This book attempts a history of knowledge traced through its institutions, from the library to the monastery to the university and onwards.
It’s an ambitious attempt and an interesting read.
The authors acknowledge that their focus is upon formal knowledge in institutions rather than informal knowledge and they focus primarily upon the western tradition with occasional comparative reference elsewhere. It was in this definition that I had a problem – the later chapters go on to examine the republic of letters, the disciplines and the laboratory. While I would acknowledge these as constructs in the reinvention of knowledge, are they institutions? One key feature of the republic of letters is the extension beyond formal institutions – the informal intellectual community linked through social connection.
There is also a tension in dealing with the overlap between the role of the institution and the medium – between the library or university and the library or university.
This starts in what seems like fairly standard serial killer territory with a decent CFC (crime fiction cliche) score as the lead character is a jaded FBI agent described on the cover as ‘maverick’.
The action then switched to 1947. Okay, a hint of post-war conspiracy theory. Interesting.
Then we’re in an abbey in Wessex in the eighth century, named after the bus service on the Isle of Wight (okay I may have that the wrong way around, but it was definitely the eighth century).
It’s rather a good set-up, but impossible to carry through to a completely satisfying conclusion.
Think of this book like one of the later episodes of the X Files where the tension is ratcheted up with an intriguing case and a twist of the conspiracy theory, but then the entire construct deflates at the end as our heroes live to fight another day with a true solution still beyond their grasp.
A mystery that begins with a body on a golf course outside Edinburgh that I chose to read during a weekend staying in a hotel on a golf course outside Edinburgh (Dalmahoy Marriott Edinburgh – just don’t, not quite murder but close).
Part of a series centred around a policeman, DCC Bob Skinner – although I’m not sure how successful it is as a serial entry. This book recaps back story in a way that doesn’t help a newcomer and would probably bore an established fan.
The main notable feature of the structure was the short chapters leaping between the personal and professional lives of the various characters. The author must be a fan of the theory of six degrees of interconnection, or Edinburgh is a lot smaller than I thought, because each of the characters seemed to a have a personal connection to the next link in the mystery chain. Fans of CFC (crime fiction cliche) will be pleased to know that the case becomes personal for at least two of the characters.
The other weakness is the amount that is withheld from the reader. The wise all-knowing detective has worked it out a hundred pages before the end, but unfortunately the author isn’t as skilled at leading the reader along, but instead chooses the lazier route of ending chapters as follows in order to set up a denouement that the reader doesn’t have a chance of reaching from internal evidence,
I’ve just had a weird idea. It’s complicated, and you’ll need to move very fast, but if you can put all the pieces together , this is what I’d like you to do.
A cross between a biography of Katharine Hepburn and a self-help book and style manual for those who wish to live their lives according the gospel of Kate – by having a credo, finding yourself fascinating (doesn’t everyone?), saying what you think…etc, etc…Mindless and harmless – fodder for the pile of trashy books in the guest room.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
The strapline says it all – take one Jane Austen novel, add zombies.
It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Taken on its own terms – as a parody – this is fun. There is some decent entertainment to be had from predicting precisely how the zombie sub-plot will be interwoven with the original text….even if 300 pages is stretching it a little.
I liked the pseudo-classic coverdesign and the reworking of familiar elements such as the opening:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains
I also laughed out loud at the parody of a book club reading guide added in the appendix.
I was less convinced (inevitably) by the quality of the re-writing of some passages. This would probably work best as a comedy sketch or possibly a movie – in which media there would be less obvious unfavourable comparison of the quality of the prose. There was also some heavy handed innuendo – not prudery, I just thought it unnecessary.
I predict this could be the start of a trend. You don’t believe me? Well, who would have thought that turning the greatest hits of seventies and eighties bands into badly plotted musicals would have become a global phenomenon? I’m thinking Shakespeare and vampires, Shakespeare and zombies…actually, thought of in those terms, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet start to make a lot more sense!
I didn’t dislike the book – in fact it has rather pleasant associations as the result of being a summer read during a trip to Rome. Easier to suspend belief about the story when you’re sitting with a glass of wine looking at the Bernini fountain to which reference is being made.
The film is another matter. Hard to forgive the casting of Tom Hanks rather than Harrison Ford. Hard not to laugh at the physics (no laughing matter that CERN felt obliged to issue ‘reassurance’ to the public about anti-matter). Hard to forget quite how bad Ewan McGregor’s accent is. Last but not least, impossible to forgive the treatment of an archive facility
A mechanical elephant, a gold lame tracksuit, putting your make-up on while singing a song from the new album, balloons, singing ’til you’re hoarse, cheesy dancing.
