For some unclear reason, I've spent several months barely touching a book.

Now apparently my brain is trying to make up for it. In the past 4 days I've read 4 novels. What's more worrying is that once I started each of them, I basically couldn't do anything else until I'd finished it.

They were all good and enjoyable books (2 by mizkit and 2 by autopope, as it happens), but they weren't of the gripping-thriller variety that would normally have that kind of effect. I think it really must be something in my brain trying to make up for lost reading time.

...I hope it stops doing that. I want to go back to reading books, but at a normal pace -- i.e. one that allows me to do other stuff too.

I have read a book.

Normally, this wouldn't be noteworthy, but for a combination of fuzzy and mostly unclear reasons I hadn't actually read any books since last Christmas -- and in fact, I'd only read 2 books in all since November. I think that's a record for me since probably age 5. (Not that I didn't read anything: just not books).

I hope that this fact is a sign that my generally uninspired and "flat" mood is changing. I'm getting really rather tired with it.

Oh -- the book was Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions, and it was quite good :-)

I'm reading the Gutenberg edition of Darwin's Origin of the Species, which is a fascinating book in various ways, but one of the things the struck me most is what a complete geek the man was!

Here is one quote, which is representative of very many similar instances in the work:

"I took in February three table-spoonfuls of mud from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little pond; this mud when dry weighed only 6¾ ounces; I kept it covered up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it grew; the plants were of many kinds, and were altogether 537 in number; and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup!"

(The context is the possibility of water flora spreading geographically by being attached to wading birds' feet.)

Apart from this, one of the most impressive things is how good, detailed and supported his theory is, considering that he had not the faintest clue of the means by which inheritance worked -- only that it did work.

(In other news, anxiety still pretty bad this morning, though it may be improving slightly now. But I have started the fluoxetine last night, so I am confident it will improve tomorrow, and if not, the next day. Which is early compared to general advice, but would fit my previous experience -- and if it's placebo, I don't have a problem with that! :-) )

I'm reading Pema Chödrön's The places that scare you, and tonight I just read the chapter where she talks about the Heart Sutra -- the one that goes "form is emptiness, emptiness is form". It is almost certainly the most famous of the "Perfection of Wisdom" sutras, and also the only one I know pretty much by heart (because it is short, and because it is recited -- in English -- as part of the standard puja in the FWBO). And she managed to turn my understanding of one element of it around.

The teaching in this sutra is not given directly by the Buddha, but by the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara -- the Buddha simply approves his teaching at the end. (This is not uncommon in the sutras.) He gives the teaching as an answer to Shariputra, one of the principal disciples of the Buddha.

Now, what I always took as "the" explanation of this format is that it's a Mahayana device for showing their own superiority compared to other sects (called disparagingly "Hinayana"). Shariputra is an arhat, cast as the "ideal" of the Hinayana -- which is considered a limited, inferior ideal by the Mahayana. Avalokiteshvara, as a bodhisattva, represents the Mahayana ideal. In this sutra (as in others that follow a similar model, and commonly feature Shariputra) the representative of the Mahayana is shown as "winning" over the representative of the Hinayana -- demonstrating a fuller, more perfect understanding of the dharma.

And this is almost certainly the historical truth about these sutras -- the "source criticism" truth, aware of the specific context in which the text was produced as part of an ongoing "debate". What Pema Chödrön says does not contradict this -- it just takes it from a completely different angle, and gives the device an intrinsic meaning, which may or may not have been intended by the author(s), but which makes perfect sense and is perfectly orthodox, and which I really like :-)

"Then [...] Shariputra began to question Avalokiteshvara. This is an important point. Even though a great bodhisattva was teaching and the Buddha was clearly in charge, the profound meaning emerged only through questioning. Nothing was taken complacently or on blind faith.

"Shariputra is a role model for us as students. He wasn't willing just to accept what he heard; he wanted to know for himself what was true."

