Ged Carroll

Category: oprah time | 書評 | 서평 : 文芸批評

Welcome! I guess the first question that you have is why oprah time? Well in my last year of college I used to sit in the house that I shared with my landlord and write my essays whilst watching cable TV.

There I would be sipping tea, writing away and referencing from text books spread around me on the couch and coffee table. One of the programmes on the in the background was Oprah Winfrey. A lot of the show was just background noise. But I was fascinated by Oprah’s book club.

She’d give her take on a book, maybe interview the author. And then it would be blasted up the New York Times bestsellers list. This list appears weekly in the New York Times Book Review. Oprah’s book club was later emulated by other talk show hosts, notably the UK’s Richard Madeley and Judy Finegan.

On the high end you had Melvyn Bragg‘s South Bank Show when they profiled an author of the moment.

When I came to writing my own review of books that I’d read, I was was brought back to that time working on a sofa. Apple laptop in hand. It made sense to go with Oprah time.

You might also notice a link called bookshelf. This is a list of non-fiction books that I have kept. And the reasons why I have kept them.

If you’ve gone through my reviews and think that you’d like to send me a book to review. Feel free to contact me. Click this link, prove that you’re human and you will have my email address.

  • The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia by Bill Hayton

    In The South China Sea; Hayton sets an ambitious goal for himself to try and unpick the claims and counter claims on territory in the area. It is a massive convoluted story that encompasses colonial powers, oil companies and a plethora of Asian countries.

    In the end no one comes out of it with glowing colours. China is easy to paint as a villain and it has played to type. But other countries and major powers have made constant mis-steps and it has become an intractable problem. The more hawkish may see the inevitability of war with China.

    On the Chinese side, it makes sense for them to escalate a fight with one of their neighbours; as a Chinese idiom puts it ‘kill a chicken to scare the monkey’ and distract from the pain of change at home.  The history is wrapped up with rising nationalism and aspirations of China and its neighbours.

    From the American perspective, it makes sense to have the war with China further away from the Homeland, so the South China sea rather than the Pacific ocean.

    Hayton doesn’t take a standpoint one way or the other leaving the reader to decide.

    From a reading perspective, the tangled nature of the claims makes the book more difficult to read in small bursts. I tried reading it as a commuting book and it took a while to get it done.

    More book reviews here. More details on The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

  • Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? by Philip K Dick and Tony Parker

    Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep

    Like many people I was drawn to Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep by the film adaptation Blade Runner. I originally read the paperback book and found it less satisfying. It is one of the few cases where cinema did a better job than the source material, even though it veered off from the book.

    I re-read the book after I knew about more about Dick’s amphetamine fuelled life and the paranoia associated with speed underpins the story in plot turns affecting our main character.

    I have now had a good deal of time to read the graphic novel adaptation with some distance from the original book. Time has moved along and I think I would be more receptive to the book today.

    Tony Parker’s adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep

    Untitled

    Tony Parker has done a really good job of interpreting the original and breathing life into it as a graphic novel. He brings it to life to Dick’s work, in particular the entropy of the environment. In particular the  phenomenon of ‘kipple’ and philosophy of Mercerism which underpins much of the novel. It is a credit to Parker that he managed to keep the visuals distinct from the iconic style of Blade Runner.

    My one criticism of the Parker adaption is that it is an unwieldy book and the  binding comes apart under the weight of the pages. As for the content, I think Parker’s adaption is a great way of taking in Dick’s novel. Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep is important for the way it shaped culture and technology. The book foreshadowed cyberpunk culture.  It has been listed as one of the 100 books you need to read (at least according to the Times Educational Supplement). More on Do Androids Dream… here. More book reviews here.

  • The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

    The Three Body Problem like all the best science fiction is multi-layered. It has a complex story which gradually weaves together a large set of characters across time as the story is told in a non-linear manner. It is also multi-layered in terms of genres:

    • It is a space opera as rich as Asimov’s Foundation books, except it is the aliens who will be doing the interstellar travel. The Hari Sheldon like character on earth has dark motives
    • It has a conspiracy at the heart of it that reminded me of James Bond novels and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps
    • It is the tail of of hard-bitten detective work as if Raymond Chandler had been in Beijing; complete with film noir levels of smoking and drinking

    But most interesting of all is the mirror it offers on the modern China from the cultural revolution onwards. Liu is unflinching in his depiction of Cultural Revolution excesses. As China changes towards ethno-Han nationalism it will be interesting to see if Liu’s book is still as well received in his own country.

