What I've Been Reading: January 2015 to June 2015

As is evident from the length of time since my last post on my reading and the limited number of books in this post (though I should point out that one of the entries below is a trilogy of books), it should be obvious that I am getting even less reading than I did last year. This is in large part because I've acquired a laptop computer and have been trying to get some work on my various music and other projects done on it while commuting instead of reading as I did in the past - and as has been true for an even longer time, going through emails on my phone also takes up some of my commuting time. But I still manage to a bit of reading at home or on other occasions, so here are a few of the books I read earlier this year (more recent books will have to wait for a future post).

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Set in Istanbul in the late 16th century at the height of the Ottoman Empire, My Name Is Red is a historical novel by Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (indeed it seems to have been one of the main reasons he won the award). The story is a murder mystery, a tale of intrigue among miniaturists working to illustrate manuscripts for the Sultan, told in the first person through the eyes of a rotating cast of characters. While the use of shifting viewpoints to tell a tale is common enough, here not only do we hear much of the tale from the perspective of the obvious protagonists like Black, who is asked to solve the mystery by his maternal uncle and former mentor Enishte Effendi, or Shekure, Enishte’s daughter and the woman Black loves, but also through the eyes of the murderer, the three chief suspects, various minor characters and even non-living characters such as the murder victim, who opens the story with the declaration “I am a corpse” and several of the illustrations themselves, the latter brought to life by a storyteller in a coffee shop frequented by many of the miniaturists (though interestingly enough – and probably not coincidentally – we never hear the voice of the storyteller himself).

The story is engaging, and the characters are well drawn. The reader also learns a great deal about the art of illustrating manuscripts in the Islamic world and its historical development. The tension between the miniaturists and the sometimes capricious rulers who make use of their talents on the one hand and those who follow a stricter interpretation of Islam on the other hand forms one of the central underlying conflicts in the story, along with the struggle between those like Effendi who want to incorporate Western influences into Ottoman art and those who are repelled by the idea. It is surely not a coincidence that Pamuk chooses to build his novel around conflicts such as religion versus secularism and tradition versus modernity that continue to roil society in Turkey and in the wider Islamic world. There is also a strong element of metafiction, as the characters often express awareness that they are part of a story. In addition, not only is the name of Shekure’s younger son Orhan, like that of the author, but his older brother Shevket shares his name with the real Orhan’s older brother, and Shekure herself has the same name as the author’s real mother. Furthermore, Shekure reveals at the end that it is Orhan who has written down the final version of the story. She warns the reader that Orhan may have distorted some of their characters, concluding: “For the sake of a delightful and convincing story, there isn’t a lie that Orhan wouldn’t deign to tell.”

Cleverly written and yet more readable than most consciously “literary” novels, incorporating both interesting historical information and themes with modern parallels, My Name Is Red is worthy of its reputation as a Nobel Prize winning novel without being overly difficult or lacking in entertainment value. Readers interested in murder mysteries, Turkey, history, Islamic art, conflicts between tradition and modernity or good literature in general will find it worth reading.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
This series of dystopian science fiction novels (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay) for young adults is probably one of the best known of the genre, not only due to the best-selling status of the novels themselves but also due to the movie adaptations, which have also done very well at the box office. The novels are certainly entertaining and generally pretty well done, though they aren’t without their flaws. They are not very deep or literary, and there are some story elements that slightly strain credulity. There is also sometimes a touch of melodrama in the way Katniss Everdeen (the protagonist from whose point of view the reader follows the story) sees what is happening to her. For instance, when she realizes that her fellow Hunger Games contestant Peeta has not given up on surviving the games, she automatically assumes that he’s planning to kill her. Admittedly, given the rules, he couldn’t win without her dying at some point, but as is made quite clear once the games start, even if winning the games was actually his goal, the chance that he would have had to kill her himself would have been very small. In fact, I suspect Katniss’s tendency toward melodrama arose mainly through Collins’s deliberate effort to keep drawing the reader on. Virtually every chapter ends on, if not a cliffhanger, a dramatic revelation or other statement designed to get the reader to continue on to the next chapter to see what happens.

Despite these issues, it’s easy to see why the books are popular. Katniss is an interesting character, if not always very likeable, and the story moves at a dizzying pace. There are quite a few dramatic plot twists and surprises that keep readers on the edge of their seat, eager to find out what else may be in store. The world of the Hunger Games is also interesting, though it is less detailed than some other fictional worlds and there are occasionally believability issues. Overall, The Hunger Games books are not exactly great literature, but as pure escapist entertainment, they are a good option for readers of all ages.

