Howdy kids! Welcome back to The Book Report.
Before I go anywhere, I should tell you that preorders for the Mythoi: Birth graphic novel went on sale yesterday. You can download all the issues for free, but the graphic novel has some great goodies that you’ll otherwise miss. Besides, I like holding a book in my hands better than viewing it on a screen.

Last weekend Ridley Scott — a favorite director of mine — released a new take on the Robin Hood legend, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Check out the trailer:

This new version was entertaining, to be sure, but I felt something was missing. It just didn’t quite work as the movie it wanted to be. Sgt. Angle talks about it better than I can in yesterday’s post, and besides, I’m not here to talk movies, I’m here to talk books.

The name Robin Hood first appeared in print in England around 1228C.E. in the rolls of the English Justice system. Robinhood, Robehod, Hobbehod, and Robunhod are all names used in criminal trials, though there is much agreement that these names did not refer to the same man. In 1605 British Secretary of State Robert Cecil branded Guy Fawkes and his accomplices “Robin Hoods”.
The first clear literary reference to Robin Hood appears in William Langland’s allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman, written in the mid– to late-14th Century: “I know not perfectly the Paternoster as the priest sings it/But I know the rhymes of Robin Hood. (translated from Middle English)” This suggests that by then there already was a literary tradition of Robin Hood, though whether it was determined fact or fiction we have no idea.
The earliest existing ballad of Robin Hood is “Robin Hood and the Monk”, written around 1450C.E. The first printed collection of stories is “The Gest of Robyn Hode” (c. 1475).
Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Ivanhoe, is one of the more influential pieces of literature to shape how modern audiences view Robin Hood. It is because of this work that we tend to associate Robin Hood with the name Locksley. A key theme in Scott’s novel is the Saxon-Norman conflict in England, for which Robin Hood became famously associated with. For the first time, Robin Hood is placed as a contemporary of King Richard I (The Lion-heart), most works placed him two centuries later. Robin’s feat of splitting a competitor’s arrow with one of his own appears for the first time in the novel as well.

One of the other major influences on modern audiences was Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, written in 1883. The book was actually a compilation of many of the old Robin Hood ballads, reworked into one long narrative and illustrated for children. This book was the culmination of many other authors’ attempts to romanticize the outlaw, creating more of a philanthropist rogue than highwayman and brigand. In fact, the Douglas Fairbanks silent film, Errol Flynn’s technicolor masterpiece, the Disney film, and the Mel Brooks spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights, all owe much of their imagery and characterization more from Pyle’s book than anywhere else. Though I suppose Mel Brooks owes his imagery and characterization to Pyle second hand, through the films he’s spoofing.

My favorite piece of Robin Hood literature breaks from tradition almost entirely. In the 1991 novel Sherwood, author Parke Godwin sets the story even earlier than the Richard I tradition, during the invasion and invents after William the Conqueror in 1066. Rather than setting Robin Hood at the middle of the Saxon-Norman conflict, Godwin places him at the beginning of it.

I think this change from the typical Robin Hood story is effective for a couple of reasons. Godwin writes the characters well, he presents the conflict leading to the emergence of Robin as an outlaw in an intelligent way, and the story itself is a damn good yarn. But really, Godwin could’ve given us almost the exact same story without breaking from the traditional Robin Hood time period. But breaking from the tradition to set the story in the middle of the 11th Century allows Godwin to really highlight the political and religious differences of the English and the French-speaking Normans.
Prior to the Norman invasion, the English political system was a kind of democratic monarchy called Witenagemot. In this system, the land-owning earls would meet in public council with the king to discuss important policy, such as taxes. They had the power to ‘depose’ an unpopular king, and generally, monarchs were elected into power by the earls as well. These meetings allowed fluidity into the government. If harvests were bad during a particular year, the earls could agree that taxes should be lower, so they could afford to buy more grain from elsewhere.
After William I conquered England, he did away with the Witan and established the much more rigid feudalism the Normans inherited from France. For the English, it was as if any kind of common sense was removed from the law. Taxes, or any other public policy, shifted at the whim of the King.
Religiously, although England had been Christianized, there was still strong ties to the land, in part due to vestiges of Celtic druidism hanging on in the countryside, where the influence of the Church was not as strong. The Norman invasion, backed by pope Alexander II, brought with it stronger ties to the Church.
This is the historical setting into which Godwin inserts his Robin Hood story. The main character is Edward Aelredson, nicknamed Robin by his mother after the forest lord Robin Goodfellow (Shakespeare’s Puck). He is a small countryside landowner whose life is turned completely upside-down by the Norman invasion. All the mainstays of Robin Hood literature (excepting Richard I and King John, of course) make appearances, with the Norman Ralf Fitz-gerald providing a perfect foil for Robin as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Another fun aspect of the book is that Godwin writes in many of the traditional Robin Hood stories, but makes interesting changes, so that you almost get the sense that you are reading the stories that inspired the legends. Like any legend, the details gradually embellish over time to become the ballads we know and love.

