Reading List Apr-Jun 2011

I haven’t been reviewing, but I have been reading although even that has dropped off at the end of June with a combination of traveling, limited internet access, and irregular work hours. I will get back to the main business in July, I promise. I see that people get here by searching for Geisler’s book and I don’t want to leave the review unfinished.

The Anubis Gates – Tim Powers

This book has been the most fun thing on the recommendation list so far. It was entertaining and full of fantastic happenings – and what good is fantasy if nothing fantastic ever happens? There were a lot of opportunities for things to go ridiculously over the top – time travel, werewolves, beggar guilds, historical figures… but almost everything came together satisfactorily.

The Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This was not a fun book; it felt like an accomplishment, both the impressive prose and the feat of finishing it. Admittedly, I was busy and tired when I read it, getting only a few pages in at night before falling asleep and having to reread the ends of where I left off because I’d started scanning without comprehension. It wasn’t a good way to read. There’s a lot of circularity and different memories of the same events. Dspite my failings as a reader, it was an amazing work. It did not strike me as belonging on an SFF list though, even accounting for how many books with clearly fantastic elements are classified as literature rather than fantasy. The surreal or magical elements seemed to me to be entirely internal.

Looking for Jake and Other Stories – China Mieville

The weirdness and overflow and indulgence of Mieville’s novels are some of my favorite parts, and the more abbreviated and concise nature of the short story didn’t work for me as well. There were a few good stories among this collection, but none of them left me stunned with admiration and I was anxious to move on to the next book.

Blindness – Jose Saramago

I was concerned that this would be a slow and dense book, and was happily surprised that the pages flew by. Although there wasn’t constant action – much of the book was a description of the difficult day to day activity of the suddenly blind, the situation was continually compelling. While the resolution was fitting and paralleled the introduction to the conflict, thinking back on the book a few months later I do feel a bit frustrated with the lack of answers.

The Book of the New Sun (The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, The Citadel of the Autarch) – Gene Wolfe

The author’s relationship to real world religion kept tugging on me as I was reading. It’s hard to know what exactly to say about this particular series. It was worth reading even though I don’t share the author’s worldview. Sometimes the symbolism was so explicit that I felt like I was being preached to, and sometimes the story was so self contained that I felt ashamed for equating it with an allegory. In The Sword of the Lictor, when I read “I found myself thinking how strange it would be if the New Sun, the Daystar himself, were to appear now as suddenly as he had appeared so long ago when he was called the Conciliator”, I felt like Wolfe might as well have written, “Hey, the New Sun is Jesus, you know, Jesus, hey it’s Jesus”. At other times, it felt more like an artifact than a story. It seems to me that it’s more a rebuilding of the connections that belief might take – and a thoughtful and intellectual rebuilding too – but one that I don’t connect to and one where I can’t share the author’s vision.

Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke

An important book to the SF genre, easy and quick to read. After Book of the New Sun, the straightforward style was a relief.

A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

The reread! I started reading this almost at the same time as the Game of Thrones show on HBO, partly so that I could nitpick, which I must say is not an angry or frustrated or dissatisfied reaction for me but merely a hobby. It also coincided conveniently with getting through a reread before A Dance with Dragons comes out on July 12. A year ago, I would have told you that I was over it; I’d waited so long that I didn’t care if I never read the rest of the series. Turns out that wasn’t true.

Kraken – China Mieville

Awesome and flawed. This seems to be a fairly common opinion. The atmosphere, the setting, the equal parts familiarity and weirdness of the Kraken religion, Goss and Subby, and the looming threats and secrets all around make the book amazing. I got into the premise much faster than I normally do with Mieville – even though I love the Bas Lag novels, I had to work through the first few chapters to get into the story. Unfortunately, the opposite happened with Kraken, as I started falling out through the middle. The parade of new characters and groups through the plot gets to be a bit much and ultimately doesn’t contribute much, and the characters in the special police unit feel unnaturally stuffed into the plot as they become increasingly slow and irrelevant and until they’re needed at the end. If I’d stopped halfway through, then read the last few chapters, the book would have been just as good.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti – Milton Rokeach

This book is about three men in a mental asylum who believe themselves to be Jesus. The author is a psychologist who hypothesizes that even if a person is mentally confused about his own identity, he will still hold to the fundamental belief that only one person can have a given identity – he gathers the men for daily meetings to see if confronting them with other people claiming their same identity will cause them to reevaluate their own claims. The book is both funny and sad at the same time. In one incident, a man in their ward is disturbed by another man’s snoring. He yells, “Jesus Christ! Quit that snoring!” and one of the Christs sits up and says “that wasn’t me who was snoring!” While their collective insistence leads to funny moments, I think it makes it even sadder that for the most part, the three men could be extremely articulate and charismatic. One is an avid and intelligent reader, and he can recount details of the author’s lives and culture as well as the plots of the books, but then will end by claiming that he is the true author and the work was stolen from him. The author calmly mentions that he thinks he has some understanding of experiences with no external reality, since he had real seeming experiences doing LSD!

