Summer Reading: Death of Liar by M.C. Beaton

So, let's deal with some housekeeping first: I have given upon The Story of Stuff by by Annie Leonard.

I like Leonard, I support the goals of her organization, and I think she has an important message. I just don't think she wrote a very good book. Or more precisely: I think she wrote the absolute best introduction to one of the dullest books I have ever read. Her intro is personal, witty, and engaging; the book reads like an extended Mental Floss listicle of things that can kill us. It was very disappointing, given my high hopes. To honor Leonard's good work, here's the twenty-minute movie that started it all. It's worth a watch:




To break the reading logjam that had me stuck in Leonard's prose, I went to the library yesterday and borrowed about seven books. I've finished the first already (and two GNs that will be reviewed on Thark), so here we go.

About thirty years ago I read a couple of books starring Hamish Macbeth, a constable in remote and rural Northwest Scotland. In his initial outing, Hamish was lazy and canny, and solved a cozy mystery set in a fishing school almost in spite of himself. In the second book I read (which Wikipedia tells me was the third in the series), Hamish was a little more action-oriented and solved a creepy murder that involved the corpse being picked over by lobsters in a commercial lobster farm. I never ran across any other books in the series, so when I saw this one, I was surprised to find that they have been coming out like clockwork every year - Death of a Liar is the 31st adventure.

Since I enjoyed those first two so many years ago, I picked this one up and looked forward to reading it, all the more so considering considering my especial interest in serial narrative.

Hoo, boy.

How can I put this? This books reads like it was cobbled together by an inexperienced relative from a dead author's notes. There's no pacing, the plot is incomprehensible to the point where the mystery doesn't even seem to matter anymore, and vignettes and subplots arise and pass like mayflies with no discernible impact on the story. What's worse, the prose sounds more like the summary of someone describing a story they had read than it does actual written narrative - the word perfunctory looms large as I assess it. The adage "show, don't tell" apparently does not apply here - supporting characters, their qualities and attributes, their relationship to and history with Hamish, and even some of their conversations, are all presented with the light touch of the nutritional advice label on food packaging. I certainly got caught up on the 28 books I missed!

And yet, I finished it. Hamish, roaming around the beautiful landscape with his dog and cat along on investigations, using all sorts of Scots dialect and interacting with all sorts of people, was still enough of a draw that I always wanted to find out what would happen next - not to the mystery, but to him.

But I don't think I'll be seeking out any more volumes.

Makin' it

So, between writing and publishing yesterday's post, I got going on the making. Turns out my pal Bucci was right: forget the art stores and even the hardware stores: for old-school soldering goodness, Radio Shack came through with the whole kit and kaboodle:

Well, the whole kit, anwyay - I'm not really sure what a kaboodle is.  In any case, I sub-let some space in Coco's art studio and got all set up with my tools and consumables, including this sweet temperature-controlled soldering iron:

So, we're ready to Make! But make what? Well, I'm not really sure yet... most of the videos on YouTube talk either about soldering electronics or soldering jewelry, neither of which appeal to me much. I have half a mind to start crafting some D&D minis, but I will probably start out with some generic doodads and geegaws as I experiment with materials and techniques. In that vein, here's the first artifact:

It's a... well, it's four picture-hangers soldered together on three seams, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Coco said it looked like a guy standing akimbo.And it will stand up by itself, so maybe she is on to something.

After the roaring success of Sloppy-Seam Sam, the Soldering Stooge, I tried heftier materials: a few washers I had hanging around. This looked messy again, but cool:

Of course, it couldn't hold up to any stress and one of the washers broke off pretty quick, but it was pretty while it lasted.

I think I'll head down to Archie McPhee and get some more, lighter components to work with, at least as I learn. But we've certainly got traction!

Update: Between writing that and publishing, I did get down to Archie's, and tried two more experiments.

Just a pretty good bond between two wires.

I made a quadruped, but couldn't get the head on. I think I might be using too much flux? Too little? I don't know... back to YouTube.

