Clockwork 2

After reading so much fantasy, I expected that returning to history would be dull, and I almost started a new book to add a little more excitement. But actually, “the Clockwork Universe” was very entertaining. Rather than writing chronologically, the author picks a theme and shares several vignettes about the Royal Society and its members. I learned about Leibniz, who I really only knew from Voltaire’s work of satire Candide. Leibniz was a genius who knew a lot about everything, and constantly flew from one pursuit and place to another. He invented calculus independently of Newton at about the same time, but in the middle of doing so he traveled to see an invention that supposedly allowed people to walk in water (it didn’t really work). I want to read more about Leibniz. While Leibniz was all over the place, Newton stayed in a very small area in England. Even though he explained the tides, he never saw the sea.

There were a lot of gruesome and sensational experiments done in the Royal Society. Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke invented the vacuum pump, the effects of which were demonstrated on various subjects with great enthusiasm. The members were fascinated at how a chicken immediately spasmed and died in a vacuum, but a snake did not. Robert Hooke even volunteered to enter a vacuum himself. The pump malfunctioned before killing the zealous scientist, but Hooke was given dizziness and temporary deafness for his failed attempt. The most gruesome to me was when a madman was given a blood transfusion from a sheep in the attempt to cure him of his madness. Somehow the madman suffered no ill effects, but neither was he cured of his madness.

The society had varying views about the new position of science. While in the past the secrets of science had been closely guarded and perhaps never passed on, the Robert Boyle said that it was a crime not to spread the light of ideas. He even wanted laymen to be able to understand science. Robert Hooke wanted to keep some secrets for the sake of patents, and Newton had no desire to simplify science, but in the end they both furthered Boyle’s cause despite their intentions.

It was also interesting that these scientists were so willing to believe other claims that would be dismissed without consideration today. For example, one presentation in the Royal Society concerned “weapon salve”, made in part from something that grows on a human corpse after a few days, and applied to a weapon so that the wound that the weapon has made would heal. Gruesome stuff indeed.

The Silmarillion 2

I finished the Silmarillion last night. It surprised me that almost all of the characters died (or sailed to Valinar and out of the story), and yet I still wanted to read more. But I wouldn’t be able to, because the Silmarillion is more about elves than men and there are no elves left. At the end of the third age, Arwen is the only elf still alive in middle earth, and she marries Aragorn and becomes human. At the beginning of the third age, only one descendent of Elros remains. Furthermore, of all the Noldor who went to Valinor and returned to Beleriand, only Galadriel remains. Also, I found it interesting that Aragorn, who is a descendent of Elros of the 32^nd(?) generation, ends up marrying Elros’s niece Arwen. Another thing about this marriage--it is the third (and last) union between elves and men. I found that quite poignant.

Why do I enjoy reading it so much if it is mainly about people dying and great works being built and destroyed? Incidentally, the most difficult chapters were the stories of Hurin and Turin, who, though they did great deeds, for the most part they lived in agony causing destruction rather than dying heroically. Beren and Luthien's story is probably my favorite, but at the end Luthien goes to Mandos and brings Beren back from the dead, and I wasn't quite happy with that part--it was too much of a happy ending. I suppose though, that they needed to have offspring somehow. Their only son had two sons and a daughter. The sons were lost, but the daughter married the son of Tuor and Idril, the daughter of Turgon, the son of Fingolfin. In this way the Noldor, Teleri, Maiar, and humans were all joined as a family. From this union came Elrond and Elros.

I really should have written about this every day because there was plenty that I thought about it and no longer remember. Oh well, I'm sure I'll read it again and rediscover some of that which was lost in oblivion.

The Silmarillion 1

I’ve been reading the Silmarillion for nearly a week already, but I’ve been negligent in updating this blog. This book is wonderful in a variety of ways. It’s not suspenseful (perhaps because I’ve read it so many times) but I enjoy it richly. It’s like savoring a chocolate cake, whereas reading suspenseful books is more like devouring addictive candy. I learned a couple of new words, though the only one I remember right now is firth, which means coastal waters, a strait, or a smaller inlet.

Mom asked me why I enjoyed reading this book. I told her that it was like being able to read a long-term history in which you can see many of the motives that end up influencing the events. You can also see how the choices of individuals can make a large difference. That’s what I told her, but I left out a lot. I also really enjoy the epic feel of it—the famous places, the legendary artifacts, the heroic characters. I can imagine how it would be to live in this world and hear about these things.