[Side note: The popularity of The Hunger Games books led to an influence on real world events, as anti-coup protesters in Thailand used the defiant salute from the books (and the movies) to express their opposition to the military takeover, in some cases getting arrested for it.]

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Pinocchio is one of many characters from children’s literature and folk tales that is regrettably most familiar from the Disney version. Unlike characters from folk tales like Cinderella, Snow White, or Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) but like Peter Pan, Pinocchio comes from a more modern novel, in this case a 19th century book by Carlo Collodi. This means that there aren’t numerous different versions of the story, so without reading the original novel most people will only be exposed to the Disney version. On the other hand, it also means that there is a definitive original, which is not the case for most folk tales, whose origins are usually lost in the mists of time. In either case, while the Disney versions of the stories are not bad, their tendency to so vastly overshadow earlier versions is not a good thing (Disney’s propensity for using and essentially taking over public domain characters while going to great lengths to protect their own original copyrights is also hypocritical, but that is another issue). So I was curious to find out what the original Pinocchio was like, though to tell the truth it’s been so long since I’ve seen the Disney movie that my memories of it are rather vague.

Pinocchio is initially extremely mischievous, even nasty, to his creator Geppetto and to the Talking Cricket (who he kills early on, though the cricket reappears as a ghost), but he soon resolves to turn over a new leaf. Unfortunately, he keeps getting tempted and returns to his mischievous ways. The series of adventures Pinocchio has have a slightly old fashioned feel to them, vaguely resembling earlier folk tales or perhaps the adventures of slightly more modern (but still older than Pinocchio) characters such as Don Quixote or Tom Jones. Many of the adventures were used in the Disney version, though I don’t remember enough of the latter to determine how much they were changed. The cricket at least underwent a fairly drastic transformation in the Disney version. But overall I really can’t judge whether the Disney version of the story was much worse or better that the original. The latter at least is reasonably interesting and entertaining, though there are better books around.

The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic by Robert O’Connell
As I think I have mentioned previously on this blog, one of my favorite subjects as a kid, aside from astronomy and planetary science, was ancient history, and in particular the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. So of course my favorite historical figure was the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, and I read pretty much every book on him and his home city of Carthage that was available at any of the local libraries. While I also read plenty on other historical topics (general histories of Greece and Rome and so forth), Hannibal and the Punic Wars was my main focus. While today the scope of my historical reading has broadened considerably, I still can’t resist picking up any interesting looking new take on Hannibal and his career, and so when I saw this book in a used book store on a visit to the US a few years ago, of course I had to get it. Interestingly, subsequently I saw a Chinese translation of this book placed prominently on a display table in a bookstore in Taiwan, which surprised me a little, because as interesting as I think Hannibal is myself, the topic is a little esoteric and so not something I’d expect to attract a particularly wide audience.

The Ghosts of Cannae, as the title suggests, takes as its centerpiece Hannibal’s most famous and most complete victory over the Romans, the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, but it also covers the background and aftermath of the battle. It is a lucid, well done account, though I don’t necessarily completely agree with all of his interpretations and conclusions. For example, he concludes that Hannibal made a mistake by failing to march on Rome after the battle, though he admits that it was a long shot and acknowledges that the majority of modern scholars think Hannibal’s decision was the right one (assuming that there was even any debate about it, as Livy claims with his story about the Carthaginian officer Maharbal’s urging Hannibal to go to Rome). Of course we can’t be sure that such a march, long and difficult though it would have been, especially considering exhausted state of the victors and the substantial casualties they had suffered, wouldn’t have somehow caused Rome’s will to collapse, and we know that Hannibal’s chosen strategy of breaking up Rome’s alliances ultimately failed. But considering the difficulties of an immediate march on Rome, it’s likely that Hannibal didn’t even seriously consider the idea, and it’s probable that it was not a realistic option anyway for the reasons mentioned above. For that matter, if a few things had gone differently later in the war (for example, if Hasdrubal had defeated the Scipio brothers and go on to march on Italy in 215 BCE), it is possible that Hannibal’s strategy could have been successful. But all in all O’Connell’s account is a solid addition to the body of work on Hannibal and his war against Rome.