Ok, when I wrote the first “Books” post I was planning it to be an interesting one off entry. I realised that I’d need to split it up when I was getting to the end of explaining what I was going to do and it had already taken up over 2,000 words. Now 2,000 words is nothing if you’re talking about an introduction to a book, but for a blog post I think it’s quite a good point to stop. I generally stay within the 2,000 to 5,000 word range as a rule, I think that’s the sweet spot because it’s long enough that you have to take a good five to ten minutes out of your day and give it some time, you can’t just breeze through one of my posts in 30 seconds and forget about it, but it’s not so long as to actually change anyone’s plans either. You can read one of my posts in one go, and hopefully it gives you something to think about but ultimately you can then simply move on with your day. Although I think my posts are better enjoyed in the evening, with no further plans ahead.
I then realised after the second post in the series, which was the first one where I really actually started talking about the books I own, that this would take a lot longer than I originally expected. That is, if I wanted to actually say more than a few words about each of them. The problem is I’ve now reached the sixth part, and have not even covered half of the books I own yet. So I’ve decided this part will be a “lightning round” where I cover a lot of the books that I don’t have a lot to say about and hopefully that pile that needs sorting will be a lot smaller by the time I’m done. I’ll say now that you shouldn’t expect anything insightful or interesting from this particular post, I’m just kind of trying to get through these books now because I kind of backed myself into a corner with this whole idea. I do think that I’ll have one or two posts in this series after this, maybe even three, which will be more engaging though. Here’s hoping.
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
This is a short novel, set in an alternative post-apocalyptic London during the early 20th century. The premise if I remember correctly, is that some kind of alien energy field hits the earth one evening and everyone who sees it is blinded. Which is most people on the planet. Then after that these moving hostile plants which for some reason are named Triffids spawn into being and begin hunting people, and I think consuming them as well. The protagonist of the novel keeps his eyesight thanks to some kind of plot convenience that I don’t remember, and the novel follows his journey through the city and eventually to a farmstead in the countryside.
My uncle gave me this copy, years ago now. I enjoyed reading it at the time, but that’s it. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained from going back to it. Even if it’s just a case of going back to a familiar story and familiar characters, there are other books like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which are far better if you’re looking simply to escape into a good story. There’s no reason for me to hold onto this, so I won’t. I wouldn’t say it’s not worth a read, but it’s not worth having a physical copy of it in this day and age.
The Big Big Big Book of Tashi by Anna and Barbara Fienberg and Kim Gamble
This is collection of 14 short stories for children, small children. The author and the series, the characters and so on, are Australian in fact not british. See my uncle lived in Australia for a years, I think possibly for as long as a decade maybe even more than that. He didn’t move back to England until I was a few years old, maybe four or five I’d guess. I don’t recall exactly, being four or five years old I don’t remember much from that period of time. I imagine he must have brought this with him when he came back, as a gift. I know he bought it for me, and I know I’ve had this book for as long as I can remember.
The books are about this boy whose name I forget, and his friend Tashi who has these many fantastical stories to tell about his life before emigrating to presumably Australia but basically a generic western neighbourhood that could be anywhere. So the actual stories are mostly set in this fantasy land with monsters and magic and so on, but framed within a more normal/ familiar setting. Anyway as much as I did enjoy this book as a little kid I just don’t see any good reason to hold on to it. It’s going to have to go.
Europe: A History by Norman Davies
This is one of the longest books I’ve ever read, maybe the longest. It’s pretty clear what it’s about, a book that supposedly covers all of European history from pre-history through to the fall of the soviet union. One of the positives about this book is that it does make the effort to include a lot of eastern European history that might be overlooked like the history of medieval Poland and Lithuania, Kievan Rus and the Eastern Roman Empire/ Byzantium. It moves chronologically of course, but because of the scope this means a lot of moving back and forth to switch to a new region especially during the early middle ages when things were the least connected.
The problem is that the book is just incredibly dull, I actually didn’t finish it if I’m being honest but gave up towards the end while reading an absurdly long chapter on Napoleon. It’s quite clear where the author’s interest lies, it was about twice as long as the chapter that covered almost an entire millennium of roman history. Perhaps author is the wrong word here, the first thing he says in the introduction is that there’s no original work or research that was necessary for this book. Not that it was just a compilation of other historical works, it was a retelling in his own words, but everything in here could be found somewhere else. The list of citations/ sources at the back is huge, they alone make up the length of a short novella.