8W.2.10K &c

Week 2 update of the 2015 SSIS™, such as it is.

Running

Week Two of the regimen seems to be a plateau: essentially, four two-miles runs at a 10:30 pace. This is pretty slow for me: I ran a 5K a year and a half ago at 9:31 and one in the spring (after too little training) at 9:53. Maybe I'm just getting older and slower. In any case, the regimen ramps up now and over the next two weeks I'll pretty much run eight 5Ks, so we'll see how that goes.

Facebook

Still off, although Coco shares some news and photos with me. Almost out of the habit of looking for the icon to click. Been sending more direct emails to folks rather than posting on their pages - how quaint and old-fashioned!

Reading

Dang, still slogging through The Story of Stuff.

Miscellany

• Worked again on Tuesday and Wednesday - this has got to stop.
• Met with my Maker pal for a delightful and informative lunch and went on a fruitless expedition to find the tools I want. I'll try again.
• 10 Weeks to a Dead End is delayed again and will start next week for better coordination with the running schedule.
• Spent a day at the cabin and did a little cat-sitting.

Bonus surprise extra

Coco loves her some indy-girl singer-songwriters, and I learned that this is happening tonight:

Danielle is one of Coco's faves, so I am going to take her up there as a surprise tonight. As a matter of fact, this post will publish while we're there, so text her and tell her to have a good time!

Island of Lost Blogs

So, I made a Skype call recently to pal Wheylona in Spain and she commented in reference to my recent spate of posting that she hadn't checked so many blog posts since 2005. I have talked (and even done math) before about the Death of Blogging in the wake of Facebook et al, but this time I thought I would just give you a visual display. Herewith is some archeology from the increasing mis-named Active Blogs folder in my bookmarks file, some pot shards from that bygone era when it seemed everyone had a blog.

9W.2.10K &c

This year's SSIS™ got off to a sketchy start, so this is the first Official Update®. Let's catch up, first:

Week -3: Finished grading, made a final, vain attempt to get clearance for Trike Snacks, enjoyed time with Coco before summer work started. Almost like a lazy summer vacation!

Week -2: Spent five full days at a training workshop in beautiful Vancouver USA, escaping the heat and working hard. Between that and the holiday heat wave and cat-sitting, not much else!

Week -1: Social week while Coco worked! Dinners and lunches with pals just about every day! More cat-sitting! A weekend-long nerd bachelor party! Punk blues band! Pretty good stuff, actually. Got the my SSIS together.

There is no Week Zero.

So, now that we're current, here's the normal update for Week 1:

Running

10W.2.10K.1

The red line is my mile pace (in minutes). That line should trend down as I get faster. The blue line is the distance run (in miles) in each workout. That line goes up, partly because as I get faster, the three time-limited runs per week will see greater distance, and partly because the fourth distance-limited weekly run increases by design every other week. Those two lines should track toward each other all summer, but don't expect them to meet. I'm not aiming to run farther than six miles, and I couldn't run at a six-minute pace unless I was was struck by lighting and thrown into a wall of chemicals. But hopefully they'll get close enough to wave at each other.

Facebook

Off it for a full week. Miss it a little, but feeling the lightened load. I must curate my Twitter account pretty well, because there's lots less nasty stuff there than I encountered on FB, and it keeps me in touch with the pop culture stuff.

Reading

The Summer Reading Program has included (since Week -3)

• The Score and The Outfit (graphic novels)
• A Touch of Stardust
• And Another Thing... (abandoned)
• The Knowledge (abandoned)
• No Highway
• Raiders of the Nile
• The Martian

Currently reading: The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

Miscellany

•  I actually did campus work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday: what the heck is up with that? I'm supposed to be on vacation!
  
• Making is still in the works; I have a meeting next Thursday that will move it forward a great deal.
• 10 Weeks to a Dead End will begin Week 2 and be offset one week from the running.
•  I saw Ant-Man!

That's all, then. Looks like we're on our way!

