On her blog, Larissa often lists books that she has read recently, so I thought I might do the same here and there. It gives me a chance to put down in words some of my impressions and thoughts about good stuff that I’m reading. So, books I finished in July:

The Confusion – Neal Stephenson
I started reading this a while back but just finished it. Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors of all time (I particularly recommend Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon). I read the first book in his ‘Baroque Series’, Quicksilver, late last year and started on The Confusion a while back. However, after reading for a while I got a bit bogged down and had to put it down for a while. I guess the very middle of a three part series is the bit where it might get bogged down anyway. Fortunately, the second half of this book greatly picked up and I enjoyed it very much. I’m looking to reading the third book in the cycle, ‘The System of the World’, sometime in the not too distant future.

Serendipities – Language and Lunacy – Umberto Eco
This is another one that I started reading late last year while I was also reading ‘Quicksilver’, but had to put it down as it was getting just too confusing switching between them. I’ve read quite a few of Umberto Eco’s books, starting with The Name of the Rose back when I was in uni (wonderful book, incidentally), but this is the first time I think I’ve really appreciated the intricacies of semiotics and linguistics, and why Eco is so brilliant in that field. Particularly interesting is his look at quests to develop a perfect language – to recapture the divine language spoken between Adam and God before the fall – and the useful side affects of those otherwise unsuccessful attempts. If I had my time again, I would probably have read this before I started reading ‘Quicksilver’ and ‘The Confusion’ as Eco looks at some of the historical attempts to create a philosophical language, particularly by John Wilkins and Leibniz, that form major events in Stephenson’s books. Overall, quite a fascinating little book.

Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
I can’t believe I’d never read this before. It’s a fascinating little story in a genre somewhere between sci-fi, historical fiction, alternate reality, pulp fiction and modern literature. It is, I believe, a semi-biographical tale based on Vonnegut’s experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany during Wold War 2, including being interred in Dresden during the fire bombing of the city.
What was really interesting about it, though, was his approach to the question of evil. My thoughts on this probably require a whole post, but in short: I understand that after WW2 there was a lot of philosophical discussion and analysis about humanity could be so evil and do such terrible things to each other. Vonnegut’s answer is somewhere between fatalism and denial of free will and sticking ones head in the sand, i.e. bad things are going to happen, nobody can change that, so just try to ignore them or don’t focus on them and only look at and remember the good things in life.

Spiderman – Blue – Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
Love the work that these two do together – when working together they are probably my favourite comic creators; I lap up whatever I can by them.

Samurai Executioner – Volume 4 – Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima
Not as good or interesting as ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’, but ok.

Currently reading ‘American Gods’ by Neil Gaiman, ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ by Jared Diamond and The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches

PS: If anyone can recommend to me any books about the attempts to address the problem of evil in the Western world post-WW2, that would be wonderful.

Neil Gaiman is an interesting bloke.

I had suspected this, based on interviews with him that I have read on the net, and because he is so popular in several areas of pop subculture – comics, novels and film. However, what really convinced me was when he told me that his fountain pen had a flexible nib; that he had believed that such pens were no longer produced after the 1920s until he was in a pen shop in Bologna, Italy where the owner told him that they still made them until the 1950s and that he had one in stock, which Neil promptly bought. Incidentally, he used that pen to sign a copy of his novel American Gods for me. He also explained the primary benefit of flexible nibs, viz that they release more ink the harder you push the nib onto the paper.
I was hooked.

Some context may help here: Neil Gaiman is someone I had heard of a long time ago, as he was the author of the Sandman comics and he collaborated with Terry Pratchett on the novel, Good Omens, although I had not read any of his work. Last year, when Impact Records in Canberra (a sad passing) closed down, I bought a hardcover copy of Volume 1 of the Sandman graphic novels at half price, which promptly went into storage ready for moving house. I pulled it out earlier this year after we moved to Dickson and read it in January or February. It was great. Very interesting, intriguing and just off beat enough for my tastes. So, when I heard that Mr Gaiman would be in Canberra on Tuesday 19 July for a book signing at a local SF/Fantasy specialist book store followed by a talk at the ANU, I decided that I may as well go along to get my one book by him signed.

Even an hour before the event I was wavering about whether or not to go – in the end, I decided to go deciding that I would regret it if I did not. As my tale above indicates, I was glad I did. Further, I hadn’t intended at all to go to the event at the ANU, however after that conversation and some encouragement from others I met while queuing for the book signing I decided to go to that as well. Tegan came along as well, despite being exhausted, reasoning that, like me, she would later regret it if she didn’t go – even though she had read nothing at all of Neil Gaiman’s work. She came away with a strong conviction that she would enjoy his books and was immensely glad that she went.

At the ANU, Neil Gaiman showed excerpts of an upcoming film that he worked on, called MirrorMask. He said that the design brief was to make a movie in the vein of Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal. MirrorMask looks fantastic and we can’t wait to see it. Mr Gaiman was also witty, uproariously hilarious and (again) came across as an intensely interesting person. Tegan and I will definitely be tracking down and reading more of his work.

In the meantime, I’m off to look for a fountain pen with a flexible nib and think I have discovered that the Namiki corporation of Japan still manufactures one.