Wow. Yes. Turn Shariputra into a role model. Now that's a perspective I would never have thought of -- because I was quite content to stop at the historical explanation. A little knowledge... :-D

(Oh, and just in case, I should add that Pema Chödrön is a representative of a Mahayana school[1] -- she's not trying to rescue Shariputra for sectarian purposes...)

And even before she gets to that, she tells

"the story of Krishnamurti, who was raised to be the avatar by the Theosophists. The elders continually told the other students that when the avatar manifested fully, his teachings would be electrifying and revolutionary, shaking up the very foundations of their beliefs. This turned out to be true, but not quite in the way they had imagined. When Krishnamurti finally became head of the Order of the Star, he called the whole society together and officially disbanded it, saying that it was harmful because it gave them too much ground."

Which is a coolness in itself, and is also quite like something that happens in the mythical Book 2 that comes after my WIR... always nice to see that the stuff you've made up from whole cloth for fantasy people has actually happened before to real live people :-) [2]

And of course then she goes on to discuss the actual content of the Heart Sutra -- about emptiness, groundlessness, fearlessness. And that's pretty good too. I think I could fruitfully spend a few months reflecting on this particular chapter of this book. Such a good find. I am very happy.


[1] Ok, Vajrayana really. But for these purposes, Vajrayana is to be classed with Mahayana rather than with Hinayana. Just trust me :-)

[2] The reason she tells it is that in her opinion the teaching of the Heart Sutra was a very similar experience for the Buddha's students. Which is not completely unrelated to the fact that this sutra can be considered a bit like the manifesto of the Mahayana...

Another review I just posted on LibraryThing

Robert Temple, Netherworld: Discovering the oracle of the dead and ancient techniques of foretelling the future.

The author is a cookie, but of the benign variety. The book actually includes some interesting primary source material, especially in the first part about ancient Mediterranean oracles -- the most interesting being the author's own visits to the oracular cave in Baia (Italy). The collection of writings on divination by ancient authors like Pliny (and other, less famous ones) is also interesting.

Unfortunately any original conclusions or extrapolations by the author are to be treated as wild speculation, since he seems to lack any ability to approach his sources critically -- or rather, he seems to lose that ability when the extrapolation goes in a direction that he finds fascinating.

At some point in the course of the book, I gave up howling and screeching at him every half page and started becoming amused instead, and this did improve the reading experience.

The second half of the book is cookier. It starts out with Chinese oracles (bones/tortoise shells and the I Ching), gets entranced with the fact that the I Ching, based on a binary system of whole or broken lines, is -- wait for it -- BINARY!!! But the binary system was only discovered in the West by Leibniz in the 17th century!!! (Not discovered, invented. And binary notation is not the same as binary arithmetic: the I Ching is not binary arithmetic. Sorry Mr Temple -- Ed.)

From here he moves on to hexagons, which he seems to find really exciting. After explaining in detail how they are the most economical way of filling a plane, he then proceeds to find it nothing short of miraculous that so many things that need to cover a surface actually and in the real world do so with hexagons. From two-dimensional hexagons he goes on to "economical" solids, which are related to hexagons!!! (And in those cases where they aren't, it is possible to work out hexagons one way or another by combining selected faces. Or at the very least they will be found to contain 60-degree angles somewhere). This all seems to have deep and portentous significance. There's a longish section where every sentence that contains the word "hexagon" seems to end in an exclamation mark.

Also notable is the "they also laughed at Hoyle and Wickramasinghe" part, if nothing else as a true piece of cookie bravura. (This is in connection to comets predicting plague and other disasters. According to the author, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe clearly "demonstrated" that viruses come on Earth from space via cometary debris -- which is also the origin of life on Earth -- and so comets did predict plagues. Even so, he kind of forgets to explain about the other disasters, but hey.)

In his favour, the author is a kook but not a crook: he comes across as honest and genuinely enthusiastic, which can be endearing and makes the book easier to read -- just a bit lacking in the critical-approach department.

In conclusion: the book collects some interesting facts, but does so under wildly speculative theories that really don't stand up, sorry. Worth having a look at if you have an interest in one of the specific areas he touches on. Just don't give it to young and impressionable readers who may themselves lack critical reading skills and may therefore take it too seriously.