Grrl power

So, way back during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the BBC website provided a widget - it's still there - into which you could enter your height and weight and find your body match among the competing athletes. I tried it and to my delight I was paired with Amanda Bingson, a hammer-thrower from Las Vegas:

I read about Amanda, even corresponded with her briefly, and still sort of semi-follow her career; she has a permanent spot of honor on WalakaNet Central. She didn't medal in London, but has been doing well since in competitions, and even made a merchandise ad for the USA Track & Field association.

As you can imagine, I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out my body match was one of the featured athletes in the ESPN Magazine Body Issue. (I was first surprised because I didn't even realize ESPN had a magazine.) This edition of the magazine was apparently developed at least partially in response to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (which itself was a gimmick to increase sales during the sports doldrums), but is much less salacious and a lot more artsy. The special feature highlights both male and female athletes nude or semi-nude, but instead of showing provocative or come-hither poses, the photos capture the power, grace, athleticism, personality, and sometimes whimsy of the individuals. Amanda was featured on one of the alternate covers, as above, but here's the spotlight shot of this wonderful competitor:

Besides my connection to Amanda, I thought this mainstream, for-profit enterprise was notable for two things: (a) its non-exploitative representation of female athletes (b) of all sorts of body types. We could use a lot more of this in our culture, not just on the progressive fringes, but in the middle of the road, where most of the world lives. Maybe if we get people's attention with some artistic nudes, our society will start paying more respect to the work and achievement of all women athletes in actual competition - without them having to win a world championship.

Go, Amanda!

Just a cockeyed opsimath

So, a couple of posts ago, I used the term opsimathy. This was deliberate and mindful choice and I'd like to expand on it a bit more.

Opsimathy refers to the ability to learn late in life. I first encountered this word 40 years ago. Back then we had these things called newspapers - sort of static web pages printed out on large paper. These newspapers ran columns - those were sort of like blogs, with a new post every week. James J. Kilpatrick was a politically conservative journalist (he's the one Dan Ackroyd is parodying in the "Jane, you ignorant slut..." bit from SNL) who also was a bit of a language maven, and for a while he wrote a regular column all about grammar and usage. In September 1975, Kilpatrick noted in this column that William F. Buckley had praised [former New York Governor and then-vice President] Nelson Rockefeller's opsimathy and he delighted in the erudition its use demonstrated.

To me, using the word presented a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, it was the perfect word to describe the quality that Buckley was seeking to highlight in the man who may have been the last liberal Republican. On the other hand, if no one even recognizes the word, much less understands it - and Kirkpatrick presents a laundry list of respected journalists who did not -  does it serve to aid communication and persuasion? Or is making your readers run to the dictionary part of the goal?

Another favorite word of this ilk is depauperate. I think I found it on a saunter through the thesaurus in the "height" area. Depauperate is in the bucket with short, but its precise meaning is something like not having attained full growth or development. A plant having short stems might be normal; having depauperate stems cannot be. Is Wolverine short or depauperate?

I am still not sure how to advise my writing students regarding this sort of choice. On the one hand, Aristotle tells us rhetorical choices ought to be audience- and situation-driven: find the most effective means of persuasion for the particular circumstance, and that includes assessing the register of your audience's vocabulary. On the other hand, if we write only to the common denominator, our prose begins a race to the bottom and we lose grace and style. Maybe there are circumstances where persuasion isn't the all-overriding goal.

In any case, I chose opsimathy in my own composition for a very particular reason related to its very particular meaning. To me, the connotation carried in the word is more than just the notion that an opsimath chooses to be a life-long learner; rather, it is that the opsimath possesses a surprising ability, one so noteworthy as to merit a peculiar designation: the capability of continuing to learn long after the expectation has dissolved. As depauperate is not just short, but shorter than should be, opsimathy is not just learning, it's unexpected learning when the world has reckoned you done.

And that's part of what riled me up in that earlier post: we don't need the burdens that external expectations or preconceptions can place on us - you're not a writer, you're not an artist, you're not an athlete - when we already place so many barriers in our own way through self-doubt, fear, or lack of confidence. We don't need to add an expiration date to the mess.

