Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in zerothin's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
8:28 pm	Fabulous Jun 2009 The Arabian Nights - tr. Husain Haddawy - Norton, 1995 * * * * The original twelfth century Syrian manuscript of The Arabian Nights would make a good subject for the General Ignorance section of QI. For a start, there are only 271 nights, not 1001. Secondly, the stories that most people associate with it - Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp - do not appear. The reason is interesting and says a lot about western attitudes to Arab culture. Aladdin and Ali Baba were added in the eighteenth century by the first western translator of the Arabic text, Antoine Galland, based on stories he had heard from a Syrian Christian called Hanna Diab. To be fair he was simply following in the footsteps of some Ethiopian copyists who had also supplemented the original with stories from other sources (Sinbad is one of these), but even so it shows a lack of respect for the text that would not be tolerated nowadays. Worse, later scholars translated Galland's French versions of the added stories back into Arabic and passed them off as originals. Academic fraud, it seems, is nothing new. Translations into English were not much better, veering between Payne's prudish version which excluded passages that conflicted with his own observations of Arab life, and Burton's sensational rendering that only avoided falling foul of indecency laws because it was printed in a private edition. It is good, therefore, that we finally have an unfussy scholarly translation that makes a bonfire of the accretions. What emerges phoenix-like from the flames is a set of stories that are relatively unknown but are more evocative because of the consistent view of the world that they present. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
5:40 pm	Gormenghast in South Kensington May 2009 Dry Store Room Number One - Richard Fortey * * * * How refreshing to encounter an author who knows his genre fiction. The comparison between the Natural History Museum (NHM) and the setting of Mervin Peake's famous trilogy is Fortey's own and is entirely apt. Beyond the grand public halls of that magnificent Gothic building, through the doors marked "private", lie a warren of store rooms, laboratories and offices inhabited by unusual specimens of humanity engaged in mysterious and arcane practices. But though obscure, the work of these dedicated individuals has helped win wars, avert major epidemics and expand human knowledge, and as a reader I feel privileged to have learned something of their secret world. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
4:24 pm	Choosing Where To Start Apr 2009 The Family Trade - Charles Stross - Tor, 2004 * * * All hail Dave Langford, writer of one of the funniest books I have ever read (The Leaky Establishment) and book reviewer par excellence. His Critical Mass columns in White Dwarf magazine were an important part of my development as a teenage SF reader. It was his favourable review of an obscure paperback called The Colour of Magic that has enabled me to follow the journey of Terry Pratchett from his humble origins in fantasy geekdom to his current eminence as knight of the realm for services to literature, one of the minor pleasures of my adult life. Sadly, Critical Mass went the way of all flesh when White Dwarf became Games Workshop's house magazine, and in the absence of such authorities, it is hard for even a dedicated reader to identify a good author just as he or she gets going. This means that more often than not, a reader wanting to try an author new to them has to choose where in their existing body of work to start. The obvious place - their most famous or best reviewed book - is like having sex on a first date. You may be more motivated to continue the relationship, but there is nothing to look forward to. Starting with a lesser work, on the other hand, may result in disappointment but at least means that next time it could be better. With my strategist's mind, I generally adopt the latter approach. Reading is after all a lifetime activity; true classics are rare and I don't want to be stuck in old age with only second-rate books to read. So to Charles Stross. He has a reputation as an energetic ideas man, one of the young(ish) Turks of British SF along with Alastair Reynolds, Peter S. Hamilton, Ian McDonald and China Miéville (depressingly, British women science fiction writers are noticeable by their absence: Justina Robson is the only one that I can think of). His most well-reviewed novels - Iron Sunrise, Singularity Sky and Saturn's Children - are space operas, but his most recent work has been a fantasy sequence called The Merchant Princes. Following Zerothin's Law of Genre-hopping, I reckoned that the latter would be the weaker work and therefore the place to start. I think - I hope - that I was right. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
5:16 pm	Diary Of A Shallow Man Mar 2009 The Insider - Piers Morgan - Ebury Press, 2005 * In a recent edition of QI, Stephen Fry asked the participants to name a poisonous snake and Jimmy Carr triggered the show’s infamous boring and obvious alarm by suggesting Piers Morgan. That Carr should make such a joke, and that the QI elves should predict that he would do so, says a lot about the opinion in which Mr Morgan is held by the celebritocracy. Which makes reading this account of his editorships of The News of the World and The Mirror a rather bizarre experience, in that a good proportion of the text consists of self-congratulatory vignettes in which famous people from Kate Winslet to Tony Blair ask and then thank him for his wise advice. The disconnect between his popular image and his own world view strongly suggests that we have an unreliable narrator and makes us inclined to doubt his account of the tabloid editor's world. Not that it is that insightful anyway. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