One aspect of plots that I really enjoy is when there is a tragic fate that is doomed to happen. In the Silmarillion, the elves are doomed to wane in power as a result of their choices regarding the silmarils and the way they left the halls of Valinor. And yet their fate isn’t ultimately tragic. If it were, I wouldn’t enjoy the plot nearly as much. Perhaps I enjoy this because of the way that it parallels reality. The sin of our first parents in the garden of Eden doomed humanity to many evils, and yet I believe that ultimately it is for the glory of God, and we can rejoice in being used to correct these evils.

Another aspect I like is the nostalgia of the elves. Unlike men who have short lives, the elves have a long memory and thus they seem to spend the majority of their time fondly recalling times past. In Valinor, they are nostalgic about their awakening under the stars and their initial wonder at the world. In Beleriand, they recall the halls of Valinor with fondness. Later, they remember the peak of elven power in Beleriand and the many great wonders that were destroyed by Morgoth. I don’t consider their nostalgia to be admirable, but as I myself am prone to it, I am moved when I read about it.

Arcane (The Arinthian Line 1)

The beginning of this book was much more palatable than that of the others. The main character is an orphan who has been treated badly, but has been taken in by a knight who taught him to read as well as many other things. The boy is bullied and has no friends, but the knight invests in him so he has a purpose in life. Then a terrible army comes to his village and destroys it, and the boy escapes. A woman finds him and tells him she can teach him magic. Up to this point I felt like it was a good story that could develop into an epic, but from here the boy's behavior and thoughts become more juvenile, and he soon meets some other children who are even more juvenile. The boy is supposedly 14 (maybe 13?), and he meets another boy who is older than him. The other boy constantly teases him from the start, and some of the teasing takes the form of parroting. Are they first-graders? That's hardly teenage behavior. Given this is early in the books, I would normally stick it out, but I realized that this is supposed to be a YA series, meaning the characters probably won't grow up very soon. I haven't returned the book yet, but I'm doubtful that I can read much farther if I give it another chance.

The Dark Citadel

I read this last night and yet I hardly can remember it. In half an hour's reading I went through the perspectives of three characters who were far removed from one another. None of them were interesting, although I do remember rolling my eyes at the stupidity of the young boy I believed would become the main character. His baby sister was adopted by a merchant family to whom he belonged as a slave. When he is given the chance to escape, he tries to take his sister with her, even though she is clearly loved and cared for, while he will become a fugitive. This sort of reasoning might be expected from a younger child, but the boy is a teenager. He himself comes to the realization that he should leave his sister, but only as he is caught trying to take her.

This book used many terms from the Islamic world--pasha, khalif, dinar, etc. They bothered me because they were so wholesale-imported from our world. Perhaps if I had continued the books I would have gotten used to it, but the characters were uninteresting, and I had no curiosity to discover how the plot would develop, so I dropped this series too.

The Keeper Chronicles

The Keeper Chronicles starts out somewhat mysteriously as the main character encounters many ghosts as he returns to where the keepers live. Curiosity drove my reading, to find out what he had done, why he was haunted, why he had unwillingly returned. He was looking for an antidote but he can't seem to find it. At every step he reflects on his overwhelming guilt, regret, and longing to return to his life of a year ago when his beloved was alive and healthy. About half an hour in, I barely knew anything about this character except that he was a keeper and that he was deeply attached to his wife, so deeply that he committed great atrocities (which were skimmed over, but definitely did not endear him to me) so that she would not die of a snake's poison. My disgust and detachment overcame my curiosity and returned the book.

Cradle Books 2-6

I read these books a few days ago so my impressions are a bit stale, but I have a lot to say about them, or at least I did.

My classification of the books as plot-based did not need to change at all through the series. The characters have enough quirks to be distinctive, but they're not really deep. I like at least a little bit of romance, and given that the main character is male and his companion is female, it only makes sense for this to come up. But the closest it comes to this is a ship-tease, where for half a paragraph or so the woman notices how close the man is or something like that and her cheeks warm up. Seriously, there is no examination of feelings whatsoever. The man is even worse--from his point of view, the only hint of him having any romantic inclinations whatsoever are when he sees women under-dressed and gets embarrassed. It's unrealistic in my opinion, but it's hardly the only thing. But it is kind of nice that such a fantasy series exists when so many modern fantasy series are obsessed with sex and even sexual deviancy.

The writing is quite good. It gives enough details that to avoid both the cold, empty environments of that fanfiction writer ShayneT and the plodding pace of most high fantasy novels. Although, to be honest, I do skim the battle sections because they tend to have more detail than I like.