Another review posted on LibraryThing.

Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

I've read this book without having read the previous trilogy. I disagree with the other review that says that doing so would mean finding the first 200 pages boring and/or confusing: I definitely didn't. It is a slow book, with a slower start, but one that kept me fascinated and glued to the page throughout. It is a slow book in a good way.

It was pretty obvious that it continued a previous story: but this made for a deep, layered background that was revealed bit-by-bit without blatant summary/exposition, and not in a linear way. In fact, I enjoyed this aspect a lot: I do prefer being fed tidbits and having to piece them together myself rather than having it all laid out for me like See Spot Run.

A very satisfying read, and I will definitely look for the continuation of this series. Then I may go back and read the previous trilogy. (I don't mind that I already know "what happens": but I like the characters as they are now, and I might like them less as younger people.)

SPOILER SECTION BELOW: and I do mean it, don't read it if you haven't read the book yet. It's only gossip anyway, and unlikely to affect anybody's decision to read the book or not.

( Serious spoilers behind the cut )

[The review I refer to above can be found here, with other readers' reviews.]

Again, a copy of the review of a book I posted on LibraryThing.

Donald S. Lopez Jr, Modern Buddhism: Readings for the unenlightened

A very informative and interesting collection of writings by people who have been influential in the creation and spread of "modern buddhism".

The introduction by Lopez explains what he means by "modern buddhism", and gives a brief history of it. The biographical introductions to each piece are also very interesting -- in many cases, more interesting that the texts themselves.

I could have done with fewer beat writers (expecially Kerouac, whose inclusion I find a bit of a stretch) and a couple more women, but these are very minor considerations. Worth reading to get an idea of the fairly diverse forms of Buddhism from the time it started spreading in the West to about the 1980s.

'It's a very manly book, for values of "manly" that overlap with "gay".'

(nwhyte reviewing the Seven Pillars of Wisdom)

Some notes on the role of women in early Indian Buddhism from a book that has a few interesting points and a lot of things that irritate me (but then I'm not the primary audience for it, given that I'm not a specialist in either Indian palaeography, early Indian Buddhist history, or Indian archaeology... Still, I think I'm right in screaming at the lack of consideration for alternative possibilities in the book. Anyway.)
( This is boring unless you happen to be interested in the history of women in early Buddhism. And even then, I don't know... )

I only review books I read sporadically, and when I do I post my review on LibraryThing. I've thought that I might as well post a copy of the review here, in case someone is interested. So this is the book I finished reading the other day...

Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster travels

A potentially fascinating subject, but I'm left with a feeling of "yes, and?" at the end of the book. There's too much speculation and too little point -- even though I appreciate that the speculation is clearly labelled as such, and that the research is probably outstanding from an academic point of view (I'm not in a position to judge the specifics, but it looks sound; and the apparatus of footnotes is certainly impressive).

After a series of very wandering chapters, the "Epilogue" attempts rather out of the blue to draw parallels between "Leo Africanus" and Rabelais -- which seem stretched to say the least: I came away with the impression that the only things the two men actually had in common was being contemporaries, and having written some books.

Again, I cannot judge the value of this book for specialists in the field -- but on the other hand it seems to be directed to a wider, non-academic public; and as an "informed layperson'" I have to say my main impression was of pointlessness and lack of substance.

Quoting from this post by nwhyte:

dsgood informs me in a comment that there is in fact a feed for the Project Gutenberg updates, that is new books that are made available. In case anybody else is interested, it's gutenbergupdate.

I've gone back to Distributed Proofreading for Project Gutenberg in the past few days, and so I've come across the list of books that have recently been finished and made available as e-text on the Project. Here are a few that may be of interest (the links are in the PG-numbers, where PG does not stand for Parental Guidance).

