Day 752: The Ascent of Man

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Cover for The Ascent of ManThe book The Ascent of Man is a companion piece to the 1970’s era TV series. The introduction to the book states that the series was an answer to Kenneth Clarke’s famous Civilisation, which left out the accomplishments of science. Author Jacob Bronowski was a well-known mathematician, biologist, and science historian.

Bronowski begins this book with our ape relatives and a discussion of evolution, but he really gets into his subject after man has moved from a nomadic to an agrarian lifestyle. His contention is that nomads do not have the time or energy to innovate.

The book takes us through a series of the most important discoveries for the improvement of human life and understanding. These include the combination of copper and tin to make bronze, mathematical discoveries, the Copernican system, the Scientific Revolution, and so on up to the double helix.

As the book is so obviously the script of a program, there are some frustrating times when it refers to an image that certainly appeared on TV but not in the book. On the other hand, the illustrations in the book are many and beautiful.

Of course, since the book was written in the 70’s, it is a little dated. One example is that Bronowski frequently comments on how slowly animals evolve, but I believe this idea has been reconsidered.

Because the discussion of the concepts is very brief, there were times when I felt Bronowski was implying a lot more than he described. That is, his greater understanding of the topic interferes a bit in his simple explanations. So, even though I watch a lot of science programs and usually have no trouble understanding them, I felt sometimes as if the explanations of the more difficult subjects have too much left out. Still, for someone who wants to learn basic information about important scientific discoveries up to the middle of the 20th century or is interested in the history of science, this is a good place to start.

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Day 751: The Martian Chronicles

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Cover for The Martian ChroniclesThe Martian Chronicles is an odd collection of stories about the colonization of Mars by Earth. The stories begin with an almost comic book feel, which continues with many of them, even though the message is ultimately serious, about the destructiveness of American culture. (Only Americans come to Mars.)

As with many futuristic stories, Bradbury doesn’t get it quite right, rendering them dated in these times. The stories take place beginning in 1999 and continuing for about 30 years, yet many features of the tales reflect the 50’s, when the stories were written. Of course, even the notion that Mars would be habitable for humans without space suits is a funny one for us today. Most shockingly, there is a story about all the black people leaving Southern towns for Mars, supposedly set in 2009, that is queasily stereotypical, both of the Southern whites and the African-Americans, even for the 50’s. And having shown the African-American people a modicum of sympathy in that story, Bradbury never mentions them again.

The stories begin with a series of expeditions to Mars, where the exploratory forces are killed by Martians, not because the Martians fear invasion but just sort of accidentally. The first human to Mars is murdered by a Martian in jealousy over his wife, whom the human hasn’t actually met. In fact, the Martians don’t even realize they’re being invaded. They are telepathic, but their telepathy doesn’t seem to extend to figuring out what’s going on and what a danger these people are. By the fourth story, most of the Martians have been wiped out by disease brought by the Americans. When they appear, though, the Martians seem to be residents of superior civilization to ours.

Overall, my impression of the stories is ambiguous. In many ways they seem childish, although all together they convey a powerful message. In one story that seems to be a frank indictment of McCarthyism, a wealthy man whose library on Earth was burned by government forces who have proscribed all works that aren’t realistic comes to Mars to build his own House of Usher. When government officials come to destroy it for the same reason they destroyed his library on Earth, he gets his revenge and honors Poe at the same time. It struck me that in the frontier environment Bradbury depicts, the government forces wouldn’t be that strong or present (or they would control everything, and there would be no frontier environment).

The stories are beautifully written, especially the descriptions of Martian cities and landscapes. I just think that Bradbury has more to offer us in other works, as classic as this one is. Try Fahrenheit 451 or Dandelion Wine instead.

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Day 750: The Quarry

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Cover for The QuarryThe Quarry is the third of Johan Theorin’s dark novels set on Öland, an island off the coast of Sweden. The Quarry is more of a traditional mystery than my favorite of these novels, The Darkest Room, but it does have uncanny overtones.

Gerlof is an old man who has talked his family into releasing him from a retirement home so that he can return to his cottage in Stenvik near the quarry. Nearby, in the house that belonged to his friend Ernst, is Per Mörner, who inherited the house from Ernst.

Per has just had a run-in with another neighbor, Max Larsson, who almost hit Per’s son Jesper with his car. But Per has much more to worry about. His 13-year-old daughter Nilla is in the hospital with an aggressive cancer.

Per is trying to visit the hospital, but his father Jerry keeps calling him. Although Per has kept his distance from his father, who is a notorious pornographer, he has had to help him sometimes lately since he had a stroke. Jerry has difficulty talking and no use of one arm. When Per finds his father at his studio, he has been stabbed. Upstairs the house is on fire, and he realizes there are people in the rooms that he can’t get to. He is just able to get his father and himself out and thinks he sees a man leave the property.

The police find two bodies in the house—that of Hans Bremer, Jerry’s partner, and a woman. When Per asks Jerry who stabbed him, he answers “Bremer,” which doesn’t seem possible as Bremer died upstairs in the fire. Soon, both Jerry and Per begin receiving anonymous phone calls.