If I could sum up these books in a sentence, I would call them “An RPG/fighting game converted as well as possible into a book series”. Furthermore, I think they would make a great video game if anyone decided to do that adaptation. There is very little that happens in the book which isn’t fighting, training, or planning to fight or train, or being subjected to the will of someone thereby leading to fighting. I found myself constantly amazed at the author’s continuing escalation of conflict. The main character starts at the bottom of the power totem pole, but by the end of the sixth book he is (apparently) practically a god compared to the people who pushed him around growing up. Throughout the series he is constantly making (stronger and stronger) bitter enemies who are defeated sooner or later. It gets a little old.

In conclusion, this is an exciting series that worked well as a time killer, but I don’t expect to remember any details in a year. Which might be nice—maybe I’ll be able to enjoy it a second time just because it was so unmemorable.

Second Japanese Reader 4 and Unsouled

I finished the Second Japanese Reader. The final stories were both weird. There was a nice old man who heard a couple of mice doing sumo in the forest, and recognized one of them, a skinny one, as the mouse who lived at his house. As the old man was poor, the mouse was lean from lack of food, and was easily defeated by the fat mouse who apparently lived at a rich neighbor's house. Wanting to help his mouse, the old man asked his wife to make mochi and leave it near a mouse hole. The next day, the mochi was gone and the old man went to the forest to see the sumo.This time his mouse was always the winner. When the fat mouse expressed his frustration, the lean mouse explained that the old man had left him mochi, and invited the fat mouse to come to the house and eat mochi as well. The old man asked his wife again to make mochi, which disappeared overnight and some gold coins were left in its place, apparently the fat mouse's gratitude. The old man and his wife lived very happily for the rest of their lives on these gold coins.

In the last tale a man dropped his large rice ball at the top of a hill, and it rolled into a mouse hole. The mouse popped out and said thanks and invited him to visit the world of mice. The man agreed, and as instructed he grabbed the mouse's tail and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was in the mouse hole, which was very luxurious. He ate mochi until he thought he might burst, and took home some leftovers. He apparently told his story to the neighbors because one wicked man came to the mouse hole and threw his rice ball into the hole. When a mouse came out the wicked man immediately grabbed its tail and closed his eyes. When he opened them he was in the mouse world, and wanting to take as much as he could, he made the sound of a cat and all the mice fled. After grabbing what he wanted, he tried to leave the mouse world, but ended up wandering in darkness eternally.

Next, I picked up a fantasy book called Unsouled, the first in a seven(?) book series. The first quarter was rather difficult to get through, as many unfamiliar terms are used. Usually a fantasy book starts out in a place where life is mostly comprehensible to the reader, and moves to places that are more foreign. For example, starting in Hobbiton and moving to Lothlorien. But this book is bizarre from the beginning. I can only think of one other book that throws you in a foreign culture so deeply: Ursula LeGuin's the Tombs of Atuan.

Anyway, it's about a boy who is "Unsouled", which means that he has a spiritual deformity that makes him unable to get stronger. In a society where power and position determines everything you can achieve in life, he is the lowest of the low. The first third of the book was a bit difficult to get through because it's about how much he struggles for every scrap and suffers much humiliation. He learns a technique that allows him to disrupt the spiritual power of others by hitting them in just the right place. When a god-like man descends upon his village, kills his mother, and prepares to destroy all of his clan's warriors, the boy tries the technique, despite knowing that he will fail. The technique isn't effective with such a power gap, and the boy is immediately killed, but an angel sees what happens and gives him another chance at life and a path that will change his destiny. With this path in mind the boy, whose name is Lindon, uses trickery to enter a school. From there he seeks out the person that will be able to take him out of the valley, where he will have a chance at finally gaining power.

The concept of "advancing" in clear stages sounds so much like a video game that it was a bit off-putting at first, but I got used to it. In fact, training and advancement are more or less the key themes of the book, which makes it sound like it will be boring but so far it hasn't been at all. Until the last quarter of the book, it wasn't terribly suspenseful, but there was constantly a goal in mind or a development to understand, and that kept me reading until I finished it. The characters don't have any particularly interesting qualities, and the world, while foreign, doesn't have any kind of enchantment to it that makes the discovery an end to the reading. In fact the valley dwellers know nothing of the outside world, so readers also by the end of the first book have only seen a few short glimpses of the world outside. So this is very much a plot-driven book in my opinion.