Do defy depauperation and reach your full development, whatever stage of life you are at. All it takes is a little opsimathy. Just ask Rocky.

Summer Reading: Raiders of the Nile by Steven Saylor

So,  I have mentioned Steven Saylor and my fondness for stories of ancient Rome before; I also have a penchant for book series, especially longer series that move forward in time with character (as in the Sharpe novels by Ber Cornwell). This latest offering from Saylor fed both those Joneses.

Raiders of the Nile takes us back to the very beginnings of Gordianus's career - rather than being The Finder (a sort of private eye) in the shadowy backs streets of Rome, Gordianus is a somewhat callow youth living in Alexandria, with the love his life Bethesda, still his slave and not yet his wife. He still traffics in secretes and troubleshooting, but in this adventure, his infiltration of an outlaw gang and participation in an insurrection are personal, not professional, enterprises.

As usual, Saylor's keen depiction of detail and historical authenticity carry the book. To read a Saylor novel is to immerse yourself in an ancient time that is at once strange and familiar; the author has a way of filtering the sometimes brutal sensibilities of the times through sympathetic characters, making them more understandable and a little more palatable to our modern tastes.

Plot is usually Saylor's downfall; his mysteries aren't always "play fair" and he often relies on coincidence to get Gordianus out of a tight spot - or has the hero come to the wrong conclusion, but things work out alright anyway. The young Finder seems to have a bit more agency and initiative, and most of his successes come from his own efforts. The characters are pretty much stock Saylor - interesting, but a bit flat. Like Harry Turtledove, Saylor seems to have a limited repertory company at his disposal, and the same types seem to pop up repeatedly.

Overall, the book spins a good yarn, with camel chases and secret hideouts and crocodiles and plucky boys and scheming chamberlains: all the things you might want in Ptolemaic Egyptian intrigue.

Magnus Aestas: decem septimanae

So, this year marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the agreement signed at Runnymede in England on June 15, 1215 to settle an ongoing conflict between King John and his barons. The document (a copy of which used to adorn my office door) is seen as foundational to later expressions of democracy and human rights (such as the U.S. Constitution), even though it was essentially a contract between the .1% and the rest of the 1% on how to share the spoils of exploiting the 99%. Nonetheless, it was a tiny step forward away from the divine right of kings and the absolute rule of the aristocracy. I only recently discovered that provisions of the "great charter" were really only in effect as the law of the land for ten weeks until it was voided by the pope (who could do that kind of stuff back then).

This little history lesson is nothing but a sneaky way of introducing the 2015 Summer Self- Improvement Scheme™ which, as noted here, is off to a delayed start.

First, the whole Trike Snacks plan started to fray in the eleventh hour and is currently abeyant. Then I wound up attending a five-day training workshop for school during what would have been the second week of summer, and then we had a bit of a heat wave to deal with. But now I am ready to launch the SSIP: the Decem Septimanae Aestatis, or Ten Weeks of Summer.

The driver for this particular SSIP is the 10 Weeks to 10K program. There are a number of versions of this training regimen out there; I just picked one and adapted the calendar to this summer. I plan to run in Magnuson Park  Family Fitness 10K on September 19th, so the 10Wto10K training starts Monday, July 13.

Once I had that ten week structure, I looked for other things that could have the same timeframe. The first one to come up was taking a Facebook Break. This choice is really just the most definitive part of changing both my morning routine and my relationship with social media - something I talked about at the very start of the year. The experiment didn't have much result then, but we're going to have another go at it. Instead of starting the day with coffee and internet surfing, we're going to start with a workout - and then get to coffee and some limited surfing. It's all about breaking habits and establishing new ones, rather than making some Big Statement. But a complete cold turkey withdrawal from the big blue time-sink seems to be an important part of that.

