TWI Books: #25
Apr. 3rd, 2007 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanComing (predictably) a day late, here's what I read last week.
1) Celtic Warriors - Daithi O'Hogain
Daithi O'Hogain is an academic whose name is dropped quite frequently in Celtic Studies circles; as such I was eager to read one of his works. Unfortunately, if Celtic Warriors is at all indicative of his scholarship I will approach his other works with extreme caution. The book itself is beautiful, with high quality glossy paper and lots of photographs. It's too bad that these qualities can't compensate for its flaws. First, the title is misleading. I was expecting a book about pan-Celtic warrior culture, weaponry, attitudes, and mores. What I got was a military history of the rise and defeat of the Continental Celts at the hands of the Romans. It's a remarkably detailed military history, but I'm not a big fan of military histories; moreover, I am one of the few Classical scholars who finds the Roman empire and its "diplomacy" repellant, so reading of their constant invasion and brutalizing of other cultures was depressing. Finally, Celtic Warriors is yet another book that suffers from an atrocious lack of editing: names are misspelled or worse yet incorrectly substituted for other personages, sentences lack grammatical constructions, and some phrases and explanations are repeated so frequently and unnecessarily that they appear to have been entered via Microsoft's "replace" function. End verdict: students of military history (general or Classical) will likely enjoy this book, but it's probably worth missing otherwise.
2) Tiger in The Well - Philip Pullman
I don't think I would have been nearly as disappointed with this book were I not aware of the truly wonderful writing of which Pullman is capable (see: His Dark Materials). Tiger In The Well is a good, atmospheric caper, with tight plotting and nicely realised settings. There are unexpected humorous moments and some truly nail-bitingly tense scenes. Best of all, the characters have recovered from their loathsome The Shadow In The North incarnations. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, Pullman dashed them to the ground with a contrived and forced finale, where the author beats readers over the head with the anvils of Social Awareness and Enlightened Compassion before he avoids resolving the outstanding plot points by...ignoring them. Just like that. The reader finds herself just before the gripping climax, turns the page, and then...everything is resolved. Without any explanation as to how that resolution occurred. The end. Nice try, Mr. Pullman, but these books are going in the mooch inventory.
3) The Book Of Dragons - E. Nesbit
This collection of children's tales was written about 150 years ago. The narrative voice is similar to that later adopted by Lewis, the gender roles as clearly defined, and the intended moral lessons as obvious. In other words: mildly enjoyable, but dated. What ultimately left the greatest impression on me was how frequently large numbers of creatures (innocent or otherwise) met their deaths, which is something one doesn't see in contemporary children's literature.
4) Japanese Death Poems - Yoel Hoffman
Japanese Death Poems is a collection of just what the title suggests: death poems (jisei) written by Japanese throughout the centuries. Hoffman's discussion of the genre along with basic cultural background (some aspects of which are more solid than others) occupies the first third of the book; the second is composed of translations of jisei originally written in Classical Chinese; and the third and largest section contains haiku-style jisei along with romanizations of their original Japanese. It was this last aspect that convinced me to purchase the book, as Japanese poetry anthologies fail to include anything save the translation more often than not. The romanizations do help quite a bit, as they both allowed me to understand how the author arrived at her choices in translating and to formulate my own alternate translations when I disagreed with her choices. Another strength of Japanese Death Poems is to be found in the author's inclusion of biographical notes and death dates for the poems' authors, as well as explanations concerning the formalized symbolic imagery in the poems. The book's weaknesses are Hoffman's choice not to include the original characters for any of the poems; to not indicate vowel duration outside of the transliterations; and her choice to organize the poems alphabetically by author instead of chronologically, thus destroying any opportunity to observe developments in language, expression, and symbolism within the form. Still, I recommend this book both for the uniqueness of its content and for the fact that it is more informative to the Japanese-speaker than other similar collections.
5) The Road To Auschwitz - Heidi Fried
The Road To Auschwitz is the memoir of an ethnically-Hungarian Romanian Jew who survived the ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen before being liberated and naturalized in Sweden. As indicated by by title, the majority of the memoir takes place before Freid's interrment (Romania fell to the Nazis relatively late in the war, and she spent a little over a year under Nazi imprisonment), but this just makes it more emotionally draining than otherwise because the reader knows more about the life the author lost to the camps. Like The Aquariums Of Pyongyang, the narrative is disjointed and sparse, and doesn't convey the enormity of the experience because of that, but it's still heartrending all the same.
6) Worse Than Watergate - John W. Dean
This book was written shortly before Bush's reelection by the former White House council to President Nixon--a man who is uniquely qualified to judge whether a political situation is similar to Watergate or not. It should be required reading for every American citizen or anyone else with an interest in the underhanded dealings of the current administration. Paired up with All The President's Spin it is one half of a damning record of the dissembling, obfuscation, and utter mendacity of the Bush White House. Dean's prose is pointed and concise. He doesn't mince words, but neither does he resort to mudslinging or empty polemicising, which makes his arguments all the more powerful. The author also chose to forego some of the more commonly-known scandals and dark doings of the administration in favor of discussing other not-so-well-known machinations. All of which, predictably, made my blood boil. Although I have the first edition hardback I also checked out the new material in the TPB, and it is as solid as the older. Read, read, read this book, and then weep that more people didn't bother to do so before the 2004 election.
Special Bonus Supplement: currently holding strong at 64 books. Yes, I read six this week, but several new ones came in to replace them via BookMooch. Woes.
That will be all.