Carthage 7

It was interesting to me that Italy was called Graecia Magna at this time, so it seems that a lot of future Romans considered themselves Greek. Anyway, seventy years after the disastrous defeat on Sicily, the grandson of the leader of that terrible campaign (his name was Hannibal) returned to interfere in Sicilian affairs, sacking a city that was threatening one of theirs. This set off a horrendous retaliation by Syracuse, in which one of the oldest and most important Punic cities in Sicily was utterly destroyed and never rebuilt, despite its great location. Hannibal tried to take revenge and died because of the plague during a siege. A lot of the Punic cities then became military outposts, and there were battles for many years on Sicily without either side gaining decisive advantage. Eventually the western part of Sicily was more or less acknowledged as Punic territory, but the toll was immense and the wars and brought many mercenaries to the island, which caused a lot of trouble.

Then suddenly Alexander the Great appeared on the scene and conquered all the way to Pakistan in just 12 years. He razed the mother city of Tyre, including the great temple of Melquart, and all Tyrians were either killed or made slaves. Reports made his next target the city of Carthage, but fortunately for the Carthaginians, he died before embarking on his next campaign.

I was struck by how frequently the author seemed to criticize the Syracusans and emphasize their brutality, and yet downplay that of the Carthaginians. The author often reiterates that the sources for these events are Greeks or Sicilians who bore a grudge or at least prejudice against the Carthaginians, but I wonder if the author isn't pushing back against that bias a little too strongly.

Carthage 6

There are a lot of myths about Heracles. Despite the later antipathy between the Romans and Carthaginians, the author heavyhandedly suggests (based on some evidence) that the Romans were strongly influenced by the Carthaginians. At one point the Carthaginians felt threatened by Syracuse though, so the moved to set their man in leadership there, but suffered crushing defeat. Strangely, the man who led the army during this crushing defeat seems to have been very popular even afterward. Also, it doesn't seem to have affected Punic economy much. Why would that have happened? It doesn't make sense to me.

Second Japanese Reader 3 and Carthage 5

The next Japanese fairy tale was about the inch-tall samurai. It starts like Tom Thumb or Momotarou(?)--a childless couple wish very hard for a child. Eventually they find a very tiny child. He gets older, but he never grows, and acquires the name of the inch-tall samurai. When he is an adult, he goes to work for a nobleman protecting his daughter. One day the daughter is kidnapped and the inch-tall samurai saves her. For some reason he gets to make a wish, which he does, and he becomes normal-sized and marries the nobleman's daughter.

As you would expect of a people that interacted with many other nations, the Carthaginians had a syncretic culture. We can see this from their art, which incorporates Greek and middle eastern art traditions into the same piece. The punic god Melquart seems to have been frequently conflated with Heracles. In the sixth century the Carthaginians made an agreement with Rome, as they probably did with many nations, but it was preserved because considering Rome's minor power at that time, it was an important recognition of their status. I was surprised to learn that Egyptians had already circumnavigated the continent of Africa at this time. The Carthaginians also seem to have made an effort there, and the account of one explorer is believed to show that they reached the Gambia, although they probably didn't settle that far away from their home.

Second Japanese Reader 2 and Carthage 4

I finished the story of Urashima Tarou. After what feels like a year in the dragon's palace, Tarou suddenly remembers his mother and his hometown and becomes homesick. He tells the princess that he must return home. She is sad, but gives him a box (玉手箱) and tells him never to open it, and that as long as he keeps it closed, he won't age. Tarou returns to his hometown but he doesn't recognize anything. He goes to his home, but there is only grass, and no one has even heard of him. He finally encounters an old man who (conveniently) knows that Urashima Tarou disappeared into the sea three hundred years earlier. At a loss, Tarou sits on the beach, and then decides to open the box. Smoke comes out, in which he is delighted to be able to rewatch all the wonderful moments he enjoyed in the dragon palace. When all the smoke is gone, though, he becomes a wizened old man with a beard. Did he die? I don't know.

Apparently this 玉手箱 is the Japanese translation of Pandora's box, which is easy to see. I don't think this story has a moral, but it was interesting to think about, because if so it's about the evils of nostalgia. Tarou thinks that he can return home, but when he gets there he finds that everything is different. So then he spends the rest of his life remembering the good times in the dragon's palace. Does this mean that I should choose a nice place to live and never return to my family? Hahah.