4:57 pm	An Iliad For Everyone Mar 2009 Black Ships before Troy - Rosemary Sutcliffe, illus. Alan Lee - Francis Lincoln, 2000 * * * * * I put this one on my Amazon wish-list because it was a Rosemary Sutcliffe that was new to me. I was expecting an authoritative re-telling of the Homeric epic in Sutcliffe's wonderfully vivid prose - what I hadn't spotted was that it is in fact a "childrens'" book with illustrations by Alan Lee, the well-known Tolkien illustrator and one of the art directors of the Lord of the Rings movies. Fortunately Sutcliffe is far too good a writer to dumb down for children, and Lee's illustrations perfectly complement the story with their rich evocation of the ancient Greek world. The result is a minor classic and the best version of the Iliad that you are ever likely to read. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
5:48 pm	The Grocer Who Wrote For Mozart Feb 2009 Lorenzo Da Ponte - Rodney Bolt - Bloomsbury, 2006 * * * * It is probably fair to say that the name "Lorenzo da Ponte" would elicit blank looks from the overwhelming majority of people. His only claim to fame is that he was the librettist for Mozart's three greatest operas (The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte). But that was only a small part of his life. He travelled extensively and was also a priest, a libertine, a poet, an impresario, a bookseller, a grocer and a professor, all of which he recounted at considerable length in his memoirs. As such he is a biographer's dream and Rodney Bolt must have thanked his lucky stars for being able to snaffle such a good subject. For the dramatic events of Da Ponte's long life perfectly illuminate the social and political upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and make this more than just a biography of Mozart's librettist. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
2:12 pm	Good Fathers And Bad Mothers Dec 2008 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Oxford University Press, 2008 * * * * * Truth be told, Dickens is not as great a writer as some critics and literary academics have made him out to be. He has an eye for character and a way with words, but his novels can be preachy, digressive and appallingly sentimental, with viewpoint characters who are thin moral ciphers rather than real people (exhibit A: The Old Curiosity Shop). These weaknesses, especially if encountered in an uninspiring educational context, must have created a legion of the Dickens-phobic, and it is possible that you, dear reader, are one of them. In which case, this review is for you. Firstly it is important to acknowledge that your antipathy is not at all unreasonable (or unusual: a google for "I hate Dickens" returns 352,000 results). If you are intolerant of emotionalism or implausible characterisation, Dickens is always going to be a hard sell, and I am certainly not going to argue that Great Expectations is free from them. But it has a focused three-act plot structure, a flawed and therefore interesting hero, and things to say about betrayal, revenge, class, the corrupting effects of unearned rewards and the well-springs of character. So it might be worth a few hours of your time. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
9:54 pm	Missing The Mark Jan 2009 Making Money - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday, 2007 * * * * In addition to his other considerable talents, it appears that Terry Pratchett is something of a prophet. It surely cannot be a coincidence that this satire on banks and the people who run them should be published just a week after problems first became apparent at Northern Rock, the harbinger of the recession that we are currently enduring. So it is a shame that it does not bite as hard as it really should. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
3:53 pm	The Ultimate Bildungsroman Jan 2009 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling - Bloomsbury, 2007 * * * * * Books are like savings accounts. The reader makes an investment in them and expects a return. The more time spent with them, the larger the payoff has to be, which makes the final book in a multi-volume series particularly important. If done well, the reader’s investment in the major characters is repaid with interest and they are left with a feeling of satisfaction that overcomes any niggling objections to plot developments, characterisation or writing style. If not, they are left feeling short-changed and disappointed. J.K. Rowling has more to do this in this respect than most. The high number of books in her sequence and the ungainly lengths of the last three means that a reader who has followed the entire story will already have invested in over 2500 pages of Potterishness (that’s over twice the length of Lord of the Rings). So has she pulled it off? Somewhat to my surprise, I’d have to say that she has. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
5:51 pm	Catch up 2008 Oct 2008 An Utterly Impartial History of Britain - John O’Farrell - Black Swan, 2007 * * Anyone who attempts a humorous history of Britain will - however they try to deny it in the introduction - invite comparison with the Sellar and Yeatman classic 1066 and All That. The genius of the latter lay in its acceptance that the overwhelming majority of history is deeply boring to the average reader and its brilliant solution of focusing on the bits that you remember (or mis-remember). Sadly O’Farrell ignores this important observation and attempts a factually accurate re-telling with some humour thrown in, largely in the form of snatches of jokey-blokey dialogue which feel like out-takes from a sub-Blackadder sitcom. This becomes wearisome fairly quickly and the result is a volume which for all its good intentions is almost as long and dull as the history textbooks it is drawn from. Nov 2008 Mencius - tr. D.C. Lau - Penguin Classics, 1970 * * * Congratulations if you know who Mencius is, because I certainly didn’t, despite his importance in the development of Chinese political thought. He was a travelling sage and follower of Confucius who lived during the Warring States period and advised the kings of the time. The book is a record of his sayings and stories, and is essentially a primer on how to be a benevolent despot. In contrast to some of his contemporaries, Mencius believed that human beings possess “heart” which makes them innately predisposed to civilised (“gentlemanly”) behaviour, but that this tendency can be squelched by hostile social conditions. The purpose of a good ruler, therefore, was to set social policies so as to ensure that people’s natural kindness could be expressed. His influence has been immense; all China’s regimes since have espoused this aim. Though the current one may not be so keen on his notion that rulers who failed to promote benevolence could be legitimately deposed. An interesting read, though perhaps not in this edition which fails to explain adequately the history, geography and personalities of Mencius’ world, nor the principles of Confucianism on which his philosophy is based. Dec 2008 Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett - Corgi, 2007 * * * It is interesting that Pratchett has redirected his “Witches” sequence of Discworld novels into the young adult genre, possibly because their rural setting is less amenable to the technology upgrades that drive the development of his other series. His solution is the bildungsroman of Tiffany Aching, a witch of implausibly tender age who can generate new stories by the simple expedient of growing up. Here, as a young teenager, she gives in to her hormones and rebelliously joins the Dark Morris dance, a ritual that powers the seasons. Which turns out to be a bad idea, because in doing so she attracts the attention of the Wintersmith, the spirit of the season. And when an elemental who only knows about ice and snow starts to take an interest in you, things can get out of hand. The result is a book with some nice ideas but less interest for an adult reader than Pratchett’s other novels. The MacFeegles, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax all do their music-hall turns, there is an interesting new take on witchcraft (Miss Treason and her boffo) and a good wintry atmosphere. But somehow it all feels a little dumbed down. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
2:26 pm	My Two Titties Sep 2008 The Observations - Jane Harris - Faber and Faber, 2006 * * * * Thought that would get your attention... Actually it’s a quote from the list of attributes with which the heroine, Bessy Buckley, sets out into the world. It’s characteristic of the book as a whole, which is a darkly humorous Victorian melodrama told from a female point of view. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
3:22 pm	The Analogy Engine Aug 2008 The Stuff of Thought - Steven Pinker - Penguin, 2007 * * * * I have long been suspicious of Noam Chomsky's concept of a universal grammar, the principle that all humans are born with a grammatical "toolkit" which they use to acquire and develop language. Whilst it explains some curious similarities in sentence construction between culturally distinct languages and provides a possible mechanism for the astonishing speed at which infants learn to speak, it has always seemed to me to be a bit too convenient to be true, an unverifiable just-so story. Reading this book, however, has caused me to revise my opinion. For if the universal grammar hypothesis is true, then the study of language - determining the nature of the tools in the toolkit - should give us important clues about how our minds work and, importantly, what the limitations on human cognitive abilities might be that could affect our continued survival on this planet. With the many examples collected in this book, Steven Pinker makes a persuasive case that linguistics can indeed offer these sorts of insights. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
7:20 pm	Too Many References, Not Enough Ideas July 2008 Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey - Picador, 2004 * * * Well, here's an unusual thing - an author with a PhD in theoretical physics who is also literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. Which may explain how he has managed to sneak a many-worlds SF story past the draconic guardian critics of "mainstream" literature. Though it could also have something to do with all the knowing literary references that sadly drag this novel down. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
3:00 pm	The Poor Snake! Jun 2008 Paradise Lost - John Milton, ed.Gordon Tesky - Norton, 2006 * * * A perhaps surprising title from an avowed ophidiophobe, but bear with me. My view of John Milton has been forever influenced by Robert Graves' book Wife to Mr. Milton, which portrays him as a brutal Pater Familias who made the life of his spouse an utter misery. Having now read his magnum opus, I am prepared to admit that Graves may have traduced him - whilst the Puritan idealogue is definitely in evidence, there is also a strong argument for freedom of thought and a rather endearing concern for the logical consequences of his flights of fancy that frequently leads to bathos. The result is a poem that is magnificently absurd in its contradictions. It seeks to promote conventional Christian biblical interpretations but ends up undermining them. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
3:19 pm	Magical Realities May 2008 Storm Front - Jim Butcher - Orbit, 2005 / The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud - Corgi, 2004 * * * / * * * * * I am going to review these two together because both feature magic and wizards in a contemporary setting, though otherwise they couldn't be more different. One is a straightforward grafting of magical imagery and rules onto the Philip Marlowe detective / thriller genre, competent but not very exciting. The other is a funny, dark, imaginative treat. ( Read more... ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 4th, 2008