The book was written in the 60s, and the author added some comments twenty years later, expressing regret for overstepping his patients’ autonomy in rearranging their lives in such a way. He says that the study was really about four men who thought they were God in a mental hospital, but by the end of the study, he himself had been cured of the delusion that he could interfere with their lives.

Embassytown – China Mieville

I wanted to love this book, but couldn’t. It’s a work of talent and intelligence, and is probably worth reading for the ideas. There are a lot of things to think about floating around, from the structure of language and how we think about language to how a society would be arranged when in proximity to a culture that cannot be fully understood or participated in. Unfortunately, the plot is haphazard, poorly paced and full of holes. The conflict, its resolution and the narrator’s part in it failed to convince me, and with many of the characters being either alien with a different concept of language and meaning, or pseudo-alien, having been altered to imitate the alien language, it didn’t help that I found all the characters who might have been relatable to be repugnant. It was hard for me to keep reading the narrator’s tone of petty superiority. I wouldn’t mind talking about the book, but I don’t want to reread it.

Outer Dark – Cormac McCarthy

Bleaker than Blood Meridian or The Road, and both are pretty bleak. But it gave me pity and compassion for the characters in a way that McCarthy’s other books have not, and left me with a lingering desire for goodness to prevail rather than merely shock, horror, or in the case of Blood Meridian, dumbfounded awe. I thought that the book captured the Appalachian landscape and dialog better than The Orchard Keeper, although the theme of incest and fatalistic guilt may be a stereotype that wasn’t entirely transcended.

To steal from an earlier review, the theme of the absent father is always present and the parable of the murdered traveler in Blood Meridian can fit both the Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, but the scope of these stories falls short. Outer Dark does contain a moving and shocking story, complete with symbolism and references to many myths and older stories, but at the end, I was left feeling that the references were more a curiosity and an intellectual exercise than something that lent much lasting meaning. For me, it’s a preparation of all these things to be distilled into the figure of the Judge. (I like to write the list a few months after reading because sometimes my perception changes with time, but for this group of books, my opinion has stayed pretty much the same as with the first reading).

A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin

This is the book in ASOIAF that I really love because it’s the book where I first became so engrossed in the series. The politicking in King’s Landing is my favorite part, particularly as Tyrion begins to set into motion his plans for the younger Lannister children, believing that he’s starting to outsmart the councilors, figuring out who’s trustworthy, and putting his own people in place. The fact that he’s entirely wrong doesn’t make the setup any less enjoyable. The book also contains by far the best Dany section, in the House of the Undying, and the best battle, at the Blackwater. 

Child of God – Cormac McCarthy

This is the first McCarthy book where I’ve felt disappointed after finishing. It wasn’t difficult to read, and in many instances the prose was beautiful and deliberate and well crafted, but there was an insubstantial voyeuristic quality. It was a story about a necrophiliac serial killer. I felt that there was something of a moral to it, explicitly stated at the beginning that the man was another human like every other, and also that the life of such a person was not a series of packaged explanations or consequences of how he became that way and that his life resisted such a tidy summary – but the fact that I see the book as being one that can be explained in terms of having a moral is enough to make it less of a book than his other works. Ultimately, although it illuminated the material in a unique way, there wasn’t anything new or different about the material itself to the point that it boiled down to being just a serial killer story.

A Storm of Swords – George R.R. Martin

One of the best things about this book is how it fits in seamlessly with the events started in ACOK and the action flows naturally from the setup. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s that I find the stories located outside Westeros to be irritating and simplistic in comparison to the events without Westeros. The Jon events at the beginning are the most interesting, with some characters that hold their own against the problem that in the first three books, Jon’s story is always all about Jon and everyone else is a sidekick or plot device who mainly exists to advance Jon’s arc. And that just makes the second half of  his Gary Stu story that much worse. I’m not a fan of the blond chick frees a literally nameless mass of brown people bit either. My biggest hope is that the story continues to be about internal Westerosi events instead of the Jon and Dany show.

