Week Twenty Five: Cows by Matthew Stokoe

Cows by Matthew Stokoe is now the third book of Matt's I have read, but the first published. Also the second book in this blog series, the other one the excellent Empty Mile way back in week 2.

Cows is brilliantly written and has a lyrical and literary feel to the language that I truly envy.

But.

It's pretty disturbing, like a fairytale it's full of metaphor and imagery and littered with brutality and deliberate shocks.

Would I recommend it? For the strong stomached and strong hearted person who is looking for a well written and incisive dip into the cesspool that is capability but not reality.

Matt has a following it seems of people who like it for the violence and for the shocks and the out and out one-upmanship of the gore and depravity.

It would be a shame if this is the only thing they take away from it, because it is beautifully surreal and well written.

But not for many people, and my reprint edition came autographed by the author and contained a warning "wait til you get a load of this".

Matt. You were right.

Next Week: I've already started on "How to Win a Cosmic War, by Reza Aslan".

Week Twenty Four: Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman.

Yikes, what a long and painful read. It was only 307 pages of book, and lengthy appendices and sources (always a good sign, they have the facts and sources behind them.) but each single page was a crawl through dense words, small typeface and an overabundance of hard facts followed by interpretation.

It is a good book and very seminal to many scholars and dissidents to follow, but just hard, hard work. John Pilger by comparison was more horrifying in his portrayal but easier to read.

The thing is that the media is free, but by right of that freedom, market forces and the desires that drive government and media organisations alike, they waste that freedom in ignorance and acceptance. Even the so-called left-wing opposition press in the mainstream is prey to such basic misconceptions.

If the premise from which you operate is flawed, then all your reports focussing on the details (true or otherwise) never question the basics and therefore perpetuate the myths.

This book is now well out of date, but the comparisons between the "terrorists" and "worthy vitcims" when it was written and nowadays would be well worth a re-examination of the medias involvement today.

I make no secret of my disdain for most media and the bias they maintain, but things have changed some for the better (the internet and instant news) and some for the worse (Fox News).

The current mid-east push for democracy is relevant in seeing where the US support goes to, they support democracy only where the outcome is favourable. This book is over twenty years old but still shines a light on that foible of the US. And maybe we all have these discussions in the mainstream (biased though they are) because of the way this book has been read, appreciated and denounced in all measures over time.

Something shorter, something lighter, something less taxing next.

We'll see what falls into my hands.

Week Twenty Three: Flu by Gina Kolata

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the search for the Virus that Caused it By Gina Kolata. AKA longest book title yet.

I started this book about 2-3 years ago when the Avian Flu was scaring the pants off of everyone and drugs companies started selling Tamiflu in somewhat indecent and very profitable haste. And the book in and of itself is a hard one to read as it leaves behind a traditional narrative for a disjointed series of biographies and episodic events in the modern life of H1N1 and the virus we call influenza.

A series of obsessive people and half completed hypothesis and experiments with little to show at the end of the day except more questions. One thing it does leave you with though is the sense that we overreact badly to certain things. And that sometimes scientists can be so stupid so as to beggar belief that they represent the greatest minds among us.

On an unrelated note the book also introduced me to the logical tool of Alexanders Question. What information if presented to you would make you change your mind? An excellent exercise in logic and counterargument if you need one.

Done early this week - 2 days of reading and done. May have to pick something longer this week since I have a greater window of opportunity. Charlie Brooker may have to wait.

Week Twenty Two: The Enchantress of Florence

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. After a few weeks in a row in non fiction, decided it was time to dip back into the made up. And the book I settled on was at times beautiful and lyrical - as the author is so good at being, but ultimately frustrating.

It's an alternative history of sorts, and in re-writing the already scandalous and visceral political beings of Florence and the Medicis and all its swirly eddies of intrigue, it loses something. It belittles the work of Machiavelli by making his life's most remembered work an echo of an Indian fairytale of the impossible, the deluded and the incestuous. Why on earth he thought it a good idea to include the four musketeers? Anyone's guess.

And so in places it becomes too flowery, too magical and ultimately too much.

I was fascinated and entranced by The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is the same approach with modern and distinctly unmagical times and events. But translating this fairytale approach to a romanticised almost fairytale time and it it cancels each other out and you're left feeling manipluated and confused, like some one has betrayed your readers trust in a story. And so you feel betrayed by this until you do not and this is why you love it.

Ok thats a bit of poetic licence, but that Oprah Winfrey book club feel ruined it for me.

Still like his writing - just not this one.

Next? Charlie Brooker's Book (Try saying that drunk...)

Week Twenty One: Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin.

Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford. Another misleading title, because it's neither secret nor a return.

It's a history. An interesting history that went over some ground I knew and some I did not. There are six 'events' that encapsulate the supposed Boffinesque behaviour of the Brits and each one of them is fascinating in some way or another.

Ultimately though what we end up with is a modern Britain, one that can't compete with Europe and America on an equal footing any longer and so produces a very high quality, but ultimately doomed venture that is usually superseded or left behind as a testament to both the quality and futility of British Engineering.

Whenever you say Boffin or British Engineering, it does conjure up the White Coated, Dan Dare, Top Gear Test Track view of a scientist (minus the appalling racism of course) but that seems to be all it does. This quickly goes from the titular promise of "Secret Return" to the actuality of a "History of high quality losses". This is a massive generalisation of course, but that is the feeling it left me with.

Interesting. Racal invented Vodafone, (did not know that). Elite was developed by 2 British nerds who rewired the BBC Mirco (knew that). Britain had a space race of sorts (knew that) and it's propulsion drive HTP was based on hair bleach (did not know that). The chapter on Concorde was really interesting and inspiring, the one on the Human Genome - dull and a little bit of a waste of everyone's time. And to top it all off, Beagle 2. No one knows where that went (well it went to Mars - but when it got there? Anyone's guess).

I'd neither recommend or not recommend this book. It's a book, read it or don't.

Next week. I may have to finish the proto military essays on what might have been...