I’m not sure whether to keep hold of it or throw it away, because I don’t like to leave a book unfinished, but it’s been years since I gave up on it and I remember almost nothing outside of the major events of the period I was up to. That is outside of the particular periods of time which I’ve read other things about. Speaking of which the book just didn’t go into nearly enough detail in the areas that I personally find interesting, pre-history and into the bronze age, classical Greco-Roman history and dark ages Britain. I think I’ll hold onto it for now, and if I haven’t picked it back up within a year I’ll just give it to the charity shop. After all I did originally buy this there, before my current job I volunteered at a second hand shop for half a year and it was while there that I bought this. I’ll probably take it to a different one though, I don’t ever plan to return to the shop I was helping out ever again.
The Lamb and the Butterfly by Arnold Sundgaard and Eric Carle, The Unicorn and the Sea by Fiona Moodie, and The Fire Children by Eric Maddern and Frané Lessac
I’ve decided to group all of these together because whatever I might say about one applies to all three. These are books for very small children, basically toddlers. They’re picture books so I think that in this case the illustrators are just as crucial as the authors which is why I included both names. Upon opening these books just for a quick flick through I’m hit with this warm feeling of familiarity, these are probably the first books I ever read. In fact they were probably there before I was even capable of not just reading but speaking. I remember I had quite a few more like this, but for whatever reason these ones have remained in my possession while the others have been lost along the way. It’s a shame, there are others I remember more fondly even than these and I do wish I could look through them one last time. I can’t even find them online based on the hazy memories I have though, and anyway even if I had them I would be making the same decision I am going to make regarding the ones I do still have. That is, I will finally be letting go of them.
boom! by Mark Haddon
Now this isn’t the only book by this author I have a copy of, I also have The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time but I think that one might lead to a more interesting entry in this series so I’ll leave it for today. boom! on the other hand is another children’s adventure book, following the theme that will run throughout this entry. It’s not even one I remember particularly fondly or well either. I don’t know why I have held onto it for this long, but it can certainly go now. I do however have a particular memory associated with this novel, which I wouldn’t mind having written down so I won’t forget about it.
It’s actually of the first time I was unable to fall asleep, when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, I don’t quite know. A better way of putting it would be to say, my first experience of insomnia. Now I have pretty mild insomnia, it’s not debilitating at all and most nights it’s not a problem. A few nights a month though, and often all in one go, I’ll have quite a lot of trouble getting to sleep. There’s been a heatwave here over the last week in fact so it’s been worse than usual actually, but hopefully next week should be cooler. Also my dad is leaving for a few weeks, and I always sleep better when the flat is empty apart from me.
So one summer evening I decided to stay up late, and I was reading this book at the time. At the time I had just got rid of my bed, and had yet to build the new one so I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor (kind of like I do now, although this was in my old room) with the door on my right hand side as I was sat up in bed. I started reading under the covers with my torch, and after a short while I heard my mum go to sleep. I kept reading for quite some time after this, but eventually I realised it must be really late, maybe even midnight! So I decided to go to sleep. Yet I wasn’t able to, I closed my eyes and turned from side to side but nothing would do it.
I remember after some time I started to worry that it would always be like this now, I knew that my mum had always suffered from insomnia as she often had to take naps in the afternoon after getting home from work because she hadn’t slept enough the night before. In a way I kind of saw it as part of the process of growing up, after all she was the main adult figure in my life and she had it. I’m surprised how quickly I just accepted this fate, and luckily I was wrong and it’s not anywhere near as much of a problem for me as it was for her. I must have fallen asleep eventually, but I do remember feeling groggy and miserable the following day. Not an especially interesting story, but it’s one I remember well.
Esio Trot, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, George’s Marvellous Medicine, and Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
I’m sure everyone is well aware of who Roald Dahl is, I loved these books when I was little and I used to have quite a few more of his books but they have also been lost along the way. Just like those picture books I talked about, when I see Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations I’m taken to a very familiar and comforting place. There is just no good reason for me to hold onto these though, and so they also have to go.
Now We Are Six and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
These might be the hardest of the books from my childhood to let go of, I’m still considering holding onto them. The House At Pooh Corner is the second of the two volumes of short stories featuring the character Winnie The Pooh and his friends, I did have both volumes once as well as both of the poetry collections but now I only have one of each clearly. Again, I’m not exactly sure what happened to the other books I had, but they’re gone now. Now the final story in the collection ends with Christopher Robin leaving Pooh and all the other animals of the hundred acre wood to go somewhere. It was never really clear to me where when I was a little boy, but I’ve since learned that the implication was that he was going off to boarding school.