Life is hard when you have a job

Ever since I’ve been gainfully employed again, I’ve been too busy to post very much. I’ll start again just as soon as I have this program working…

I’m still managing to read a decent amount, I’ve made several pysanky, and bought a piano. Pictures forthcoming.

Reading List Jan-Mar 2011

I had planned to do an entire year’s book list like last year, but thought that it would be easier to read and allow me to write a little more if I split it up. I do like waiting for some time and after several different books to give my opinion.

The Orange Eats Creeps – Grace Krilanovich

This wasn’t an easy book to read or to understand. It’s a drug-altered stream of consciousness, and although linear events can occasionally be deciphered, if you’re looking for a plot or a clear ending, you’re going to end up frustrated. The narrator is a teenage junkie possible vampire in the Pacific Northwest and memories of her foster sister and mother drift in and out as she drifts between convenience stores and temporary hideouts. It’s short and I found the writing style to move quickly. If you think it sounds interesting, you’re probably right and if it doesn’t sound like something you’d like, you’re probably right.

The Half-Made World – Felix Gilman

Incredibly well written. I saw this book recommended many times as one of the best of 2010 and I believe it’s deserving of that designation. The setting is imaginative, the prose is excellent, and the plot is intriguing. The developing West is being fought over by the Gun, angry, chaotic spirits attaching themselves to lone gunmen, and the Line, driven by Engines that desire the organized building and operation of an increasing number of railways and stations. But if my review thus far is a bit bland, it’s because it’s for a book that I can recommend with respect and admiration, but for all that, I was never completely absorbed in. I felt at a distance from the main characters and their thoughts and actions and was more interested in the mechanics of the world building than in any plot related incident.

The City and the City – China Mieville

Here was a book in which the mechanics of the world building were a main aspect and I found the result to be fascinating and attention gripping. A crime takes place in a “shared” city whose inhabitants coexist with deliberate lack of interaction, and a detective follows the trail between cities – that description doesn’t do the situation justice, but it’s better understood through following the characters than by an explanation. You should read it if you like Mieville and you should read it if you didn’t like Mieville – it’s very different in tone and setting than the Bas-Lag novels but is equally vivid.

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future – Vali Nasr

Very informative and slightly biased. The differences and conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims are significant both in their theological outlook and their resulting politics and policies. Nasr does a great job of explaining these differences and the history of the sects. I don’t think that he’s unfair or necessarily pushing an agenda, but I do think that he has the tendency to downplay wrongdoing by Shia groups and individuals in comparison to how he presents the Sunni.

Shriek: An Afterword – Jeff Vandermeer

I’ve had the problem a few times now with characters who are accurately, descriptively and perceptively written, but are nevertheless so obnoxious and annoying that I can’t bear to read about them.Janice Shriek is so self-absorbed that even as the most fascinating events are unfolding around her – in this case, a new emergence of the mushroom-like Grey Caps and a war involving fungal weapons – she can’t stop blathering on about personal issues. I didn’t enjoy reading from her perspective, but still felt the unrelenting urge to know as much as possible about the Grey Caps. Some of the middle could have been condensed and I’d have had a better opinion.

Stories of Your Life and Others – Ted Chiang

Almost everyone who’s read this has been favorably impressed and almost everyone is right. There wasn’t a single story I didn’t like, although the titular story was by far my least favorite. Tower of Babylon, Division by Zero and Seventy-Two Letters were great, but I was completely blown away by Hell is the Absence of God. Many of Chiang’s stories are available online, although of course I recommend that you support him by buying his book.

The Orchard Keeper – Cormac McCarthy

Kind of a slog, to be honest. It’s worth reading if you’re a big fan of McCarthy because you can see how his style and themes have developed from this first book he published. If that doesn’t interest you, there are probably better things to read. The style whose later incarnation works so well in the bleak violent ultra-extreme landscape of Blood Meridian doesn’t ring true for me in the Tennessee Appalachians, nor does the story warrant such treatment. In fact, the story reemerges in Blood Meridian in just a few lines, and I think it’s more powerful in the few lines than in the entire novel. A lot of well-read, well-educated reviewers disagree with me and praise the way that McCarthy captures the dialect of the area, but it doesn’t have an Appalachian feeling to me.

