Books and Things

Because the world will be oh so very interested, and because I don't particularly have anything else to talk about just now (but this blogging thing is still new and I feel like writing just for the newness of it), here are some lists of things, in various media, that I've been messing around with lately.

Books I Am Currently Reading:

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Everyone is reading, or has read this, it seems, and now there's the PBS miniseries. A brewing cottage industry about one theory of ultimate answers. I love the concept, but think that Prof. Diamond pushes way too hard sometimes, like for example the development of technology section--I just don't buy the idea that geography alone determined who invented such a crucial technology as writing. Maybe he's right that any civilization might have eventually invented it, given enough time, but the plain truth is that such an invention was a very, very difficult thing indeed, and that only two civilizations did invent it (the rest absorbed it through diffusion). They got there first; and while it's impossible to guess how many more thousands of years might have passed before some other civilization came up with it, I have a hunch it would have been a very long time indeed. Somewhere in this whole equation we simply have to leave room for the idea that someone (with, yes, the right set of environmental circumstances, etc.) was simply very clever indeed.

United States by Gore Vidal. Yeah, that's right, I'm a liberal, and right proud of it. And Vidal is one of those essential gadflies every culture needs--particularly when the culture looks and sounds like ours. And while I certainly don't march in lockstep with Vidal (his argument for Timothy McVeigh still baffles me, even after reading the article thoroughly), on the whole his arguments against America's misabuses of power through every presidential administration make for essential reading no matter what your political viewpoint. He also has some valuable things to say about the "bookchat" crowd, literary academics who create nothing but instead talk endlessly about books and how clever they are for being able to read and understand them. Much as I am doing here, come to think of it...

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I'm the first to admit that poetry is not my forte, which is why I've been reading this book since before I left Chicago, almost three years ago. A poem or two at a time, in drips and drabs, every now and then; and currently it's at the bottom of the pile and hasn't been touched in a while. But when I do open it up, and make the effort to get into the poems, there's no dispute: pure brilliance. Whitman had a one-of-a-kind vision of a beautifully interconnected everything, and every time I read his work I feel a part of the world in ways the world usually discourages.

London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd. Yeah, that's right, I'm an Anglophile. So this book should be right up my alley: an extensive look at the history of a city I love, by a very good writer. Trouble is, I don't know the city well enough, I don't have its geography down nearly well enough, so that everything Ackroyd writes about seems to be out of context. Thus I've never really been drawn in, and this is another book that I only dip into irregularly. It might be great to take this along on a long trip to London, but as it stands I just find it frustrating.

My Life by Bill Clinton. Yeah, that's right, I'm a lib--oh wait, I covered that already. Gore Vidal is right, and there were abuses of power under Clinton that leave me unsettled--the policy of "extraordinary rendition" began under his watch, it must be noted. Still, I've always loved the man, practically from the first moment. He shares my birthday, he's a deep-rooted Southerner who was never comfortable with the South's racism and intolerance while still loving the South's generosity and good humor. I've always believed that Clinton's heart was in the right place even when petty human crap got in the way of the better angels of his nature, and his mistakes were usually the human kind that I find easy to forgive. (Put it this way: when the current administration lies, thousands of people die. This I cannot forgive.) Clinton is no prose stylist, but the tone of the book is comfortably conversational, and while I'm only a hundred pages in, I've been enjoying the book a lot.

Five books at once. Can you say "short attention span"? There are also magazines, online magazines, newspapers, comic books, etc. I read a lot. And this is already long enough, so any discussion of other media will just have to wait. I'm sure you're heartbroken.