Week Ten: Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton is a posthumously published novel. Apparently it was found completed in his estate. I'd argue against the completed part though. There was a complete plot, and it had all the earmarks of something waiting to be adapted into a blockbuster film as well, but it read full of cliche, cheap characters and cardboard cutout villains. Critics of Crichton will probably point to this as evidence that he was actually the author, but he's done better. I suspect that perhaps several more rewrites would have happened at some point if he had taken it to publication while alive.

In short this is an adventure story, heavy on cliched character and light on historical accuracy. It reads like a movie plot, with obvious villains and betrayals a-plenty. The basics are that the hero of the piece straddles the fine line between hero and villain, pirate and privateer, us vs them. Essentially to be on the side of the king, you could do know wrong unless you made the mistake of getting caught. To be on the side of the Spanish you were basically a pirate and cared not for the pleasantries of good behaviour etc. So it progresses as a lesson in 17th century seafaring racism with murder, politics, rape and prostitution all taking abundant time in the spotlight.

Unlike modern settings for novels, the crimes and attitudes are not judged or condemned, they just are. No commentary though leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling that the author either did not care or wanted to redress them via inattention. Somehow that approach seems too subtle for the broad brush the book is painted in.

A ripping yarn I guess, probably make a good movie with some re-writes and post-modern American moralising thrown in for good measure.

Next Week: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
(one of those books I always wanted to read )

Week Nine: Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

Week Nine: Flashforward

The book written waaaaay before the TV series, came, rated poorly and then died.

Is a good read, without all the action, conspiracy and melodrama that marked the TV show as the new "LOST" that was not. This was actually a pretty easy read, though not light by any means. It tackled the nature of God (that's two books now) and religion, destiny and quantum mechanics.

But in a more simple way tackled humanity. Lloyd Simcoe and Theo (unpronounceable Greek name) and the love triangle played out over decades. It's a complicated book in many ways, not just because it segues all over the show, but also because it forms several distinct parts that play like their own mini-novel. The experiment and the aftermath. The murder trying to be prevented. The coming of the future. The next big glimpse of nothing and a very quick trip down immortality lane.

Enjoyable, little bit of closure on the show in that it closes a few chapters and makes the additionals suddenly seem less important.

Week Eight: How To Design A Chair

How to Design a Chair - the Design Museum.

By sheer unadulterated coincidence, Max bought a book by the same author as one of my previous reviews (see The Language of Things - Deyan Sudjic). Though in this case he's the editor and creator, but this appears to be more of a collaborative effort by the Design Museum, of which he is the Curator.

A curious book, it's not really "how to" design it yourself, so much as "how did" others actually work and what they were influenced by. The back story of the chair and why certain types and materials were used were fascinating. The history of Chippendale and other designers is equally interesting even though I could not have imagined it prior to reading this.

Just when you've had enough of the why and history, the modern age creeps up and Bauhaus and Starck raise their ubiquitous designer heads into the picture and then the intricacy of the design process becomes more transparent as the designers and the designs are still around. And they can spout all the existential quandaries that so often anthropomorphise their work.

And when that gets too arty and subjective, and a little hard to swallow, we follow the cradle to grave design and deploy of the Myto chair by Grcic, and that is the most curiously engaging piece of the book. There's a lot of thought and work going into the design of the chair, there's always more than you know of course. In this case 6 months working on the colour dyes other than black, white and grey, because the 120 degree heat made the dyes spot except in certain colour frequency or mixes.

Plenty of pictures too, a good look at how a chair is designed, and made and appreciated. But not really a How To.

Week Seven: The Black Cloud - Sir Fred Hoyle

Week Seven - the Black Cloud was written by famed UK astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, back in 1957 and is a stunning and precipitous novel about contact with an alien intelligence. It defies conventional wisdom and structure to climax in a way that would horrify literary and film critics alike. Sweeping and calamitous events are dealt to in short and almost off hand paragraphs, which serve to illustrate the nature of the story itself.

There are some wonderfully naive and intelligent characters contained and they say the most amazingly intelligent, coherent and perceptive things about humanity and alien beings in very succinct terms.

I picked up a recent re-print edition after seeing it reviewed in the Guardian online. It comes with an afterword by Richard Dawkins, and having read the book I can see why he would want to, or was chosen to comment.