Thunderer – Felix Gilman

I loved this book and I loved it from the first chapter. It was Gilman’s first book, and it’s enthusiastic and chaotic and fantastic. It’s about a lot of things – a man looking for a vanished god, a bird-god who left some of its power with a boy who escaped from a workhouse and a ship belonging to an countess, a man who captured bits of gods, and other gods who wander through the story and the city. In the first chapter, I was completely convinced by the excitement and desire of the city watching the bird-god pass, and it was excitement and desire that stayed with me through the entire book. I don’t think it’s technically as well written as The Half-Made World – it’s not as clean and tight and pared down – but perfection isn’t a requirement for love and I love the excess and the way that everything is constantly threatening to spill out around the edges.

Gears of the City – Felix Gilman

Usually I wait for a while between reading books by the same author, but I was so excited about Thunderer that I wanted to read Gears of the City immediately. And happily, this is also a book that I love. When I finished Thunderer, I felt that it was complete even though there were large plot points that were unresolved, so I was happy to see that this book moved in a different direction with a new story – it also increases my optimism for the sequel to The Half-Made World. Arjun is still searching for his vanished god, but his attempt to climb the Mountain that looms over the edge of the city has created new problems for him in a new part of the city.

The Ninth Avatar – Todd Newton

I wrote a full review on this site.

Finch – Jeff Vandermeer

I was a bit wary after Shriek, but I shouldn’t have been since this was my favorite Vandermeer book thus far. It’s properly weird and unsettling, and I thought it wrapped up the history of Amergris and the Grey Caps in a satisfying way although there was still a good deal of mystery and open ending remaining. It was worth reading all three books.

The Affirmation – Christopher Priest

At this point, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was going to read next, and I decided to start reading things that looked interesting from the Westeros Fantasy and Science Fiction Book List, based on forum recommendations. When I say things that looked interesting, I’ll probably skip long epic series, books by authors that I’ve disliked in the past, books that are very difficult to find, and I don’t intend to read all of Discworld before moving on to other books. Life is too short to read books that I’m not interested in just because someone else liked them.

With that said, The Affirmation was a good recommendation. I thought that the first three quarters of the book were great, wonderfully written, and built the concept well. While the ending was certainly clever and appropriate, my perception of the situation changed in a way that I’m not sure the author intended, as I started firmly identifying one account as “true” and the other as “imagined”, which reduced the narrator from being ambiguous to simply delusional. I’m still glad I read it but feel that some of the impact was lost on me.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects – Ted Chiang

Very good, not quite as good as some of his short stories. Well worth reading. It’s about two people who work on AI pets designed to look like baby animals or cute robots. The AI is so advanced that the pets are more like children who learn language, concepts, and a sense of self. The people who work with them are able to become attached to them as living beings.

The New Weird – ed. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer

It seemed inevitable, considering my liking for the New Weird authors I’ve encountered. The anthology itself was somewhat uneven, although I enjoyed most of the stories. I didn’t think that Crossing into Cambodia by Moorcock had the same tone as any of the other stories at all, and I thought that The Gutter Sees The Light That Never Shines by Rennie was truly terrible – who’d have known that so much violence gets boring? And I was a bit disappointed that the Laboratory section was dependent on continuing a beginning that was well enough written but felt contrived. I’d rather have seen the authors create something that was NEW new weird. OTOH, the atmosphere was overwhelming in In The Cities, The Hills by Barker and Watson’s Boy by Everson – from the first line of Watson’s Boy, I felt twitchy and claustrophobic. Several of the stories made me curious about the author’s other books. The one story I feel I should reread is Ligotti’s A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing. It was seriously weird, but I’m not sure I caught everything.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon

This probably won’t be popular, but I truly disliked reading this book. I had to force myself to finish and pleasurable moments were few and far between. I have no idea why it won a Pulitzer. The brief story of Joe and the golem was the best part, and I was hoping there’d be more of that tone, a bit of the truly fantastic rather than merely the implausible, but it wasn’t to be. It’s a pretty frequent criticism that I have of bad books – we’re told repeatedly that Sam and Rosa are clever and special, but their conversations are dull and wooden. One of the biggest sacrifices Sam makes in the story is completely in the background, over for years before we encounter him again. So he ends up in the first half being like a humorless Jewish Forrest Gump, a blank slate that happens to be part of big events with famous people. Rosa had a fleeting moment of apparent oddness when we met her, but turned out to be a conventional simpering type. I also felt that the author was heavy handed and unnuanced. Even in the saddest moments, I couldn’t forget that the author wanted me to feel sad. I did have ongoing sympathy for Joe, but I found the other characters to be unbelievable and unlikable, and that the plot steamrolled over their personalities and individuality.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 – Steve Coll

Long, dense and interesting. A mistake in the Kindle edition really drives me crazy – the book is repeated twice in its entirety, once without electronic chapter breaks, which made the book look impossibly long. I found the prose style to be slow in the first section, with so many different incidents of money and weapons going to the mujaheddin. The next two sections were easier to read and dealt largely with bin Laden’s rise as a financier of global terrorism and the American attempts to find a way to capture or possibly kill him. If I had one complaint, in a few places coherent narrative is lost in an information dump.

