This Week In Books: #17
Feb. 5th, 2007 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanChristmas, New Year's Eve, and now the Superbowl. I swear, choosing Sunday for these things only makes me look like the lamest person in the world for actually being on lj on these dates. Pity, because I actually read six books this week.
1) A Natural History Of Latin - Tore Janson
This nice little book is divided into four sections: a brief history of Rome and Latin as it developed and was spoken during that time, a history of Latin's development during the middle ages and into the modern period, a description of Latin grammar and usage, and a dictionary and fairly extensive compendium of Latin phrases. The author has a light and entertaining voice, turning what could have been an excruciating slog through historical detail and minutiae into a very enjoyable read. The book was of obvious interest to me as a Latin learner, but its first two sections would be quite enjoyable to anyone with a general interest in history.
2) The Planets - Dava Sobel
I'm not usually into pop science books but was attracted by the volume's presentation, which is, in a word, gorgeous. The paper is thick and creamy, the text peppered with full color illustrations that reminded me of the Voyager Tarot. So that is what initially caught my eye, but the writing drew me in. Far from some bare bones astronomy textbook retread, Sobel's Planets takes all nine (at that time) of its namesakes as starting points for unexpected forays into poetry, free (though never far-straying) association, and storytelling, so that Mercury's chapter is about Greek mythology, Neptune's about two little-known female astronomers, and Earth's about the development of geography. Good stuff. The writing is airy and beautiful; Sobel reminds me very much of Ciaran Carson--one of my all time favorite authors. I will definitely be checking out her other works.
3) The Art Of War - Ralph D. Sawyer (trans)
I was surprised to see so many people singing translator Sawyer's praises on this volume's back cover, as I'd always thought R.L. Wing's Art Of Strategy was considered the ultimate translation. As it turns out, Sawyer's is quite good as well. He completely eschews the annoying modern tendency to view Art Of War as some "Ancient Chinese secret" guide to hostile business takeovers, and instead views it for what it is: a guide to formulating martial strategy in Warring States/Spring And Autumn period-China. The majority of the book is composed of extensively footnoted discussions of Art Of War's time period: the weapons, the states, the major players, the battles, and the culture. This gives the actual text a concrete grounding that allows one to truly appreciate the genius of Sun Tsu's composition. The actual translation of the text is quite good too. Saywer chooses to go with vernacular English instead of trying to maintain the rhythm of the four-character original, making the texts' points easier to grasp. I would recommend reading this book twice: once straight through and once while looking up every footnote as you come upon it. (Unlike some books, you really do need to read the footnotes here; they provide even more interesting historical context, notations of important differences between the tomb/Sung/Ming and other extant texts, various commentators' approaches to the time period and text itself, and sometimes all three.) I only have one complaint, although it is a serious one. This book was not edited, which is highly annoying in and of itself. Combine that with the fact that Sawyer has chosen to go with the odious Wade-Giles romanization system, and you end up with major trouble (i.e. when you have two states--Ch'in and Chin--at war with one another and the author consistently forgets the apostrophe, the reader is forced to spend inordinate amounts of time puzzling over which state is doing what). It's the only annoying factor in an otherwise very good translation.
4) Symbols Of Tibetan Buddhism - Claude B. Levenson
I was expecting this book to be an academic discussion of Tibetan Buddhist symbolism. Instead, it is a budget coffee table book--lots of nice glossy pictures accompanied by text that says a whole lot of nothing. The pictures are gorgeous and occassionaly atmospheric to be sure, but the author does not know much about Tibetan Buddhism and consequently is unable to identify its symbols or even write very intelligently about the obvious ones she has covered. She thus spends a lot of time rhapsodizing about Tibet and its religion in annoyingly flowery, new agey language. To add insult to injury, the pictures often do not correspond exactly with the subjects she is discussing. She also has a puzzling fascination for the word "indissociable"; it pops up once every two to three pages. Flip through this one in the store if you'd like to look at the pictures, but don't waste any more of your time on it.