As new neighbors, Max and Vendela Larsson decide to throw a party for the little enclave above the quarry. Vendela is actually a local girl whose family held some secrets, one to do with the quarry.

The mystery concerns why someone is going after people associated with Jerry’s old porn business, which Per begins to investigate. But the diaries Gerloff’s wife left behind also help solve a mystery about Vendela’s family.

If you decide to read any of Theorin’s novels, I think you’ll find them difficult to put down. He has a way of building atmosphere around the history and landscape of the island, and his characters are interesting. These novels are worth searching out.

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Day 749: Charlotte’s Web

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Cover for Charlotte's WebBelieve it or not, I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web before. I bought it for my niece’s birthday and read it quickly before I wrapped it. It’s a charming story with the bit of pathos that all children’s books should have.

Fern is devastated to learn that the runt from the latest litter of pigs is to be killed, so she begs her father to keep him. He allows her to hand-raise the piglet, and she names him Wilbur.

When Wilbur is a month old, he goes to live in a nearby farmer’s barn. After spending most of his time during the previous month playing with Fern, he is lonely, although Fern visits him often. No one in the barn seems interested in being his friend, though. After he asks each animal to be his friend, someone he has not even noticed says she will. She is Charlotte, a spider whose web is right in the doorway above his sty.

This is a delightful tale full of the smells and sights of rural life. Although the story starts with Fern, it is soon about how Charlotte and the barnyard animals try to figure a way to save Wilbur from being Christmas dinner. Although it doesn’t shy away from the basic truths of farm life, it is calm and gentle in tone and has lessons about friendship. It’s a wonderful book for reading to smaller children or one that slightly older children can read themselves. I think many modern children may envy the freedom eight-year-old Fern and her older brother Avery find in their rural life.

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Day 748: The Lily and the Lion

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Cover for The Lily and the LionBest Book of the Week!
The sixth book of Maurice Druon’s The Accursed Kings series follows the fall of Robert Artois, the prime mover in many of the events of the other five novels. It is the reign of Philippe VI, the first Valois king, so you’d think the curse of the Knights Templar against the Capet kings would be complete. But Druon points out that there is one Capet we’ve probably forgotten.

It is Robert Artois who ensures that his Valois cousin is chosen from the candidates proposed for the crown, despite the better claims of Isabella of France, the only surviving sibling of the Capet King Charles IV, for her son Edward III of England. But even though by supporting the victorious candidate Robert finally gains a peerage and property of his own, he is still obsessed by the theft of his county of Artois by his Aunt Mahaut years ago.

He hears of the existence of a copy of the will and deeds that left him the property when he was a boy. The originals were stolen and destroyed by Mahaut and her minion, Monseigneur Thierry. But the Monseigneur kept the copies to protect himself, Robert is informed by Jeanne de Divion, the Monsiegneur’s mistress. Now that he is dead, Mahaut has treated Divion so poorly that she offers to steal the papers from the Monseigneur’s office. Before she gets the opportunity to do so, however, Beatrice d’Hirson, Thierry’s niece and Mahaut’s servant, steals them for her mistress. Robert then makes the decision that will decide his fate. He decides to forge the papers.

In the meantime, Isabella and Roger Mortimer have taken the throne from Edward II for his son, but the young king is a ruler in name only. Mortimer’s abuses are just as bad as those of the previous reign perpetrated by Edward II’s favorites. In addition, Edward III hasn’t forgiven Mortimer for having his father murdered. Soon, Edward will act for himself.

As with the others in this series, this novel is packed with traitorous acts, poisonings, and other skullduggery, as well as amazingly readable historical detail. Druon peppers his tales with plenty of cynicism and sly remarks. As always, I highly recommend this series.

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Day 747: Literary Wives! The Astronaut Wives Club

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Cover for The Astronaut Wives ClubToday is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club. Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives! If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Emily of The Bookshelf of Emily J.
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors
Naomi of Consumed By Ink

* * *

The Astronaut Wives Club just plain irritated me. I don’t know why such a potentially interesting story had to be written as if it was chick lit. If I had had to read one more description of an outfit before the end of the book, I would have screamed.

The book tells the stories of the wives of the astronauts from the beginning of the space program in the 1960’s until the manned exploration program was cancelled in the early 70’s. It keeps its focus on the wives with admirable intention but sometimes unfortunate results, as its determination not to focus on their husbands’ activities, even in moments important in history, sometimes sucks any potential drama right out of the book. For example, anyone who has seen Apollo 13 knows what a stressful bunch of hours those must have been for the families. Yet, the mission gets a bare few paragraphs in the book.

