"Britannia: 100 Documents that shaped a nation" by Graham Stewart

This is perhaps a somewhat eclectic collection of documents from the Treaty between Alfred the Great and Guthrun the Dane to the sergeant Pepper Album cover via the Laws of Cricket and the Great Reform Act. I often wanted more detail and more authentic quotes from the documents (every document is reported upon but not always quoted and hardly ever quoted in full). I was a little disappointed by the selection which is heavily weighted towards the modern era. Nevertheless, it was so interesting and compelling that I changed my annual long distance walk from the second half of the Thames walk to the River Lea so that I could walk along the boundary between Wessex and the Dane Law as agreed by Alfred and Guthrun above in about 885.

Some wonderful moments of history are represented by this magnificent book. I don't always agree with the selection but I have learned a great deal from it.

 September 2011; 422 pages.

"Death in Holy Orders" by P.D.James

A theological college for just 20 students on an isolated and wind-swept headland on the East Anglian Coast where Adam Dalgliesh, poetry writing Commander of Police at New Scotland Yard and son of a Norfolk vicar, stayed when he was a teenager. An industrialist called Sir Alred, a detective who studied theology, a padeophile priest, another priest who is aristocratic descendant of Prince Bishops, a barmy old maid, an unnaturally beautiful bastard and a vitriolic Archdeacon. An exquisite work of art and a papyrus purporting to be the command from Pontius Pilate to release Christ's body. High Anglicanism and low crime. The classic ingredients of a PDJames murder mystery.

Pure hokum. I don't know that you could ever begin to believe in some of the bizarre characters but the plot is almost worthy of Agatha Christie, the descriptive writing is lyrically brilliant and there are some moments of wonderful comedy. An entertaining read.

September 2011; 548 pages

"The Accidental" by Ali Smith

The Smart family are on holiday in Norfolk. The story is told in episodes by each of the family in turn. Mother Eve is a blocked writer. Step-father Michael is an English lecturer who fucks his students. 17 year old Magnus never washes or eats because he photoshopped the head of a girl from school onto a porn body; the girl killed herself; now Magnus wants to kill himself. 12 year old Astrid is being bullied at school and is obsessed with her new DVD and her estranged father.

Amber walks into the house. Michael assumes Eve invited her; Eve assumes Michael did. Over the summer Amber  turns their lives upside down. Who is she? Why is she there? And is she real or magical?

This is literary fiction and sometimes too obviously so (Michael the lecturer spends pages worrying about cliches and making silly puns; he writes a sonnet sequence). But there are also moments of wonderful humour. Magnus the geek, who has had his virginity taken by Amber and who spends all summer fucking her has to explain what he is thinking about at family dinner. He says he is thinking about a lighthouse (phallic!): "to measure the total inside area in cubic metres would be really difficult because of the changing size of it as you went further, uh, further up inside. Magnus has gone a really really red colour" so his mum thinks he has been sun burnt and asks "weren't you using any protection?"

I was disappointed by the ending. The holiday is magical. After the holiday, reality seems somewhat banal.

August 2011; 306 pages

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Whitbread Novel Award in 2005; shortlisted for the 2006 Women's prize for fiction.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

“The other hand” by Chris Cleave

A Nigerian girl is released from a British detention centre. She phones a journalist, then walks to Kingston-upon-Thames to meet him. She turns up two hours before his funeral; in the intervening ten days he has committed suicide. She helps his widow look after the four year old son, who thinks he is Batman.

But these two women have already met on a beach in Nigeria. And what is the secret of the missing finger?

The prose is lyrical, the plot twists and turns. This is a magical book.

August 2011; 374 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

“Six degrees” by Duncan J Watts

This is a description of the science of networks by a physicist turned sociologist. In many ways it reiterates and explains the concepts found in other books such as ‘Wikinomics’ and ‘Critical Mass’. It is brilliantly readable but a little too popular to allow me to understand the mathematical ideas properly. But it is sufficiently in depth to make it clear that Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Tipping Point’ was the froth on the waves on the ocean compared to this book. It is full of amazing insights and brilliant ideas; at the same time it is a beautifully biographical and frequently amusing chronicle of the process through which mathematical discovery is achieved. I was utterly entranced.

And networks are important. An obvious example of network failure Watts doesn’t use is death. He starts by talking through the much cited example of when a power line in Oregon touched a tree and half the Western US was blacked out. By the end of the book we have learned about the Small Worlds phenomenon, epidemics and computer viruses, tulip bubbles and information cascades, how revolutions start and how hindsight makes history useless, and how information flows within hierarchies and what this means for the future of the firm.