1) Celtic Warriors - Daithi O'Hogain
Daithi O'Hogain is an academic whose name is dropped quite frequently in Celtic Studies circles; as such I was eager to read one of his works. Unfortunately, if Celtic Warriors is at all indicative of his scholarship I will approach his other works with extreme caution. The book itself is beautiful, with high quality glossy paper and lots of photographs. It's too bad that these qualities can't compensate for its flaws. First, the title is misleading. I was expecting a book about pan-Celtic warrior culture, weaponry, attitudes, and mores. What I got was a military history of the rise and defeat of the Continental Celts at the hands of the Romans. It's a remarkably detailed military history, but I'm not a big fan of military histories; moreover, I am one of the few Classical scholars who finds the Roman empire and its "diplomacy" repellant, so reading of their constant invasion and brutalizing of other cultures was depressing. Finally, Celtic Warriors is yet another book that suffers from an atrocious lack of editing: names are misspelled or worse yet incorrectly substituted for other personages, sentences lack grammatical constructions, and some phrases and explanations are repeated so frequently and unnecessarily that they appear to have been entered via Microsoft's "replace" function. End verdict: students of military history (general or Classical) will likely enjoy this book, but it's probably worth missing otherwise.
2) Tiger in The Well - Philip Pullman
I don't think I would have been nearly as disappointed with this book were I not aware of the truly wonderful writing of which Pullman is capable (see: His Dark Materials). Tiger In The Well is a good, atmospheric caper, with tight plotting and nicely realised settings. There are unexpected humorous moments and some truly nail-bitingly tense scenes. Best of all, the characters have recovered from their loathsome The Shadow In The North incarnations. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, Pullman dashed them to the ground with a contrived and forced finale, where the author beats readers over the head with the anvils of Social Awareness and Enlightened Compassion before he avoids resolving the outstanding plot points by...ignoring them. Just like that. The reader finds herself just before the gripping climax, turns the page, and then...everything is resolved. Without any explanation as to how that resolution occurred. The end. Nice try, Mr. Pullman, but these books are going in the mooch inventory.
3) The Book Of Dragons - E. Nesbit
This collection of children's tales was written about 150 years ago. The narrative voice is similar to that later adopted by Lewis, the gender roles as clearly defined, and the intended moral lessons as obvious. In other words: mildly enjoyable, but dated. What ultimately left the greatest impression on me was how frequently large numbers of creatures (innocent or otherwise) met their deaths, which is something one doesn't see in contemporary children's literature.
4) Japanese Death Poems - Yoel Hoffman
Japanese Death Poems is a collection of just what the title suggests: death poems (jisei) written by Japanese throughout the centuries. Hoffman's discussion of the genre along with basic cultural background (some aspects of which are more solid than others) occupies the first third of the book; the second is composed of translations of jisei originally written in Classical Chinese; and the third and largest section contains haiku-style jisei along with romanizations of their original Japanese. It was this last aspect that convinced me to purchase the book, as Japanese poetry anthologies fail to include anything save the translation more often than not. The romanizations do help quite a bit, as they both allowed me to understand how the author arrived at her choices in translating and to formulate my own alternate translations when I disagreed with her choices. Another strength of Japanese Death Poems is to be found in the author's inclusion of biographical notes and death dates for the poems' authors, as well as explanations concerning the formalized symbolic imagery in the poems. The book's weaknesses are Hoffman's choice not to include the original characters for any of the poems; to not indicate vowel duration outside of the transliterations; and her choice to organize the poems alphabetically by author instead of chronologically, thus destroying any opportunity to observe developments in language, expression, and symbolism within the form. Still, I recommend this book both for the uniqueness of its content and for the fact that it is more informative to the Japanese-speaker than other similar collections.
5) The Road To Auschwitz - Heidi Fried
The Road To Auschwitz is the memoir of an ethnically-Hungarian Romanian Jew who survived the ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen before being liberated and naturalized in Sweden. As indicated by by title, the majority of the memoir takes place before Freid's interrment (Romania fell to the Nazis relatively late in the war, and she spent a little over a year under Nazi imprisonment), but this just makes it more emotionally draining than otherwise because the reader knows more about the life the author lost to the camps. Like The Aquariums Of Pyongyang, the narrative is disjointed and sparse, and doesn't convey the enormity of the experience because of that, but it's still heartrending all the same.
6) Worse Than Watergate - John W. Dean
This book was written shortly before Bush's reelection by the former White House council to President Nixon--a man who is uniquely qualified to judge whether a political situation is similar to Watergate or not. It should be required reading for every American citizen or anyone else with an interest in the underhanded dealings of the current administration. Paired up with All The President's Spin it is one half of a damning record of the dissembling, obfuscation, and utter mendacity of the Bush White House. Dean's prose is pointed and concise. He doesn't mince words, but neither does he resort to mudslinging or empty polemicising, which makes his arguments all the more powerful. The author also chose to forego some of the more commonly-known scandals and dark doings of the administration in favor of discussing other not-so-well-known machinations. All of which, predictably, made my blood boil. Although I have the first edition hardback I also checked out the new material in the TPB, and it is as solid as the older. Read, read, read this book, and then weep that more people didn't bother to do so before the 2004 election.
Special Bonus Supplement: currently holding strong at 64 books. Yes, I read six this week, but several new ones came in to replace them via BookMooch. Woes.
That will be all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2007-04-03 04:21 am (UTC)Sorry. I thought it had the same context as its spanish counterpart.
no subject
on 2007-04-03 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-04-03 04:53 pm (UTC).
.
.
Ok, don't hate me I wrote "bookworm" thinking it had the same context as "raton de biblioteca" which we use to describe people that loves reading books... but now I discovered that even here the word is an insult... forgive me I think that I need to update my database...there are many words I use that have changed their first meaning
Once again sorry
no subject
on 2007-04-03 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-04-03 05:42 pm (UTC)