5) Zen: A Way Of Life - Christmas Humphreys
I first read this book five years ago, and came away with the impression that its author was a hopeless wanker. I found myself much more kindly disposed to it this time around, but it is still unfortunately dated. Humphreys was born in 1901 and wrote Zen... in the early 60s--a time when not much at all was known about the subject in the West. (Consider: there weren't even any excerpts of the Shobogenzo translated into English at the time of Humphreys' writing; now one can select from several translations of the entire work.) His opinions are often erroneous, based as they are on conjecture and badly distorted information, and he also suffers from a bad case of turn-of-the-previous-century Orientalism, and writes accordingly. His excerpts of various sutras are junked up with lots of "thous" and "hasts", and this fancy language obscures the very mundane message they convey. Still, there is a lot of good material buried in the latter half of the book; I would recommend that anyone with the opportunity and desire to check it out skip the first six chapters entirely and take any sweeping statements about Soto and Rinzai made afterwards with a grain of salt. Finally, the book suffers from an annoying inconsistency in its Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese transliterations; no big problem if you're already familiar with most of the terms, but still irksome all the same.
6) Dispatches From The Edge - Anderson Cooper
This book has all the hallmarks of a volume I'd hate: a priveleged author with no sense of narrative continuity and an annoyingly overwrought voice, and yet I found that I couldn't hate it, because Anderson Cooper is one messed up cookie. The text itself is a mishmash of tenuously related 1/3-4 page long chapterlets which jump back and forth across time and location. Cooper's experiences of Sarajevo, Sri Lanka, Niger, Somalia, and especially the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged south are compelling, although you wish he'd chill it with the thesaurus adjectives and learn to write in complete sentences. Anyone looking for penetrating, observant firsthand accounts of these disasters should best look elsewhere; their (perhaps unintended) function here is to work as a backdrop for Cooper's chilling emotional detachment from the world. Dispatches is probably best approached as a memoir describing the devastating effects of death and suicide on a young psyche rather than a historical document. But if you read it looking for the former, it works alarmingly well.
That will be all.
1) A Natural History Of Latin - Tore Janson
This nice little book is divided into four sections: a brief history of Rome and Latin as it developed and was spoken during that time, a history of Latin's development during the middle ages and into the modern period, a description of Latin grammar and usage, and a dictionary and fairly extensive compendium of Latin phrases. The author has a light and entertaining voice, turning what could have been an excruciating slog through historical detail and minutiae into a very enjoyable read. The book was of obvious interest to me as a Latin learner, but its first two sections would be quite enjoyable to anyone with a general interest in history.
2) The Planets - Dava Sobel
I'm not usually into pop science books but was attracted by the volume's presentation, which is, in a word, gorgeous. The paper is thick and creamy, the text peppered with full color illustrations that reminded me of the Voyager Tarot. So that is what initially caught my eye, but the writing drew me in. Far from some bare bones astronomy textbook retread, Sobel's Planets takes all nine (at that time) of its namesakes as starting points for unexpected forays into poetry, free (though never far-straying) association, and storytelling, so that Mercury's chapter is about Greek mythology, Neptune's about two little-known female astronomers, and Earth's about the development of geography. Good stuff. The writing is airy and beautiful; Sobel reminds me very much of Ciaran Carson--one of my all time favorite authors. I will definitely be checking out her other works.
3) The Art Of War - Ralph D. Sawyer (trans)
I was surprised to see so many people singing translator Sawyer's praises on this volume's back cover, as I'd always thought R.L. Wing's Art Of Strategy was considered the ultimate translation. As it turns out, Sawyer's is quite good as well. He completely eschews the annoying modern tendency to view Art Of War as some "Ancient Chinese secret" guide to hostile business takeovers, and instead views it for what it is: a guide to formulating martial strategy in Warring States/Spring And Autumn period-China. The majority of the book is composed of extensively footnoted discussions of Art Of War's time period: the weapons, the states, the major players, the battles, and the culture. This gives the actual text a concrete grounding that allows one to truly appreciate the genius of Sun Tsu's composition. The actual translation of the text is quite good too. Saywer chooses to go with vernacular English instead of trying to maintain the rhythm of the four-character original, making the texts' points easier to grasp. I would recommend reading this book twice: once straight through and once while looking up every footnote as you come upon it. (Unlike some books, you really do need to read the footnotes here; they provide even more interesting historical context, notations of important differences between the tomb/Sung/Ming and other extant texts, various commentators' approaches to the time period and text itself, and sometimes all three.) I only have one complaint, although it is a serious one. This book was not edited, which is highly annoying in and of itself. Combine that with the fact that Sawyer has chosen to go with the odious Wade-Giles romanization system, and you end up with major trouble (i.e. when you have two states--Ch'in and Chin--at war with one another and the author consistently forgets the apostrophe, the reader is forced to spend inordinate amounts of time puzzling over which state is doing what). It's the only annoying factor in an otherwise very good translation.