What we end up with is a Robin Hood novel different from any other, yet still feels familiar. It is full of politics and violence, but also never abandons the values of love and family that each character — whether they be English or Norman — holds dear. Sherwood is an excellently written, thoroughly entertaining read about a man willing to remain unbowed and tell a king to his face that he’s wrong.
And if you really enjoy it, Parke Godwin wrote a sequel, titled Robin and the King, which expands the history and themes covered in the first book, culminating in the Charter of Liberties, an agreement by Henry I which was the inspiration for the Magna Carta.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hello, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

In 1984, James Oliver Rigney, Jr. began his work on a series of novels that he would continue working on for the rest of his life. In 1990 he published the first novel, using his familiar pen name Robert Jordan, titled The Eye of the World.

The series was called The Wheel of Time, and over the next seventeen years, Robert Jordan released ten sequels and a prequel, and had just one more book to write to finish the series. Unfortunately, in Mid-September of 2007, James Oliver Rigney, Jr. died of a rare heart disease with the series unfinished. I was devastated. His loss to the literary world is profound, but what got to me even more was that I’d never get to know what happened.
I spent just about half my life following the trials and tribulations of the characters in these books, and right before the final culmination of one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time…the author dies. I know that perhaps it sounds like I’m being insensitive, but I do recognize that a real person, with friends and family, died. It’s just that the only parts of him that I knew were his creations, and so for me, it was they that had died.

Three months after Jordan’s death came the announcement that an author had been chosen to finish the series: Brandon Sanderson. While I may have read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy, I recognize that I have only read the merest fraction of authors from these genres. Still, I couldn’t help but think to myself, when I read that Brandon Sanderson was to take up the mantle left by Jordan: “Who?”

So I picked up one of his books. Well, to be fair, I picked up a trilogy of his books.

The premise of the Mistborn Trilogy certainly sounded promising. A lot of fantasy plots are about a hero, drawn from a lowly past, tasked with saving the world from a great evil. Frodo Baggins (Lord of the Rings), Rand al’Thor (The Wheel of Time), Shea Ohmsford (The Sword of Shannara, though I suppose you could count the entire Ohmsford clan), the Pevensie children (The Chronicles of Narnia), Lyra Belacqua and Will Perry (His Dark Materials), and Harry Potter (really?) a have just such journeys to save the world. What Mistborn does is imagine what a fantasy world might be like after the epic hero already had his journey — and failed. What would Middle Earth look like 1000 years later if Sauron had won? That idea is where Mistborn begins.

What follows is a great tale of revenge and redemption, politics and power, love and loss, magic and murder. And also death and deception. Not everything is as it seems in this world. Each book ends with some shocking realizations, and the finale of the last book literally had my jaw dropping in amazement.

By the end, I not only felt that Brandon Sanderson was aptly able to finish The Wheel of Time, but I also was intrigued to read the rest of his work. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey, kids! It’s your pal, Akatzen, back with another Book Report.

I tend to be somewhat suspicious of hype. If I go see a much-hyped movie, my suspicion helps me keep from getting too disappointed if the movie fails to live up to the hype. For example, following the hype of Black-suit Spiderman, Spiderman 3 was downright awful. Posthumous hype is particularly dangerous. We nearly always remember the dead as someone better (and occasionally, much worse) than they were.
Look at The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan. Heath Ledger’s performance received good notice before he died, but after his death, the hype over his character shot through the roof. Luckily, his performance actually lived up to the hype, and in some ways, I believe surpassed it.

On the other hand, the posthumous hype around Rent was much better than the musical actually is (this is, of course, my opinion, and I’m sure Admiral Eo will disagree).

So I was understandably wary of the hype surrounding Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
When the book hit the shelves in 2005, its author had been dead for a year, due to a massive heart attack. Due to his journalism exposing many Swedish extreme right and racist organizations, some conspiracy theory arose that his heart attack was induced because of the numerous death threats he received. In 2008, he was the second best-selling author in the world, behind Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. The Swedish film company Yellow Bird filmed the movie version of the novel, releasing it in Sweden in 2009. The film hit American shores in late March, and you can read a bit of what Sgt. Angle has to say about it here. An American film version of the book is in the works, with a tentative release date in 2012. Needless to say, the hype behind the book is extensive. (Okay, perhaps “needless to say” is one of those sayings that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since I did say it.)

