retrotech

by Peter Carey
I am not a fan of historical fiction. My dislike for it probably comes from the mixing of ‘fact’ and fiction in a blend that I can not split apart (which is probably impossible as ‘fact’ is often not very solid). I’ve read some history in the past, but am not generally very knowledgeable. Despite that bias against historical tales, I enjoyed this book about a famous Australian outlaw of the 19th century.
The story is well told with a convincing sense of detail that paints a clear sense of the extent to which Irish in Australia were abused and persecuted by the ruling English and clear picture of the roughness of life at that time and place. Kelley was the son of an Irish convict sent to Australia who then grew up in poverty and with a chip on his shoulder. If this telling is to be believed, he was motivated by a sense of justified indignity and outrage at the way his family was treated. The truth is probably more complicated.
Worth a read.

by Julian Barnes

A “novel” that provides a story mainly as a basis for a ‘meditation’ on life and death. The main character is a British woman, Jean, born around 1920 who lives to be one hundred. Her life story is only sketched in as a basis for comments and observations about life and death and some mundane things along the way. Lots of it is about courage, fear, and about death and dying, but it is not at all a morbid book. A book of thoughts and explorations of ideas. Not an essay that argues for a position; it Just “talks” about things.
In addition to the Jean, an uncle, a husband, an aviator boarded with the family in WW II, and a son play roles in providing opportunities for observations. Events in the lives come in and out of the narrative in a way that seems very natural and smooth. Nicely written and interesting. As a bonus, if you choose to believe “Jean” at age 100, you’ll get definite answers to three BIG questions (No, not the meaning of life).
As an aside, the book was written in the early 1980′s and near the end it includes a dialog with a smart machine (TAT – for “The Absolute Truth”) that supposed to know everything, but doesn’t. No definite date associated but it would be somewhere about now. The characterization of the machine and interactions with it are very off: a green screen character based terminal. Missed widely on that one, but then the book is not at all about technology or prediction. Just about the human condition.

by E. L. Doctorow

This book of historical fiction is loosely based on the eccentric Collyer brother who lived and died in NYC in the early to mid 20th century. The basic idea for the story is the Collyer brothers, but Doctorow extends the time period and broadly imagines the lives of the brothers. His version is told by Homer who becomes blind as a young man and is supposedly typing the tale on a braille typewriter. Homer’s viewpoint and concerns are well developed and he seems quite real as a person. Langley is mainly present as an aid and instigator of external conflict.
This relatively short book tells a version that is part black comedy, and part tragedy. Doctorow uses the story to note and comment on some of the notable aspects of the 20th century: wars, atrocities, blackouts, Vietnam, hippies…. Interesting, but not great. Well written, probably not very interesting for anyone under the age of 40 or so.

As if to re-enforce the message of the book “Fatal System Error”, this article appeared in my news reader yesterday. Seems that some guys in St. Petersburg, Russia broke into some stock trading accounts and then used them to ‘kite’ a few thinly traded stocks and make a ‘killing’ off of the stocks’ price moves.
St. Petersburg was highlighted as the home of a lot of corruption and of RBN (Russian Business Network) which apparently hosts a lot of shady and probably criminal web servers and provides them access to the Internet. Don’t know if RBN was involved, but it seems likely.

by Joseph Menn

This book seems to be intended to get a reader concerned about crime involving the Internet and it probably will succeed at that task for most readers. Generally the crimes involved are not new, extortion, theft, but the involvement of the Internet introduces new characteristics and difficulties in finding and convicting the perpetrators.
The author is a reporter and the book reads like a very extended article built around the activities of two individuals who became involved in fighting Internet crime with some success. One an American entrepreneur and the other a British policeman. The story covers is some detail a number of related incidents and cases starting 6 to 8 years ago and general moves forward in time. In ends with some references to events in 2009. Along the way, there is a lot of criticism of some law enforcement agencies; especially the FBI.
The main pitch is to emphasize how difficult it is to prevent Internet based crimes due to the ability of criminals to cover their digital track and more importantly to blend into the relatively supportive Eastern European countries. Overall, the author makes the case that Russia in particular protects many of these criminals because of a combination of pervasive internal corruption and, more speculatively, because the perpetrators also serve Russian government agencies when asked.
The most attention is given to blackmail via ‘denial of service’ attacks (roughly preventing productive use of web sites by overwhelming them with trash traffic), but identity theft is also well covered.
The book provides a useful, non-technical description of the recent state of Internet crime with a useful description of the difficulties associated with international investigation and prosecution. A little dry.

