Reading Jan to June 2009: non-fiction
Brief reviews of non-fiction that I remember reading in the first half of the year.
Sei Shonagon (trans. Ivan Morris): The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.
This is so great. It's really, really good. Certainly one of my favourite books so far this year. It's a pile of thoughts and notes written by a woman in late-900s Japan; and it's also, pretty much, a livejournal, full of personal anecdotes and lists:
THINGS THAT SHOULD BE LARGE
Priests. Fruit. Houses. Provision bags. Inksticks for inkstones.
Men's eyes: when they are too narrow, they look feminine. On the other hand, if they were as large as metal bowls, I should find them rather frightening.
Round braziers. Winter cherries. Pine trees. The petals of yellow roses.
Horses as well as oxen should be large.
("Rolled dyeing, uneven shading, and all other forms of dappled dying. #thingsoneisinahurrytoseeorhear")
TH White: The Age of Scandal.
Gahhhh. This is a gossipy collection of discursive essays on the late eighteenth century, and there's a lot of interesting anecdotes and fragments: snail tea! A man who does his makeup in the morning by walking through clouds of powder in four different colours, puffed into the air in four different rooms! Hot air balloon duels!
At the same time, though, White is constantly going on about how dreadful it is that class barriers are breaking down and England is now (as of 1950) DOOMED and blah blah blah. He opens the book with a story about how he went to have dinner with a couple of masters of colleges in Cambridge, and they both had to help with the washing up, which he holds out as evidence that England as a worthwhile nation has come to an end.
So, yes. Depends how tolerant and/or obnoxiously classist you are. I think I would have had real trouble reading this if I were English, but as it is I felt dissociated enough from it that I could mostly look at him as quaint and peculiar rather than infuriating.
(I'm not sure why I find it so much more annoying than Sei Shonagon, who is extremely obsessed by rank. Perhaps just that she is more distant from me in time and space; perhaps that she is acting in concert with her times rather than holding her opinions despite the world's disagreement.)
Simon Singh: The Code Book.
A popular history of codes. Also a source for my story on quantum baking. Singh is a personable writer and the subject is interesting and seems well-covered (not that I'd know).
Simon Barnes: The Meaning of Sport
I am not very interested in sport, which seems a flaw, given that one of the problems that comes up repeatedly in pervasive game design is "how do you make a game lots of people will want to watch? Is that even a good idea?", and sport has, y'know, solved that one pretty comprehensively.
This collection of very short essays about Barnes and his experiences at many different sporting events does not satisfactorily explain the meaning of sport, nor does it really try to. But it was interesting as a collection of moments of "here are some of the sorts of things that people who like sport find appealing about it".
David Foster Wallace: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
I don't know, I really like collections of essays! And I feel I ought to enjoy these: lots of tangents, eclectic subjects, ostentatious cleverness. But, no.
Why not? Well, at one point, Wallace reviews a book and complains that it's too obviously a rejigged thesis: it sets out its argument and then supports it. He finds this dull. And that's, perhaps, the crux of why I don't get along with his writing: I like arguments that tell me what they're doing, I like clear structure.
I also like people who are pleased and excited about things, or angry about them, more than I like arms-length detached-irony examination. But I guess his handling of long sentences is virtuosic or whatever.
Iona and Peter Opie: Children's Games in Street and Playground.
This is fantastic - a compendium of street games as collected by way of interviews with thousands of British schoolchildren in the 50s and 60s. Recently reissued. Brilliant detached-anthropologist tone when reporting small schoolboys talking about their favourite knife-flipping game ("good for recess or other short breaks"). Iona Opie is still around and, as of 2005, living in a house in Hampshire with 50 hens.
Keith Johnstone: Impro.
This is a weird, weird book. Some genuinely useful stuff (about, in particular, how it gets more difficult to accomplish things as soon as you're expecting to do them cleverly, and ways to break out of that); and some very peculiar sections about masks and teaching masks (possibly Masks?) to speak English and how to avoid making them violent.
Since we solved "why are YA books better?" on Tuesday, today's question is: what books about sport should I read? Non-fiction and fiction are both fine, and it is very safe to assume that whatever you might mention, I will not have read it, unless perhaps the sport takes place in a futuristic dystopia where the only way out of the underclass is to play... FOR YOUR LIFE. I currently have C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary on my to-read list, so maybe steering away from more cricket?