10:24 pm	Nevarre Goes Fitzy Apr 2008 Forest Mage - Robin Hobb - Harper Voyager, 2006 * * And it started so well. Shaman's Crossing introduced a promising Victorian fantasy world and a protagonist, the pious and conventional soldier son Nevarre, who was at least different from Hobb's previous hero, the self-pitying Fitz. Unfortunately in this book all the original elements are thrown away and it degenerates into a re-telling of the original Assassin trilogy with some minor variations. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
11:58 pm	Pop Fantasy Mar 2008 Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link - Harper Perennial, 2007 * * * * Before we begin, I hope you will forgive a small digression on the topic of classical and popular music. The difference, for me, is one of journey. A pop song typically tries to create and hold a mood for four minutes and there is rarely a sense of change (though of course there are some fine exceptions: Bohemian Rhapsody, Yes' experiments in the 70s and the gradually accumulating instrumentation of Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" spring immediately to mind). By contrast, classical music reflects the second-by-second developments of thought and feeling that we all experience all the time. Just try counting the number of mood-shifts in the four-minute overture to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro", for example (good luck). Most pop songs are snapshots of our emotional world, often powerful and beautiful but static. Classical music pieces are movies of it, often stylised and simplified but capturing the dynamics of our thoughts and feelings in a way that pop does not. So to Kelly Link, another good writer of whom you have probably never heard. Like Ted Chiang, her metier is short stories, which is part of the problem. This is compounded in her case by the problem of defining the genre in which she writes. Her stories feature fairies, zombies, ghosts and witches but also student parties, convenience stores, television series and other paraphernalia of modern American life. Present-day fantasy with a twist of magical realism is the nearest I can get to a description, though that fails to capture some of the darker elements that infuse her work. Her style may be off-putting to some. It's feather-light, semi-humorous, jumping from idea to idea, rarely stopping to express a profound thought. It would be easy to dismiss it as whimsical or twee, and that may be correct. But something is going on underneath, and for all their lightness and inconsequentiality several of these tales leave an indelible mark on the mind. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
2:22 pm	The Real Raleigh Feb 2008 Lady in Waiting - Rosemary Sutcliffe - Heywood Books, 1989 * * * * Quick, name all the things you can remember about Sir Walter Raleigh (without clicking the link). If your knowledge of history is as patchy as mine your list will probably be something along the lines of: favourite of Queen Elizabeth, explorer who went to America, introduced tobacco and potatoes to England, curried favour by laying his cloak over a puddle. Which only goes to show the power of myth over reality, for none of them is strictly true. Yes, he was a favourite of the Queen, but also earned her ire by marrying her lady-in-waiting Bess Throckmorton which led to his imprisonment and exile for five years. When he was in favour, the Queen refused to let him go on any expeditions, and those that he did succeed in arranging, like the colony on Roanoke Island and the quest for El Dorado, were failures (he also never set foot on the American mainland). He probably made smoking popular at court, but both the potato and tobacco were already known in England through trade with the Spanish. And the cloak story is probably a myth, invented by Thomas Fuller and popularised by Sir Walter Scott in his novel Kenilworth (this is disputed and a cloak does feature in Raleigh's coat of arms, though in my view it could just as easily signify his love of travel). Rosemary Sutcliffe, one of our best historical novelists, was clearly aware of the myths, which is why none of them appear in this book. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 25th, 2008
6:14 pm	The Post-Pentecostal Preacher Jan 2008 In Green’s Jungles - Gene Wolfe - Tor, 2000 * * * * * Hurrah, Wolfe is finally back on form, at least for one book. Sidestepping the reader’s expectations, constantly pushing on with the plot, and hinting at a grand resolution of the whole New Sun / Long Sun / Short Sun series, this is SF writing at its most exciting. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
12:09 am	Falco On Vacation Jan 2008 Scandal takes a Holiday / See Delphi and Die - Lindsey Davis - Arrow Books, 2004 / 2005 * * * / * * * It’s been a while since I have read a Lindsey Davis so it was nice to catch up on the doings of Marcus Didius Falco, although it is clear that she has had a few problems maintaining the standard. There are two main difficulties, firstly in finding original settings for the stories now that she has covered every conceivable aspect of life in the capital from gladiators to aqueducts to the legal system, and secondly in reconciling Falco’s new-found respectability as a middle-class father of two with his dodgy occupation as an informer. The former is solved neatly - in these two books Davis gets Falco out of Rome by sending him on working holidays, first to the domestic port of Ostia and then to the ancient ruins of Greece. The latter proves to be more problematic and perhaps explains why neither of these books is really a satisfying mystery. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)