by William Boyd

An excellent mystery with an embedded spy story that drives most of the mystery. A well written entertaining book. The main characters are a woman who was a very minor ‘spy’ for the UK in WW II and her daughter who is a single mother, graduate student, and teacher of English as a second language to adults. The intertwined stories are the mother’s history in 1939 to 1941 and the disclosure of that story to her daughter in 1976. The revelation of the mother’s past and prior identity is a total surprise and shock to the daughter. The book is organized as the overlapping telling of these two stories and they come together very nicely.
Very enjoyable.

by Richard Dooling

This was a nice little mystery story set in the insurance industry with a few references to the old movie “Double Indemnity”. The main characters in the story are investigators for a life insurance company. Three young investigators and their older generation boss are the main characters. One of investigators dies after being fired and spending the evening out with the other two investigators who then want to figure out if it was murder, suicide or an accidental drug overdose.
There is a small dose of computer hacking thrown into the plot, but the context is mainly provided by the ‘viatical’ industry which began to flourish when the aids epidemic arose. Briefly, a viatical settlement occurs when a terminally ill person sells their life insurance to a company for a fraction of its value after death; i.e. money now for them vs. more money later for some beneficiary. All legal but tempting to abuse, as it is in this story.
A nice little mystery in which the investigators need to be investigated.

by Ian M. Banks

The book jacket calls this “An apocalyptic fable for terrible times”, and the introduction pins the timing to the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers. That seems like a god transition to focus on, but as it turns out, that time period doesn’t seem the least bit relevant to the story. While I like Banks’ writing, I didn’t like this book.
This story seems a hodge podge of ideas. It is based very loosely on the “Many Universe” interpretation of quantum mechanics, but only as a abused ploy for a lot of what is essentially magic. Some good bits of writing but the plot is just a battle between good guys and bad guys (both women), with too many miraculous capabilities used to resolve the plot.
The story is developed as an interweaving of episodes happening to the several main participants and this may be the best aspect of the story.
Not recommended.

by Jeff VanderMeer

This book tells an imaginary history of two imaginary people in an imaginary place which is not unusual for a novel, but these are more imaginary than most. One of the two is pretty normal, but the second becomes pretty unusual. Not speculative fiction, not science fiction, but a literally ‘fantastic’ story with a bit of a surreal feel; very clever and imaginative. The story of a brother and sister told through an “afterword” to a book that the brother wrote. The afterward is written by the sister with comments added by the brother who apparently reappeared after the sister somehow abandoned the afterward. The story is well written and plays out gradually and nicely as a meandering story, not a gripping page turner. Much is implied and little is explicit.
The setting is a world with a usual dose of conflicting governments and organizations and it includes one war (ended in a “festival”), but it is not a tale of large scale action. There are a few other characters in addition to the imaginary authors, but fungi and mysterious beings who live underground but intermingle with the people are the ambiguous focus. The fungi constitute some kind of sentient entity that is gradually taking over a city. Not really taking over explicitly, but that seems inevitable (nothing is explicit).
The brother is fascinated by the fungi, goes exploring underground, and through the course of the story is merging with the fungi (at least some of them live in and on him but he has some control over them). The overall feel of the book is a little like 2001 (the movie); a migration toward something unknown, but ‘bigger’ than normal reality. As if the fungi and people coexisted in the same space and only occasionally interacted.
An unusual aspect is there was almost no technology in the story. Casual mention of telephone, boat, and automobile. Most travel is by foot. The fungi, however, can make weapons out of fungi! Makes some sense when you read it. Weird and I can’t describe it at all well, but it was a pleasant imaginative read.