I'm not sure what else is going to wind up being a specific part of the structure. The Summer Reading plan is already underway, but I can't figure out how to tie it to the conceit: I'm certainly going to read more than ten books, but I am just as sure I won't read 100, so I don't exactly know how to brand it. I've got some ideas for Making (as in Maker Culture) so we'll see how that goes, and there's a non-monetary scheme for the trike that I will reveal soon (teaser: 10 Dead Ends in 10 Weeks). But mostly, even though I have some grant work and some meetings to attend, I am just going to enjoy my first non-teaching summer in years.

For at least as long as the Magna Carta obtained.

Amateur hour

So, there's an article I want you to read. Here it is. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Finished? Let's sum up:

• Don't start a blog.
• If you ever thought of starting a blog and didn't, you're not really cut out to be a blogger.
• If you can imagine yourself not writing, you're not really a writer.
• All bloggers are competing with people who live to write.
• The author has lots of blogs and Twitter accounts and stuff, so she knows best.
• Don't start a blog. 

In this vein, I would like to propose some additional rules:

If you have ever thought of writing a book and submitting to a publisher, or even self-publishing, but have shrunk from the challenge, don't do it. You're not really an author - there are people out there who feel driven to write every day and can't remember a time when they weren't writing, and you'll be competing for readers with them.

If you have ever thought of taking up an instrument, but hesitated to try, don't do it. You're not really a musician - there are people out there who live for music and can't go a day without creating it, and you'll be competing for ears with them.

If you have ever thought of doing extreme sports, or any sports for that matter, but haven't yet, don't do it. You're not really an athlete - there are people out there who live for that adrenaline rush or the thrill of the contest, and you'll be competing for recognition with them.

As a matter of fact, if you have ever thought of doing anything creative or challenging or interesting, but have not felt compelled to do it with every fiber of your being since you were young, you probably just shouldn't bother to try, since there are so many people out there who can already do it so much better than you can and are making money doing it.

Because self-doubt and the inner critic and social pressure and fear are meaningless and never affect anyone's lives, and growth and renewal and life change and opsimathy are myths, and all that matters is how many people read or watch or buy your stuff.

Or...

You can say fuck that.

Go ahead, start a blog, even if the idea frightens you or you have had several failed or aborted efforts. Give it a try. Design the page, create a persona, make a statement. Don't worry about how many followers you have. Just take a swing at it. The internet is for everyone.

And while you're at it, rent that trumpet or buy a cheap guitar, even if you have a tin ear and haven't touched an instrument since the glockenspiel in middle school. Practice in the park or the parking lot or the basement, or sit on the street and play terribly with a upturned hat in front of you. Work on that novel, or that comic strip, or that oil painting. Submit it to a publisher, or don't. Self-publish an e-book, photocopy a 'zine, enter your work in the county fair. Try kayaking, or buy a skateboard, or join the roller derby team or a kickball league. Win, or lose, or whatever.

You don't have to listen to a content marketing specialist about doing what you might want to do, even if she has eleven Tweetdeck columns (whatever they are), because writing a blog isn't about "competing for eyeballs." The notion that people are born writers, or innately musical, or natural athletes is specious and harmful: people come to projects and avocations through all sorts of paths, and there are all sorts of rewards for the efforts we put in to any enterprise or activity.

So even if you have hesitated in the past or don't think that something comes naturally to you - maybe especially in those cases - go ahead and do it anyway. Make, create, do, and share, with vigor and without apology. You don't need anyone's permission or approval.

Summer Reading: No Highway by Nevil Shute

So, with all the bookstores and libraries in the world and all the unread books stacked and stored within them, it would not be unusual to wonder why anyone would re-read a book they had already read. I guess I think that way in theory, but then I am put in mind of one of may favorite authors, and I fall right into the practice.

