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The Alluring Problem, D.J. Enright (reread, I think)
I bought a paperback of this, not realizing that I had earlier bought the hardback (which has since disappeared, leaving only a dustcover behind). As before, I noted that this book works pretty well up to a point, basically where it becomes very difficult to tell whether he's pulling your leg, seeing irony where I can't/don't, or just plain losing it. I continue to suspect the latter.
The Number of the Beast, Robert Heinlein (reread)
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Robert Heinlein (reread)
For some reason, the Enright caused me to want to reread these prime examples of manners novels saturated with unreliable narration on multiple levels to humorous effect. Sharpie continues to strike me as just about the coolest (altho scariest) person I've ever encountered in fiction. That whole bit with the kid they rescue and drag from Golden Rule to Luna still confuses me terribly. I just do not believe that a person with the background supplied would have said the things Hazel claimed he said when explaining why she gave up on him. OTOH, I'm now convinced that's totally irrelevant, as it was the perfect story to convince Colin, which is all that matters.
Principles of Transaction Processing, Eric Newcomer and Philip A. Bernstein
I started getting sick early in the month, and it's been a nasty few weeks, sleeping all the time, trying to make a deadline and just generally feeling crappy. This book, picked by Shel for the software group in an effort to Make Our Stuff More Scaleable had me in stitches. Aimed at applications programmers, it's the kind of thing that drives me nuts -- they say "and that's all you really need to know" just when they're getting to the really good bits. Had I read this book a year ago, I might have gone a bit slower, attempting to imagine examples of the various problems they describe as plaguing non-transactional approaches. Today, however, for each of those I can readily recall how we make that mistake and suffered those consequences.
Newcomer and Bernstein draw a variety of parallels between transaction processing systems and WWW/Internet/Intranet systems (the browser as presentation server, etc.). They note that existing vendors of transaction processing systems are attempting to garner this market for themselves by emphasizing that parallel, but note that this time around things may go a bit differently. Taken together with their comments on the similarities/differences between TP systems and database servers, it almost sounds prophetic.
How to Get From January to December, Will Cuppy
Not as funny as How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and no where near as funny as The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, this volume had more than enough chuckles to keep me turning pages. YMMV -- I grew up in a time warp.
The Golden Rule, Jeffrey Wattles (incomplete)
Wattles is a xtian, but he does reference other sources, primarily Confucius, and assorted Greeks and Romans. He accepts both positive and negative formulations, and presents a variety of ideas about their relative values/interpretation. He understands retributive thinking (tit for tat, altho he doesn't call it that and appears not to reference any game theory sources) to be substantively different from the more generous moral theory underlying the Golden Rule (since one is to love one's enemies, not just one's friends). His approach is an idiosyncratic combination of historical, moral, ethical, theological, psychological and some anthropological perspectives, with a fair amount of power relations thrown in for good measure.
Because he starts with Confucius, Wattles does seem to have at least a limited grasp of two major components of what's going on with this moral guideline: loyalty and altruism. He further seems to understand that loyalty is that part of retributive thinking which is retained in the move to a more generous (not to say selfless) moral stance. And he has a firm grip on the realization that the Golden Rule cannot be understood either outside a social context, nor can it be derived axiomatically from more basic principles (because of it's recursive nature and ultimate utility as a self-interpreting spiritual guide). And of course, he makes the connection with the idea of kinship amongst us all.
I'm not done yet, but Wattles has thus far repeatedly approached and backed away from the idea of the Golden Rule as a compromise between defining the Good in some sort of loyalty framework (e.g. God says so, so it must be and it must be Good), and defining the Good in some sort of (basically syllogistic) framework of logic/reason/principles (X is Good, x is in instance of X therefore x is Good). Of course both constructions are right and both are wrong. Wattles understands that the power of the rule as a spiritual guide lies in its use of the sincere self as a measure for figuring out what to do in the moral dilemmas we encounter. Something seems to be stopping him from taking the last step, however. He finds moral frameworks based on loyalty to a person (whether that person be human or other) morally repugnant, but his response to moral frameworks based on loyalty to principles is much more ambiguous. He knows they don't work, but he doesn't seem to find them so appalling, and it's not even obvious he realizes they work exactly as well and as poorly as loyalty frameworks (from the appropriate view, they are, of course, equivalent, a point a lot of scientists and philosophers find appalling, and which a lot of handwaving about contingency has attempted to defeat).
