Oooh, I remember what I wanted to tell you.

[electricland]

I read Beyond Fate by Margaret Visser on the plane, and it is amazing... short (based on a set of lectures) but powerful exploration of fate, spatial metaphors and their influence on how we think and speak, honour/shame/vengeance vs. guilt/forgiveness, the nature of heroism, the inherent flaws in dualist thinking, individualism, transcendence, and love.

A little hard to encapsulate, but I can't recommend it highly enough.

Believe it or not I originally started this journal to keep track of the books I was reading... haven't done that so much lately, so here's what else I've been up to:

Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond. Fascinating -- took me a little time to get into it, but well worth it. Basically attempts to answer the question of why some societies developed at faster rates than others (e.g., why Europeans went out and conquered the Americas rather than vice versa), synthesizing physical and environmental geography, biology, paleontology, anthropology and a bunch of other ologies. Worth reading if you're a science fiction fan as well -- many implications for planet-building.

Muddling Through in Madagascar, Dervla Murphy (author of Full Tilt: From Ireland to India with a Bicycle). Also excellent, although her books do tend to make me feel like a rather unadventurous traveller.

And others. Must try and keep better track. Interesting, I seem to be reading much more non-fiction these days than I used to.

Comments

Re: Three Times!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Well I've been circling around it for quite some time now... ever since it came out, in fact. I had even started it a couple of times in the store and put it down as way too dense.

But it got pretty engrossing pretty fast. And the train trip helped, of course.

Re: Three Times!

[thebitterguy]

It was just that I had it from the library. And I could never renew it, because it was always on wait for someone else, and it was SO DENSE at the beginnning. Ich.

But, yes, great book.