Sei Shonagon (trans. Ivan Morris): The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.
This is so great. It's really, really good. Certainly one of my favourite books so far this year. It's a pile of thoughts and notes written by a woman in late-900s Japan; and it's also, pretty much, a livejournal, full of personal anecdotes and lists:
THINGS THAT SHOULD BE LARGE
Priests. Fruit. Houses. Provision bags. Inksticks for inkstones.
Men's eyes: when they are too narrow, they look feminine. On the other hand, if they were as large as metal bowls, I should find them rather frightening.
Round braziers. Winter cherries. Pine trees. The petals of yellow roses.
Horses as well as oxen should be large.
("Rolled dyeing, uneven shading, and all other forms of dappled dying. #thingsoneisinahurrytoseeorhear")
TH White: The Age of Scandal.
Gahhhh. This is a gossipy collection of discursive essays on the late eighteenth century, and there's a lot of interesting anecdotes and fragments: snail tea! A man who does his makeup in the morning by walking through clouds of powder in four different colours, puffed into the air in four different rooms! Hot air balloon duels!
At the same time, though, White is constantly going on about how dreadful it is that class barriers are breaking down and England is now (as of 1950) DOOMED and blah blah blah. He opens the book with a story about how he went to have dinner with a couple of masters of colleges in Cambridge, and they both had to help with the washing up, which he holds out as evidence that England as a worthwhile nation has come to an end.
So, yes. Depends how tolerant and/or obnoxiously classist you are. I think I would have had real trouble reading this if I were English, but as it is I felt dissociated enough from it that I could mostly look at him as quaint and peculiar rather than infuriating.
(I'm not sure why I find it so much more annoying than Sei Shonagon, who is extremely obsessed by rank. Perhaps just that she is more distant from me in time and space; perhaps that she is acting in concert with her times rather than holding her opinions despite the world's disagreement.)
Simon Singh: The Code Book.
A popular history of codes. Also a source for my story on quantum baking. Singh is a personable writer and the subject is interesting and seems well-covered (not that I'd know).
Simon Barnes: The Meaning of Sport
I am not very interested in sport, which seems a flaw, given that one of the problems that comes up repeatedly in pervasive game design is "how do you make a game lots of people will want to watch? Is that even a good idea?", and sport has, y'know, solved that one pretty comprehensively.
This collection of very short essays about Barnes and his experiences at many different sporting events does not satisfactorily explain the meaning of sport, nor does it really try to. But it was interesting as a collection of moments of "here are some of the sorts of things that people who like sport find appealing about it".
David Foster Wallace: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
I don't know, I really like collections of essays! And I feel I ought to enjoy these: lots of tangents, eclectic subjects, ostentatious cleverness. But, no.
Why not? Well, at one point, Wallace reviews a book and complains that it's too obviously a rejigged thesis: it sets out its argument and then supports it. He finds this dull. And that's, perhaps, the crux of why I don't get along with his writing: I like arguments that tell me what they're doing, I like clear structure.
I also like people who are pleased and excited about things, or angry about them, more than I like arms-length detached-irony examination. But I guess his handling of long sentences is virtuosic or whatever.
Iona and Peter Opie: Children's Games in Street and Playground.
This is fantastic - a compendium of street games as collected by way of interviews with thousands of British schoolchildren in the 50s and 60s. Recently reissued. Brilliant detached-anthropologist tone when reporting small schoolboys talking about their favourite knife-flipping game ("good for recess or other short breaks"). Iona Opie is still around and, as of 2005, living in a house in Hampshire with 50 hens.
Keith Johnstone: Impro.
This is a weird, weird book. Some genuinely useful stuff (about, in particular, how it gets more difficult to accomplish things as soon as you're expecting to do them cleverly, and ways to break out of that); and some very peculiar sections about masks and teaching masks (possibly Masks?) to speak English and how to avoid making them violent.
Since we solved "why are YA books better?" on Tuesday, today's question is: what books about sport should I read? Non-fiction and fiction are both fine, and it is very safe to assume that whatever you might mention, I will not have read it, unless perhaps the sport takes place in a futuristic dystopia where the only way out of the underclass is to play... FOR YOUR LIFE. I currently have C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary on my to-read list, so maybe steering away from more cricket?