<i>War and Peace</i>: Volume #1 by Leo Tolstoy

Since this is a rather long book and Tolstoy conveniently divided it into volumes, I've decided to comment on the individual volumes as I go. I can thereby keep some sort of continuum of understanding on the text.

First, though, some notes on the version I am reading---a recent translation by Anthony Briggs. Included in the appendices are three sections that have so far been invaluable to me as I read: a list and brief description of the characters, maps of the major battle areas and one to two sentence summaries of the chapters. As with most Russian novels, it is virtually impossible to keep track of the characters with the patronyms, honorifics, given names and nicknames. The list of characters is broken down by family, which is very helpful in comparison to the basic lists I've usually run across.

Any time I'm reading a book describing battles---especially 19th-century battles with detailed troop movements---the maps are essential. Finally, since so many stories are interwoven, the chapter summaries are useful in recalling earlier plot points.

Tolstoy spends the first parts of the volume introducing all of the characters in their civilian social lives. We start to understand the relations between the families---which son is planned to marry which daughter---and the current international situation: the movement of Napoleon and where the political affinities of each character lie (it is surprisingly fashionable to have sympathies for Napoleon in Russian 'society').

From the social layout, two plot lines appear to be of particular import for later in the story. The first is the legitimization of Pierre from the status of a bastard son. Through the events surrounding his father's death, he moves from being scorned to celebrated (from a bastard to a Count). Pierre goes with the flow, seeing the changes in his life and the maneuvering of Prince Vasily to get Pierre to marry his daughter. He sees this all as inevitable---despite his misgivings, he feels there is no way he can resist.

While Pierre sees destiny, Rostov and Prince Andrey instead see opportunity to distinguish themselves and change history. It seems, though, that Tolstoy does not agree with their beliefs, as both are swept in directions beyond their control. And, despite their intentions, are unable to act as they had initially planned.

The other plot line that looks like it will be a centerpiece is that of Princess Marya. The oppressiveness of her life is outlined completely---her horrible looks (except those of her eyes) and the way her father frightens her and forces her lessons. But, despite, or maybe due to, this oppressive atmosphere, she is able to resist the tide of events and decide that her marriage to Prince Anatole is not best in the grand scheme: it is better to find a way for her friend to marry Anatole.

Two battles are also completed in this volume. We see quickly that the Russians are no match for the French in the second battle---the French are better organized, more prepared and have a plan, unlike the allies (Russian and Austrian) whose plan is extremely complicated and has little support from those carrying it out. Tolstoy notes his thoughts on the plan for the battle of Austrerlitz by describing the "disposition [of troops] was very complicated and hard to understand" and "went on and on." With that description and Kutuzov sleeping through its announcement, there was no hope for the Russians.

One aspect that Tolstoy is very keen to communicate is the reverence and adoration of the Tsar, shown most clearly through Rostov. Tolstoy describes how Rostov "longed for some means of expressing his love for the Tsar." And that Rostov contemplates that if the Tsar ever spoke to him, he would "die of happiness." Tolstoy later mentions how "nine-tenths of all the men in the Russian army were in love...with their Tsar and Russian military honor." A very hard thing to consistently live up to in a time a war. I sense we are soon to see further disillusionment of soldiers as the war continues.

<i>Ender's Game</i> by Orson Scott Card

This was a really great read. I would have, I think enjoyed it even more reading it as a 13 or 14 year old. Card mentions in the introduction that many gifted kids use the book as their Bible---identifying strongly with Ender. I had trouble seeing that for myself---though maybe the 13 year-old me would have easily made that identification. Now, though, Ender seems too perfect, too young and the one story too well worn (though I really liked this retelling) for me to identify completely with Ender's point of view.

With that said, really liked the sci-fi aspects of this book. Card mentions in the introduction how he was trying to figure out how fighting would be different in space. I think Ender demonstrated that most perfectly in the idea that there is no "down" when there isn't any gravity. "Down" is toward the goal. The orientation of the entry point's ceiling and floor means nothing once you are in a weightless environment: orientation is relative to your task.

I liked how Card visualized the internet. Granted his last revision for the copy I had was in 1991, but even then, few people had any vision of how the online world would emerge and dominate. He saw it as the primary location for human discourse, with entire symposiums held online. We haven't quite reached that point yet, but we are getting there.

The battle school appears to be a necessary outcome of the time the plot is set. With 2 invasions of aliens fought off, it is expected that militarization would be required to keep them at bay---a normal human response to an external threat that we are unable to understand.

Card concludes the story with redemption---absolution given by the enemy to the humans through Ender. Ender is the one---with enough empathy, survival instincts and smarts to save the world as a tween (a young Paul Atrides, Luke Skywalker or Neo) and later redeem human kind to bring back the enemy in the name of empathy.

