Dec 08 2014

Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly

Did you know there was an Association of Poles in India? Did you even have the faintest idea that there had been Poles by the thousand in India during the Second World War and in the first few years afterward? I certainly didn’t, and I know a thing or two about Poles and Poland.

Which is to say that I figured right in my previous notes about Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly when I wrote that there would be “more for me to just enjoy in the other four-fifths of the book, as Kelly tells a story of what happened to members of his family.” Kelly, a historian at the University of Southampton, applied his professional training to the Polish side of his family. His narrative centers on his great-grandparents who settled in the eastern part of interwar Poland, in Hruzdowa, a small settlement in what is now northwestern Belarus. That’s a part of the interwar republic that went to the USSR under the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and following the Soviet invasion in 1939, Kelly’s forbears were deported in April 1940. His great-grandfather Rafał was most likely captured and taken prisoner by the Red Army. His great-grandmother, along with her two daughters, was packed into a railroad car and taken, along with thousands of other Poles from the borderlands, to serve the state in Kazakhstan.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/08/finding-poland-by-matthew-kelly/

Dec 05 2014

Parkinson’s Disease: A Guide for Patients and Families by William Weiner MD, Lisa Shulman MD, and Anthony Lang MD

A good source of information with a surprisingly optimistic outlook on a really terrible neurological disorder. There is still no cure, but there are drug treatments that can alleviate the symptoms. I hate to dwell on such an irrelevant detail, but there was significant commentary on the effects of Parkinson’s on the patient’s sex life. Well, hello, I have no sex life and have never had a sex life; am I supposed to regard that as a medical problem and seek treatment for it? Silliness aside, there was a lot of interesting stuff about the brain and the nervous system, and contrary to what is popularly believed, there is NO evidence at all that stem cells have any therapeutic effect. There was a long and detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of various drug treatments and surgical treatments; this was probably the most useful information in the book. The causes of the disease remain unknown. I wouldn’t say this book prepared me for med school, but it did educate me considerably.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/05/parkinsons-disease-a-guide-for-patients-and-families/

Dec 03 2014

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

What to say that Laura hasn’t already?

This story is a week in the life of a minor character, minor in Rothfuss’ other works, that is, and I think that it’s a good example of a writer doing something interesting because he doesn’t feel constrained to follow that larger story. It isn’t trying to be the story of someone who changed the world (though Auri might have, and might yet, just not so as anyone else is likely to notice), it’s not an epic quest, it’s not a clash of great principles or even much of a clash at all. Among all of the things that this story is not, the story takes the freedom to be just what it is.

Auri lives under the library and other parts of the city from Rothfuss’ other novels, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear. She was apparently once a magician and now leads a furtive, precarious existence. It’s not clear whether her heightened sense of objects and their belonging is real, whether it’s the result of whatever mishap led to her underground life, or whether that’s a meaningful distinction at all in the context of the story.

Naming, sorting, placing: these are magical tasks, and that is what she spends most of her days and nights doing. There are rituals within her life, and her life as a whole is also a ritual.

Rothfuss says in the afterword, “I let the story develop according to its own desire. I didn’t force it into a different shape or put anything into it just because it was supposed to be there. I decided to let it be itself.” I’m glad that he did, and I’m glad that he has the market clout to get an unusual story like this one into print. I wouldn’t want this off-kilter tale of heightened attention to be the only kind of fantasy book around, but I am glad that it is there and stretching the boundaries of what publishers will print just a little bit.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/03/the-slow-regard-of-silent-things-by-patrick-rothfuss-2/

Dec 02 2014

The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan

Fun, funny at times, and even occasionally touching. Hits its mark perfectly for its intended audience, and isn’t bad at all for those of us a couple of decades past that. The Mark of Athena is much the same, and brings the overall story closer to completion. I am taking a break before going much further into The House of Hades; my inner 10-year-old is tired.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/02/the-son-of-neptune-by-rick-riordan/

Nov 30 2014

Skin Deep (Simeon Grist #3) by Timothy Hallinan

Was actually pleasantly surprised by this! Picked it up for free way back when I started using the Kindle app and never got around to reading it, so didn’t really expect much when I cracked it open. The beginning didn’t really do anything to dispel doubt (especially since this book was written as the first in the series but was published as the third,) but once Simeon gets hired by the TV producers, the book really gets going. It’s intelligent, raw LA gumshoe noir, with a good mystery at its core and a heartbreaking coda.

