nwhyte's reviews
4413 reviews

The Alphabet: Unraveling The Mystery Of The Alphabet From A To Z by David Sacks

http://nhw.livejournal.com/490899.html[return][return]I was disappointed. The book can't quite decide whether it's a serious investigation of the history of orthography or a collection of fun trivia snippets. I did learn a lot about the first Semitic alphabet, from which most others are descended, and its descent to us through the Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans and French. But I was disappointed not to learn more about other alphabets than ours - especially the Georgian script which as most of you will know fascinates me. (Does the Georgian

Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone by Kenneth Cain

http://nhw.livejournal.com/477492.html[return][return]The title here is pretty misleading, in that there's not a lot of sex in it. But it's a very interesting book nonetheless, as three UN workers, two American and one New Zealander, one a doctor, one a lawyer and one a former social worker, reflect in intense narrative form what it was actually like on a human level to participate in the UN peacekeeping missions of the mid 1990s - success (as it seemed at the time) in Cambodia; humiliation in Somalia; failure in Rwanda; intervention too late in Bosnia, Haiti and Liberia. For all three, their initial sense of idealism and optimism about the mission of the international community in general and the UN and US in particular faded once confronted by the brutal realities of life in the field and incompetent, uncomprehending superiors. There are grim, horrible, memorable descriptions of prisons and mass graves, and honest descriptions of the hedonistic methods of relaxation (security situation permitting) once out of the office at the end of the day.

Girl with a One Track Mind by Abby Lee

http://nhw.livejournal.com/722523.html[return][return]Many of us who write blogs like to occasionally fantasise that there may some day be a market for our words of wisdom. (Of course, some who write blogs are already established professional writers, so this does not apply to them.) Very few, however, manage to make the transition from blogger to published author on the basis of what is in their blog; I doubt very much that my book reviews from here will ever appear in dead tree form in your local bookshop.[return][return]Of course, that's because I write about books I have read, and occasionally sf cons I have been to, or arguments I have had, or speeches I have made, and not about sex. The Girl With A One Track Mind has written a very entertaining blog about the sex she has had for the last couple of years, and managed (somehow strangely) to persuade a publisher to take it on, and here it is.[return][return]And it is an entertaining, in some ways rather a moral read. Sex with strangers, or semi-strangers, is not always satisfactory. Wildly successful sex does not necessarily lead to a wildly successful relationship. By the end of the book, she is firming up her ideas about what she wants from a long-term partner. In that way, the novel format is more sustainable than the blog - done properly, as it is here, it imposes a duty on the author of character development, of story arc rather than the episodic narrative we get from the blog.[return][return]The Sunday Times wrote an incredibly spiteful article exposing the author's real identity - typical of the trash rag it is (a friend of mine who was briefly its foreign correspondent had to help the then foreign editor work out where the Balkan states were, one of many events that I thought Evelyn Waugh had invented for Scoop). However, she has since made a few more media appearances on her own terms. Let's hope that her fears of being finished in her film industry career are exaggerated, and that she continues to write entertainingly and for profit.

Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

http://nhw.livejournal.com/490626.html[return][return]Returning to an early favourite for me here. The plot, to be honest, doesn't hold much water: far in the future, the Egyptian deities have returned (or some godlike beings have set themselves up as such) and are in charge of the universe. Various other mythical and cyborg beings drop in on proceedings. But really the book is a delight for the language and the impassioned present tense narrative, which sweeps you along so effectively that you don't notice how little sense it makes. Notable also for the Possibly Proper Death Litany, an agnostic's prayer:[return][return]"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."[return][return]and for the great line, "They are my innards! I will not have them read by a poseur!"

The Course Of Honour by Lindsey Davis

A very interesting riff from Davis - a biographical novel about the emperor Vespasian's lover Antonia Caenis. Well worth reading.

Music & Silence by Rose Tremain

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1202711.html[return][return]won the Whitbread Prize in 1999 and is set largely in the royal court of Denmark in 1629 and 1630, where a young English musician falls in love with one of the king's estranged wife's maidservants. There's a lot of long lingering flashback to the earlier lives of the lovers, their respective bosses, and extended families; from my own interest, there's a child with an Asperger's-ish disorder; but I wasn't quite sure what it all amounted to. Still, it was a picturesque ride.

