Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Books

  • Joyce and Beckett

  • Life Imitates Art

    The news item that an astronaut has been charged with trying to kill her rival in love is already bizarre enough in itself. But then, as pointed out over at the Ballardian, the news story bears a number of hallmarks of the typical motifs of J. G. Ballard. Spooky.
     
    At least it’s a better referent to his work than the twaddle written by Liddle recently. See Obscene Desserts for the full story and riposte. Oh, and as far as I’m concerned Mr. Liddle lost any claim to be talking sense some while back. I now classify him as being in the Jeremy Clarkson pigeonhole: best avoided, at all costs.

  • You Are What You Read

    Here’s a bit of computer fun. A photomosaic of myself composed of bookcovers of books that I have in my library…
     
    gcoupe Mosaic 
     
    Click on the image above, and then by clicking on the "All Sizes" icon, you can see the full-size original.
     
    (image created by AndreaMosaic, from book images catalogued for my library by Librarything)

  • I Am A Strange Loop

    On my hunt for other books written by Douglas R. Hofstadter, I think I’ve struck gold. There’s a book scheduled to be published in April this year that sounds as though it’s a "must-have": I Am A Strange Loop. The synopsis says:
    This is Douglas R Hofstadter’s long-awaited return to the themes of "Godel", "Escher", "Bach" – an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. Why do we say "I"? Can thought arise out of matter? By "thought" we mean not mere calculation, the manipulation of algorithms and patterns according to fixed rules, but something deeper: experience, self-awareness, consciousness. "I Am a Strange Loop" argues that the key to understanding the level on which consciousness operates is the feedback loop. After introducing the reader to simple feedback systems like a flush toilet, the ever-popular thermostat and his own experiments with a video camera pointed at its own monitor, he Hofstadter turns to the idea of "strange loops" – feedback loops, which exist on two levels of meaning, a theory, which Kurt Godel employed in the mathematical statements constructed for his famous "Incompleteness Theorem". Like Godel’s logical statements, the brain also exists on at least two levels: a deterministic level of atoms and neurons, and a higher level of large mental structures we call symbols. One of these symbols, perhaps the central one which relates to all others in our minds, is the strange loop we call "I". By the time we reach adulthood, Hofstadter writes, "I" is an endless hall of mirrors, encompassing everything that has ever happened to us, vast numbers of counterfactual replays of important episodes in our lives, invented memories and expectations. But is it real? And if so, what does it consist of? Douglas Hofstadter’s first book-length essay on a scientific subject since "Godel", "Escher", "Bach", "I Am a Strange Loop" is a journey to the cutting edge of ideas about consciousness – a bold and provocative argument that is informed by the author’s unique verbal whimsy and eye for the telling example. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter’s many readers have been waiting for.
    Ooh, yes, I’m definitely getting this for the library… Aad, I think this might be one for you as well…

  • Five Luminous Towers

    I have been known to be a collector of pop-up books. The paper engineering that goes into them speaks to the engineer in me. I particularly like the work of Robert Sabuda.
     
    But here’s a pop-up book that, while I may lust over it, I’m never going to get, because it is quite simply out of my reach. It’s Five Luminous Towers, by Carol Barton. It’s being made in an edition of 50 copies, each of which costs $2,000. Gulp. Move along, nothing to see here…
     
    (hat tip to BibliOdyssey for the picture of the book)

  • Time and Love

    Another story, this time a universe away from Delany’s. This time an altogether gentler, elagiac love story involving a woman and a traveller who might be a man. First, read the appreciation of the story here, and then follow the link to read the story itself.

  • The Mad Man

    The Mad Man is the title of a dark and disturbing book by Samuel R. Delany. I bought it in hardcover when it was first published in 1994, but I’ve never been able to read more than a few chapters, so disturbing did I find it.
     
    The book has recently been discussed over at The Pinnochio Theory blog. First here, and now, as a result of Delany himself reacting to the first entry, here. The entries make me think that I should try again with the book, and see if I can last the course.

  • Ballard Conference

    I see that there’s going to be an international conference on the life and works of J. G. Ballard: From Shanghai to Shepperton. It’ll be held in May at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. I doubt whether I’ll get there, but I do hope that the papers will be published for the wider audience.
     
    (hat tip to J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts, who will be presenting one of the papers)

  • World’s Biggest Book

    Bhutan purports to be the world’s biggest book. Weighing in at 150 pounds (nearly 70 Kg.) and measuring 5 x 7 feet (1.5 x 2.1 m), I can well believe it. At $15,000 a copy, it’s not one that I’ll be rushing out to purchase, either. Besides, I’ve got nowhere to put it. Even the little big book of Bhutan is pricey at $100 a pop. 
     
    (hat tip to Bibliodyssey for the link)

  • Little Faces

    Liz Henry, over at the ED SF Project, pens an appreciation of the short story "Little Faces" by Vonda McIntyre. I’ve only read one other work by McIntyre, Dreamsnake, which I enjoyed very much. Liz Henry’s description of Little Faces is intriguing, and a good example of describing the "what if…" factor of Science Fiction. A sample:
    "Little Faces" is about a society of women symbiotic with their living spaceships. It answers the age-old question, "How do you write an exciting romantic crime story set in a genderfucked anarchic utopia?"
     
