. Those were some nicely spent TWDs.

Other books I've read