An obligatory update

I’ve been busy with work. That’s pretty much all.

I found a recipe that attempts to duplicate the dearly departed toasted coconut sesame brittle ice cream. It seems a bit complicated, but what is complication compared to addiction?

http://the-cooking-of-joy.blogspot.com/2009/02/toasted-coconut-ice-cream-with-sesame.html

Book Review: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist – Interlude

I just started a new job and right now, I’m too preoccupied to give the question of evidence for Jesus sufficient attention. I was starting to write about chapter 9, but didn’t have the attention span for it. Lest anyone be thinking of the proper Christian reply – that it’s shortsighted and arrogant for an atheist to decide that she doesn’t have time to consider the evidence for Jesus; and that if I died today, the explanation that I had put it off would be insufficient, I will note that I have yet to see any new material and if there’s one thing that I can’t be accused of, it’s unfamiliarity with Christianity.
What I did want to start the new section with ended up being more of an interlude than a review or a response anyway:

Finally, we can start talking about Jesus. It occurs to me that I’ve gotten too bogged down in criticisms of the author’s writing style, and that I need to get back to talking about whether I find the arguments convincing for me, whether they’re explained well or not. My initial thoughts are about the knowledge of Jesus or any other member of the Trinity as a personal god. I’ve heard it preached many times that the members of the godhead are persons rather than impersonal forces, and that God can be known. Christians often say that they experience God’s presence in some way. My mother says that the Holy Spirit gives her peace about certain things, although she has claimed in the past to have had peace about things that did not work out in a positive way. As I stated before, I thought that I was a Christian for most of my childhood. I prayed to God with all sincerity. But I never had any personal experience of God in any form or manifestation. It seems to me that the experience of God should have been sufficient testimony.

When Jesus is asked to show the disciples the Father, he replies that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father. Moreover, he says that the Spirit will live in them and will teach them all things (John 14:8-26). Later, Peter preaches at Pentecost that the gift of the Holy Spirit is for all believers and their children and all who are far off (Acts 2: 38-39). I would say to anyone trying to convince me that we have testimony about Jesus that if the Holy Spirit truly lives in them, they should be able to give me living testimony and not just apologetics. It is as if you talked to me all the time about your friend Jesus, who you claimed was a living person; he even lived in your own house. Yet when I asked to meet Jesus, you gave me a ghost-written autobiography of his life, and told me that the book along with your enthusiasm for him should be proof to me that he is real. This is a poor sort of introduction to someone who lives with you. Maybe you tell me that if I read the autobiography and try to talk to Jesus, I will meet him, but when I have done all that with great supplication and he doesn’t appear, what else is there to do? Pray harder? Try harder? Obey better? You tell me that I cannot meet him through my own works, so what is there remaining? In place of the meeting, you give me some books that attempt to convince me that all the things Jesus claimed in his autobiography are true. But of what use to me are books when I want to meet him? Can you blame me for doubting that he lives here with you?

It’s the same thing, always.

In other review related news, I would like to recommend a response to I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist that is much shorter, much funnier, and much more clever than mine: http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p98.htm I’m not associated with either the author or the website – I found it via the magic of Google. I’m not sure that I buy every one of his arguments – I feel that he throws around the term “other dimensions” too much without giving it a rigorous and static definition, but otherwise he brings up a lot of good points without going on and on the way that I do!

Have you, possibly non-existent reader, seen The Sunset Limited on HBO? http://www.hbo.com/movies/sunset-limited/index.html# It’s a play by Cormac McCarthy with Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. That should be enough reason to watch it. I was nervous at the beginning. Nervous that it seemed to be shaping into religious truth vs. bitter nihilistic symbol of atheism with a little bit of magical Negro thrown in. There might be people who agree with that first assessment. What really stood out to me was the idea of experiential truth and the idea that a character needn’t be a symbol or a representation. It’s good that McCarthy doesn’t go into speech writing for televangelists. I don’t know his own beliefs, although I sincerely doubt that he’s a born again, but he and Samuel L. captured something in experiential Christianity that to me is missing in what I’ve seen of actual Christianity (although I was reminded a bit of Wayne, an ex-homeless man who now runs a soup kitchen in my hometown). It was convincing because I wanted to be convinced – but conversely, it was made-up and acted, maybe observed and idealized, and how could someone else’s experience be trusted when experience can be generated as art?