A well written and engaging book.

8/10

<i>Laughter in the Dark</i> by Vladamir Nabokov

Throughout the majority of the book, I thought the title referred to the start of the story, where Albinus meets Margot in the cinema. After completeing the book, though, it more obviously refers to Albinus's cuckold position later in the novel and his blindness. Though, beyond the more obvious poetic justice of a man being cukolded by his lover after leave his wife, it may also reference how the relationship began in the dark and tended to stay that way for Albinus.

There were two parts to this story that I particularly liked: the first few and the last few sentences. The first few reminded me of How to Read a Book (in which I checked and found no reference to it), in that it gives us the whole story in two sentence, but concludes by noting:

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

The last few sentences describe the last scene in terms of stage directions, which is very effective since the beginning of the chapter was told from Albinus's blind point of view. since we are seeing with him, we have a limited understanding of the room and the actions within it. With the stage directions, we get to see the results of the last actions, giving us a better understanding of how Albinus, Margot and the room interacted.

The story, overall, was very good, though I am generally frustrated by stories where people seemingly effortlessly remove themselves from long held relationships. I find the section where Albinus was blind and the conclusion of the story to be a bit rushed after the long set up between Rex and Margot.

Rex was a despicable character---pretty much a conman who can draw. His amiability for life, seen most easily in how he teases Albinus, was very amusing to watch, but painful to think about in reference to Albinus.

The sympathies of this story are reverse to those in Lolieta. To HH, one is more sympathetic at the start, but less sympathetic later in the book. Here, as Albinus is planning his infidelity, I was must less sympathetic as his actions were rather pathetic. But, as Rex and Margot start conning him and he becomes blind, my sympathies for him increased greatly.

A very good read.

8/10

<i>Men, Machines and Modern Times</i> by Elting E. Morison

Dave gave me this one.

Come to find out, Elting Morison started th STS (Science, Technology and Society) program at MIT. You can see that interest in his writing. There are 8 essays in this book, which address some questions on innovation.

My favorite essays focused on the mechanical. Morison includes two essays on computers, but like many thoughts on computers they don't age well. It may be due to thoughts that are generally had regarding any new technology are very optimistic at the outset---"none of the processes involved in human creativity appear to lie beyond the reach of computers" (I'm not an AI person, but I think that we don't say that with certainty now)---then it is slowly determined that the problem is much more complicated than originally thought.

But, back to the mechanical. These essays are about men (all the examples were of men) who were able to create---as Clayton Christenson would say---disruptive innovation in their respective fields. Morison puts this down to a type of personality more than anything else. In the case of the naval gun site, the man (Sims) who faced the change

was moved...in part by rebellion against tedium, against inefficiency from on high, and against the artificial limitations placed on his actions by the social structure

He gives other similar examples related to the expansion of the use of the Bessemer process in the use.

Morison aims, though, not to say that we should all fight our hierarchies (despite the fact I really want someone to give me permission to do so), but

that in a world such as ours, new ways to do things [are] standard operating procedure and that we had all better realize it and become an adaptive society before we [are] shaken apart or disintegrated under the strain produced by our blind resistances.

But within this we have to beware of our

mechanical triumph...produc[ing] a mechanical atmosphere we can't stand...the design of our technology must take into greater account our interior needs."

One note on an essay included here, but does no easily fall into either of the two categories above. This one was on bureaucracy and described it quite wall as a state reached due to years and years of refinements put into place with the best intentions, but never reconsidered---"it is easy to make a regulation than to abolish it." As a result, organizations are "highly dependent upon outside stimuli to force changes...Everyone inside is too committed to the special world." All due to the order we try to apply to the chaos we see around us.

A very good read---minus the essays on computers.

7/10

<i>Peyton Place</i> by Grace Metalious

This reminded me, very much, of a cleaned up version of The Beans of Egypt Maine. The Beans, though, was written from the perspective of the "shack dwellers," where this was written from that of the townspeople. I also agree with the Introduction to Peyton Place that the Beans are more caricatures of individuals, whereas Metalious's characters are more dimensional and believable.

Metalious writes very well about northern small town New England. The descriptions of the of the people and places ring true and are not forced. I was frustrated, somewhat, by the rather prosaic descriptions of Indian Summer, which occurred at least twice and was functioning almost exclusively as a metaphor (not quite as bad, though, as Wolfe's "island fortress"). Generally, though, she captured the color well and I enjoyed reading.