The Swedish title of the book is Män som Hatar Kvinnor, which translates to “Men who Hate Women”. The content of the book completely lives up to the hype, in my opinion. The novel is a crime thriller, following in the vein of Agatha Christie and Thomas Harris, and maybe with a little bit of John Grisham thrown in. The world the characters live in, however, is totally contemporary.
Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist for (and co-owner of) Millennium magazine, a journal dealing mainly with high-finance investigative reporting. The start of the novel finds him going head to head with perhaps the Swedish version of Goldman Sachs.
Lisbeth Salander is a free-lance investigator for a security firm. She is 26, socially awkward and sullen, has enough tattoos (including a dragon on her shoulder, hence the title) and piercings to front a punk band, and is probably the best private investigator in Sweden.
Their paths converge as they attempt to find out what happened to a missing scion of a wealthy corporate family.

(I’m trying to be incredibly vague here, since the book is, after all, a mystery.)

As a mystery thriller, the book works pretty well. I figured it out pretty early on, but I doubted my guess very nearly the whole way through. Finding out I guessed it actually came as a surprise. Now, I know some of you might be saying, “Hey, um, Akatzen? If you guessed the mystery, how is it that it works well?“
Well, I’d read the book for an hour or so before going to sleep, and as I’m lying their in the dark, I found myself turning over every detail the book gave me in my head. I became just as engrossed in the mystery as the main characters, but from the safety of my bedroom. They had to deal with danger. If I’m engrossed in figuring out the mystery of a novel at times when I’m not reading the novel, then I’d say the book is a pretty damn good mystery.

Thematically, the book deals with some pretty weighty issues too. Reviewer Robert Dessaix wrote, “His favorite targets are violence against women, the incompetence and cowardice of investigative journalists, the moral bankruptcy of big capital and the virulent strain of Nazism still festering away …” (Sydney Morning Herald, February 2008). The “Nature vs. Nurture” debate comes up a bit as well.
The real treat of the novel is Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo. Incredibly intelligent but socially withdrawn, she has an enormous force of will and believes firmly in righteous retribution. There’s incredibly depth to her character, and it’s revealed in delightful — and also sometimes ghastly — ways.

So go and pick this one up. It’s the first book in a trilogy, so if nothing else, it’ll give you something to do for a while.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hi, kids! Welcome back the The Book Report.

He was credited as publishing the first Great American Novel. Earnest Hemingway, in fact, once said of that book that “all modern American literature comes from [it].” He was as famous for his humor as his satire, called “the greatest humorist of his age.” His name was Samuel L. Clemens, and he wrote under the pen name of Mark Twain.

By the time of his death, more than fifty novels and essays were published by Twain. You’ve probably read a few of them. But Mark Twain wrote many articles and gave many speeches that never appeared in a novel collection, and a group of editors formed The Mark Twain Project to track them down. One result of their hunt is Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A handbook for The Damned Human Race, published in 2004. Another book worth taking a look at is The Bible According to Mark Twain, published in 1995.

Helpful Hints is a bunch of letters, anecdotes, newspaper articles, and short stories on topics ranging from the telephone to advice for burglars and traveling salesmen. Many of the letters and anecdotes had never been published before. Some of the other entries are rare finds receiving only their second printing.
What the book really offers, however, is a glimpse into the Clemens household. The humor is all there, of course, but you also get a sense of the man. Beyond the satire and moralizing was a man who smoked, swore, laughed, loved, and endured the same problems we all endure. It’s rare to find a book about an author that does what Helpful Hints does for Mark Twain.

Collected from four decades of writing, The Bible According to Mark Twain takes a humorous approach to the Bible. Often his satire will point out problems or inconsistencies he sees with the book, but the stories never fail to tickle the funny bone. One of my favorites is “The Diaries of Adam and Eve”, hilarious personal accounts of Eden, the Fall, and of being the first two lovers in the Universe.
Even amidst all the hilarity, however, are issues and ideas that Twain himself acknowledged as being heretical. Some of the stories were not published until 1962, when his daughter Clara finally allowed some stories to print.

What these two books offer a reader is some material from one of America’s greatest authors that many people have never read before. I highly recommend these books for anyone who enjoyed anything Mark Twain ever wrote.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Howdy, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

Before we go anywhere, you need to go read the final installment in the Mythoi: Birth series: Touch. I’ll be waiting patiently until you get back.

---

Took you long enough.
Today I want to talk about an author who has been called a nihilist, a satirist of the highest order, a voice for an angry generation, a modern beatnik, and a shock-value gross-out author. Two of his novels have made the transition to film, doing poorly at the box office but establishing a large cult following once the films come out on dvd. In fact, very often when I mention this author by name I get a blank stare until I add in the fact that he was “the guy that wrote Fight Club.” And then I’ll occasionally get the response, “Wait, Fight Club was a book too?”