The other thing that I dealt with was not being sensitive toward having myself misrepresented, because every other atheist is not myself. Archetypes are different from representatives. There are bitter nihilistic atheists and I’m not one of them. I’m a happy nihilist. I’m happy that when I die, I’ll be part of the universe in the trees and earth and stars and other things, other people. Make no mistake, I don’t think there’s a larger purpose to it. It’s enough that it happens. I did hear echoes of other McCarthy when White started talking about the progression of time. The beginning made me think that I should reevaluate Blood Meridian. But I hope the movie never gets made. Because I can’t see it being anything but a disaster, no matter who directs and who acts.

The Ninth Avatar: review

Since the author of the Ninth Avatar, Todd Newton, is a friend of mine, his book gets its own discussion instead of an end of the year paragraph. This is his debut novel.

Before starting to read, I found the cover art appealing and the font annoying. I consider it a huge plus that the novel can be read as a standalone.

A cast of characters from different cultural and religious backgrounds are joined in a fight against an undead army that is ravaging their land. A Mystian priestess named Starka has visions that the turmoil foreshadows the Avatar of Darkness. She is sent into the world to attempt to influence the events of her prophecy, and meets survivors who are determined to bring down the Carrion army.

My impressions of the book are divided largely between the different character sections. There were a few character arcs that I always enjoyed reading and a few that grated on me. In particular, I was interested in everything to do with Cairos, a wizard whose city was destroyed by the Carrion army. I could have easily read an entire book that centered around him and his magic – his sections read easily and the small glimpse of his backstory was immediately interesting. I also appreciated the sections dealing with Xymon, a Carrion army general. He had the aesthetic of a Nazi officer or any real subordinate climbing to the top through bloodshed. His jealousies, grasping and fear added interest that wouldn’t have been present if his army had been presented as a vague force of evil. Most of the other characters with their own sections were enjoyable and sympathetic but spread a bit thin.

However, the main character Starka annoyed me so much that it was difficult to read about her. I think she must be the sister of Bella from Twilight. She was always doing stupid things, asking stupid questions, had a 14 year old’s sexual maturity, and was always needing to be rescued by a man. To be fair, she was previously a sheltered member of a patriarchal religion, and she felt accurate as such, but it didn’t make her easier to read. I was disappointed in DaVille as well. He had a troubled past as a warrior, but I never got a good sense of his deeper motivations. I felt that his character was trying to have it both ways – that he was so damaged and beyond human emotions that he couldn’t connect to anyone and being pulled toward his destiny was all that was left for him, and that he was developing emotions toward Starka and becoming more caring – and I ultimately didn’t buy either. Disliking main characters who are supposed to be good guys made things somewhat difficult.

A real strength for me was the way that religions were constructed and appeared to have real signs and powers, despite each culture having its own religion and own gods or forces. It struck me as being like a world where Christianity, African traditional religion and Hinduism as well as fantasy style magic all had undeniable manifestations, and while each religion could sequester itself to some degree, it would be impossible to entirely deny that the other religions had real and tangible powers. I’d have liked to see even more about the interactions between different religions and their followers, especially how they dealt with the Pillars and the Avatars. For example, Wan Du’s deity appears to speak him, but it’s not very clear the relationship that the deity has with the Pillars, or if there’s spiritual conflict  between deities of different cities when there’s physical conflict between the warriors of the cities. I would also like to have more information on the different Avatars and how their manifestations come about. I think that the setting would be conducive to having some short stories filling in some of the history and details of the different religions and cultures.

The main problem that I had with the plot was how several plot points came and went very quickly and without much precedent. The subplot about Starka’s brother seems like it’s going to be important at the beginning, but it goes nowhere for a long time, and even when it surfaces again, it does almost nothing to change the events of the story. Elsewhere, spells and charms and magical items occasionally come out of nowhere to advance the plot. Perhaps trying to fill up an entire world with characters, cultures and an epic conflict was a little too much. There’s a reason that epic fantasy tends to require several volumes, and I felt that some detail and buildup was sacrificed to be able to tell the entire story in one book. I’ll admit that I’m not a big fan of epic and I prefer standalones, so my preference would have been less character perspectives and a more focused quest, but I think that the story would work well with expansion. I also think that it would work well as a movie. I’m excited that Todd Newton is continuing in this setting by writing a prequel, and I’m hoping to find out more about the beliefs and cultures that make up the world.