The story ends with a touching moment between Christopher Robin and Pooh on a hill overlooking the wood, in which Christopher Robin knights Pooh and then asks him never to forget him “not even when I’m a hundred”. Even when I was the age of about five or six and I didn’t pick up on the implications about where exactly he was going, I still remember this ending felt rather sad. Christopher Robin probably didn’t have any time for toys when he came back from school, so this was his way of putting childish things aside. Which I suppose is what I need to do also.
Now We Are Six is a collection of poems, many of them about Christopher Robin, Pooh and the rest of the characters. I suppose I got it wrong when I said in the second entry in this series that I had covered all of the poetry books I own. This particular copy is very special to me, it was a gift for my sixth birthday from both my uncle and his partner (a friend of my mother’s who he met upon returning to England) and it even has a little message from them on the inside cover. Again as with quite a few of the books I’m looking through today the illustrations bring out a strong feeling of nostalgia. I know I should let it go, as I plan to do with the other Pooh book and all the little kiddie books I’ve sorted through, but I really don’t want to. It’s difficult because I’ll have to simply throw this one in the rubbish, as my name written on the note at the front means I can’t give it away. I’ll just hold on to it until I can think of what to do, it’s very small and doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Ubik and Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick
Another pattern might be noticeable in this entry, in fact across this entire little series of posts. Both of these were gifts from my uncle, in fact because his memory isn’t very good he actually gave me two separate copies of Ubik. One quite a few years ago now, shortly after I read The Time Machine the first time and mentioned that I was looking for more science fiction to read, the second copy was a gift either last Christmas or the year before that. I loved it at the time, in fact I was considering reading it again just as a recap for the post I had planned to do in this series which was all about Philip K. Dick. I’m currently in the middle of reading something that I don’t want to be distracted from though and while I am reading quite a lot these days because the heat makes it impossible to do anything else I think it’ll still be a little while until I finish it.
So instead I’ve decided to just write a short bit about PKD and the books of his (and one about him) I own rather than giving him a whole post. I will keep hold of my copy of Ubik though and probably re-read it some time soon. Maybe I’ll have more to say about it in another post, not part of this series but just a standalone thing like I did for Travels in Nihilon. I’ll keep the newer copy, it’s got a nicer and more appropriate cover, it has better quality paper and binding, the pages aren’t faded and yellowed, etc. Time Out of Joint on the other hand I read more recently, maybe a year ago now or so. I didn’t like it at all, I’m not really sure what the point to any of it was. See Ubik brings up all these ideas about death and how reliable our sense of perception is and I don’t feel like Time Out of Joint really asks or answers anything.
The book is about a simulated environment of sorts, and I’m sure it was one of the earliest explorations of that concept, but it’s been done so much more interestingly since. Kant and his concept of the Thing-in-itself is name dropped as well but I don’t know if it’s actually something the book explores or really says anything about at all. It doesn’t feel like it, the book seems very straightforward unlike the other PKD books I’ve read (Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), then again I don’t know anything about continental philosophy so maybe there is some real substance to be found and it just went right over my head. I’ll keep hold of it as well for now, but I might change my mind at any point and just throw it. I don’t think I want to read it again, I didn’t really enjoy it. It’s certainly the least enjoyable of all the PKD works I’ve read so far.
A Life of Philip K. Dick by Anthony Peake
This is an interesting book, at least the last section was kind of interesting. It’s split into two parts, the first part takes up most of the book (about three quarters) and it’s simply a biography. It’s interesting enough if you’re interested in the man, and he is an interesting man, but this book came to me (as you can guess, as a gift from my uncle) a bit too late. See by the time I got this, I think the Christmas before last, I had lost most of the interest I had in the man who remembered the future. Even the stuff in the second part which talks about his genuinely impressive insights into the future and his many weird interests I had already read a great deal about already online over the years.
I’m not sure whether to hold onto it or not, speaking about him in this post has made me think about perhaps reading one of his novels that I haven’t yet. I’ve been reading a lot of fairly dry history lately, and maybe a sci-fi novel will be a nice change of pace. I always meant to read his last book The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which supposedly explores a lot of his weirder theological/ esoteric ideas. Maybe it’ll be worth holding onto this book for now.
