Books!
Somehow I don't have it in me to do proper book reviews, but I've gone through a lot of them in the past week or two. I think it has something to do with Thanksgiving and being kicked out of math mode by having solved a problem, but not to my satisfaction.
Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, by Norwich. This was fun, for somebody like me who only has the most cursory idea of the institutional history of the Catholic Church. It was short enough to be readable on the train back to Princetonia for Thanksgiving, and it gives a small taste of what the popes went through throughout the ages. It's nowhere near comprehensive or balanced, particularly given the author's admitted lack of knowledge concerning theology and doctrinal disputes, so it might be called "things about the Papacy that interested a popular writer on Mediterranean history." Still, fun for its discussion of the early Papal states and the popes of the Renaissance. It gets a lot weaker in the counter-Reformation and the discussion of the modern era was rushed and unsatisfactory. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.
No Lost Causes by Uribe. A memoir by the greatest statesman the Americas have produced in the last generation. The things Colombia faced under his presidency and the way things have turned around since then are scary and inspiring. In 2002, Colombia was well on its way to failed statehood; today, it's a promising country with some residual problems. Uribe's blend of participatory democracy with the reassertion of the state's monopoly on violence against the narcoterrorists makes for immensely interesting reading, particularly in light of our own, far less successful, efforts at the same. His irritation with certain apologists for leftist terrorism and the double standards of human rights activists come through pretty clearly.
He's a self-admitted salesman and relentless politician, with the charming ability to poke fun at his own ridiculousness: he once gave a campaign speech from a phone booth while out of the country, shouting Spanish enthusiastically into a pay phone in Boston. I think the translator deliberately went for the 'exotic.' This gives certain passages an overly dramatic and unreal air. The tale is great and doesn't need such embellishments.
Cold Days by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden the wisecracking wizard is back! Mm. So much fun. This book defers a lot of the emotional issues raised by his death and Ghost Story, because, well, there's a ticking clock, bad guys to kill, and a world to save. A lot of the cosmology of the Dresden Files gets a new layer, and I thought the introduction there was well done - Dresden has gained a level, he learns more about how reality really works. There is definitely a shift in tone - the new Dresden is more powerful, more sure of himself (more arrogant at times) - which changes things somewhat. I'm not sure whether I like the new Harry more, but I am definitely interested in what happens next.
Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, by Norwich. This was fun, for somebody like me who only has the most cursory idea of the institutional history of the Catholic Church. It was short enough to be readable on the train back to Princetonia for Thanksgiving, and it gives a small taste of what the popes went through throughout the ages. It's nowhere near comprehensive or balanced, particularly given the author's admitted lack of knowledge concerning theology and doctrinal disputes, so it might be called "things about the Papacy that interested a popular writer on Mediterranean history." Still, fun for its discussion of the early Papal states and the popes of the Renaissance. It gets a lot weaker in the counter-Reformation and the discussion of the modern era was rushed and unsatisfactory. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.
No Lost Causes by Uribe. A memoir by the greatest statesman the Americas have produced in the last generation. The things Colombia faced under his presidency and the way things have turned around since then are scary and inspiring. In 2002, Colombia was well on its way to failed statehood; today, it's a promising country with some residual problems. Uribe's blend of participatory democracy with the reassertion of the state's monopoly on violence against the narcoterrorists makes for immensely interesting reading, particularly in light of our own, far less successful, efforts at the same. His irritation with certain apologists for leftist terrorism and the double standards of human rights activists come through pretty clearly.
He's a self-admitted salesman and relentless politician, with the charming ability to poke fun at his own ridiculousness: he once gave a campaign speech from a phone booth while out of the country, shouting Spanish enthusiastically into a pay phone in Boston. I think the translator deliberately went for the 'exotic.' This gives certain passages an overly dramatic and unreal air. The tale is great and doesn't need such embellishments.
Cold Days by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden the wisecracking wizard is back! Mm. So much fun. This book defers a lot of the emotional issues raised by his death and Ghost Story, because, well, there's a ticking clock, bad guys to kill, and a world to save. A lot of the cosmology of the Dresden Files gets a new layer, and I thought the introduction there was well done - Dresden has gained a level, he learns more about how reality really works. There is definitely a shift in tone - the new Dresden is more powerful, more sure of himself (more arrogant at times) - which changes things somewhat. I'm not sure whether I like the new Harry more, but I am definitely interested in what happens next.