*Facepalm*

The Guy That Wrote Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and went to college at University of Oregon for a degree in journalism. After working a variety of jobs (which eventually inspired characters or events in later novels), Palahniuk began writing in the mid 1990s. His first novel, Invisible Monsters, was rejected by publishers for its disturbing content. In retaliation, he wrote a novel he hoped would disturb publishers even more than the first one, called Fight Club. To his surprise, it was picked up and published in 1996.
Despite its relatively short shelf life, the book was noticed by a few people in Hollywood, though producers were reluctant to back the film. David Fincher, however, had been trying to get the rights to direct the film version since the book first hit shelves. He was able to broker a deal with 20th Century Fox, and the film hit movie screens in 1999.

Beyond the Mayhem
The same year that Fight Club hit movie screens, Palahniuk was finally able to get Invisible Monsters published. He released his third novel, Survivor, that year as well. The novels follow Palahniuk’s convention of writing in the first person, as well as utilizing non-linear storytelling. In fact, Survivor’s chapters and page numbers run backward, so the last chapter and last page of the book are both 1, effectively making the narrative a countdown. Both novels have film versions in production.
That year, tragedy also struck Palahniuk’s life. His father was brutally murdered by the ex-boyfriend of a girl he was dating. The trial and subsequent death sentence inspired his 2002 novel Lullaby. During the trial, Palahniuk was asked to be part of the decision as to whether or not give the murderer the death penalty. In the horror-satire novel Lullaby, the main character is given a powerful curse that allows him to cause the death of anyone merely by thinking it.

Commercial Success
Prior to the publication of Lullaby, however, Palahniuk released Choke in 2001, which would be his first ever New York Times bestseller. The book was a hilarious satire about people’s need for a messiah and their secret desire to be a messiah themselves. A film version of the novel, starring Sam Rockwell and Angelica Houston, was released in 2008.

Satire: n, a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.

In 2003, Palahniuk released Diary, another horror satire, this time written as though it was a “coma diary”, daily letters written to a person in a coma while you sit at their bedside.
That same year, he published his first non-fiction work, Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. Tired of boring travelogues listing the typical, cheesy tourist spots in his home town, Palahniuk wrote a travel book of all the cool, weird, and alternative activities and places you can find during a visit to Portland.
The next year, Pahalniuk released Stranger Than Fiction, a collection of non-fiction essays, stories, and interviews he’d written for various magazines and newspapers.

Guts
While doing the book tour for Fugitives and Refugees and Diary, Palahniuk began to do readings of a short story he called “Guts” at public appearances. It was one of a group of stories in “a collection of short stories that are going to be like the darkest, most offensive short stories I can conceive of.” During that book tour, it was reported that over 35 people fainted during the reading.
During his Stranger Than Fiction book tour, readings of “Guts” increased the number of fainters up to 53. To date, more than 70 people have fainted during the reading of the story.
Brilliantly satirical and horrifically disturbing, the collection of short stories was published in 2005 as the novel Haunted.

Palahniuk loves to experiment with the novel form. In Survivor he uses the pages as a countdown to zero. Diary is written like an actual diary. Haunted is a collection of horrific short stories wrapped up in a longer, much more horrific story. In 2007, Palahniuk released Rant, written as an oral biography, where several different people remember the life of a person. In 2009, Palahniuk released Pygmy, written as an epistolary novel, which is a novel where the narrative occurs as a series of letters.
In addition to continually playing with the form of his novels, Palahniuk utilizes several other unique writing styles throughout all of his works. Preferring to “write in verbs rather than adjectives”, his sentences tend to be short, with a somewhat limited vocabulary, depending on the character. Since his novels are narrated in the first person, Palahniuk feels that short sentences and a limited vocabulary is more indicative of how a normal person talks, which help give his stories a better sense of believability.
He also spends an amazingly large portion of his time conducting research for his novels. All manner of strange facts, quotes, recipes, and true story “legends” show up in his novels. Palahniuk uses these factoids to help immerse the reader in his work. By including wildly strange but true facts the reader has no choice but to agree with — because they are true — the reader is more likely to believe in the equally wildly strange but false information that comprises the story’s fiction.
One last tool that consistently shows up in all of Palahniuk’s work is repetition. Certain turns of phrase, words, or images repeat themselves in each of his novels. Palahniuk calls them his “choruses”, but the use of repetition is a clever technique when using the first-person narrative, which is essentially rhetoric. Repetition allows the writer to hammer home an idea, image, or theme, forcing the reader to pay attention. Repetition also helps create a rhythmic quality to the work. Just as the punchline of a good joke depends on the rhythm of how the joke is setup, fiction has a similar rhythm to it.