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
This is a book that you’ve probably heard of if you’re part of the /polit9k/ crowd who mostly end up reading these little blog posts I write, as 4chan and specifically those boards are the only places I’ve ever linked this blog to. Naturally most of the visitors I get come from there or through the wordpress reader thingy, but for a few months I didn’t get anyone from the reader. So I bought this book right after starting my job actually, with my first month’s pay I think or maybe the second. I had heard that it was le relatable doomer novel, and frankly that’s quite a mischaracterisation. It’s certainly an interesting read, although I didn’t like the way it was structured at all as it was kind of all over the place, but that’s fine.
The book is semi-autobiographical, it’s a work of fiction with made up characters but heavily inspired by the events of the author’s own life. It’s split into three main sections, which are set during a different period in the life of the main character Oba, each one a decade or more apart from the others. Then around this is a short intro and outro where some other character talks about finding out about this main character and his life through some journals left behind by him. The thing is though that Oba is not a modern “doomer” by any stretch, he’s basically just a sociopath. Not a Patrick Bateman or Howard Roark big shot corporate type sociopath, but similar in that he has seemingly no regard or care for the suffering if others.
The seeming difference is that his inability to sympathise or relate to anyone is something that is a curse rather than a benefit. I’m not sure if it is a difference though, maybe the community focused “collectivist” culture of early 20th century Japan played more of a role than any moral character of his own. Perhaps someone similar would just go on to fit the “sociopath” archetype that we’re more used to if he was raised in a modern western city. I know this is kind of a cope that a lot of unsuccessful people cling onto, but it is undeniable that being uncaring and willing to step on other people gives you a huge advantage in life. That is, you will find it much easier to achieve your material goals.
In fact that’s something to think about isn’t it? Oba’s feelings of alienation are considered relatable and “oh he’s just like me” by a lot of robots and incels which is why this book gets suggested a lot, but he’s not like them at all. In fact he’s the very opposite, but rather in a culture like his it’s people such as that who are the ones that struggle the most to get by. There’s a lot pseudo-scientific talk online in the circles I’ve been around about “alphas” and “betas” and a lot of people have done a good job of pointing the broscience out for what it is. However I think the terms are used figuratively more so nowadays, an “alpha” is a collection of characteristics and attitudes, it’s a feeling. In the past in these circles you would hear the term “alpha male” but now it’s just “alpha”. “Is X alpha or beta?” is a an example of how the terms are used now.
So what exactly is it that defines “alpha” and “beta” as the terms are used today? Well it’s difficult to say, there’s some quality that can’t be described with other words otherwise we would have kept on using those. I do think that one (1) of the many themes represented is care. Visualise a spectrum, at one end would be someone who cares for others entirely over themselves, and at the other end vice versa. This is one of many measures of “alpha-ness” or the opposite, in that whatever point along the line it is where your care for others exceeds the care for yourself is where you can be classified as “beta” at least in this one regard. I suppose the idea behind having these themes all lumped together under the terms “alpha” and “beta” is that if you’re “beta” in one area of life you’re probably “beta” in most others also. So the value is in showing the connection between these traits.
Now I could get even more sidetracked than I have been in talking about why some people are more one way or another when it comes to this. I’ll leave it for you to think about on your own though, you can probably figure out my general thoughts on why from what I’ve said in other posts. My point here is that Japan appears to be a “beta” culture, you could say. In that emphasis is placed on putting the needs of the community before those of your own, rather than the “alpha” culture of the occident. So Dazai’s feelings of alienation might be relatable but he isn’t. I’m not the only one who feels like this, I’ve seen quite a few threads about this book on both /r9k/ and /lit/ in my time and a lot of people express a similar feeling.
That’s fine though, in fact thinking about it perhaps it’s more valuable for robots to read this book than to read a novel which features a primary character who is more like themselves. That would in a way be a kind of self pandering, this on the other hand allows us to see that perhaps in a different time and a different place it is someone quite different who is “disqualified from being human” as the more literal translation of the title goes. So I would actually say that this book does a better job of describing and capturing this aspect of the human condition than both works that as I said may feature more relatable protagonists in a similar situation, but also the same book back in it’s own context when it was originally published. I’ll hold onto this one.
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean
I was doing so well, keeping it concise, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ll end this post with one last quick one. Peter Pan is a story we all know well I’m sure, the tale of the boy who wouldn’t grow up. This was one of those books I read over and over, the “official sequel” Peter Pan in Scarlet I didn’t enjoy as much and I remember almost nothing about, but I still have it here for some reason and so it must be mentioned. I think the irony in holding onto a children’s book which is about the necessity of growing up (in part) is clear to everyone, so of course I will be giving both of these books away.
Ramblings of a neurotic mess 