This is the third time I have read this story, and it never fails to amaze me with its power and its timelessness. Gilgamesh is the first legendary hero known to history, and like a true legendary hero his story is tragic. He achieves great things, but loses his best friend, and is haunted by the knowledge that he and all other men will come to the same fate. He goes on a quest to discover the secret of immortality, and when he finds it he resolves to bring it back to his people and share it with them, but at the last moment he is cheated of his prize, and in the end he perishes as all men must. The universality of a story like this cannot be overstated. Man constantly struggles to overcome obstacles and create lasting works, but in the end the dust claims him and all his achievements. The gods are portrayed as they always are, rulers of man’s fate who are indifferent when they are not downright cruel, and hardly worthy of the devotion they demand of their human subjects. There is religion in this myth, but not any kind of religion that inspires hope. I am reminded upon reading this story that of all the heroes of history, only one has successfully triumphed over death.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/27/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/
Dec 26 2014
Bad Machinery Vol I: The Case Of The Team Spirit by John Allison
For Christmas, Jay bought me a physical copy of Bad Machinery’s first two volumes and ZOMG, I didn’t even know how much I wanted these till I had them! Oni Press has done an amazing job of translating the web comic to an oversized, glossy paperback that is luxe to the touch and weighty in the hand, reminding me all too vividly of what I lose in reading electronic versions of books, and particularly of graphic novels. Such a splendid tome, and one I’m anxious to share with those I love.
I wrote a more detailed review of the contents when it was first published, based on an electronic copy, but I must say that the physical product is breathtakingly superior. You can find that other review here.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/26/bad-machinery-vol-i-the-case-of-the-team-spirit-by-john-allison/
Dec 25 2014
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert Caro
This is a fascinating story, in a way that only a true story can be. It is the story of a young man for whom ambition was the guiding force in his life from earliest boyhood. To hear Caro tell it, Johnson was planning to be president when he was just a boy growing up in the impoverished Texas Hill Country, and this guiding star drove him hard all his life. His parents were idealists and dreamers, but Lyndon Baines Johnson saw the way they turned out and was determined to follow a different path. Never in his life did he allow principles or ideals to get in the way of his career trajectory. All his life he trimmed his sails, and in the process he achieved his goals. In many ways he is not a very admirable person, but his incredible will, his steely resolve, and his genius for the game of politics add up to make him one of the most remarkable men of his time, certainly a man worthy of a multi-volume biography. This book is a testimony to how a strong will can overcome any obstacle.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/25/the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-the-path-to-power-by-robert-caro/
Dec 24 2014
Dark Prayer by Natasha Mostert
So few books deserve the title “literary mystery.” Often, that phrase is given to books where ponderous writing and a quasi-mystical theme are draped over a poorly constructed plot, as if the fact that the book itself is so unenjoyable is some testament to how smart the reader must be to not only finish but like, or at least pretend to like, the damn thing. Pretentious intelligentsia are the bane of my reading existence, I tell you.
Fortunately, Dark Prayer is one of those elegant, if not overly complicated novels that fully deserves its accolades as a literary mystery. Natasha Mostert knows what she’s taking about when she discusses memory and mysticism, and the underlying murder plot is briskly and, more importantly, credibly constructed. She wasn’t afraid to mine the emotional depravity that so many other of her less accomplished cohorts think they can substitute mere sexual peccadilloes for. I thought her writing really shone, though, when she was describing the thrills of parkour. The passages of physical grace and athleticism were a terrific counterpoint to the murkiness of the mind and emotions.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/24/dark-prayer-by-natasha-mostert/
Dec 24 2014
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
I always thought this play was pretty silly, but this time around I appreciated what good fun it is. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” The seeming randomness of the direction love’s arrows take works mayhem in a way that is all too real even with the element of magic thrown in, but since this is a comedy and not a tragedy everything is restored to its rightful place in the end, with unrequited love eventually being requited and the thwarted lovers eventually being mercifully brought together. The play within a play of Pyramus and Thisbe is laugh-out-loud funny…the “base mechanicals” provide most of the comic relief, while the plight of the lovers runs its course and in its own way provides amusement, although one cannot help but feel compassion for the devoted and jilted Helena. I always wondered why this was one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, since it seems so obviously devoid of any serious significance…question answered.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/24/a-midsummer-nights-dream-by-william-shakespeare/
Dec 23 2014
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
This book seriously freaked me out. It is a reminder, as only a science fiction novel can be, of what a tenuous thing subjective reality is. I have never done acid, but based on the testimony of others I would say that this book resembles an acid trip in that it is both mind-altering and perhaps even permanently life-altering. It is also a reminder of what Einstein said, that science without religion is lame. Aside from that, it strikes me that most science fiction writers in the 1970’s had very dystopian visions of the future; the problems that were coming into public consciousness in those days…pollution, overpopulation, resource depletion, social disintegration…now seem slightly overblown, but they clearly weighed heavily on the minds of most thoughtful people. Yet the theme of this novel seems to be that such massive problems are not necessarily amenable to rational solution, and that trying to reorder the world on a grand scale proves disastrous. A real mind-bender.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/the-lathe-of-heaven-by-ursula-k-le-guin/
Dec 23 2014
Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski
Adam Zamoyski began Poland: A History as an update and revision to his 1987 book, The Polish Way. He found that history had gotten in the way, and that just revising the older work would not be enough.