Chuck Palahniuk’s latest book, Tell All, is expected to hit shelves in May this year. I strongly encourage you to pick up a few other works by this modern master of satire in preparation. I’ll see you in line at the bookstore!

Until then,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

Today I want to talk about a book — and the series that followed it — that covers a vast array of ideas, including the problems with godhood, ecological and environmental concerns, the philosophy of religion, power in political maneuvering, and the pros and cons of eugenics. The story was written over the span of more than forty years, and with the inclusion of side stories and prequels, the series can be considered still in progress.
The series inspired a movie, two miniseries, computer games, a board game, and a song by Iron Maiden. George Lucas cited the book as an influence when he made Star Wars in 1977.
The series has been called the science fiction equivalent to The Lord of the Rings. The first book is titled Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Dune was published in 1965, and the following year it won the Hugo Award and the first ever Nebula Award for Best Novel. The book is set 20,000 years in our future, and humanity has spread across the galaxy. There is a Galactic Empire, however true political power is managed through corporations. When not just nations, but entire planets, desire your product, your ability to influence political policy increases.
And there is no product more desired in the galaxy than the spice melange.

Melange (the spice in the books, and not the peppercorn spice shown here) extends the life of those who ingest it, as well as grant slight prescient abilities. The spice is crucial to space travel, as well as to the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit are a matriarchal religious order who use their power and influence in subtle ways to preserve and advance the human race.
Yet it seems that anyone who has a use for spice also has a hidden ulterior goal within their spice usage. That melange is the most desired product in galaxy, then, means that plenty of political maneuvering surrounds spice production. That the only source of spice is the desert planet of Arrakis means the political maneuvering often turns violent.

The book opens with control of Arrakis being given to House Atreides, headed by Duke Leto and his Bene Gesserit wife Jessica. What follows is a tense, exciting novel filled with betrayal, political upheaval, and fulfilled prophecy.

There are quite a few themes I could write about in conjunction with this novel, but the one that I keep coming back around to concerns what it means to be human.
A significant back-story event of the novel (which gets explored more thoroughly in a prequel) is the Butlerian Jihad, a war between humans and thinking machines (computers and artificial intelligence) occurring approximately 10,000 years in our future, the result of which is the prohibition of any type of thinking machine. A revised version of the Bible came out with a new commandment after the hundred year war: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” In the fourth Dune novel, God Emperor of Dune, the Jihad is described as a semi-religious upheaval initiated by humans who felt their reliance on machines was usurping their humanity. “The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines,” the main character states.

The actual war against machines isn’t what concerns me. Tell me if this picture looks familiar:
You are walking down the street, and you see a young teenager walking your way. Ipod headphones are stuck in their ears, dark sunglasses cover half their face, and they practically run into you because rather than watch where they are going, their attention is focused on the constant stream of text messages they tap into their phone. And you just know, if you were to look at the content of their messages, there abillity 2 spell wouldnt B 2 good
I’ve decided to start calling this Media Sensory Deprivation (MSD). Have you heard of sensory deprivation tanks? Essentially you float inside a dark capsule of liquid, so that any sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch gets filtered out. MSD then would be filtering your five senses through the variety of media available to “connect” us even deeper to the rest of the world. In 2006, the University of Wyoming was granted more than $10 million by the National Institutes of Health to determine how sensory deprivation (such as can happen in cases of extreme neglect) may lead to abnormal brain function in adults.

If sensory deprivation can lead to abnormal brain function, what possible side effects could MSD have on brain function? Are people losing their humanity by becoming so connected to their machines?
A few months ago Mr. Wolff put up a post on robots, filled with paranoia of just how close Skynet may be to becoming active.
A more interesting dilemma to me would be the self-enslavement of humanity to machines in order to make life easier and more “connected”. Skynet-type paranoia would be unnecessary.

The Butlerian Jihad, then, is a symbol of humans wresting back control over their lives — of regaining their humanity, as it were. The Dune novels are awash with this theme of humanity, and Frank Herbert explores this theme in a variety of intriguing ways throughout the entire series.

So give this award-winning series a read. Or, even better, download the series to your Kindle, Nook, iPad, or e-reader of choice!

Until next time,
still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

Last week I talked about a book listed as the second most loved book in the United Kingdom. Today, I want to talk a bit about the series listed at #3 on the list: His Dark Materials.