It's about the nature of a whole bunch of things like the universe, humanity, politics, religion, physics and by extension of all those things, God and our place etc...

But it does not preach and that is the brilliant thing about this - this is an academic exercise, not an action movie or worse, a sermon.

Above all else this is a great read.

Week Six: Grow your own Drugs - James Wong

Not a manifesto for the "Leaglise" movement, but a cookbook of sorts with all sorts of handy advice for keen gardeners and non-conformists alike on how to use herbal remedy type solutions and home make those things that you would normally pay for someone else to make.

I thought I'd read this as an antidote to the psychological books I'd been into lately and sure enough it's very, very different. The approach is one I kind of agree with as a choice, drugs in and of themselves are not bad, anymore than lotions and ointments made in factory are not. This is a way to make these yourself, not preach how awful all these chemicals are etc...

Which is good because a huge percentage of these "chemicals" are present in naturally occurring things - which is where we got them from in the first place. Like Acetyl-Salicylic Acid - which became Aspirin (Dispirin) and Heroin and a few other choice drugs.

What was interesting was how make emulsions and oils and what all the differing things do. There's loads of gardening advice and then page after page of "recipe".

Interesting to read about someone else's passion - on a scientific subject delivered so rustically, but with common sense and not a head full of "belief" and "nature" as if these two things can convince any rational mind.

Enough ranting, it was interesting but not fascinating. A curiosity.

Next Week: The Black Cloud by Sir Fred Hoyle (or the Infinite Crisis Graphic Novel - depending on how much time I have).

Week Five: Sway (The Irrestible Pull of Irrational Behaviour )

Sway: Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman.

Another in a long line of psychological behaviors and/or social economics books I have on my list. This one gets points for being brief and easy to read, with really fascinating case studies, but little else.

It was interesting to see yet again the way we think and the way we act are not what we think they are, but the book provides anecdote after anecdote, experiment after experiment and study after study. Then what?

People are stupid and don't always act rationally? Hardly a news flash, but the subtitle of the book describes the pull of irrational behaviour, but nowhere in this book is there such a thing. Instead it simply does what always happens in scientific progress, our understanding of the parameters changes. Things we didn't know - we now know or have uncovered.

All very interesting stuff, particularly in the chapter on job interviews (you should test all applicants before reading their CV's basically - which is a brilliant idea).

Ultmiately I'm not looking for hope or a roadmap to success - just a little more information and insight. It has the information, but no insightful commentary or revelations. It's defeatist as it tends to come full circle as if to say "oh well, that's the way we are, it doesn't make sense does it?"

People are stupid, I know that and I fall prey to the same stupidity sometimes and this book points it out, but that's all.

Not lame, just not great, damned with faint praise?

Perhaps I'll try something completely different next week.

Week Four: The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

Two things, yes it's THAT Nick Cave and no I didn't buy it for the cover. Actually the cover of the version I have is all red and only has the title and author text that takes up the entire cover. The lady at the bookshop where I bought this told me that there was a more offensive cover (she wasn't offended but there were complaints) but that it had been reissued with something less 'grabby'.

So as I post this is the first time I've seen the cover, and the cover is pretty lightweight based on what's actually inside the book and if the picture is of the scene that I assume it is, well it's much worse than what people were probably complaining about.

On to the book. It's vicious and dirty, cathartic and revealing as well. It's not a book I'd recommend to many people, but not because of the content so much as the content. I know that's a bit backwards, but the story is redemptive, reads like a David Lynch film plays out and in the end is so full of metaphor, self loathing and fantasy (guilt induced) that I couldn't help but feel that it wasn't intended to shock or disgust, or even confront the reader. It felt more like the author just wanted to speak without boundary or internal censorship. It's not a treatise on the human condition, nor a shock fest for the genre lovers.

The death of Bunny Munro is a psychological balancing of the scales, for one man who could be all of us, but in truth is none of us. I can picture Nick Cave acting this out in my head, and hear the sympathetic timpani of his voice running through it's narration. Loved the language and the style and unencumbered nature of his observations. Everyone is up for it, in our minds and in our fictions, we usually never publish them in general terms.

Next Week: Sway (The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior) and a return to non-fiction in attempt to wade through all the behavioral science books I have...