In the early modern period, the Poles failed spectacularly to build an efficient centralised state structure and they paid the price, being swallowed up by their more successful neighbours. The history of Poland has therefore, up to now, been written as that of a failed state. Like some distorting lens or filter, that failure coloured and deformed the historian’s view of the whole of Polish history.
He is now no longer, as he was only a couple of decades ago, writing the history of an enslaved and to all intents and purposes non-existent country. There is a great difference between writing up a bankrupt business and writing up one that has been through hard times and turned the corner. He is no longer writing the history of a state that failed, but of a society that created a social and political civilisation of its own, one which was occluded by the success of a rival model (now utterly discredited) but whose ideals are close to those the world values today. p. xxi-xxii
Not that writing Polish history has ever been easy. Poland is, famously or notoriously, a “nation on wheels.” The title of the most comprehensive English-language history of Poland is God’s Playground. Zamoyski summarizes the difficulties, “How was the historian to approach a country whose territory had expanded and contracted, shifted and vanished so dramatically, which currently existed as an almost random compromise resulting from the Second World War, and which [in 1987] lay within the imperial frontiers of another power? How was he to treat a people which, from ethnic, cultural and religious diversity had been purged by genocide and ethnic cleansing into a homogeneous society? How to represent a culture which had been largely obliterated, whose remains survived only underground or in exile?” p. xvii
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/poland-a-history-by-adam-zamoyski/
Dec 23 2014
Alias: Grace by Margaret Atwood
In the interest of disclosure, I have to say that I have never read a Margaret Atwood book that I didn’t like. There were some that disturbed me, made me think, made me wish such things didn’t exist to be written about, but I have always been glad for the experience. Part of her charm is that you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get next when you pick up a Margaret Atwood novel. Yes, she has themes that she likes to return to, but there’s always something new to look forward to as well.
Alias Grace: A Novel
I found this book both satisfying and not satisfying. It was satisfying in that it addressed a subject of interest in an unusual way, and made you feel the characters as they went through their moves in this drama. The unsatisfying part is that no one really knows if Grace Marks truly was a “celebrated murderess” or if she was just a 15-year old girl with the cards stacked against her from the beginning.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/23/alias-grace-by-margaret-atwood/
Dec 22 2014
Nightmare Ink and Bound by Ink by Marcella Burnard
I was hesitant about these books, to be honest. There’s so much urban fantasy out there and new ideas seem difficult to come up with, or doing the old ideas with a new twist. I’m glad that I read both books, however. Marcella Burnard has managed to take tattoos, demons, magic, and evil angels, and put them into a new setting, one that’s interesting in itself, not just within the story. There are some tropes in there that will be familiar, but at this point in the genre’s history it’s almost impossible to avoid those. Overall I was pleasantly surprised with the story, which kept my interest and has me looking forward to the third book in the series. If you’re looking for a good way to spend a couple-three hours, these would be a good choice. The writing is still a little rough, but I can see that the author is going places with her world.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/22/nightmare-ink-and-bound-by-ink-by-marcella-burnard/
Dec 22 2014
The Hienama, Student of Kyme, and The Moonshawl, a trilogy by Storm Constantine
Anyone who is familiar with Storm Constantine‘s Wraeththu Chronicles will enjoy these books. The first two are much shorter than the last, which was just released, but together they make a whole picture from three points of view, and tell a story that is more than just a story. These books delve deep not only into the personalities of the main characters, but also into the history of the Wraeththu, or, to put it more accurately, into their future.
The beginning of the Wraeththu as the dominant race on Earth has been accomplished. Now all the various tribes across the globe are working to find their way to their future, and part of that is the friction between former humans who have been incepted into the Wraeththu, and those Wraeththu who are second generation and thus born into the race with not ever having been human or having had a human experience. On top of this is a decent sprinkling of emotion, and difficulties communicating with other people, and finding your own ground in a new world.
This trilogy exemplifies all of that in a beautifully written way. There is the Hienama, a priest of sorts (although the word doesn’t do justice to what a Hienama is capable of), whom, despite his talents and abilities, is still subject to the need to play mind games with people and lead them to places without ever taking responsibility for having done so. There is his student, who falls in love with him (as they often do), but this time Ysobi (the Hienama) decides to try a bond and to make it work. It is something like a difficult marriage with one partner having a wandering eye, but this is Wraeththu and so that’s not correct. (I’m afraid you’ll have to read the first books to get a good feeling for these differences.) Another student shows up, there are ructions, and Ysobi ends up leaving his chesnari (mate) and going to some place completely new, where he manages to find a completion to his story that he didn’t expect and didn’t truly felt like he deserved.
In human terms – powerful person with a less than robust sense of responsibility, love triangle, eventual redemption for all three, with none of the three ending up together. But, it is so much more than that and so much better than that. I love this universe that Storm Constantine has created and I read every bit of literature I can get my hands on. Also, I stalk her on Facebook (ok, not really, but I do read her posts with great interest).
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/12/22/the-hienama-student-of-kyme-and-the-moonshawl-a-trilogy-by-storm-constantine/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire