I have certainly been remiss about reviewing books, but there is no excuse. Time’s running short, so from now on, the reviews will be shorter and batched together, as in the previous post.
How the Mind Works: a very good aggregation of cognitive knowledge, some of which you probably already know. As a compendium of all things contemporaneous in the neural sphere, this book is quite riveting.
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: More Pinker, and this one lacks some of the finesse of his other heavyweights. There are enough facts in here to enthrall most of us, but some of the strokes are too broad and you should beware of them. However, as a refutation of all modern paranoia about violence, this book is worth its weight in Aurum.
A Fraction of the Whole: This Aussie book reads like a journal set out by a blasé teenager. Entertaining at times, always crude, this book is all-too-Australian. A good inter-generational storyline involving a family of criminals and eccentrics is the plot’s thickest point, though your eyes might glaze over at times. Scrupulous honesty is one of this book’s strengths.
The Stone Carvers: This book about an inmate at an asylum in Roscommon offers a glimpse into Ireland’s troubled past, through the eyes of the inmate and the doctor who has to decide her fate.
Unless: This book is unashamedly modest, and is a poignant tale of how those whom we rear often end up nothing like what we’d hoped. All the urbanity and smooth intellectualism of the world doesn’t prepare the protagonist of the tale for when her daughter decides to panhandle on a busy Toronto street corner. A very Canadian look at one possible outcome of a parent’s experiences.
Fingersmith: Easily one of the better books from this batch, this is the book with enough twists and turns to keep your brain beguiled. Told from one perspective and then another, your sympathies switch in this anachronistic Dickensian tale.
Saturday: Similar to ‘Unless’, this book captures a tumultuous weekend in posh London, where a renowned neurosurgeon is attacked by and saves a hooligan, in a surprising chain of events. Thoughtful and provocative, you wish you’d end up like Henry Perowne, all mammal and no reptile.
The Night Watch: This chronicle of the lives of lesbian and gay people during the Blitz describes the heartbreak and jealousy of Londoners during a very difficult period, compounded by the effort of keeping their sexual proclivities hidden. A good read, though a bit slow at times.
The Big U: How could you not love a group called the Crotobaltoslavonians or the Stalininist Underground Battalion? You’ll find both in the American Megaversity, a classic parody of any major-league American university extant today.
Snow Crash: What if the mind could be frozen with a single glimpse of malware that acted on the firmware in the brainstem? It might sound hokey today, but it’s the central premise of this thrilling book, which is a joyous romp through more -ologies than you can care to rattle off. Hiro is the hacker who sets out to save the world, with his teenage sidekick in tow. The rest has to be read to be believed, with a special mention to Fido.
Cryptonomicon: Another Stephenson work, this one has two story plots that run in parallel. One is the classic codebreaking legend of Bletchley Park, while the second is a fictionalized group of cyber-entrepreneurs who seek to build a secure data haven in the Sultanate of Kinakuta. Detailed analyses and technical explanations of cryptography are sprinkled throughout the book, though Stephenson does get minus five for not having read the Lovecraftian mythos he named his book after.
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