The rule says, basically, you have to choose, and the right way to choose is to put yourself in all places -- be the One, be the All, benefit from all the goods and suffer from all the punishments and find a decision that Thou As That can live with. It says it in a way that sounds like a lot of other things, and those are all very, very true and very, very useful. Wattles aptly portrays the progressive unpacking of the rule that naturally occurs in the sincere user of it. All very nifty, and quite possibly useful for the MM.
Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein (reread)
Sorcery and Cecilia, Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Christina Schulman and others have repeatedly recommended this book to me. Stevermer's Serpent's Egg disappointed me after the excellent College of Magics, but this volume is the best yet. An epistolary novel, with two correspondents (Cecilia and her cousin Kate), this is unusually well-balanced -- because it was played out as a game between two novelists. Kate is enjoying her first (and probably only) London Season, when all kinds of magical unpleasant starts happening. During a family acquaintance' installation as Member of the Royal College of Magic, she stumbles into a cloistered garden where someone tries to poison her, thinking she's a disguised someone else. Of course no one believes her, but then the mysterious someone else shows up expressing gratitude and bearing a warning that she should stay in well-lit ballrooms. Well!
Meanwhile, back at home, Cecilia is knee-deep in the other half of the conspiracy, which somehow involves a chocolate pot, stealing another person's magic, and the next-best-thing to eternal Youth. Are they going to get away with it? Oh, come on! This being a Regency Romance in the best tradition, the heroines obviously pick up beaux along the way, and even manage to get in a clinch or two towards the end. Very satisfying and all kinds of fun. Thanks for finding me a copy Christina!
Once a Hero, Elizabeth Moon
Elizabeth Moon's Paksenarrion was my introduction to Moon's brand of female military hero. I forgive Baen (the publisher) for many of their myriad sins, simply because they publish these books. Quiet, strong, polite -- these are a few of the traits I vastly admire in these women. Not all are quiet -- Cecilia speaks up for herself, and then there's always that Thornbuckle. But Heris, Paks, and now Esmay all shoulder their burdens and do their best and don't complain.
Esmay Suiza comes from Altiplano; she is a daughter in a family of hereditary military -- rulers, really, altho there are elected officials as well. All her life she's had horrible nightmares and wanted nothing more than to get off planet to the clean dark of outer space. She's a jig on one of the traitorous ships that supports the Xavier raid in Winning Colors, and survives the mutiny in time to command the ship on its return to save the day. Obviously, a hero. But to the Familias military, she's always looked like a mediocre, technical track officer, nose to the grindstone, but not initiative, no brilliance -- certainly no operational genius. What else might she be hiding?
In plain sight, of course, she's hiding the fact that she's enormously high status military. Less obviously, there are those nightmares. What if they weren't just dreams? What really happened when she ran away from home during that civil war so long ago?
Moon juggles the many pieces in a convincing and compelling fashion. Esmay learns the truth, and slowly begins to really adapt to Familias culture, to fit in and make a life for herself instead of always hiding. I look forward to reading more about Esmay's career -- and Barin Serrano's, as well.
Learning how to learn, Idries Shah
This is the second book by Shah I've tackled, and I find him almost as confusing as I initially found The Perennial Philosophy, which I regard as probably a good thing. Shah is much more apparently functional than Huxley. This has some weird effects, since Sufism is very specifically an esoteric teaching. Shah is obviously no idiot, and he's never struck me as a crank, so the combination makes me both nervous and curious. It also makes for a very slow read -- not boring, just extremely time-consuming trying to figure out what all is going on. Shah is doing some of what I propose to do in the moral manual: say the same thing in a lot of different ways, and rally a wide variety of sources in support/supplying evidence or examples.
The sources of Shah's anecdotes and examples range from Sufis past and present; practitioners of a variety of other religions; and the daily newspaper (mostly late 70's London papers, due to when this was written). They are not so much irreverent (altho they are that, at least part of the time) as they are contemptuous of conventional notions of reverence, spirituality, etc. These are often tied directly to the Malamati method of behaviour. "A Sufi may deliberately court opprobrium, not for masochistic or attention-arousing purposes, but in order to show others how readily they will respond to outward signals which have no meaning at all". Those more familiar with the Christian tradition might think of Christ consorting with Samaritans, tax-collectors and other "unclean" persons, not unclean by God's word, but by tradition. Ditto with some of his "Sabbath-breaking". (Don't blame those examples on Shah -- these are my fault only.)
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This file recreated from The Internet Wayback Machine in January 2002. Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created February 10, 1997 Updated January 10, 2002