Bookishgal

I’m writing mostly about books I want to read, just now, rather than those I’m reading, but this is one I really, really do want: The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, by Raj Patel.

Patel once worked as an economist at the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and after what he saw there, about how the world food system is organized and how it exploits (and often destroys) almost everyone, he quit those organizations and became an activist working against them. A couple of years ago, I wrote about his visit to Toronto where he discussed his book, Stuffed and Starved. (”If we are what we eat, we’re in big, big trouble“) What I learned then horrified me so much that I really began supporting local farmers’ markets and buying as much local food as I could.

Now he’s got his new book, The Value of Nothing, and he goes still further in his push to reorganize the production of food so that the producers on the ground are honoured and paid properly, and no longer expend their life’s blood to feed gigantic mega-corporations like Cargill.

An interesting list from his book is found in his own post, Cheaponomics, where he shows that several things we believe should be really cheap ought to cost way more than they do. This is because that’s what the price would be if we factored in all the real costs of creating such products as bottled water or cell phones. As he says,

…in the US, the annual energy wasted on bottled water adds the equivalent to 100,000 cars on roads and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And the price we pay for water doesn’t begin to address the longer term issues of global shortage for something that everyone needs to survive

I want to read this book, in a way, because it makes me afraid. But I feel like I need to know these things, and that somehow we have to force governments and megacorporations from going what they’re doing. I don’t know how possible that really is. Patel seems to think it can be done. Some days the best I can do is rely on his hope for that, since I can’t muste any.

Must.read.this.book.

This is a book I really want to get. Chronicle Books has produced what looks like a wonderful illustrated version of a great Hindu epic, Ramayana: Divine Loophole, this one created and illustrated by Pixar animator and storyboard artist Sanjay Patel.

You know the two major Greek mythological epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey? They could take lessons in greatness and epic sweep from The Ramayana and the other, even more massive Hindu epic, The Mahabharata.

The Ramayana tells the tale of the Indian prince, Rama, who is exiled to the forest for 14 years with his wife, Sita, and his brother, Lakshmana. Rama is one of the ten incarnations of the god Vishnu. Each time this god incarnates, he comes to earth for the purpose of saving it from some huge threat. In this case, it’s the threat of a ten-headed demon-being named Ravana, who endangers the earth through his flouting of dharma (i.e. the divinely ordained right way of doing things).

As the three exiles wander the forest, they encounter divine sages, many demon creatures, an army of monkeys, and Hanuman, the monkey god who serves Rama and can carry a mountain on his back. Eventually Ravana kidnaps Sita, forcing Rama to bring the monkey army to do final battle. After he gains the victory, and Sita proves her fidelity to Rama, the exiles return home and Rama at last gains his throne.

If you enjoyed the look and feel of the Samurai Jack animation, or the wonderful Sita Sings the Blues video by Nina Paley (which tells the Ramayana story in animated form), you may be as excited about Patel’s book as I am. I love the very stylized look of these illustrations, and of course I love the story itself.

I’ve lost count of how many different versions of the Hindu epic, The Ramayana, that I have. As a graduate student, I not only TA’d an undergrad class studying this epic, but I was simultaneously taking my own grad-level class studying the same thing. I spent my whole final semester at university completely immersed in this story, and have kind of collected versions of it ever since. But I am just keening to get Patel’s book and give it pride of place.

You might hesitate about a book where the narrator approves of foot-binding, believes women are worthless unless they bear sons, and thinks the highest female virtue is for a woman to serve and obey her husband without complaint. But the narrator, Lily, lives in a small village in China in the mid-18th century, and in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, she describes the culture she lives in and tells the story of her life.

That is, her life and the life of her best friend and pen pal, Snow Flower. The story begins with the two girls at the age of about six, when they are officially contracted to become laotongs. In Chinese society at the time, such a relationship between two girls was meant to last their entire lifetimes, transcending any other relationships they had with parents, siblings, husbands, or their own children. Marriage was always a duty contracted with a stranger, arranged by a matchmaker, but the laotong was one’s beloved friend through all life events. And through nu shu, the “women’s writing” invented centuries ago by and for women in the Hunan province of southern China, the two heart partners could share their true thoughts and feelings with each other.

The story follows Lily and Snow Flower as they grow up, have their feet bound, go through the matchmaking and betrothal process, and finally become wives and mothers. They are from two quite different economic classes, and face some amount of disapproval from their in-laws as they continue their relationship, but it is so important to them that they refuse to break their contract with each other. They sustain each other through many difficult times, until a misunderstanding comes between them and they must somehow work their way back to each other.