I was put out of place a bit by the year the book was set. I kept thinking it was set around the time the book was written (mid-1950's) instead of about 15 years before. The war seemed out of place due to that. And the times when the years were identified ("Class of 1939") it stood out to me like a sore thumb. I think Metalious could have gotten away with setting the book in some undefined and undefinable time.

As with most books that ere once banned or considered deviant, now the idea seems quaint. I think I've read modern "teen" books with more sex and "shocking" behavior in them. I suppose, though, the more shocking idea is the extent to which the characters kept up appearances and took the mantra "live and let live" to the extremes. The realization to the reader was that even polite, idyllic small-town society has its secrets and often they are kept by the whole town.

As a former and probably future resident of small-town New England, I found the characters quite believable and the secrets very true. Overall, a good read. Well paced and written.

8/10

<i>Mindless Eating</i> by Brian Wansink

I read about this book somewhere online. Wansink is a food researcher and completes experiments to asses what effects how much and what we eat. The food labs he uses include the standard one-way glass and a full service restaurant on campus.

It is very sobering to see how much influence advertising has on us. I suppose it shouldn't be much of a surprise, since modern advertising has been figuring out these things for a number of years. Wansink gives a number of examples of this: printing the number of servings in large text a package contains causes us to eat less; having an emotion tie to a food influences us like it that much more; etc. He used his lab to prove these and a number of other behaviors that modern humans have with food---a serving is how much we have in front of us (proved, in part, by an experiment with a never-ending soup bowl; that would've been an awesome Course 2 UROP).

Wansik outlines a diet based on this research. The idea is to generally reduce the amount you eat---not drastically, but by only 100 calories a day (i.e. if you normally eat 2100 calories a day, aiming for 2000), otherwise you fell hungry or deprived---to slowly lose weight. Since thought the eating behavior you develop becomes a habit over time, you tend to keep the weight off that is lost in this manner. The goal: mindless weight loss.

The strategies are basic: split big meals; pick two: dessert, drink or appetizer; keep food out of sight and distant from you; use smaller plates; don't eat straight from the bag. I like the advice a lot, as it doesn't tell you: "NO! Don't eat THAT!" You don't have to feel deprived, you just need to adjust your habits slightly to lose weight over th long term.

This book was interesting for three reasons: (1) it offers reasonable advice for a better diet; (2) it explains (at least partly) why we tend to overeat; (3) it includes some great annecdotes about the results of studies completed in Wansink's food labs. An educational, quick read.

8/10

<i>Father and Son</i> by Edmund Gosse

Back almost a year ago when Slate.com had its series of articles about memoirs, this book was mentioned as a first in its genre: the "tell all" memoir . First, this is a tell all by Victorian standards. So, don't go reading it expecting to find tales of lurid sexual affairs or the exposure of wrists or ankles. It is a tell all more in the terms of feelings and relationships---equally as repressed as sex during that time period.

Second, despite being a "significant" book in the history of literature, it is very good.

Gosse recounts his youth. Since much of his youth was spent only with his father---his mother died of cancer when he was six---it is mostly about his relationship with his father and his relationship with religion. His mother and father were strict Plymouth style Puritans. His father often preached the good word, but he would often be found in his study working on his day job as a naturalist.

In one very interesting part of the book Gosse describes the difficulty his father went through when first encountering the ideas of Charles Darwin. Since his father was, at very least, observant about nature (he drew, painted and cataloged it for many books), Gosse describes (and imagines) his father's final decision to promote a creationist style view as very difficult. Once, though, the decision was made, his father never looked back, even going so far as to write a book about God's role in geological formations, despite geology being far outside his ken.

Another dramatic part of the book is Gosse's baptism. Part of the Puritan belief is that one can only be baptized once one is an adult. Gosse's father convinced his congregation that his son was so advanced in spirit that they must baptize him despite him only being around ten years old. Gosse, at this point, was very enthusiastic about his religion---even to the point of smugness---despite not believing in the same idea of god that his father saw. This belief goes back to a much younger time: Gosse tested the idea of a vengeful god by putting another god before him. One afternoon, around the age of five, while his parents were out, Gosse said his usual daily prayer to a chair---replace all the "Oh Lords" with "Oh Chair" (a very comical scene). Since nothing horrible happened, he concluded that the vengeful god of his father's mind was not the correct understanding of god.

This difference of interpretation widens then contracts throughout Gosse's boyhood. By the end, though, Gosse has moved to London to study and finds his father's intense interest in his son's soul stifling. Their relationship breaks a part.

The story of Gosse's young life and relationship with his parents is wonderfully told. He describes his younger days without raging sentimentality. He is sober when describing his mother's illness and death, but still brings out some of the small charms that occur during such life-changing events (Gosse at age six reading his mother poetry). The writing is clear, witty and engaging. Well recommended.

9/10