    Like all good authors there are hints of the authors early life. In this case it is the crucial early events in the book, set in a rural part of Henan province during the cultural revolution. He has managed to spin the complex web of a story. The Three Body Problem is the first book in a trilogy – I am looking forward to reading The Dark Forest – the second book. More book reviews here.

  • Velvet by Brubaker & Breitweiser

    Velvet is the antithesis of mainstream comics. In a world of Marvel-dominated culture, it is hard to imagine more realistic material. Ed Brubaker got the freedom to publish Velvet after several years at DC, Vertigo and Marvel.

    Velvet is a welcome antidote to the superhero genre of graphic novels. Instead, you get a cold war era spy drama with modern storytelling. Velvet tells the story of a middle-aged Anne Bancroft-like secretary and one-time agent. The story gets going when she is set up for murder by persons unknown.

    In this respect, it outlines the kind of spy plot that would be familiar to readers of Len Deighton or Alistair Maclean. Brubaker’s choice of the early 1970s goes back to a pre-cellphone and computer age. This provides him with a broader canvas to work with.

    The story feels modern in its non-linear narrative that moves back and forth between 1956 and 1973. The story zips through Europe across both sides of the Iron Curtain as Velvet tries to find who set her up. The comic features highly kinetic action reminiscent of Matt Damon-era Jason Bourne.

    The first two volumes of it are available here and here. Volume three is due out in September. More book reviews here.

  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    It’s been nine years since Taleb wrote The Black Swan. Like Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man before it, The Black Swan is widely cited and paid lip service to.

    The timing of publication for Taleb was particularly pertinent as the book became popular as the financial system broke down in 2008. Some eight years later, the economy has limped along as financial issues were punted into the future, rather like a child kicking a can down an alley. Like the can, the financial issues are still here to be ran into. I thought it was time to re-read Taleb’s book.

    Taleb’s work is philosophical rather than scientific in its method. Although he avoids the talk show friendly cliches of Malcolm Gladwell or Seth Godin. Much of our world is based around the normal distribution, it is used by insurance companies and pension funds to access risk and longevity. Taleb points out that the really big changes that rock the boat often don’t fit neatly within these models.

    Taleb’s solution boils down to two things

    1. A defensive skepticism that would encourage the average person to question common wisdom and ask ‘what if’
    2. For those that can afford it, an offensive posture that asks ‘what if’ and has a mix of savings or investments most of which is put in very safe vehicles and 15 per cent or so on high risk speculative investments to take advantage of change

    Taleb’s work doesn’t seem to have had the impact that one would have expected just five years ago when it was quoted as a touchstone to modern life.

    Much of the excess and risk that had happened previously is happening again, despite a plethora of disruptive forces laid out in the media.

    Audiences are paying too much attention to listicles that go something along the line of ‘5 habits you need have to be like Bill Gates’. Where is the critical filter? More books reviewed here.

    More information

    McMansions Are Back And Are Bigger Than Ever – There was a small ray of hope just after the Lehman collapse that one of the most lamentable characteristics of US society – the relentless urge to build massive McMansions (funding questions aside) would have subsided
    The market’s most crowded trades could be causing dangerous bubbles – Business Insider
    Many Middle-Class Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck – The Atlantic
    Economic Conditions Snapshot, March 2016: McKinsey Global Survey results | McKinsey & Company
    Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley – The New York Times – Mr. Grove contrasted the start-up phase of a business, when uses for new technologies are identified, with the scale-up phase, when technology goes from prototype to mass production. Both are important. But only scale-up is an engine for job growth — and scale-up, in general, no longer occurs in the United States. “Without scaling,” he wrote, “we don’t just lose jobs — we lose our hold on new technologies” and “ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.
    Crap IT means stats crew don’t really know how UK economy’s doing • The Register – and people make accusations about Chinese economic data…
    Return of ‘100% mortgages’ ease burden on Bank of Mum and Dad | FT