by Dan Balz & Haynes Johnson

I am not anything like a “political junky” and don’t watch much TV. I actively avoid listening to politicians since they tend to talk too much and say too little. Politics is important, but I can’t stomach the pompous talk, the omissions, the distortions, and the half truths. So, I tend not to be the best informed on what politicians are saying or doing. But, I like to think I investigate enough to vote sensibly and I occasionally write or call an elected official.
With that point of view, it should no be a surprise that I don’t read much about politics, but I did really enjoyed this book. It was written by two journalists who worked on the recent primary and general elections, and they provide an interesting ‘journalistic history’ of the incredibly long and costly process that eventually led to Obama being elected president. Their story starts before the candidates declare and essentially ends with the general election.
There is a lot of name dropping and explanations of who did what when, but the overall impression is of an immensely arduous process. Serious candidates are followed around continuously and every word examined for real or imagined slights or gaffs. Most anyone would make some number of stupid or insulting to someone statements in the course of two years! The press which is always looking for a story or headline is very quixotic; sometimes making a big deal and sometime ignoring a particular depending on the mood and story of the moment. Getting elected President is an unbelievable grind. Not sure how anyone survives it. Though I suppose the story just skips the inevitable down time; as there must be some of it.
Overall, the battle for the Democratic nomination was more intense and interesting than the general elections. The authors left me with the conclusion that Obama beat Clinton because he had a better strategy for collecting delegates and he executed it better. Clinton, on the other hand was probably over confident and certainly over staffed with talented people who didn’t server her well. They fought and schemed, but that was partly her fault for not organizing them well (and Bill C. Inadvertently helped to stir the pot.).
The world of political operative, planners, and schemers seems to a small one. The people who work on campaigns seem to jump from candidate or campaign, and to a lesser degree form party to party as candidates join or abandon the contests and they all know one another, have fought one another and sometimes greatly dislike one another. A small but probably very influential industry.
One specific I have to mention. Edward Kennedy’s reported advice to Obama when discussing whether or not to run: “You can’t get elected with a voting record!!” so run now. If you’ve had to vote on tough issues or emotional issues, you’ll create too many people who won’t ever vote for you. That’s a sad but probably accurate observation and portends more off the wall new comers like Palin, Fiorina, Whitman, etc.; people who have made a name elsewhere.
All in all the book tells an interesting tale. Not always inspiring, but with some inspiring snippets of speeches (primarily by Obama but also McCain’s concession speech).

by Thomas Hardy
This novel is over 100 years old, but was still a good ‘read’. A somewhat polemic novel that was quite critical of the contemporary late Victorian cultural institutions; especially scholastic and religious. It tells the tale of a doomed romance between two young cousins. Doomed by societal pressures around appropriate behavior; especially around marriage. Apparently, this novel was viewed as scandalous when it was written, and the negative reception it received convinced Hardy to stop writing novels!
Its criticism of religion, the scholastic world, and marriage have become very conventional:
- An English church more concerned about apparent form and obedience than religious beliefs.
- A scholastic world which is elitist and give too much precedence to the moneyed and powerful while ignoring ‘true’ learning.
- Marriage as a tyrannical relationship which kills ‘love’ more than encourages it; especially for women.
Overall, the story is a pretty dismal tale: a forced marriage, an impoverished youth who dreams of being a scholar, a loveless marriage, a doomed love that ends disastrously, and murder and suicide. Sounds depressing but mainly it wasn’t. It felt truthful though it was pretty easy to see where the story was heading. Keep in mind that this description doesn’t do the book justice, and if you want a better description of the story just google it.

PS. Rather than read this book, I listened to a Libravox.com recording of it. A first for me. The sound and quality of the readers were quite uneven, but it was a good way to ‘read’ the book given my post operation situation at the time. All the libravox recordings are free and in the public domain. A good thing to encourage.

