Genre: Literary fiction
Year Published: 1997
Of the books I have loved in my life, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett stands out as one of the most mature and beautiful. For those of you who haven't read it, I won't spoil it -- I urge you to go pick up a copy and see for yourselves.
So naturally I began The Magician's Assistant with high hopes, but (perhaps inevitably) these hopes were dashed. The Magician's Assistant is not in the same universe as Bel Canto. You'll forgive me for making the obvious comparison, but if the latter is opera, the former is musical theater.
But let me for a moment examine the book on its own merits. Certainly I enjoyed The Magician's Assistant, but I found it to be too generic and predictable to really recommend it to you all, dear readers. And you must take me seriously when I call a book predictable, because I'm generally terrible at working out how things are going to end up. Yet I saw the arc of this as clearly as a contrail on a clear day.
The plot is simple: Sabine, the eponymous assistant, is the recent widow of Parsifal, a gay, HIV-positive magician who married her so that she would be taken care of after his death. Sabine had thought Parsifal had no family, but he did, and her interactions with them form the bulk of the novel. Self-discovery (often in the form of too-rational dreams) ensues.
I hate to bring up Bel Canto again, but that novel felt like a book that no one else could write, it was that original and heartbreaking. The Magician's Assistant felt like a book you could pull off the shelf and see any American woman's name on the cover. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it was just like every other middlebrow, female-authored book aimed at women from coast to coast. I prefer my reading to be a little quirkier, a little less marketable.
Recommended? You can pass it up.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (Paul Hoffman)
Genre: Biography (mathematical)
Year Published: 1998
While I was walking to the train station yesterday, having just finished this book, I tried to think of a historical figure to compare Paul Erdős with, so that non-mathematicians could appreciate the enormity of his legacy. The best I could come up with was an unholy cross of Buddha and Bach: Buddha for his itinerant, indigent lifestyle and complete generosity; Bach for his highly prolific genius. (Now try to imagine Buddha with Bach's crazy white wig. Doesn't the imagery alone make it worth it?)
With that bizarre hybrid in mind, I admit it cannot be easy to begin to contemplate how to write a fitting biography of Erdős. There are probably a dozen directions in which an author could go. As much as I enjoyed The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, it never quite achieved whatever lofty ideal was in the back of my mind. Apparently the book grew out of a biographical story that Hoffman wrote for The Atlantic, and it shows: it retains the jumpy, floating structure of a typical high-class magazine piece instead of assuming the more linear pace of a typical work of nonfiction. Even more tellingly, we as readers are never made to think too hard in a mathematical sense: never are we given even a sketchy outline of one of Erdős's thousands of proofs, nor do we learn much more about number theory (Erdős's field) than the definition of prime numbers.
Having said all this, I'd like to reiterate that I did enjoy this book very much -- I barely put it down once I'd begun it. I simply wish that it had achieved more. This volume is a mere glimpse into the life of one of the most intriguing mathematicians to ever live (and that is saying a lot!) If someone could marry the very good, anecdote-heavy legwork that Hoffman has done with a bit more serious biographical information and a deeper insight into Erdős's mathematics, we'd have the makings of a first-rate biography. As it stands now, it feels somehow incomplete . . . part book and part fog.
Recommended? Only if you are a mathematician, or particularly fond of same.
Year Published: 1998
While I was walking to the train station yesterday, having just finished this book, I tried to think of a historical figure to compare Paul Erdős with, so that non-mathematicians could appreciate the enormity of his legacy. The best I could come up with was an unholy cross of Buddha and Bach: Buddha for his itinerant, indigent lifestyle and complete generosity; Bach for his highly prolific genius. (Now try to imagine Buddha with Bach's crazy white wig. Doesn't the imagery alone make it worth it?)
With that bizarre hybrid in mind, I admit it cannot be easy to begin to contemplate how to write a fitting biography of Erdős. There are probably a dozen directions in which an author could go. As much as I enjoyed The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, it never quite achieved whatever lofty ideal was in the back of my mind. Apparently the book grew out of a biographical story that Hoffman wrote for The Atlantic, and it shows: it retains the jumpy, floating structure of a typical high-class magazine piece instead of assuming the more linear pace of a typical work of nonfiction. Even more tellingly, we as readers are never made to think too hard in a mathematical sense: never are we given even a sketchy outline of one of Erdős's thousands of proofs, nor do we learn much more about number theory (Erdős's field) than the definition of prime numbers.