British author and professor Philip Pullman wrote the series to be a retelling and inversion of Milton’s Paradise Lost poem, commending humanity for what Milton took to be their most tragic failing. The title of the series comes from a line in the poem:

Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. (Book 2, lines 910–920)

Pullman published the first book of the series, Northern Lights, in 1995 (released in America as The Golden Compass). It tells the story of a young girl, Lyra Belacqua, embarking on a fantastic voyage that by the end of the series shakes the very fabric of creation. She lives in a London very similar to ours, with the exception of a few key differences.
Visually, Lyra’s Oxford has the look of 19th Century London: the height of the British Empire and the fantastic wonders built during the Industrial Revolution. Except in her world they already have an understanding of particle physics, which they call “experimental theology”. This is a world which found a way to wed science and religion together, rather than the rigid separation we have in our world.
The religion of this London, called the Magisterium, bears many similarities to the Roman Catholic Church, though it is a church that never had to struggle against a Protestant Reformation (indeed, at one point, John Calvin was referred to as a pope!), and its connection to science and politics allows for a more visual form of corruption that perhaps we are used to in our world.
Perhaps the most striking difference in Lyra’s world are the daemons (pronounced “demons”). Every person has one, and they are (with the rare exception) the opposite gender of the person. Each daemon appears as an animal, and a look at the animal can often tell you much about the attitude of the person. The best way to describe daemons would be to think of them as a combination of a physical representation of the soul of a person mixed in with Jung’s idea of anima and animus. There is much greater depth I could go into concerning daemons, but I fear that I might spoil some of the story to do so. Suffice to say, the concept of daemons is a fascinating, in-depth mixture of psychology and religious ideas that enlivens Lyra’s world and makes it unique in the realm of literature.

While critics have compared Pullman’s series favorably to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series and Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, he rejects any comparisons to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, even suggesting his books are a defiant response to Lewis’s books, which he has called “blatantly racist”, “disparaging of women”, “immoral” and “evil”.
Pullman’s work has received some controversial criticism, though by no means as much as other popular children’s fantasy. Pullman himself has stated, “I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak… Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God”. Cynthia Grenier, in Catholic Culture, wrote: “In the world of Pullman, God Himself is a merciless tyrant. His Church is an instrument of oppression, and true heroism consists of overthrowing both.” William A. Donohue of the Catholic League has described Pullman’s trilogy as “atheism for kids” and called for a boycott.
Most of Pullman’s criticism against God, however, is really more of a criticism against organized religion and the god that might allow much of the monstrosities that have been committed in his name. “I suppose,” he said, “technically, you’d have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and He is as the Christians describe Him, then He deserves to be put down and rebelled against”.

Pullman’s series has made the transition to other media successfully. In 2003, Nicholas Hytner directed a two-part, six hour version of the series for the London stage (part one combined Northern Lights and most of book two, The Subtle Knife. Part two finished off what was left of book two and all of the last book, The Amber Spyglass). The play was very successful, and two successful revivals followed.
In 2007, New Line Cinema released an adaption of the first book, using the American title The Golden Compass. The film did well worldwide, but American box office returns disappointed producers, and so far no sequels are planned.

The depth of religion, psychology, theology, and philosophy found in Pullman’s novels has spawned much commentary. More than fifteen novels by various religious and philosophy writers, among others, have been published concerning his series. His Dark Materials, while ultimately written for children, contain such an amazing array of ideas wrapped in a truly satisfying story that adults will enjoy the experience just as much as any child.

Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report.

I want to talk about about a book that, when it was first published, took the literary world by storm but I couldn’t stand reading when I was forced to get through it in high school. Now that it has been updated and revised, however, it’s an absolute joy to get through.
The book I’m talking about is Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

First published in 1813, the book was an immediate success. Jane Austen called the work “her own darling child” and spoke of its protagonist, Elizabeth Bennett, “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” History has, more or less, agreed with her. In 2003, the BBC conducted one of its largest surveys to determine “The UK’s Best Loved Book”, and it placed second behind The Lord of the Rings.
(Side note: Have you noticed how The Lord of the Rings consistently gets a mention in these Book Reports? It’s because it really is that good of a book, and you should go read it if you haven’t yet)
As a love story it works fine, but I am inclined to agree with Charlotte Bronte when she calls the novel “…a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses…Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.” (written Jan 12, 1848 to Fraser’s magazine, in response to their review of Austen’s book)
It is a good criticism. Jane Austen wrote clever characters doing clever things in clever situations, and surrounded those clever people with idiots so they might appear more clever. The trouble is that just because it is clever doesn’t automatically make it any good. Even the main conflict of the story, the squaring off of Darcy’s pride and prejudice against Elizabeth’s (get it?), is more a battle of wits than anything and doesn’t go any deeper than simple miscommunication.
What this story really needs is a conflict of apocalyptic proportions.

In 2009, Jane Austen’s novel got a much needed face-lift (so to speak), when Seth Grahame-Smith updated her “classic Regency romance” to include “Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem” with the newly revised Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And so the story got the conflict of apocalyptic proportions it so desperately required.
The story essentially remains unchanged (in fact, Mrs. Bennett remains almost completely unchanged), the only difference now is that when the story is about to get unbearably boring, a zombie attack (called “unmentionables” in the story) comes around to liven things up.