"The Misplaced Battleship", Harrison, Harry (English)
25 pages; Saturday, September 8, 2007
PG #22541

"The K-Factor", Harrison, Harry (English)
22 pages; Saturday, September 8, 2007
PG #22540

"Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, A Family Record", William Austen-Leigh & Richard Austen-Leigh (English)
453 pages; Friday, September 7, 2007
PG #22536 [HTML (iso-8859-1); Text (iso-8859-1); Text (us-ascii)]

"Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Salámán and Absál", FitzGerald, Edward (trans.) (English)
138 pages; Friday, September 7, 2007
PG #22535 [HTML (utf-8); Text (iso-8859-1); Text (us-ascii); Text (utf-8)]

From The myth of freedom and the way of meditation, by Chögyam Trungpa (1976).

"Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space through the simple discipline of doing nothing.

"Actually, doing nothing is very difficult. At first, we must begin by approximating doing nothing, and gradually our practice will develop. So meditation is a way of churning out the neuroses of mind and using them as part of our practice. Like manure, we do not throw our neuroses away, but we spread them on our garden; they become part of our richness.

( It goes on... )

Is it a Secret Handshake? Is it in their contract?

When the sixth word in a book which is going to be set in 17th century Italy is a misspelt Italian name, and a famous Italian name at that, and the point-of-view character for the scene and quite possibly a major character in the book, if not the protagonist, my patience wears very thin very quickly. Otherwise, so far I'm enjoying the book (and to be fair, none of the other Italian names/placenames have been misspelt so far). But for Pete's sake, I know a lot of Italian surnames end in -i, but it's Mazarino or Mazzarino, NOT "Mazarini"!

(The book is 1634: The Galileo Affair, by Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, and as I said other than that I'm enjoying it so far. And I know it's alternate history, but it doesn't wash as an excuse. Richelieu is called Richelieu. Oh, and in case the way I put it makes it ambiguous, "Mazarini" is used consistently, not just the first time it appears.)

...damn Christopher Brookmyre...

...and while I was checking the spelling of this for the previous entry, I found an unabridged transcription of the food and cookery chapter of Le Ménagier de Paris. Medieval French isn't too difficult to read if you know modern French, and it's even easier if you know any other Romance language (as well as French).

As a side issue, I think I need a book icon.

I have to return this book, so I'm noting down a couple of things that I want to remember or look into later. (I'm doing it here because it looks like the most likely place where I will remember to look when I need them...)

From Dakini's Warm Breath, by Judith Simmer-Brown.
( Snippety snip )

I'm still enjoying the anthro collection I'm reading, but occasionally I wish the authors relaxed their academic corsets a bit and thought about what they write from a "normal sensible human" perspective. Here they're describing a game played by Mikea pre-adolescents, part of a list which includes things like tag, tug of war, dominoes etc.

"Kiombyomby is pretend oxcart; the team of 'oxen' are either two children (holding forked sticks to simulate the oxen's horns), two blocks of wood, two wild watermelons, or two rats, tied together. These pairs are tethered to another stick, melon, or block of wood to simulate the cart." (Barry S. Hewlett and Michael E. Lamb eds., Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods, p. 166-7)

...that sounds like a lot of fun...

I have started reading a collection of anthropology papers[1], and I'm finding a special joy[2] in reading rigorous research after a few recent encounter with rather fuzzy logic in my non-fiction reading...

Anyway: it's been a long time since I used to read such books on a regular basis, and I've forgotten what little statistics lingo I'd picked up back then. My question, in case anybody reading this knows the answer, is: what is the meaning of "p" in statistics? Examples:

!Kung children, especially boys (p < .01; girls p < .10) ranged a greater maximum distance from their mothers [than London children].

!Kung children were [...] nurtured less [...] than London children (all significant for both sexes at p < .02 or better).

...it's starting to itch, so I'll be grateful if anybody can solve this for me!

[1] Michael E. Lamb, Barry S. Hewlett (ed.): Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental, and Cultural Perspectives

[2] Mitigated somewhat by my misgivings about quantitative anthro research when it's not integrated by the qualitative kind; but still, it's refreshing my brain -- and I trust there will be some qualitative stuff later in the book.