Loads and loads to think about. Wonderful.

August 2011; 306 pages

Duncan Watts worked with Steven Strogatz who wrote sync
Other great books in this area include:

• At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman about fitness landscapes
• How Nature Works by Per Bak about sandpiles and self organized criticality; an excellent explanation of complexity science
• Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin which is a brilliant introduction to this whole field
• Smart swarm by Peter Miller
• The Information by James Gleick although his Chaos (not reviewed on this blog) is perhaps better

Other books not reviewed on this blog on this topic include:

• The Wisdom of Crowds 
• Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell about fads
• Ubiquity which is brilliant about fractals and power laws
• Critical mass by Philip Ball which is a brilliant explanation about phase changes

“The Tesseract” by Alex Garland

In a seedy hotel room in the least salubrious part of Manila, Sean waits for a meeting with Don Pepe, a gangster who will probably kill him. In the pretty suburbs, Rosa puts her children to bed and talks to her mother. Street urchin Cente talks to psychology researcher Alfredo before meeting Totoy. These lives collide.

This is not just an exciting thriller. Garland, author of ‘The Beach’ draws vivid and realistic characters and treats them with understanding and compassion.

August 2011; 336 pages

"Wikinomics" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

“If you’re going to be naked, you better be buff.” (p293)

A fascinating book although a little out of date despite being “fully revised and updated for paperback”. The pace of internet change is such that 2008 is long ago. Thus it recognises that facebook is growing and on the horizon but doesn’t realise quite how massive it will be by 2011. It applauds del.icio.us although that service has been effectively closed down by Yahoo. Twitter isn’t mentioned.

My biggest reservation is that although I could understand the many reasons for going open and sharing and collaborating etc that companies demonstrated and although I understood that all these things helped massively cut costs and improve rapidity and market responsiveness they failed in their ultimate promise in that I failed to understand how these things could be used to make money (rather than just saving on the costs front). Google is basically an ad company. Amazon sells books. eBay is a traditional auction house taking a cu of the selling price. But how else do you make money? Ask Twitter.

August 2011; 315 pages

"Our Fathers" by Andrew O'Hagan

Hugh ‘Mr Housing’ Bawn lies dying on the 18^th floor of one of the tower blocks in Ayrshire which, as Municipal Planner, he helped to build. His grandson Jamie who demolishes tower blocks in England, is with him for his final months. Jamie’s alcoholic, wife-beating father Robert, has disappeared.

This book, written in crisp and original elegiac prose, explores the relationship between Jamie, Robert and Hugh and their women. It explores modern Scotland and the lives blighted by poverty, unemployment, alcohol and the built environment. It seeks to redeem the heroes of the sixties who built this urban landscape in the name of progress and with the vision of escaping from worse poverty and the worse housing of the Glasgow tenement slums. If there is a poetry of the assembly line this book describes it. If there is nobility lurking within the wife-beating drunk, this book finds it. The images of girls in hair nets at superstore checkouts beside roads from an auld village centre to nowhere are haunting. Drunks quote poetry (alright, it is Burns so it is mostly doggerel) in the working men’s club. History is just beneath the surface whether it is the bell tower of the church mentioned in Tam O’Shanter or the monastery where Robert Bruce murdered Red Comyn (now a supermarket) or the housing estate all of whose Drives are named for a forgotten Scottish Socialist.

And there is comedy. Jamie meets his mum’s mates and they try to chat him up. He watches Gaelic breakfast TV with his Gran (the only people in the world who watch it, he believes) and questions the credibility of the item on swimwear fashion in Uist.

A remarkable book, full of the romance and dignity of everyday poverty.

July 2011; 282 pages

"The Angel's Game" by Carlos Luis Zafon

This book is tangentially a prequel to ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ in that it uses some of the same characters and it has the same obsession with the dark side of Barcelona as a backdrop to sinister and labyrinthine plots. This book adds a substantial supernatural element.

It is pure melodrama, despite damning Grand Guignol very early: GG “does to drama what syphilis does to your privates. Getting it might be pleasurable, but from then on it’s downhill all the way.” But it does GG very well indeed. There is a mysterious house with locked rooms and secret chambers and a secret. There is the charming old gentleman who is quite literally the devil in disguise and who manipulates the narrator into a murky and devious world. There is the Inspector of Police who always just prevents his two thugs from torturing the narrator. There are the women: Cristina whom the narrator adores from afar (very Pip and Estella) and Isabella the narrator’s competent and wise-cracking Dr Watson (a wonderful character: the dialogue between narrator and Isabella is brilliant, robust and full of humour). There are mysterious buildings that are one moment brothels, surgeries or mansions and the next are burnt out ruins; libraries; a newspaper office that once housed a sulphuric acid factory; graveyards including the Cemetery of Forgotten Books: nothing and no-one are what they seem except perhaps the saintly old bookseller with his shy son.  The atmosphere is dark and derelict.