by John Le Carre

This is the first Le Carre book that I’ve read in a while. I loved his early books, but once the real Cold War ended he lost his most fitting subject and focus. This book uses his best playing field, Germany filled with western intelligence services, in a ‘war on terror’ setting (Boy, I hate the expression ‘war on terror’). The story is strong on painting a picture of the people at the lower levels of intelligence whereas the bosses are stereotypes. I enjoyed the first two thirds or so but then it began to peter out and get predictable.
Enjoyable read for me, but not highly recommended. If you’ve enjoyed his early books, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

by Hans Fallada

This novel was written in Germany soon after the end of WW II by an author who had stayed in Germany through the entire Nazi period. He suffered under the Nazis and to an extent cooperated with them as he “had to” to in order to survive. He died soon after the book was written and didn’t live to see it published, but he did know whereof he wrote and it shows.
To the story: Superficially, the story is depressing as life for ordinary people in Germany must have been. Shortages, constant surveillance of all by many, imprisonment or death if accused. Violence everywhere. The system corrupted almost everyone and those that dared to object or criticize were silenced. The tale revolves around two working class Germans who slide into resistance when there son is killed in the invasion of France. A personal rather than a ‘noble’ reason. Their resistance is simple and ineffectual; they leave postcards with seditious messages around Berlin. About half the book involves other characters and plots at the same time in the same city resulting in a more complete picture of life in that city. Almost all the tales end in death or incarceration for someone.
The Nazi period is now 50 to 70 years ago so the methods seem crude and brutal, but it is not hard to make the connection between life in Germany under Hitler and life under any other totalitarian regime. From reading this, it seems the annihilation of trust affects everyone everywhere. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else and hunkering down is the common (only?) survival strategy. With digital communications and databases, a more modern surveillance society would be more efficient and hence worse.
The book also contains an interesting summary of the life of Fallada and an introduction to the real couple whose story underlies this novel. This is an excellent book well worth reading. Somehow, it ends up being not really depressing. Realistic and much to be depressed about, but it is not a downer.

“The First American in Afghanistan”
by Ben Macintyre

This is the story of an American from a Quaker family in Pennsylvania who went to sea to seek his fortune before marrying, was jilted by his fiancé while in India, and then set off into India to forget his love and follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. A very hardy, adventurous, and lucky Quaker. He first served with the British as a doctor but then headed off into the border fiefdoms in North India and ultimately to Afghanistan where he, technically, became a king and opposed the British Raj. Josiah Harlan was a real person and his adventures were real as best the author can discern. He likely was the inspiration for Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King”.
The travels, scenes, and cultures he encounters seem very medieval. His travels and relationships were aided by the shock value a foreigner in Afghanistan had back in that era and the impact of, mostly military, European technology on the indigenous people of India and Afghanistan. He had entrée to ruler’s because of where he came from, but he made great advantage of the opportunities.
In many ways it is amazing how little the area seems to have changed since 1840 or so when he was traveling. Clan or tribe based loyalties still dominate society and relationships. Distrust of foreigners, many vendettas based on old insults and rivalries, and violence are still the rife. Brothers plot against brothers, usually half brothers due to polygamy. All males have and know how to use guns. Ambush and raid are a way of life.
As I was finishing this book, I happened to listen to an unusually frank sounding “Economist” interview with a Pakistani General in charge of their Frontier Force which is in charge of security in the Frontier, AKA Tribal, area of Pakistan. The Frontier Force is organized into Platoons which are all from the same tribe or geographical area. Recruits are easy to train since “everybody has and knows how to use a gun” (and some know grenade launchers and machine guns). Nothing has changed except the tools.
All in all a cautionary tale about Afghanistan: Fraught with incredibly complex ‘politics’ between and within tribes. They unite and stop fighting each other only when an outside power tries to control the place. As an epilogue on the death of the last King from Harlan’s period and killing of the President installed by the Russians in the 90′s makes clear, it is still a violent and brutal place. Like old days.
A very interesting and well told biography.

by Richard Fortey
“The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum”

This is not an official history of the museum, but a tale written by one man who worked there for many years. His view of the place and its contents. The contents he describes cover all the possibilities; the buildings, the staff, the specimens, and some visitors and events. Organized by museum department, etymology, geology, etc., it describes the science and the people liberally laced with gossip and anecdotes.
Systematic classification is what natural history is all about and it seems to require obsessive, dedicated people to grasp and document all the details and differences of hoards of specimens. I could never do it, but it makes interesting reading.
This is a good book to leave laying around and to read a few pages at a time. Otherwise you can drown in or become bored by the sequence of short tales and classification details that make up the bulk of the book.