What I've Been Reading: Early 2017

While my reading pace has been slow for the last few years, with too much time taken up by going through emails (mostly from political and environmental organizations and politicians), reading the news, and various other projects, I still manage to get through roughly a book a month, though I'm often reading more than one simultaneously. I always have one book, generally a novel, in my bag when I go out, even though many days I never get a chance to read it, and another one or two books - usually non-fiction or less gripping or more difficult fiction (e.g., Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, etc.) - at my bedside to read before going to sleep, and I'll occasionally read bits out of various non-fiction or very familiar fiction during the day. The following are books I finished in the first four months or so of this year. The first of them I actually read most of in late 2016, as mentioned in my last post about my reading, but as I quite hadn't finished it then, I'm including my brief commentary on it here. A lot more could be and perhaps should be said about it, and the other books here as well, but I'd recommend that readers with sufficient time on their hands and interest in the topics covered read the books themselves.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
A very interesting look at the question of why the historical pace of development has varied greatly in different parts of the world. Why has Eurasia and the Mediterranean area, rather than sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas or Oceania, been the home of the world’s most dominant civilization throughout historical times? Diamond explores a number of different factors in considerable detail, and makes a strong argument for his basic premise, that geography was the determining factor. For example, the West Asian region was home to a variety of grains and several animals that were particularly suitable for domestication, which is why it was the first to develop agriculture and civilization. Other parts of the world had much fewer easily domesticated crops, and many had no animals that could be domesticated for transport and as livestock (for instance, while the horse, native to Eurasia, could be domesticated, its relative the African zebra could not. Eurasia’s east-west orientation made it easier for crops domesticated in one part of the continental mass to spread to other parts, whereas the north-south orientation of the Americas and other geographic obstacles elsewhere made it harder for crops to spread. A similar series of factors resulted in Eurasians having more endemic disease germs that could devastate populations newly exposed to them with transmissions in reverse being much less common. While it’s possible that Diamond oversimplifies some points or exaggerates the importance of some factors, or that there are some alternate explanations for some of these things that I am not aware of, in general he makes a convincing case. One important takeaway is that the relative success of certain civilizations or ethnic groups has nothing to do with any inherent superiority they possess, but is due to a combination of factors that ultimately lead back to geography. All in all, it’s definitely a book worth reading.

The Martian by Andy Weir
In general, if a movie is based on a novel, I prefer to read the novel first. This is not always possible, of course, particularly if I hadn’t been aware of the novel until the movie came out, in which case I usually wouldn’t have time to read the book before the movie’s theatrical run ended, assuming I was even able to find a copy. Such was the case with The Martian. The movie was quite good, and when I came across a used copy of the book, I snapped it up (even though the copy I got had a cover based on the film, something I dislike). The book turned out to be as good as the movie, which was pretty faithful to it. The parts of the story that take place on Mars are told through a journal written by the Martian himself, astronaut Mark Watney, with other parts told in third person from the viewpoint of various people at NASA as well as Watney’s fellow astronauts. The story is engaging, and Weir manages to get quite a bit of technical and scientific stuff in without slowing things down appreciably. Watney’s wisecracking personality is perhaps not what one would expect in a scientist-astronaut on a mission to Mars, but then it is in large part that same characteristic that keeps his journal entries more readable than one might expect from the typical scientist or astronaut, even one in such a dramatic situation. All in all, the book is an entertaining read as well as a pretty realistic-seeming look at what it might be like trying to survive on Mars.

Balthasar’s Odyssey by Amin Maalouf
This historical novel is set in the 17th century (in the years 1665 to 1667, to be precise) and its geographic setting ranges from Lebanon to Istanbul to the Aegean to Italy to London and back to the Mediterranean. As the title implies, the book follows the journeys of the protagonist Balthasar, who tells his story through a series of journals (it was an interesting coincidence that I read this just after The Martian, which also featured journal entries by the titular protagonist). Despite his first name, Balthasar is not of native Lebanese ancestry but is a descendant of a Genoese family that arrived in the Levant during the Crusades and ended up staying, though unlike his early ancestors, who were lords of an entire town, he is a seller of antiques, though still a respected member of the community. A mysterious book is the initial impetus for his journey, but events along the way lead him on a much longer trip than he had originally planned on. Balthasar himself is a rationalist who nevertheless becomes infected with superstitious worries about an impending apocalypse, though he constantly tries to maintain his rational outlook. Though he suffers all sorts of unexpected setbacks – some due to his own mistakes, others due mostly to bad luck – he mostly keeps his head, though he often suffers self-doubt, especially when faced with major dilemmas. In general, he’s a character that most readers will find easy to relate to. His story is gripping and the book paints a fascinating picture of the world of that time. The only minor disappointment for me was that the ending left a number of loose ends unresolved. However, this minor flaw doesn’t detract much from what is otherwise a quite good historical novel.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
This novella by Truman Capote is one of his best-known works, and the basis for the well-known movie starring Audrey Hepburn (which I haven’t seen). It is centered on the young woman Holly Golightly, who the narrator became fascinated with when the two were living as neighbors in an apartment building in New York. Published in the late 1950s and set in the early 1940s during World War II, it has a definite mid-20th century feel, but is a lot more straightforward about sex than I might have expected for a book from that era, though admittedly it only takes place off-camera, as it were – the narrator and Holly are comfortable enough with each other to be nude in the other’s presence at points in the story, but they are never lovers and the narrator’s occasional fits of jealousy over Holly are more like those of someone who worries about another stealing away their best friend (in fact, one gets the feeling, though it is never stated, that the narrator may be gay, like Capote himself was). While Holly is perhaps almost too much to be wholly believable, she is certainly a memorable character, and this short novella paints evocative picture of her. The book I have also includes three similarly evocative short stories by Capote, “House of Flowers”, “A Diamond Guitar”, and “A Christmas Memory”.

Life in a Medieval Castle by Joseph and Frances Gies
As the title states, this non-fiction book describes different aspects of life in a medieval castle. It talks about the structure of a typical castle, the lords and ladies of the era, their households, a typical day in a castle, hunting, the villagers who worked for the castle’s lord, knights, warfare involving castles, and how castle life varied over a course of a year. As it happens, the castle they use as their prime example is one of the few I have actual been to, Chepstow Castle, on the border between Wales and England (and a cool castle it is). While the book may not be as engrossing as an adventure story, it is still quite interesting, and worth a read for anyone interested in castles or medieval times.