On the first page I wondered whether there was a connection to Stendahl’s ‘The Red and the Black’ when the Barcelona skyline was described (in an image that occurred later in the book) as “a perpetual twilight of scarlet and black”. But there wasn’t. There were references to other book’s such as ‘Great Expectations’ but somehow all these were just there to set the scene. There is repeated reference to Angels, to Mausoleums, to Spiders and their Webs, to Death, but these seem to just be ways of painting the picture. In the end the reader is led into a labyrinth of clues and motives and false trails and then abandoned. There is no consistent ‘solution’ to the mysteries. The ‘boss’ is the devil but much of the evil is perpetrated by the last man whose soul the devil stole.

In the final analysis this is a wonderfully atmospheric book with a convoluted plot but in the end it failed to deliver the satisfaction it promised.

July 2011; 504 pages

"The Red and the Black" by 'Stendahl'

This overlong and over-violet romantic novel overanalyses the thoughts and feelings of protagonist Julian Sorel and he agonises and soliloquises over how to find his fortune. Starting as the pretty book-loving son of a carpenter (religious theme?) in a small town he becomes the tutor to the Mayor’s children and seduces his wife. Then he makes his way to Paris, becomes secretary to a Marquis and seduces his daughter.

What makes this book special is the character of Julien. He is driven by the ambition to be someone special although he has no clear picture of whether that special someone will be a cardinal, a general, a rich merchant or a lover. Agonisingly, although to succeed he has to worm his way into rich households he has a massive chip on his shoulder and hates both the society he is desperate to join and himself. He is a social climbing peasant who wants to start a revolution. There is a lot of suppressed hatred (which is perhaps why seduction is his route to the top). He has to do a lot of dissembling and equivocation. Stendahl makes this, which he calls hypocrisy, a central theme of the novel, although it does seem unjust to describe Julien as a hypocrite; he is simply trying to win a game when the cards are marked against him.

Magic moments include the scene in chapter five when he is about to enter the gates of the Mayor’s house for the first time. As in a fairy tale when the hero is about to embark upon a path that will lead to his eventual damnation (as if these are the gates of hell) he is warned. He discovers a torn newspaper cutting which reports the fate of a man whose name is Louis Jenrel, an anagram of Julien Sorel. He does not realises the importance of the warning and so he is damned.

In chapter 23: “The traveller who has just climbed a steep mountain sits down on the summit, and finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be happy if he were forced to rest always?”

In chapter 34: “One can lean only on what resists” says the Marquis to himself when debating whether to employ the sullen and obstinate Julien.

In chapter 39 “The end justifies the means ….I would hang three men to save the lives of four.”

In chapter 72: “Man has two different beings inside him … What devil thought of that malicious touch?”

Improvements I would make to the translation:

• More comprehensive end notes which I would put as foot notes so you don’t have to keep on flicking backwards and forwards
• Some sense to be made of the money which includes (forever unexplained as to their values relative one to the other) sols, francs, crowns, livres, and louis d’or.

Could be abridged and definitely of its time but the originality of the character of the  hero redeems the book.

Other books by French authors which have been reviewed in this blog can be found here.

July 2011; 511 pages

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart

New York Psychoanalyst Luke Rhinehart is seeking to escape the numbing tedium of his ordinary life.  So he begins to subject himself to the laws of probability. Because of the throw of a dice he rapes his partner's wife (more to her satisfaction than his). His life becomes increasingly irrational as everything he does including the roles he plays are dictated by dice. At first justifying his actions in terms of cod psychology (a search for the self) he later becomes high priest of the religion of the Die.

I suppose it is meant to be satire, lampooning psychoanalysis, religion, conservative America and the hippy movement at the same time. It is utterly of its period with plenty of drugs and graphic sex all washed down with a naive and heavy-handed philosophy: Timothy Leary meets the Valley of the Dolls without the pace, the humour and the characterisation of the latter.

Even the premise doesn't work. It is all very well choosing what you do by throwing dice but you have chosen the options. It really isn't a rediscovery of free will.

A brilliant concept ruined by elephantine prose and intrusive cod philosophy.