Sometimes it makes me sad…

… how many people I’ve known who I will probably never talk to again.

On the other hand, it’s awesome to meet up with people I haven’t seen for years. In the 3-4 times it’s happened over the past year, it’s always gone just great.

Book Review: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist – Ch 8.2

8: MIRACLES: SIGNS OF GOD OR GULLIBILITY? (PART 2)

I stopped in the middle of chapter eight for a long time because I was annoyed and tired. I thought that we were finally getting to Biblical claims, but instead, it was more magic hand-waving tricks. The rest of the chapter can be finished out fairly quickly. The author wants to define for us what is and isn’t a miracle. He says, fairly enough, that for an act of God to be an unmistakable sign from God, it must be distinguished from any other unusual event (p 210). He defines these to be an instantaneous beginning of a powerful act, intelligent design and purpose, and the promotion of good or right behavior (p 211). He does not consider events that can be explained by natural laws to be miraculous. However, he brushes over the issue of Satanic signs. I don’t have the inclination to address the arguments about dualism, but I’ll point out that again the author makes facile points and declares an absolute conclusion. Moreover, he declares that Satan can only produce limited counterfeit miracles that are often associated with immoral behavior. He says that only God can create life, with the example of Pharaoh’s magicians being unable to create life in the form of lice in the third plague, although they were able to imitate the first two. This makes absolutely no sense, because the second plague was frogs, another living creature. So somehow imitating frogs with magic tricks is possible, but lice are impossible to imitate and must be created? I don’t even know where that argument is going.

Moreover, Evangelicals will generally see fit to denounce the kind of miracles that Jesus appeared to accept in Mark 9. Jesus says No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.

Lastly, there are excuses for why we don’t see Biblical miracles today. The author says that miracles were rare and only performed during the times that God was confirming new truth (p 216). But then why talk about miracles at all at this point? In fact, we’re offered with no valid criteria to evaluate whether a miracle happened or not, because there is nothing that we can point to, within the chapter at least, that is both miraculous and witnessed. Even the plagues in the aforementioned examples, if we had any way of confirming that they happened at all, are not clearly miraculous, since anomalies are ruled out from being miraculous. Frogs, lice, boils, hail, darkness, death of children… these are all things that can occur naturally, and predictive powers aren’t addressed in the category of miracles here. Again, these kind of definitions lack meaning without having anything to evaluate. So far, it seems that a miracle is anything that the author labels as a miracle, so that a swarm of lice from an ancient text qualifies, but anything purportedly done in the name of any other god does not.

Genesis 46-50

46: Jacob’s family moves to Egypt. It turns out after all that God sanctions the move to Egypt, telling Jacob that he will make him a great nation there. I think that God talks to Jacob directly more than to anyone else in Genesis. While Joseph attributes his dream interpretation to God, neither he nor his brothers ever appear to have a direct visitation or a personal assurance that they’re part of the earlier covenant. The family of Jacob is listed, and at the end of the list, it’s said that the number of persons in the household is seventy. This is a number that has importance throughout the Bible, but it looks that the list has been doctored a bit to add up. For one thing, there’s exactly one granddaughter in the entire list, but it’s highly unlikely that there would have been only one granddaughter and fifty-four grandsons and great-grandsons, even considering that married granddaughters may have stayed with their husband’s families. I find it really really funny that Benjamin has sons named Muppim and Huppim.

In a previous chapter, it’s mentioned that Egyptians don’t eat with Hebrews, and here it’s revealed that shepherds are abhorrent to Egypt. Even though Pharaoh and the Egyptians welcomed them down because they were Joseph’s family, it’s evident that there’s already prejudice against them as foreigners.

47: Joseph taxes Egypt. It’s an odd detail to me that Joseph takes five brothers to see Pharaoh with him. Why five? Pharaoh agrees to let the family settle in Goshen. Jacob tells Pharaoh that his days have been few and evil, and that he won’t live as long as his ancestors, although he does live to be 147.

