The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (9)
What a terrific book. Well written, well researched and well imagined, with powerful themes.
A thwarted philosophical discussion: at first I had the misguided notion that the book was a "man's culture" versus "women's culture" kind of thing. But then I realized that maybe it was about "everyone can live happily if they respect each other." So... never mind. No philosophical discussion, as I've chosen a less divisive interpretation of the themes.
Preacher: Gone to Texas by Garth Ennis, et al. (8)
While I fully comprehend why it is that Jason digs this series, I just can't get that engaged in it. I finished the first one, but I'm not sure I intend to read the three others Jason loaned me.
I think that this is due entirely to the medium, and not the story. Many of my friends are graphic novel/comic book junkies. But I am not, nor have I ever been. I find that it's not enough like watching a movie, and it's not anything at all like reading a book. If I don't have some great hook, like knowing Fred and Sarah, then I have a hard time getting into it. I admit this probably makes me lame in some way. Maybe. I have also encountered, while reading The Biography of the English Language something that makes me suspect that it's just how I read that makes it hard for me to have to get information from pictures. But I'll post the relevant paragraph from that when I finish that book.
Anyway... I'm also reading The Red Tent, which has great promise for breaking this reading funk, and I want to read that, more than I've wanted to read anything in months. So, I'll have to rethink the Preacher thing when I finish it, but it doesn't look good for graphic novels, my friends.
An article by John Pfeiffer appearing back in Science '81 (what can I say? Most of my anthropological reading comes from reserves lists, as I process them) speculates that since human beings waste so much time and energy on silly pursuits, there must be some sort of evolutionary advantage to it all.
Fancy that. Instead of seeing "the impressive human ability to waste energy" as some sort of outcome of the advancement of human cultural evolution, Pfeiffer sees it as a possible catalyst.
His argument is that you don't see most carnivores wasting time or energy in vain pursuits like sky-diving (technology and opposable thumbs aside). Carnivores are either pursuing food or lazing around (e.g. lions, which sleep or drowse 20 hours a day). Never mind that human beings have culturally advanced to a place where a large percentage of the world population (at least, most of the energy-wasters) don't have to conserve all their energy for periodic massive bursts effort wherein they locate and acquire enough calories to survive. Many humans are currently swimming in an excess of calories; they have plenty of energy to waste. And while it seems especially so in this day and age, one could argue that humans have had an edge on caloric acquisition for so long, that we have probably been wasting time for many, many generations, maybe all the way back to Lucy (or Eve, if you insist).
But my point is not to prove or disprove this theory. My point is, it's a damn cool theory, and really, the only big hole in it is comparing us to full-fledged carnivores. Pfeiffer is absolutely right. We waste all kinds of energy (witness this blog), and for no good reason. Or is there a good reason? Is it encouraged, both genetically and culturally, because the energy-wasters of today are the geniuses of tomorrow? Pfeiffer says:
"[Energy-wasting] may have paid off hansomely in crisis times, for example during the settling of Oceania... about 3000 B.C. It was not mere wanderlust: People left their homelands because they had no choice, probably forced to migrate because of soaring populations. But the evidence suggests that they were prepared by the time the pressure was really on, that they had already, through 'energy-wasting' activity, learned enough to undertake voyages far out of sight of land...."We can imagine the nature of most of those early experiments... The wild ones were having their ling with drag races and games of chicken in sailing vessels, daring one another to go farther and farther out into unknown waters... overnight and then over several nights... And they must have invented all the time, tinkering with new sails and new boat designs and various versions of outrigger gear...
"In the process, they discovered a great deal about the ways of the sea... [though] the wild ones paid a high price for their adventures. Many of them learned the hard way about whirlpools, sudden, violent storms, waters awash over treacherous reefs... [but] the crews and the boats and the experience were all at hand when long-distance voyages were no longer mad stunts but the only means of survival."
"Perhaps the readiness to do or believe practically anything, to indulge in the most far-out of lunatic fringe behaviors, is a form of survival insurance," says Pfeiffer. It's just a fun thing, to think that all the times we act crazy, we're really just maintaining the flexibility to adapt, come the Apocalypse.
That appeals to my sense of humor almost as much as it does to my Inner Anthropologist.
The Diamond King by Patricia Potter (7)
This one almost restored my faith in the genre of romance novels. Classics like Outlander and A Rose in Winter cannot compare, but it's certainly the best of the streak I've read lately. Fortunately for myself and everyone who reads this, thus endeth the romance novel streak for a time.
I'm trying to think of what particularly stands out in this novel, but there's not really anything in particular, other than the character's pasts were well-defined and the settings clear. A huge bonus, really, compared to the books I've read in genre recently.