July 2011; 541 pages

"The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

This short novel is the story of an Andalusian shepherd boy who seeks treasure in the Pyramids of Egypt. On his way there he encounters an Alchemist and learns the secrets of the Soul of the World. The book is essentially an extended parable, told in a simple poetic style, to encourage you to 'follow your heart'.

A pretty story but it is more concerned with the message than the characters.

July 2011; 177 pages

"God's Philosophers" by James Hannam

The Scotsman says this book "makes enjoyable reading out of some seriously dusty history". Yes! The reading is wonderfully enjoyable but No! the history is not in the least bit dusty.

Hannam's thesis is that the philosophers of the misnamed "dark" ages laid the foundations for modern science. Contrary to received opinion the church did not repress their ideas. On the contrary, by an early decision that natural philosophers should not stray into theology the church protected natural philosophers. The monasteries and universities (sponsored mainly by the church) were fertile grounds for new ideas to breed. Although the official philosophy was Aristotle's, and this was such an integrated system that it was difficult to create an alternative because all parts had to be replaced, the natural philosophers were free to chip away at Aristotelian beliefs. This was difficult because, at least in mechanics, Aristotle's ideas are intuitive and seem to conform to observation. Until a society has the resources and technology to make systematic detailed observations it cannot really progress beyond everyday beliefs. Thus the Earth seems not to move and if it did move one should be able to observe parallax effects with the stars. But the stars are so far away that you can't observe parallax without a telescope and therefore the Earth does not move.

Despite these handicaps the mediaeval philosophers made substantial progress chipping away at the corners of Aristotelianism and developing new logical and mathematical tools.  Progress was further slowed until the printing press was invented. Shortly after that the fashion for humanism (clearly the boo-hiss villain in Hannam's eyes) meant that Aristotle was valued far beyond the mediaeval ideas purely because it was older. But the new scientists Galileo and Kepler owed a tremendous (often unacknowledged) debt to mediaeval philosophers many of whose ideas they quoted verbatim and unattributed.

Wonderful things I learned from this book:

• Aristotle considered that all things eg sheep have two categories of properties:
• substance: those properties without which they cannot be sheep (eg being an animal)
• accident: those properties which are not essential (such as whiteness)
• Archbishop Lanfranc (yes, that one, Anselm's teacher too!) used these properties to explain how the bread and wine could become Christ's body and blood in the mass despite appearing to still be bread and wine. He said the accidental properties were retained but the substantial ones altered; hence transubstantiation!
• Philosophers who believed that the concept sheep can exist independently are realists. Those who believe that  categorical concepts have no separate reality but that there are only lots and lots of individual sheep are called nominalists. William of Ockham used his razor to suggest that adding concepts was wrong, hence he was a nominalist. Science is impossible if you can't believe in concepts such as the Law of Gravity; scientists are relaists. Ockham's razor has been much misused to cut in a completely different way from that intended.
• Throughout the middle ages everyone knew that parts of the Bible were not to be taken literally. Despite the Bible suggesting that the Moon produces its own illumination Pope Innocent III (died 1216) knew it shone by reflected light.
• There was loads of scepticism about both alchemy and astrology for the simple reason that they did not appear to work. Nevertheless, both acids and alcohol were isolated by Christian mediaeval scientists in the thirteenth century and misattributed to earlier Arabic scientists.
• Thomas Bradwardine (c1290-1349), one of the 'Mertonian Calculators' used proto logarithms in his study of motion 250 years before they were 'invented' by Napier.
• Jean Buridan developed the idea of impetus. With the Mertonian analyses he more or less solved the problems of motion before 1360, at least 200 years before Galileo.
• Albert of Saxony (c1316-1390) drew the first picture of a curved trajectory, even though it is straight in its first part.
• Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference to be between 24,000 and 30,000 miles (it is actually 24,900). This was known through Pliny the Elder's work. Ptolemy miscalculated it to be between 17,000 and 22,000 miles. Ptolemy, translated in 1406, became popular so Columbus used it to 'lose' 10,000 miles from his sea trip from Spain to the Indies.
• Paper was affordable compared to parchment. The first recorded paper mill in Italy was 1276 and France in 1348.
• Printing had the edge in the West because, unlike China and Japan, we have an alphabet which means it is far quicker to typeset a page.
• The mediaeval people invented spectacles, the mechanical clock, the blast furnace and the windmill all by themselves.

Two very minor criticisms. First there is a feel that the book is one long list of very short potted biographies of some very interesting people. Second, I was disappointed that more was not made of the inventions.

This was a wonderful book.

July 2011; 342 pages