    The women’s biology, sex, and gender is complicated. Males of the species, the "companions," are not quite sentient, and are attached to the female’s bellies somehow; they are a bit like children, mates, pets, or extra limbs. They’re like remora dildos with the emotional personalities of fire lizards. They’re also a bit like hard drives that contain part of the memory and experiences of the other women who created them. Out of modesty, on formal occasions they are kept covered, though a thoughtful woman would use a lacy veil so that her companions can see out.
    It sounds irresistable…  

  • Another Bookish Wunderkamer

    Oh dear, Not Saussure has brought Bibliodyssey to my attention. Like Giornale Nuovo and the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, Bibliodyssey seems set to prove to be another addictive timewaster. I just can’t help it.

  • I’m Melting, I’m Melting…

    Nice article in the Guardian today about Frank L. Baum and his Wizard of Oz stories. It’s written by Gregory Maguire, who knows a thing or two himself about taking the traditional motifs from fairytales and writing his own idiosyncratic take on them (Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Mirror Mirror). The excuse for the article is the fact that a brand new print of the Wizard of Oz is winging its way into British cinemas next week. And of course, the Judy Garland film remains one of the classics of cinema. Even today, it stands up well.

  • Starsky & Hutch by J. G. Ballard

    Ballardian has posted the winning entries of the competition for the best pastiche of the writing style of J. G. Ballard. The task was to write a 500 word extract from an imagined novelisation of Starsky & Hutch as Ballard would write it.
     
    There is something about Ballard’s prose that makes it unmistakeable, and the winner and runner-up of the competition have delivered the true essence of the style.
     
    I’ve started Ballard’s latest – Kingdom Come – and while I’m only on page 43 at the moment, I’ve found it a rattling good read, although the reviews have been mixed. From my point of view, all his usual motifs are there, of course, but he has lovingly burnished his prose on the whetstone of his preceding novels, and the result (so far, and to me) is numinous. Ballard strikes me as a novelist analogue of Mahler, who really (it seems to me) wrote only one giant symphony, but in ten parts.
     
    My problem at the moment is a question of so many books, so little time. I have too many books on the go at the moment (Kingdom Come, Breaking the Spell, Genetic Destinies, Unspeak, Don’t Tell Mum, Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew, and The Year of Magical Thinking). Then there’s a whole pile of books building up that are clamouring to be read: Evil in Modern Thought (An Alternative History of Philosophy), The Kite Runner, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, Be Near Me, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, A Game of Thrones, White Mughals, The Vanquished Gods and Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation – to name but a few… Help! 

  • Little Recipes for Little Cooks

    And here’s another book – this time from the 1930s. Funny how the assumption is that only girls want to cook…

  • Things Girls Like To Do

    That’s the title of a book published in 1917. As you can imagine, the things are limited to housekeeping and needlecraft. The book is published as part of the Uplift Vocational Series. And as expected, the boys get the better part of the deal; their book is called Things Boys Like To Make, and is in two parts: Carpentry and Woodwork, and Electricity and its Everyday Uses.

  • The Revelations of a Rat Catcher

    Ike Matthews was a professional rat catcher who worked in Manchester, and who published a book distilling his 25 years in the trade in 1898. It’s become available online and is an interesting read. I probably need to pick up a few tips in order to keep a proper eye on the outhouses, although I’m relieved to say that so far we just seem to have the occasional mouse appear in the traps.
     
    I note that Ike recommends keeping ferrets. I do hope it won’t come to that. I don’t want to end my days being the crazy old man in the pub who puts ferrets down his trousers as his party piece.

  • The Ten Worst Science Books

    And following on from the editors of Discover magazine listing their 25 greatest Science books, John Horgan, a blogger with Discover, has an entry in his Horganism blog for the top ten worst Science books. It’s actually quite tricky to come up with a list that includes only genuine science books. There are thousands of books that claim to be about genuine science, but are simply pseudoscience. Anything by Deepak Chopra, for a start. So Horgan’s list is quite interesting.
     
    I can readily believe that some of his nominated books are pretty dire. Anything that I’ve read by Ray Kurzweil, for example, usually has my eyes rolling by the end of the second paragraph. And I suspect I would agree with Horgan about the Tao of Physics – I have another of Capra’s books that had my eyebrows raising, and not in a good way. But I’ll reserve judgement on the nomination of Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. Clearly, Horgan thinks it’s a load of tosh, and it is quite true that string theory pushes one’s sense of credibility to the limits. I quite liked the book. Greene explains things well. What we need, of course, is some experimental evidence to show that the theories of Greene and his fellow string theorists have some validity. We may get some of that once the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva becomes operational next year. 

  • The Science Book List

    The editors of Discover magazine have published their list of the 25 greatest Science books of all time. It’s a pretty stunning list, and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only read a few of them. Glad to see that Darwin takes the top two places on the list. Quite right too…

  • Top SF and Fantasy Books

    OK, here’s the list arrived at by the Science Fiction Book Club of the most significant 50 books of SF and Fantasy for the last 50 years. The list is annotated by me as follows:
    Highlighted – I’ve read it
    Asterisked – a favourite.
     
    The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
    The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
    Dune, Frank Herbert
    Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
    A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin *
    Neuromancer, William Gibson
    Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
    The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
    Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 
    The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
    A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. *
    The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
    Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
    Cities in Flight, James Blish
    The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
    Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison *
    Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
    The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester *
    Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
    Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
    Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
    The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
    The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
    Gateway, Frederik Pohl
    Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (TV) *
    I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
    Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
    The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin *
    Little, Big, John Crowley
    Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
    The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
    Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
    More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon *
    The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
    On the Beach, Nevil Shute
    Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke *
    Ringworld, Larry Niven
    Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
    The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
    Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
    Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
    Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner * 
    The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester *
    Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
    Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
    The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
    Timescape, Gregory Benford
    To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer  

  • Emotional Islands

    Teju Cole has another wonderful piece of writing up on his blog. The man’s a marvel.