PC Reading List

I’ve been invited by Sloth Jockey to begin a new blog there.  I am excited about this, and have agreed to set up a new blog called Tai Shan.

At this new blog, I’ll be writing about my experience in and with China, and about all things Chinese.  I think it should be lots of fun, and I hope you will come along and enjoy the experience with me!

The pricing is as follows, for now:

You will notice that it is cheaper to book ad space here for a whole year than it is to do so on a monthly basis. I am very willing to work out package deals for anyone who would like to make special arrangements, such as booking more than one type of ad, or blocking off periods of time for the ad to appear that may not be reflected in the above pricing. Fill up the request form if you are interested, and I will contact you to make the necessary arrangements. All requests will be read by me, and I will respond to you to arrange the details of your advertisements. By requesting your ad through this form, you get your ad space directly from me, without a third party advertising company standing in between. Please, no pornography or violent images, no ads for racist or sexist sites. And please keep it clean and family friendly. If you are interested in arranging a package deal for advertising across my network of blogs and websites, please indicate that in your request, and I will contact you to work out the details. I will look forward to hearing from you!

Admittedly, Avalon was from a more self-consciously female perspective than Cave, with the latter work even holding onto some very traditional borderline misogynist thinking. But still, the two stories just seem to have a similar style and approach to telling the events of the tale. But it doesn’t quite have to be put together that way.

The book got me to thinking about a number of different things, and I wrote a review of it for the really cool new online lit mag Sloth Jockey.  There were a lot of things I could have included in the review, but didn’t want it to get too long for people to read (or for the editor to include).

One of the things that I had to leave out was the fascinating idea of H. H. Holmes, the serial killer whose story is one of the two main threads in the book, as a harvester of body parts.  Sometimes, I think we like to think of questions of harvesting organs and/or DNA as a new ethical dilemma brought about by the great strides we’ve made in medical technology in recent years.  That’s true, to an extent.  But I think it is easy to overlook that the progress has been strides, and not leaps.  There is a flow to the technology that has developed, and the ethical questions that are raised by the advances in technology don’t sit in a vacuum. Rather, these advances have taken place slowly over time, and the ethical questions have been there throughout that time.

When H. H. Holmes and that other famous murderer across the Pond were doing their gruesome dissections, it was only a relatively short time after the writing of Frankenstein, another book which considers ethical questions which might seem to be a bit  ahead of their time.    For me, one of the beauties of Larson’s narrative is that it gives some perspective about where we sit in the whole scheme of this flow of progress — and that this place is not really so unique (and exciting) as we might like to think.

And of course, the presentation of the attitudes toward progress that were largely held in Chicago — and the whole nation — at the time is pretty depressing.  Hubris sticks so close to humans that you might think of it as a faithful companion.  Too bad it’s the sort of companion that might be said to corrupt good morals.

I enjoyed Holt’s treatment not only of how Vikings might move about in today’s world, but also at how the world of Vikings and of today might not be so different after all.  That made for a very entertaining read, actually.  And of course, the connection (or the discontinuity in our minds) between technology and magic is always fun to consider.  I liked how Holt handled that in such a lighthearted fashion in the book.

This is one of those novels I picked up cheap somewhere at some library sale or another.  It was worth the small amount I paid for it, and also the time invested in reading.  It might not be the most brilliant book ever written, but it was fun all the same.

Lottery is the tale of  Perry, who is not retarded.  His “number” (IQ) is 76, and you have to be below 75 to be retarded.  Perry is clearly above that number.  

Perry is a lucky man.  (Lucky is his middle name.)  He wins the lottery, $12 million worth of lottery.  The tale that unfolds around this is beautifully done.  Family members turn up out of the woodwork, all eager to help Perry manage his money.  Strange how they show up now, when none were particularly eager to help before.  

The story centers around issues of family, money, trust, intelligence, discrimination, and cheating.  It’s a great read, weaving all of these wonderful threads together.  The story is told by Perry, and Wood does a masterful job of capturing his voice.   Not only does she seem to understand the life of a person with a number somewhere around 76, but she has a good knowledge of sailing (the setting of the story) and lottery winnings (her dad was a lottery winner).  The knowledge she brings to the narrative creates a very rich tale indeed.

If you decide to read the book, make sure and stop in at the blog discussion after you’ve done so.  It will always be up, so it doesn’t matter that you stop in “late.”