Even apart from their story, the book provides fascinating details about how people of the villages lived in that time period. The beliefs and customs that surround women are heart-breaking to those of us living where women are now almost equal to men in our society. Yet the women in this story bear up under those beliefs, and even find strength in many of the customs. Even the horrific practice of foot-binding – where the instep is broken and the toes are also broken and curled under the foot, so the foot span is made to be no longer than three or four inches and walking is very difficult – is seen as a privilege, a right of passage that turns a child into a woman and sets her on her journey toward marriage. The smaller her “lily feet” turn out, the more desirable and marriageable she is.

We are shown the whole process. But we also see the strength of the women in the village, and how their inner world of the household sustains the men who believe they are in control of everything. And we watch the subversive nature of the nu shu, which is used to create the rituals and songs the women observe among themselves, that add to their strength.

I’d have loved this book anyway, just because it showed me the real lives of these women, and I was fascinated by the culture and customs. But the tale of Lily and Snow Flower is a deeply human story, sometimes sweet and sometimes bittersweet. You want to smack Lily upside the head sometimes, but she gains a hard-won wisdom by the end.

Lisa See has Chinese-American heritage on her father’s side, and gained her interest in the history of Chinese women through spending a lot of time with her father in Chinatown in Los Angeles. For this story, she travelled to the villages that are featured in the book, to research nu shu and understand the women’s culture.

This research is likely what makes this story so intimate and real. And a joy to read.

Got this off of Twitter this morning. Flavorwire has a great list of songs connected to libraries and librarians: Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians.

I’m already starting a collection of URLs for videos about fonts. (Three so far. Three!) Do you have a list of favourite songs or videos that relate to books in some way?

Once again I have a book for the Tuesday Teaser! This regular weekly event is hosted by MizB at the Should Be Reading blog, so head on over there and see other people’s teasers.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the procedure by now. You grab the book you’re currently reading, let it fall open to a (more or less) random page, and choose two sentences to quote, that will hopefully tease people into wanting to read the book.

(And I try as much as possible not to cheat, unless it’s absolutely necessary to have more than two sentences for the teaser to be effective. It’s usually not.)

Most importantly, you don’t post spoilers that give away important plot points or the end of the story.

So, without further ado, here is mine for this week:

“A laotong relationship is made by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and eternal fidelity. A marriage is not made by choice and has only one purpose – to have sons.” – Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, page 43

This is a book about Lily, a woman in mid-19th century China, who recounts the life she led in her village. She talks about her traditional foot-binding at age seven (a truly horrific procedure), the rituals of matchmaking and eventual marriage, and what women’s role was in the society. She also talks about nu shu, the “women’s writing” that was invented in China by women, to be read only by women, so they could express their real thoughts to each other without the knowledge of men.

But woven through it all is the laotong relationship Lily has with another girl, Snow Flower, from age seven onward. This was an officially contracted relationship based on eight criteria, and it made two girls into pen pals and best friends. It was the closest relationship they could have throughout their lives, transcending family and marriage connections.

I’m almost done the book, and have been loving having the chance to find out about these customs and a bit of Chinese history. It’s not the sort of book I’d normally have picked up, but I’m glad I did.

Until recently, I’d never heard of Paul Doherty or any of the novels he’d written, but after reading An Evil Spirit Out of the West and The Season of the Hyaena, I suddenly have several new historical novels to read – nay, to devour.

There are plenty such novels set in Europe over the centuries, or the Middle East during biblical and early church times, or in the beginning years of Canada or the United States. We also have some novels set in ancient Rome or Greece. But unless a story was being told about some great Bible character who had contact with Egypt, there haven’t been that many books with stories that take place in the times of the Pharaohs, apart from the novels of Pauline Gedge.

And, as I’ve now discovered, Paul Doherty.

I was thrilled to read these books, because they deal with the events prior to and during the reign of the “heretic Pharaoh” Akhenaten and his wife, Nefertiti, and the fallout after their deaths during the rule of the boy-Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. I’ve never seen anyone try to dramatize these events before, and this was one of the most interesting times in ancient Egypt, from the modern point of view.

The narrator of the books is a real historical character, Mahu, the person who became Akhenaten’s chief security officer and one of the royal inner circle. In An Evil Spirit Out of the West, he spends time with Akhenaten as they grow up as Children of the Kap, the “nursery” where certain young men are given scribal and military training in preparation for serving Pharaoh as adults. Through Mahu’s eyes we learn Egyptian customs and the ways of everyday life, and first meet some of the people who will figure in the history of Akhenaten: Queen Tiye, her brother Ay, the general Horemheb, possibly the man who will become Pharaoh Ramesses I, and of course, the exquisite and captivating Nefertiti.