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

This is just one of the most fantastic love stories ever written, as well as being a brilliant introduction to the mysterious region of the Caucasus.

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

http://nhw.livejournal.com/993967.html[return][return]A rather beautiful novel about the experiences of generations of a Highland family settled in Nova Scotia, with excursions to Scotland and various other parts of Canada; interlocking tales of tragedy and loyalty, against the backdrop of global conflicts, both recent and long past. (I had not realised that Wolfe was a commander both at Culloden and Quebec.) MacLeod's style feels somehow more Scottish (eg Iain Banks) than Canadian (eg Robertson Davies). I read it very quickly, but enjoyed it a lot.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/stecry.htm[return][return]Cryptonomicon follows the story of Randy Waterhouse in the present day, intertwined with the second world war experiences of Lawrence Waterhouse (Randy's grandfather), Bobby Shaftoe (whose granddaughter Randy falls in love with) and Goto Dengo (whose wartime career turns out to have important consequences for Randy). Alan Turing, and to a lesser extent General Douglas McArthur and Ronald Reagan, make appearances as supporting characters. The world of Cryptonomicon is our own, augmented by the semi-independent state of Qwghlm off the coast of Scotland and the independent south-east Asian principality of Kinakuta.[return][return]There is a lot in this book (which at 900 odd pages is the longest of the five Hugo nominees this year). The Cryptonomicon of the title is the body of cryptographic lore which Lawrence Waterhouse first learns and then adds to while working as a code-breaker in the Pacific theatre, Bletchley Park, and then the Pacific theatre again, collaborating off and on with Shaftoe, who in turn encounters Goto Dengo as first an enemy and then a friend. Meanwhile today, Randy Waterhouse and his business partners are finding new ways of exploiting the information age, involving at the very least setting up a free data haven in Kinakuta, and in the future - well, that would be to reveal too much.[return][return]And there is much more. Van Eck phreaking; why divers are like hackers, only fitter; Filipino jails; Greek mythology; breakfast cereal; pig shit; the Chinese Army; the mysterious Enoch Root; and a perl script. There is a hilarious confrontation between Randy and a bunch of academics which one feels Stephenson has either transcribed from real life or as mots d'escalier from a real life conversation. Almost the entire book is told in the present tense which adds to the air of breathlessness. The four main characters are well sketched, particularly Randy (who will presumably feature in the future novels of the series which we are told Cryptonomicon begins). The settings, both geographical and political, are vivid.[return][return]This is not the cyberpunk future of Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age; it is the present day, and the immediate past. There is absolutely nothing in the book (apart from the extra bits of geography) that would fit the normal definition of science fiction. And yet I feel quite sure that this is a genre sf novel, and furthermore that it has an excellent chance of winning the Hugo award. Perhaps it is because this is really a book of ideas rather than character; while Randy, Lawrence, Shaftoe and Dengo are all human beings to whom real things happen, the main theme of the book is culture clash, in particular the way in which the information age will force us to interact differently with the world and especially with governments and states. Some of Stephenson's minor characters are firmly libertarian in outlook; I wasn't left completely sure where his own sympathies lie, and perhaps he hasn't decided yet himself.

The Accusers by Lindsey Davis

http://nhw.livejournal.com/161945.html[return][return]Hmm. I've very much enjoyed some of Davis' novels featuring Marcus Didius Falco, a detective of ancient Rome; this wasn't one of the best. The hero and his colleagues spend ages failing to interrogate the person who is fairly obviously the murderer, and by the end nothing really is resolved. I did wonder if the two chief villains, Paccius Africanus and Silius Italicus, might actually be real-life characters from our time-line who Davis was shoe-horning into a fictional plot; and alas, this indeed turns out to be the case (I even found an article where she brags about it). Oh well, as long as my mother-in-law keeps buying them I suspect I'll keep reading them, but this wasn't really as rewarding as I had hoped.