This time around, the author was Nevil Shute, the British engineer whose writing heyday was the mid-20th century. Often set in some sort of aeronautical milieu, his novels feature hardworking men and women just doing their jobs, albeit in unusual and often high-stakes circumstances, and champion the inherent dignity of all people. In some ways, he creates figures in aerial melodrama that John Lecarre is said to use in the spy genre: the civil servant as hero. In this aspect, Shute joins two of my other top favorite authors: Ernest K. Gann (another flyer) and the great Arthur C. Clarke. None of these writers have larger-than-life protagonists; all of them make the quotidian dramatic, the commonplace critical, and the ordinary exciting. Maybe it's my working-class background, but I it's okay with me if the hero is occasionally someone who clocks in rather than a Lone Wolf or a Great Detective.

My latest Shute redux was No Highway, set in postwar England. A harried bureaucrat and an asocial researcher stumble on a possible engineering flaw in a new ariliner that might endanger the lives of travelers; they persevere through challenges both physical and political to have the cumbersome apparatus of government air safety respond to the threat. The plot moves apace and grows more complex, reaching out to embrace as key figures a Hollywood actress and a dead Russian ambassador as well as a stewardess and a dead British pilot. Every element of the story glows with verisimilitude and detail, from passive-aggressive inter-agency wrangling and mundane English villages to the graciousness of early transatlantic flight and the wilderness that was Newfoundland  in the 1940s.

And that's another strong draw to return to Shute: his straightforward, detailed prose gives the reader a glimpse of the way life was in an era that I only caught the tailwind of as a boy. It was a time before reliable long-distance calls, much less mobile phones; when information did not fly around the world in seconds and people sometimes went home for their lunch hour; when captains of industry still actually worked in their industries and everyone smoked in their office. Reading a Nevil Shute novel is like visiting a different world and getting a guided tour.



Call it a guilty pleasure; call it comfort food for thought, or call it a waste of time. I have a list of books I need to get to, but I think this summer I'll re-read some  more Nevil Shute. And maybe some Gann and Clarke, too.

Summer reading interruptus: The Knowledge

So, my last foray into Summer Reading ended in media res, when I gave up on the non-Douglas Adams continuation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  If i thought I would have better luck with non-fiction, I was quickly disabused of that notion: The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell is heading back to the library with most of it unread.

It was quite the disappointment, actually, because I had some high hopes for the book. The premise is wonderful: exploring how we could undertake the most basic of survival activities - growing food, finding clean water, making implements - without the vast, invisible, interconnected technological web that we take for granted every day.



Using the premise of an unspecified apocalypse that wipes out most of the people (leaving enough to recreate a society) but spares most of the stuff (a lot of which will deteriorate quickly enough on its own without maintenance), the book walks the reader through the basics of first scavenging, then cannibalizing, and then rebuilding technology. Besides satisfying basic curiosity and perhaps having some practical value, the topics discussed would be useful for writing and world-building.

Dartnell apparently has the qualifications to make this inquiry: he holds a doctorate in astrobiology but appears to be more of a scientific generalist in practice, writing for journals and television on the tradition of Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

All the pieces are there, but this relationship just didn't work. I am not familiar with any of Dartnell's other work, but in this case, the writing was just not good enough to sustain my engagement. The prose is jumpy, disconnected, and repetitive. Dartnell shies away from creating a specific scenario in which to explore his theme, and the result is a vague, mushy mess. A better choice might have been to create a particular narrative and even some developed characters to carry the technical explanations in some relatable context: the references to general examples and generic items wear thin quickly and the reader is left with no place to stand. It's like trying to read a random selection of user manuals without the devices themselves. So, back it goes to SPL.

And speaking of manuals: one good thing that came out of this sortie into post-Armageddon resourcefulness it is that it put me in mind of (and caused me to pull out) my old copy of The Way Things Work, the 1967 translation of a German tome that explains, with diagrams, the principles behind and the inner workings of all sorts of technology, from anesthesia to sewing machines and from photoelectric cells to escalators. While not specifically designed as such, this book has been such a touchstone for collecting basic technological technique that in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, one character buys his way into a post-comet-strike survivor's camp with a copy of Volume One - and the promise that he has secreted Volume Two in a safe place.

Maybe I'll just leaf through this instead.