Since the wives were determined to keep their family lives private and their upper lips stiff, what are we left with? Well, basically the kinds of things Life magazine wrote about in the 60’s, the glitz, the perks, the outfits, the parades, the parties. We get so little insight into the wives’ characters that well into the book, I was still unable to connect very many wives’ first names with their last names or remember which one was the pilot. Although we learn a little more about their home lives than the public did in the 60’s, for example, whose husbands were unfaithful or the pressures the wives were under from NASA to present the front of a perfect family, we still get to know very little about the individual women. I recently saw a one-hour TV program about the Apollo wives that told more about what they were feeling than this entire book did!

I believe I was also handicapped by getting an electronic copy from Netgalley that did not have any photos in it. It may have been easier for me to keep the wives apart if I could have had photos to refer to as the other Literary Wives did. All I had was the cover of the book showing the first group of wives, in such a small size that I couldn’t see their faces.

link to NetgalleyThe level of information presented sometimes reminds me of the horrors of watching Entertainment Tonight! For example, at the beginning of Chapter 8 about the parties in Houston, Koppel tells us that a society person she mentions was played by Julia Roberts in a recent movie, a completely gratuitous comment. On the other hand, Koppel is so determined not to get technical in her approach to a general audience that she describes almost nothing of the missions. In a relatively lengthy description of Apollo 8, she twice mentions a maneuver called a trans-earth injection that Susan Gorman was worried about without once explaining what it is. I would like to see this subject handled again by someone who is willing to do more research than thumbing through old Life articles.

Literary Wives logoWhat does this book say about wives or the experience of being a wife? In what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife”?

NASA pretty much defined what wives were in their concern that the astronauts’ families appear to be perfect representatives of America. This definition was strictly by the standards of the 1950’s. Wives were housewives who got up at 5 AM to make steak and eggs for their husbands’ breakfasts. The wives were expected to show support for their husbands no matter what was going on in their marriages, to ignore infidelities, and to do everything possible to keep stress away. They also weren’t supposed to show any stress during their husbands’ missions. NASA controlled them to the point of telling them what to wear before their first photo shoot.

Being a wife also had a lot to do with protecting your privacy and that of your family. This habit extended so far that Koppel didn’t really get much more out of them in her recent interviews than they were willing to say in the 50’s and 60’s.

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Day 746: Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death

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Cover for Sidney ChambersI’ve been watching the Grantchester series on Masterpiece lately, so I decided to read the first book the series is based on. Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is really a collection of six short stories. They are light cozies about a mild-mannered Anglican vicar who gets involved in mysteries. In fact, if you’ve been watching the TV series and have been bothered by the darker aspects of Sidney’s character, you will not find any evidence of them in these stories.

Just after World War II, Sidney Chambers is a vicar in the village of Grantchester and also lectures in nearby Cambridge. He is young and well-meaning, his biggest faults being a tendency to get distracted from his duties and a certain lack of organization.

The first story explains how he gets involved in detecting. After presiding at the funeral of one of his parishioners, Stephen Staunton, who apparently committed suicide, Sidney is approached by Pamela Morton.

Morton is certain that Staunton couldn’t have killed himself. However, she doesn’t want to go to the police with her doubts, because she is a married woman who was having an affair with Staunton. She tells Sidney that they were planning to run off together in the new year and asks him to discreetly make inquiries.

Sidney’s friend Inspector Geordie Keating is not happy to find Sidney making discreet inquiries. But Sidney is able to identify Staunton’s killer using clues about his taste in whiskey and a code in his datebook.

Of course, Sideny is surrounded by colorful characters, especially his crotchety housekeeper and his intellectual curate Leonard. If you like cozies, you will probably enjoy this series.

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Day 745: The Buried Giant

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Cover for The Buried GiantI thought from what I read about The Buried Giant that it was a historical novel set in the days after the Romans left Britain. But it is really a fable or a fantasy novel or both.

Axl and his wife Beatrice are an old British couple who decide to go on a journey. They have recently become aware that their memories of the past are poor, as are everyone’s, but they vaguely remember they have a son. Years ago, their son moved to another village, and Beatrice has been wanting to visit him. Finally, they decide to go.

Beatrice has difficulty remembering the way to their first stop, a Saxon village she has visited before, but they find it by evening. The village is disturbed and possibly dangerous for the visiting Britons. A boy was taken by an ogre, but a strange warrior has brought him back. The villagers have seen a bite on the boy and want to kill him. But the warrior saves the boy, named Edwin. Once Axl and Beatrice leave the village the next day, they find themselves traveling with Edwin and the warrior Wistan.

This novel features ogres, pixies, treacherous monks, a British lord on the lookout for the Saxon warrior, an Arthurian knight, and finally a dragon whose breath has made everyone forget the past. It is about reconciliation, memory, aging, and death. As a fable, it doesn’t really characterize its protagonists; they are more like symbols. As such I wasn’t really compelled by the story.

In addition, a history class I have been taking recently indicates that it is unlikely any Britons would have been mixing freely with Saxons at this time. By the time the Anglos and Saxons began settling England in earnest, all the Britons had been pushed off to far western England and Cornwall. Although this novel does not really mention which part of England they are in, I understand that Britons did not tend to mix with the Angles and Saxons.

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