4) Symbols Of Tibetan Buddhism - Claude B. Levenson
I was expecting this book to be an academic discussion of Tibetan Buddhist symbolism. Instead, it is a budget coffee table book--lots of nice glossy pictures accompanied by text that says a whole lot of nothing. The pictures are gorgeous and occassionaly atmospheric to be sure, but the author does not know much about Tibetan Buddhism and consequently is unable to identify its symbols or even write very intelligently about the obvious ones she has covered. She thus spends a lot of time rhapsodizing about Tibet and its religion in annoyingly flowery, new agey language. To add insult to injury, the pictures often do not correspond exactly with the subjects she is discussing. She also has a puzzling fascination for the word "indissociable"; it pops up once every two to three pages. Flip through this one in the store if you'd like to look at the pictures, but don't waste any more of your time on it.
5) Zen: A Way Of Life - Christmas Humphreys
I first read this book five years ago, and came away with the impression that its author was a hopeless wanker. I found myself much more kindly disposed to it this time around, but it is still unfortunately dated. Humphreys was born in 1901 and wrote Zen... in the early 60s--a time when not much at all was known about the subject in the West. (Consider: there weren't even any excerpts of the Shobogenzo translated into English at the time of Humphreys' writing; now one can select from several translations of the entire work.) His opinions are often erroneous, based as they are on conjecture and badly distorted information, and he also suffers from a bad case of turn-of-the-previous-century Orientalism, and writes accordingly. His excerpts of various sutras are junked up with lots of "thous" and "hasts", and this fancy language obscures the very mundane message they convey. Still, there is a lot of good material buried in the latter half of the book; I would recommend that anyone with the opportunity and desire to check it out skip the first six chapters entirely and take any sweeping statements about Soto and Rinzai made afterwards with a grain of salt. Finally, the book suffers from an annoying inconsistency in its Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese transliterations; no big problem if you're already familiar with most of the terms, but still irksome all the same.
6) Dispatches From The Edge - Anderson Cooper
This book has all the hallmarks of a volume I'd hate: a priveleged author with no sense of narrative continuity and an annoyingly overwrought voice, and yet I found that I couldn't hate it, because Anderson Cooper is one messed up cookie. The text itself is a mishmash of tenuously related 1/3-4 page long chapterlets which jump back and forth across time and location. Cooper's experiences of Sarajevo, Sri Lanka, Niger, Somalia, and especially the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged south are compelling, although you wish he'd chill it with the thesaurus adjectives and learn to write in complete sentences. Anyone looking for penetrating, observant firsthand accounts of these disasters should best look elsewhere; their (perhaps unintended) function here is to work as a backdrop for Cooper's chilling emotional detachment from the world. Dispatches is probably best approached as a memoir describing the devastating effects of death and suicide on a young psyche rather than a historical document. But if you read it looking for the former, it works alarmingly well.
That will be all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2007-02-05 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-02-05 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-02-05 03:06 am (UTC)your fatherlarge crowds for the next day or so.no subject
on 2007-02-05 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-02-05 03:24 am (UTC)I usually don't want to comment when you post about book recommendations but I will break my oath... because I thought everyone around the world saw/understood this work as guide even though I was given a small introducction via anime (a.k.a Thunder Jet...) don't laugh, that's how I always understood The Art of War.
no subject
on 2007-02-05 05:02 am (UTC)