One thing I really appreciated about the book is that it helps clarify the satire in Austen’s original text. Hiding just beneath the love story is subtle humor poking fun at the superficial lives of the landed gentry. The trouble is, it can be difficult to tell exactly how superficial they really are when the main conflicts of the story scratch barely beneath surface-level problems. Watching the rich, land-owning elite of the early 19th century resolutely hang onto their “manners” in the face of global apocalypse in the updated version brings out the satire to the point of hilarity.
It doesn’t hurt that the book has kung-fu in it now, too.

For those who prefer their literature in video format, there’s good news for you, too. Richard Kelly (the writer and director of Donnie Darko) and Natalie Portman (do I really need to list any credits?) are set to produce the film version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Portman to star as the historically popular heroine. The project is still under development, but I expect you’ll hear more from Sgt. Angle as things progress on this front.

That’s all for this week!

Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey, kids! It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for another Book Report.

One of the most amazing stories in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire, as reported by American journalist Hayden Church in July of 1915.

The story is of a conversation between Dr. James Murray, Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the enigmatic Dr. W.C. Minor, who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors whose labors lay at the core of the dictionary’s creation. For very nearly twenty years these two men had corresponded regularly about the finer points of English lexicography, but they had never met. Dr. Minor seemed never willing or able to leave his home at Crowthorne. He was unable to offer any kind of explanation, or to do more than offer his regrets.
Dr. Murray, who himself was rarely free from the burdens of his work at his dictionary headquarters, had nonetheless wished to see and thank his mysterious helper for quite some time. By the late 1890s, with the dictionary well on its way to being half completed, official honors were being showered upon all its creators, and Murray wanted to make sure that all those involved—even men so apparently bashful as Dr. Minor—were recognized for the valuable work they had done. He decided he would pay a visit.

Once he had made up his mind to go, he telegraphed his intentions to arrive by train to Crowthorne just after two on a certain Wednesday in November. Dr. Minor sent a wire by return to say that he was indeed expected and would be made most welcome.
At the railway station a polished coach and a liveried coachman were waiting, and with James Murray aboard they clip-clopped back through the lanes of rural Berkshire. After a couple of miles the carriage turned up a long drive lined with tall poplars, drawing up eventually outside a huge and rather forbidding red-brick mansion. A solemn servant showed the lexicographer upstairs, and into a large room with a glowing coal fire and a wall covered with portraits of gaunt-looking men. There was a large oak director’s desk, and behind it, a portly man of obvious importance. Murray advanced toward the great man, who rose. Murray bowed stiffly and extended his hand.
“I, Sir, and Dr. James Murray of the London Philological Society and editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. And you sir, must be Dr. William Minor. At long last. I am most deeply honoured to meed you.”
There was a brief pause, then the other man replied:
“I regret not, sir. I cannot lay claim to that distinction. I am the Superintendent of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Minor is an American, and he is one of our longest-staying inmates. He committed a murder. He is quite insane.”

As the story goes, Doctor Murray—astonished, amazed, and filled with sympathy—begged to be taken to Doctor Minor, “and the meeting between the two men of learning who had corresponded for so long and who now met in such strange circumstances was an extremely impressive one.”

What an amazing story, right? First published in Washington D.C.‘s Sunday Star, and then a few months later in England’s Strand magazine, Hayden’s story of the meeting between Murray and Minor took the literary world by storm.
Unfortunately, the story is nothing more than an amusing fiction.

Lexicography: n, the act of making dictionaries

In 1999, Simon Winchester published The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, a book of meticulous investigative journalism which tells the full story of Doctors Minor and Murray. In my opinion, the true story is much more interesting than the story published by Church.

The project of compiling the OED was a daunting one. When James Murray was hired on as editor in 1878, the project had been underway already for nearly twenty-five years in one form or another, but with Dr. Murray as editor, the project gained the proper focus and direction that would lead to its publication in 1928, thirteen years after Murray’s death.

Lexicography is a difficult process. When we want to know what a word means today, we can open any number of dictionaries to find it. We can even simply type in “Define:[word]” on Google, and the search engine will come up with a list of sites that offer definitions for the word. How easy it is to take such a tool for granted.
When Shakespeare wrote his plays, he had no dictionary. He either had to reference from other literature or have an intuitive understanding of the words he chose. It’s an idea somewhat hard to wrap your mind around, isn’t it?
During the compiling of the Oxford English Dictionary, the editors did not have other dictionaries to derive definitions from, because they didn’t exist. What the editors had to do was find as many possible instances of a particular word getting used in a sentence throughout all of literature, compile those sentences together, and determine the proper definition (or definitions) of the word based on how authors used the word in their sentence.