Akhenaten first appears as the Veiled One, hidden from public life because of his deformities. But we watch, sharing Mahu’s unease, as behind-the-scenes machinations create the circumstances of Akhenaten’s rise to succeed his father, the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III, on the throne. Then we watch again when Akhenaten’s brief flash of glory fades and he, his beautiful queen, and their wondrous city crumble to nothing.

In The Season of the Hyaena, Mahu is the official guardian of Tutankhamun as he is growing up. We see the leaders of Egypt trying desperately to replenish the country’s coffers, return the land to order, and deal with conspiracies and threats coming from outside, where Egypt’s enemies hope to take advantage of its recent internal upheavals. And all the while, there is a jostling of position among the remaining Children of the Kap, who now lead Egypt in Tutankhamun’s name, and jostle to see who will be strong enough to control him and perhaps eventually rule the country in their own name instead.

It doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the story that we already know how things turned out. That “foreknowledge” adds extra poignancy to the events. We know what Akhenatan’s fervent, youthful trust in his “father” the Aten will eventually lead to. We know what happens to the promise of Tutankhamun’s reign. But in many ways, we love the characters for their hopes, and weep for Mahu and the Children of the Kap when they must face certain realities and make painful decisions for the sake of Egypt’s future.

These books provide wonderful insight into how the story of Akhenaten might actually have happened. They lift the people in that story out of the flat, stylized, distant shapes they appear to be in the paintings in their tombs, and make them very real.

Paul Doherty has had a wonderful scholarly life, training for the priesthood for a while before getting a degree in History at Oxford, completing a doctorate on the reign of the English Edward II, and becoming Headmaster at Trinity Catholic School. He’s written many historical novels, mostly mysteries, set in Europe, the Middle East, Greece and Rome, and Egypt.

I not only plan to devour the rest of his books set in ancient Egypt, but I can’t wait to dig in to his many other historical novels as well.

Testament: the Bible and History, by John Romer, is a powerful and compelling book, a fitting vehicle for relating the story of the long historical creation of the Bible.

In the 1990s, nothing thrilled me more than to find a John Romer documentary on TV. My favourite was his six-part Ancient Lives: The Story of the Pharaohs’ Tombmakers series, in which he carefully documented the archaeological evidence gathered at a little Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings, known in our time as Deir el Medina. There was no sensationalism about Romer’s presentation, as there is in most documentaries about ancient history that we now see on the cable channels. (“Was the Sphinx created by a superior race ten thousand years ago??!?”) Romer didn’t need any of that, because he knew the archaeology so thoroughly that he could let it speak for itself. His friendly, informed, matter-of-fact style carried us along as he described the work the villagers did in the tombs, and how they spent their time at home in the village.

He brought exactly the same balance of careful scholarship and friendly, down-to-earth interest to the BBC Channel Four television series, Testament, and his accompanying book reads the same way. He takes a thorough look at the history and mythology behind the different parts of the Bible, beginning his study of the Old Testament in ancient Mesopotamia, moving on to Canaan and Israel. Then he gradually works out from Israel again after Jesus’ day, following the expansion of Christianity and its many documents through the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine world, following European history from the fall of Byzantium to the rise of the Catholic church, through the Reformation, and into modern times. And he ends with the effects of Higher Criticism and Darwin’s theory of evolution on the way the Bible is viewed today.

What Romer excels at is finding the meaningful, more personal details of history and archaeology and demonstrating how they contributed to the larger whole. For example, he explained very plausibly how several tribes of poor, endangered people in the hills of Canaan could look below at the wealthy cities of Philistia with their high culture, and slowly band together in protection against them and become a self-confident nation, using the earliest biblical tales about tribes escaping from Egypt as the cement to glue them together.

Or, later, he described how Charlemagne and his descendants tried to recreate a cultured, educated kingdom using the misunderstood remnants of those that had risen and fallen before. Read this description of a pulpit placed in Charlemagne’s chapel at his court at Aachen:

Set in the pulpit’s golden panels are elements that made this new northern art: bone pictures from Egypt of pagan gods, Dionysius, Isis, Pan, even the goddess of ancient Alexandria, fitted down the sides of the central panels as if in submission to the great barbarian cross at the centre. And the big bright stones of this cross – agate, rock, crystal, chalcedon – are really roman tableware set upside down and used uncomprehendingly simply as splendid shining objects. On the bottom of the central bowl set in the cross was fixed a famous antique cameo of the imperial Roman eagle and this became the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire.