Having said all this, I'd like to reiterate that I did enjoy this book very much -- I barely put it down once I'd begun it. I simply wish that it had achieved more. This volume is a mere glimpse into the life of one of the most intriguing mathematicians to ever live (and that is saying a lot!) If someone could marry the very good, anecdote-heavy legwork that Hoffman has done with a bit more serious biographical information and a deeper insight into Erdős's mathematics, we'd have the makings of a first-rate biography. As it stands now, it feels somehow incomplete . . . part book and part fog.
Recommended? Only if you are a mathematician, or particularly fond of same.
I Was Amelia Earhart (Jane Mendelsohn)
Genre: Literary fiction
Year Published: 1996
It's been about a week now since I finished I Was Amelia Earhart, and I still don't know what to make of it. In short, it is the imagined autobiography of the aviator, taking place mainly after her plane disappears, though with flashbacks to the time beforehand. Mendelsohn's prose is atmospheric and dreamlike, though her imagery is as vivid as can be.
I could tell without Googling Mendelsohn that she was a poet long before she was a fictioneer: her constructions, habits, and tics all broadcast her poetic background. The first hurdle you have to clear to enjoy Amelia Earhart is that Mendelsohn's work has all the shortcomings (as well as the beauty) of lyric poetry -- that is, the prose is a little too breathy and saturated in wonder and revelation.
The second hurdle, which for me was the nigh insurmountable one, is that Mendelsohn constantly toes the line between fantasy and reality. Not difficult, you might think, in an imagined autobiography, but I'm talking about internal consistency. Are Earhart's post-crash experiences all an elaborate, last-minute fever dream as she drowns? Are they a form of afterlife? Or are we meant to take them more literally? Mendelsohn never says, and though perhaps I shouldn't resent this, I do. Ambiguity isn't necessarily an evil, but it is at least enormously frustrating here.
Recommended? Thumb through it at your local library; you'll be able to tell pretty quickly if you're going to be able to stomach Mendelsohn's prose. If you can, then it's a quick, intriguing read -- though not, on the whole, a satisfying one.
Year Published: 1996
It's been about a week now since I finished I Was Amelia Earhart, and I still don't know what to make of it. In short, it is the imagined autobiography of the aviator, taking place mainly after her plane disappears, though with flashbacks to the time beforehand. Mendelsohn's prose is atmospheric and dreamlike, though her imagery is as vivid as can be.
I could tell without Googling Mendelsohn that she was a poet long before she was a fictioneer: her constructions, habits, and tics all broadcast her poetic background. The first hurdle you have to clear to enjoy Amelia Earhart is that Mendelsohn's work has all the shortcomings (as well as the beauty) of lyric poetry -- that is, the prose is a little too breathy and saturated in wonder and revelation.
The second hurdle, which for me was the nigh insurmountable one, is that Mendelsohn constantly toes the line between fantasy and reality. Not difficult, you might think, in an imagined autobiography, but I'm talking about internal consistency. Are Earhart's post-crash experiences all an elaborate, last-minute fever dream as she drowns? Are they a form of afterlife? Or are we meant to take them more literally? Mendelsohn never says, and though perhaps I shouldn't resent this, I do. Ambiguity isn't necessarily an evil, but it is at least enormously frustrating here.
Recommended? Thumb through it at your local library; you'll be able to tell pretty quickly if you're going to be able to stomach Mendelsohn's prose. If you can, then it's a quick, intriguing read -- though not, on the whole, a satisfying one.
Monday, June 11, 2007
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (Alexander McCall Smith)
Genre: Fiction
Year Published: 2004
If you haven't yet discovered the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, you're missing something special. In the Company of Cheerful Ladies is the sixth book in the series, so I won't speak to specific plot points that would ruin earlier books.