Think about that for a second.
The average human knows about twenty thousand words, merely four percent of all the words compiled in the OED. For the more than half a million words found in the dictionary, the editors would have to browse millions of books to compile enough sentences using each ward to determine a proper definition: an impossible undertaking without volunteers.
Which is exactly what Dr. Murray did.
He sent out letters and listed ads in magazine and newspapers, asking for volunteers. The task of the volunteers was simple: as they conducted their regular reading habits, if they happened upon a word they felt could contribute to the dictionary, they were to write that word down on a slip of paper and include the book they found the word in, as well as the sentence containing the word. The editors would then organize the slips of paper by word, read all of the sentences, determine which sentences best represented the use of that word, and then create a definition of that word using the sentences as examples.

Insanity: n, a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.

One such volunteer, Dr. William C. Minor, directly contributed to the definitions of around ten thousand words. The only trouble was that Dr. Minor was incurably insane, guilty of committing murder (though legally found not guilty by virtue of insanity), and held at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminal Insane “until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known”, which more or less guaranteed a life sentence.

Dr. Minor was a victim of schizophrenic paranoia. He recognized that he killed a man, and showed great remorse over the incident, including setting up a large fund to help the widow. During his many lucid states at the Asylum, Dr. Minor would often paint, write, and read. Indeed, his room more resembled a library than a cell in a loony bin. Because he essentially had nothing better to do, Minor devised a system of his own to assist the editors of the dictionary. So while other volunteers may have sent in thousands of slips which may or may not have been useful, Minor’s system allowed the editors to directly request help on words, to which he was readily able to supply the correct references and sentences.
Dr. Minor’s efforts did not go unnoticed by Murray, and they wrote letters to each other regularly and Murray visited often, the pair forming a strange friendship built upon their love of words.

Simon Winchester’s book covers the lives of these two extraordinary men, uncovering the actual details of their first meeting, and ways these two men helped contribute to the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language to appear in print.
Fascinating and impeccably researched, The Professor and the Madman is a great read for anyone who appreciates a lexicography or philology (a love of language), likes history, or just appreciates a damn good yarn. Full of intelligence, horror, and heartbreak, Winchester’s novel is indeed what New York Time Magazine called it: “The literary detective novel of the decade.”

Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report. And happy St. Patrick’s Day! Go do something fun and slightly irresponsible.
Before we go anywhere, I would be most remiss (and probably in trouble) if I didn’t mention the new Mythoi: Birth that came out Monday, featuring Taros. I strongly urge you to give it a read, and if you haven’t read any of the others, you really should. It’s good stuff.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

One literary genre that I’ve yet to mention is the roman à clef (French: “novel with a key”). This genre might be more recognized by the name “Faction”, a novel which describes real life, under a façade of fiction.
The upcoming film The Ghost Writer is based on such a novel, titled The Ghost by Robert Harris, where the author is hired to ghost write the memoirs of a former Prime Minister named Adam Lang (ie. Tony Blair) and uncovers details that may imply the Prime Minister is guilty of war crimes.

Why does a child molester have to make movies that look so interesting?

Other roman à clefs include The Devil Wears Prada, Primary Colors, The Things They Carried, Postcards From the Edge, A Scanner Darkly, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Bell Jar, the novels of Jack Kerouac and Lara Ingalls Wilder, The Sun Also Rises, and The Picture of Dorian Grey.

The particular roman à clef I wish to cover for Semantink is called Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Roberts readily admits that he combined people to create characters, and that he invented other characters and events to help the plot or theme come together as a novel, but the basic plot elements of the book and of his life are more or less the same.
After losing his wife and daughter in a divorce, Roberts turned to heroin for comfort. To feed his addiction, he committed a string of robberies using a fake gun. When he was finally caught, he was sentenced to nineteen years in prison. He escaped, in broad daylight, and began his life as a fugitive. All this happened (to the character and the author) before the book even begins.
The book covers much of his life as a fugitive in Bombay (now called Mumbai), India. Just reading the author synopsis intrigued me enough to open the book, and after reading the first page I knew I had to finish. It’s that kind of book. Hell, I was hooked after reading the first paragraph.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

What follows is a wonderful, heart-wrenching, (and at almost 1000 pages, epic) story of love and hate and forgiveness. A story so fantastic, it is difficult to believe that much of it really happened.
Roberts has two additional novels, a prequel and sequel, planned. Johnny Depp loved the book so much he convinced the studio executives at Warner Bros. to buy the movie rights, with the film expected to come out sometime in 2011.

That’s it for me on this particular Wednesday.
Until next time,

Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_