Romer takes such details and weaves the stories of individuals through the great book, or collection of books, whose history he’s describing. From the creation myths of ancient Sumer to the great Church Councils that decided doctrine based on Constantine’s political goals, to Jerome’s Vulgate Bible (and his problem with women), to the home life of Martin Luther, Romer leads us through the history and helps us understand how the biblical texts became what they are today. And how, if one ancient politician had had slightly different goals here, or a troubled monk had taken a different route to resolve his theological questions there, the Bible might be an entirely different book.

[Note: This is the first of my entries this year for the World Religion Challenge 2010; I'm on the "unshepherded" path, meaning I'm not restricting myself to any of the major faiths, or to any type of book. This book, being about the history of one of the sacred documents of the world faiths, so it counts. I signed up for the challenge because a) there's no set number of books or any rule about so many books per month; and b) I've got my two Philosophy of World Religions degrees, so I certainly have enough books without looking too hard!]

Can you imagine it? Liquid diamond? I just saw this Discovery.com article, Diamond Oceans Possible on Uranus, Neptune, and went squeeeee! It just seems like the most wonderful thing to contemplate.

As the article is introduced:

Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics.

Of course, there have to be certain preexisting conditions: both ultra-high temperatures and ultra-high pressures. If you get the high temperatures only, the diamond doesn’t melt into liquid diamond, but turns to graphite. So that would be why you might find liquid diamond on Uranus and Neptune, where both of those preexisting conditions exist, but never on Earth or the other inner planets.

And they say about ten percent of both of those outer planets are made of carbon, which is what forms diamond under high pressures. Meaning it’s possible out there.

So as I’m reading that article, I’m picturing this ocean of liquid diamond, and those diamond icebergs floating on it. Can you imagine the cool science fiction story you could make of something like that? Not that you need to — the science is amazing enough.

And then one of my favourite Bruce Cockburn songs, “All the Diamonds,” springs to mind. He’s singing about God coming to retrieve his loved ones from the world, but whatever the mythical background, the imagery always gives me goosebumps. Here are the lyrics to the final verse. You’ll probably understand why the thought of liquid diamond oceans made me think of it:

Silver scales flash bright and fade

In reeds along the shore

Like a pearl in a sea of liquid jade

His ship comes shining

Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns

His ship comes shining

Gives me goosebumps. Though you probably really need his music to go along with it.

But liquid diamond!

I haven’t done the Tuesday Teaser for a while, so here’s another one from the book I’m currently reading.

You must know the drill by now: you take your most recent book, and open it to a random page. There you pick out two sentences to serve as teasers, that may induce people to want to check out the book.

This meme is hosted by MizB at the Should Be Reading blog, and that’s where you can go and leave a link to your own teaser, and check out the teasers of others. You can get some pretty good ideas for reading material there!

So. Here’s mine for today:

They stood fascinated as Tuthmosis climbed onto the cart and pulled away the veil. He then did a strange thing: despite being elder brother and Crown Prince, he bowed before the Veiled One sitting on his thronelike chair.

An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egypt Trilogy), by Paul Doherty – p. 54

I’m very excited to read this book. It’s the first historical novel I’ve ever read that features the “heretic Pharaoh,” Akhenaten. I’m fascinated by ancient Egypt to begin with, and of course the story of this man, his queen Nefertiti, and all the events that surrounded his reign, is an intriguing real-life tale.

This book is the first of three, and I accidentally read the second book first, which dealt with the events after Akhenaten died. So I’m very excited finally to be reading book one.

I’m glad to see all the great nominations for the Canadian Weblog Awards. I’m not sure how they’re arrived at, so I’m going to pay closer attention and find out. I have a few that I’d like to nominate myself, in the future!

There’s no specific “Book Blogs” category, which really could have its own niche, given the volume of good book blogs in this country. But there are still several of these blogs that I should check out regularly.

For example, WordGrrls, a writing blog rather than book blog, which I have read in the past and don’t spend nearly enough time with. Then there’s one that I recognized from my Entrecard days, which I used to visit regularly and haven’t been to in a while: Live From Waterloo, essentially a family blog, but about a family that immigrated to Canada from Argentina. Reading Gabriel’s (the father’s) long story about how the family came here, your jaw just drops at what they went through. But they’re here, and loving it, and I’m so glad.

Michael Geist’s blog is the absolute best thing going, when it comes to discussions of copyright, how the law relates to the internet and e-commerce, privacy concerns, social media, government media paranoia, and so on. Do not miss it.

And I am personally pleased to see that a blog I consult almost every day – the Canadian Freelance Writing Jobs blog – has been nominated in the “Business and Career” and “People’s Choice” categories. Way to go, Angela!

We’ve got some great writers in Canada. I need to bookmark that nominations list, and check out those blogs on a regular basis. Go Canada!