It can only be the Take That Circus Tour…decide for yourself which one of the above I did and which were contributed by Take That
The perfect girlie night out. Well worth only having three hours sleep and a six hour train journey to get home!
A biographical study of the Christ Church mathematician and logician, Charles Dodgson, looking, in particular, at the common themes between his academic work and his more popular writings as Lewis Carroll.
Hard not to like a book that manages to incorporate the chapter title ‘Here’s looking at Euclid’ – and then goes on to make Euclid moderately accessible to a non-mathematician.
The biographical and contextual elements of the book are pared to a minimum, making space for reproducing a number of the problems on which Dodgson worked and extensive quotations from correspondence and published works. My favourite extract was from a teasing letter from Dodgson regarding an algebraic paradox:
Ever since this painful fact has been forced upon me, I have not slept more than eight hours a night, and have not been able to eat more than 3 meals a day.
The strength of the book lies in its explanation of Dodgson’s mathematical work and the commonality of themes with his more famous works as Lewis Carroll. In terms of historical context, I found it slightly more frustrating. There was some lovely anecdotal detail, such as Dodgson’s pseudo-mathematical argument for calculating the salary of the professor of Greek – a satirical take on a contemporary University debate about the salary of Benjamin Jowett. I did, of course, scour the later pages for reference to Dodgson’s later work on symbolic logic, given the ‘intersection’ (ahem…) with John Venn. Euler’s and Venn’s diagrams are used as a way in to introducing Dodgson’s own preference for square drawings, rather than intersecting circles, in order to represent more easily more than three terms, and also to ensure that the universe was ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d’ in a way in which Venn’s was not.
As a result of reading this book, I can feel marginally more educated the next time I go into Starbucks and ask, ‘May I have a large container of coffee?’, in the knowledge that I am simultaneously recalling the first few digits of π (by counting the number of letters in each word of the phrase 3.1415926). I always knew coffee was good for me!
A bit of a Darwin sub-theme for me at the moment – this time a group show of nine contemporary artists responding to Darwin’s work on evolutionary theory and natural selection.
The title refers to the story of an exchange of letters between Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin – and of course, it was Wallace’s work on evolutionary theory that was the catalyst for Darwin’s On the origin of species.
There were a number of absolute gems in this exhibition:
Intelligent Design by Marcus Coates, a film installation of the failed attempts of giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands to mate;
Tally by Mark Fairnington, a huge picture of a bull reminiscent of the detailed observational drawings that accompanied much nineteenth century empirical science;
Worm by Tania Kovats showing a cross-section of a wormery, the resulting disrupted strata of soil resembling an abstract painting;
Pre-retroscope V by Conrad Shawcross, which is beautifully described in the accompanying guide as a ‘poetically futile’ attempt to capture a moment of experience using a video camera on a 360 degree circuit. The accompanying wall display of found objects resembled a distorted version of the classic illustration of the ascent of man.
On a different level, I left wanting a summerhouse or conservatory in which to house collections of stuff like Ben Jeans Houghton’s On the ark and I.
Downstairs in the gift shop, the strangely apt ‘You don’t have to be a scientist to do experiments’ by Jeffrey Lewis was playing in the background. In a wittier moment, I might have made an elegant link back to Darwin’s position in the nineteenth century ‘gentleman amateur’ tradition of science.
This book attempts a history of knowledge traced through its institutions, from the library to the monastery to the university and onwards.
This starts in what seems like fairly standard serial killer territory with a decent CFC (crime fiction cliche) score as the lead character is a jaded FBI agent described on the cover as ‘maverick’.
A mystery that begins with a body on a golf course outside Edinburgh that I chose to read during a weekend staying in a hotel on a golf course outside Edinburgh (Dalmahoy Marriott Edinburgh – just don’t, not quite murder but close).
A cross between a biography of Katharine Hepburn and a self-help book and style manual for those who wish to live their lives according the gospel of Kate – by having a credo, finding yourself fascinating (doesn’t everyone?), saying what you think…etc, etc…Mindless and harmless – fodder for the pile of trashy books in the guest room.
I didn’t dislike the book – in fact it has rather pleasant associations as the result of being a summer read during a trip to Rome. Easier to suspend belief about the story when you’re sitting with a glass of wine looking at the Bernini fountain to which reference is being made.
A mechanical elephant, a gold lame tracksuit, putting your make-up on while singing a song from the new album, balloons, singing ’til you’re hoarse, cheesy dancing.