Cheerful Ladies is mostly about second chances, and as such it's hopeful, and rarely troubling. To be honest, it isn't my favorite in this wonderful series -- I think that would be Morality for Beautiful Girls, though that one's predecessor and successor are also exquisite -- but it's certainly of the same consistently high quality we've come to expect from McCall Smith. If everything works itself out a little too smoothly, we can't blame McCall Smith for wanting to keep the peace in this little piece of Botswana he's created in his readers' imaginations.
Recommended? I doubt you'll be able to resist it if you've made it this far in the series! (I don't recommend reading these books out of sequence.)
Year Published: 2004
If you haven't yet discovered the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, you're missing something special. In the Company of Cheerful Ladies is the sixth book in the series, so I won't speak to specific plot points that would ruin earlier books.
Cheerful Ladies is mostly about second chances, and as such it's hopeful, and rarely troubling. To be honest, it isn't my favorite in this wonderful series -- I think that would be Morality for Beautiful Girls, though that one's predecessor and successor are also exquisite -- but it's certainly of the same consistently high quality we've come to expect from McCall Smith. If everything works itself out a little too smoothly, we can't blame McCall Smith for wanting to keep the peace in this little piece of Botswana he's created in his readers' imaginations.
Recommended? I doubt you'll be able to resist it if you've made it this far in the series! (I don't recommend reading these books out of sequence.)
The Code Book (Simon Singh)
Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 1999
Some people's blood races when they read stories about war. These are the people who keep a Michael Shaara book by their bedside, who participate in reenactments, who spend their Friday nights playing Risk.
But there's another side of war, one filled with warriors who don't wield guns or crouch in trenches. Their purview is communication, both protecting their government's messages and finding out what their enemies are saying. They are cryptologists, and their story is the largely unwritten side of military history. And for me, as a mathematician, that's what makes my pulse speed up, to read about those breakthroughs, especially as they so often happened as countries clashed on the battlefield.
I was actually surprised by the visceral reaction I had as I was swept up in the various races to create and break ciphers, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. No one does pop science better than Simon Singh (between this and Fermat's Enigma, he is, as far as I'm concerned, to math lit as Ina Garten is to cookbooks). I could say a thousand wonderful things about him, but the highest praise I can give him is that he is the least lazy writer I can think of. He cuts no corners; he does enormous amounts of research, including interviews with all the relevant living people; and he always ensures that difficult concepts are presented clearly, in multiple ways.
Because of his deep commitment to his readers, the average reader should be able to understand all the concepts in this book with no trouble. The final chapter, which deals with quantum physics, may be a little beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, but everything else is perfectly lucid.
I only wish that Singh would write an updated, post-9/11 version of this book. The section on privacy versus national security is already terribly outdated.
Recommended? If you're going to read one "educational" book this year, it should be this one.
Year Published: 1999
Some people's blood races when they read stories about war. These are the people who keep a Michael Shaara book by their bedside, who participate in reenactments, who spend their Friday nights playing Risk.
But there's another side of war, one filled with warriors who don't wield guns or crouch in trenches. Their purview is communication, both protecting their government's messages and finding out what their enemies are saying. They are cryptologists, and their story is the largely unwritten side of military history. And for me, as a mathematician, that's what makes my pulse speed up, to read about those breakthroughs, especially as they so often happened as countries clashed on the battlefield.
I was actually surprised by the visceral reaction I had as I was swept up in the various races to create and break ciphers, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. No one does pop science better than Simon Singh (between this and Fermat's Enigma, he is, as far as I'm concerned, to math lit as Ina Garten is to cookbooks). I could say a thousand wonderful things about him, but the highest praise I can give him is that he is the least lazy writer I can think of. He cuts no corners; he does enormous amounts of research, including interviews with all the relevant living people; and he always ensures that difficult concepts are presented clearly, in multiple ways.
Because of his deep commitment to his readers, the average reader should be able to understand all the concepts in this book with no trouble. The final chapter, which deals with quantum physics, may be a little beyond the comprehension of non-scientists, but everything else is perfectly lucid.
I only wish that Singh would write an updated, post-9/11 version of this book. The section on privacy versus national security is already terribly outdated.
Recommended? If you're going to read one "educational" book this year, it should be this one.
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