I also read a story about an old man who really loved sakura. He would stop his farm work every year during the cherry blossom season and spend all day watching one particular cherry tree. He even collected all the fallen petals and buried them at the base of the tree. Eventually he became old and realized that he would die soon, but he told his grandson that he would like to see the cherry blossoms one more time. The grandson starts to reply that there's nothing to be done since it's the middle of February, but instead he runs out to his grandfather's beloved sakura tree and prays it to bloom. The grandson loses consciousness in the night due to the cold, but then he awakes from a mysterious warmth and looks up to see cherry blossoms. He returns to the tree with his grandfather, who cries from joy. He declares it the most beautiful sakura he has ever seen, and dies happily. Ever since then, that sakura tree blossoms on February 16th.

Back in "Carthage Must Be Destroyed", Assyria tightened its grip on Tyre and absorbed some of its subordinates like Sidon, but permitted it to be independent (if only in name) for the sake of trade efficacy. But then the value of silver dropped because of oversupply, and the Babylonians showed up and absorbed Tyre. This allowed Carthage to become great, not having to compete with its parent state.

There are some myths about the founding of Carthage, but they sound very dramatically Greek and are unlikely to be true. What we know (as far as we can know) is that Carthage grew rapidly. At first it imported food from other parts of the Mediterranean, such as Sardinia, but eventually it expanded and cultivated its own farmland. Carthage was oligarchic, with one noble family typically ruling with the support of a council of nobles. The ruling family apparently wasn't dynastic and changed many times.

The author spent an exorbitant amount of time considering the topic of child sacrifices. The Canaanites are mentioned in the Bible as making child sacrifices to molech. The children were burned in a place called a tophet, which is also used as a simile for hell in the Bible. In Tyre the evidence that survives suggests that these sacrifices were mostly stillborn or just a few months old. In Carthage however, it's not uncommon to find the remains of older children. The author posits that live child sacrifice became less popular in Phoenicia, becoming replaced by the more palatable sacrifice of already dead children or animals. In Carthage, however, the old tradition of burning live children remained strong. Despite this being a historical book, as the discussion went on it gave me a feeling of dark supernatural horror, something akin to the Cthulu in Lovecraft.

Second Japanese Reader 1 and Clockwork 1

I started yesterday's reading with a Japanese reader that was supposedly at JLPT level 4, which is either wrong or very humbling. The story I started was Urashima Tarou, a famous Japanese fairy tale that I have heard before at least in summary but I couldn't remember it. The eponymous character saves a turtle from being tortured by some boys, and later the turtle comes back and takes Tarou to the palace of the dragon king (竜宮). There he meets a beautiful princess (乙姫), takes part in a feast, and enjoys himself very much.

This was probably eight pages worth of story, after which I was tired. Also I was trying to read it out loud, but my voice kept giving out. I'm skeptical that the book is at JLPT level four because both of the words written in Japanese above are extremely rare and yet not proper nouns, to the point that their dictionary entries specifically mentioned this story. For some reason 乙姫 was no problem, but I had no idea how to read the 宮 in 竜宮. There were a few other words that I wasn't sure of the reading, but it is true that I didn't have trouble understanding.

Next I started reading "A Clockwork Universe", which is about the start of the modern (scientific) view of the world, particularly focusing on Newton. The author had two main points in what I read: first, the 1660s were a terrible, tumultuous time to live in England, and second, nature's behavior was only seen as general rules, so things like disease, rather than having a natural explanation, were ultimately from God.

I was reminded of the filth of time period in very concrete terms. People thought baths were unhealthy. The same boats that brought fresh produce to the city returned to farms with human feces for fertilizer. A rule was made around this time that the French palace (I think?) had to be swept of human waste at least once a week. Shakespeare's globe theater had not one toilet. With all this, it's little wonder that the plague swept through London in 1665 like a curse on the wind. Then the next year brought the Great Fire of London.

While I realized that cause and effect were very poorly understood if at all, it really shocked me to hear about some of the medical remedies of the time. Bleeding people was bad, but why would anyone even consider drinking cow urine? One king was mentioned as being sick and suffering medical torture by his doctors, after which he (unsurprisingly) died all the same. I've fortunately forgotten the details, except that he was required to take sneezing powder at the same time as doing some other painful things.

The author made the claim that it was unthinkable to be an atheist at this time, but that rang false to me. I also felt like some of his metaphors were self-indulgent, and he really belabored his point that people were terrified of God, who was most likely going to send them to hell, going so far as to quote Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the hands of an angry God". I kind of want to revisit it to see if the passage wasn't taken out of context. But the author's description of the atmosphere really comes alive, and the writing is usually wonderful, and the transitions are logical and seamless. Oh, and I learned the word "hidebound", meaning inflexible or uncomprimisingly traditional.