 

Personally, I was a bit leery of the fact that Simeon seems to have a bit of the yellow fever, but his attraction to East Asians seems more a matter of aesthetics — the way some PIs have a weakness for blondes — than a post-colonial buy-in to the myth of the submissive Asian woman. It was also refreshing to read an early 1990s period piece with all its talk of DOS computers and Dynasty references. I’m really looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/30/skin-deep-simeon-grist-3-by-timothy-hallinan/

Nov 28 2014

New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 by Susan Brigden

A pretty good account of what has to me always seemed like the most exciting and inspiring era of English history. There was a lot more discussion of Irish history than I looked for in a book about Tudor England, and there was almost no discussion at all of the cultural achievements of the Renaissance, but the religious tensions and conflicts of the time were thoroughly covered, and this seems to have been the chief theme of this work. Goethe’s Faust was for some reason heavily discussed, even though Goethe was not English and was not a Renaissance figure. Much attention was also given to court intrigue; like most such histories it is rather top-heavy in its focus on the upper classes. The “New Worlds” the title refers to seem to characterize the religious reformation rather than the actual New World; most enterprising Englishman at that time apparently thought of North America as little more than a potential pirate base from which to attack Spanish America. Yet England lives on; God save the Queen.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/28/new-worlds-lost-worlds-the-rule-of-the-tudors-1485-1603-by-susan-brigden/

Nov 27 2014

King Rat by China Miéville

Having read Perdido Street Station first, I’m fascinated to see how some of the themes are present here in nascent form. PSS is by far the superior book, but King Rat is a worthwhile entry to the urban fantasy oeuvre: grimy and bold and honest, if mean. It’s also a great take on the Pied Piper fairytale, though I felt it was a bit unfinished in its mythology. It was also pretty nice to not have a gratuitous romance thrown in, and I really liked the political underpinnings, even if I found the musical dénouement a wee bit juvenile in its description of bass. Not a book for the weak of stomach, but a modern fairytale worth reading for everyone else.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/27/king-rat-by-china-mieville/

Nov 26 2014

Véra by Stacy Schiff

Thank God that’s over.

I’ve realized that I come from the school of thought that would much rather let an artist’s work speak for itself. Particularly when I admire a product, such as the exquisite Lolita, I find that looking into the way it was made rarely serves to make me appreciate it more. Such with Vladimir and, here, Véra Nabokov, who I am sure found much joy in one another but who strike me as being incredibly tedious, self-absorbed people. Stacy Schiff does her best to give an even-handed view of the couple’s life, but there’s no obfuscating the fact that the Nabokovs were incredibly tiresome people. Perhaps fun to be around if you met their meticulous standards, but such snobs otherwise. Ms Schiff has done exhaustive research here. Pity her subject isn’t worth, in my opinion, her talent.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/26/vera-by-stacy-schiff/

Nov 26 2014

Premature Evaluation: Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly

The first chapters of this book are giving me a case of the Yabbuts. Finding Poland is mostly a family chronicle, concerning Matthew Kelly’s great-grandmother and her two daughters, and how they went from pre-WWII eastern Poland to later life in the United Kingdom. By way of Kazakhstan, Iran and India.

To get to why members of his family came such a long way around, he of course has to situate them in the first place, and that is in what is now Belarus, then eastern Poland. And to do that, Kelly must sketch the region’s complex history. Which is what gives me the Yabbuts. His abridged history of the region is mostly very good, but periodically I find myself thinking, “Yeah, but…” and considering either an omission or something else about his point of view.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/26/premature-evaluation-finding-poland-by-matthew-kelly/

Nov 25 2014

Shards of a Broken Crown by Raymond Feist

The final book in Feist’s Serpentwar Saga, unless there are more that I have overlooked. Like all of Feist’s novels, the story is incredibly tacky yet somehow enjoyable to read. There is a confusing jumble of place names and character names and story arcs, as well as a lot of implied back story that somehow I wasn’t that interested in trying to discover, and as always in such stories, magic introduces complications and implausibilities. Feist’s wizard characters are so apparently powerful that one wonders why they couldn’t have saved the world on the very first page, and I think the story would have been more compelling if he had left them out. But, you can’t have fantasy without magic, right? And there is even a dragon thrown in for good measure. The not so fantastic characters and story threads were actually the most interesting; Feist might be a halfway decent writer if he wouldn’t stray so much into the wildly fantastic, but this is a pretty good cheeseburger novel nonetheless.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/25/shards-of-a-broken-crown-by-raymond-feistthe-final-book-in-feists-serpentwar-saga-unless-there-are-more-that-i-have-overlooked-like-all-of-feists-novels-the-story-is-incredibly-tacky-yet-someh/