Joseph is a profitable overseer for Pharaoh, and he takes all the Egyptian’s silver as payment for bread, and then takes their livestock, and then their farmland and taxes them permanently. He resettles the farmers. While a twenty percent tax is not that high in total, it’s unlikely that there was no tax before that and the arrangement is that the farmland and the harvest actually all belong to Pharaoh now, and the people are being allowed to keep 80% for food and resowing. Not surprisingly, Christian commentary on this chapter includes titles like Socialism Leads to Slavery and The Sin of Socialism. Also unsurprisingly, some of these are sermons against Obama. But look at this: Well, I tell you this – I know the Messiah; the Messiah is a friend of mine; and Mr. Obama is no Messiah! No, brothers and sisters, if Mr. Obama is a character from the Bible, then he is Pharaoh (http://tinyurl.com/4jetlnq). But that’s not the case in this story. If Mr. Obama is a socialist character from the Bible, then he is Joseph. The same Joseph whom God spoke to in dreams, whom God made prosper, whose ascension as Pharaoh’s second in command is always attributed to God, and who orchestrated the entire governmental takeover. Not only that, in this story, the Egyptians are grateful to Joseph for keeping them alive. It’s simply not mentioned at all what God thinks of Joseph’s governance, but the commentary suggests that the writer of Genesis would have considered Joseph’s plan to be smart and to explain the then current economics of Egyptian peasants.

What I do find troubling about the story as a modern person is that the stored grain presumably came from the farms of these same Egyptians during the seven years of plenty. It does seem remarkably unfair that they should be bankrupted when they produced the grain they now have to buy back.

48: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob relays the words of the covenant to Joseph, but he doesn’t give Joseph any particular blessing for himself. Instead, he says that he will consider Joseph’s sons to be his own. Joseph was probably going to remain an official under Pharaoh, virtually considered an Egyptian, and never need lands or be a shepherd again nor pass those things to his children. For Joseph’s children to be considered part of Jacob’s family instead of Egyptians, they would need to be like Jacob’s sons.

Jacob gives the younger son his right hand, although he blesses both at once. Joseph should probably have smacked him. He tells Joseph that he has given him with single intent over your brothers what I took from the hand of the Emorite. It’s not clear what or where this is, but single intent translates literally one shoulder.

49: Jacob blesses the twelve sons. Firstborn Reuben is displaced from the birthright because he slept with his father’s concubine. The blessings and mixed blessings follow what Jacob knows and don’t seem to be influenced by God. As I mentioned before, Reuben is never rewarded for being the only brother to try to save Joseph’s life as a boy. Jacob outright curses Simeon and Levi for murdering the Shechemites. So Judah receives the birthright, where he is promised that his brothers will bow to him and he will have the tribute and submission.

The other brothers have no stories of their own, so it’s hard to know why they receive the blessings that they do – Zebulon will dwell by the sea, Issachar is a donkey and a serf, Dan is a judge and a snake, Gad will be goaded and a goad, Asher will have bread and kingly dishes, Naphtali is a hind and father of lovely fawns, Benjamin is a ravening wolf. Joseph does get a special blessing and his sons aren’t mentioned specifically. He’s the only son to be connected to God’s blessing. At this point, he’s obviously in a different situation than the others, but I do find it notable that while Jacob appeared also to love Benjamin more than his brothers previously, he gets a weak and ambiguous blessing.The commentary is fairly important here – it isn’t known whether this is a complete composition or a fragmented text, but it’s agreed that it’s one of the oldest, with such old and rare language that the interpretation is sometimes uncertain.

Jacob asks to be buried in the field at Mamre with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, and Leah. Jacob knows where Rachel was buried, as it was marked by a pillar in chapter 35, but Leah was the one to be buried in the family grave.

50: Jacob and Joseph’s deaths. When Jacob dies, Joseph gives him a full Egyptian embalming, then takes him back to Canaan to be buried in the family grave. The brothers tell Joseph, probably falsely, that Jacob had asked him to forgive them and they call themselves the servants of his father’s God. Joseph lives shorter than any of his ancestors, 110 years. He assures his brothers that God will take them to the covenant land and asks them to take his bones with them when it happens. He is also embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt, and as we know, his brothers never left Egypt to be able to take him with them. His coffin is the last image in Genesis.

Genesis 41-45

I’m happy to be almost finished with Genesis.

41: Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams. This story continues to be very different in tone from the other stories of the patriarchs. It’s moralistic and linear. It’s odd that all Pharaoh’s soothsayers couldn’t interpret his dream, because I had the general impression throughout the Bible that prophets who aren’t called by God are fakes and are making up interpretations to begin with. It’s also odd to me, but may be a modern perspective, that Pharaoh would make Joseph second in command with no verification of the truth of his interpretation. It’s hard to tell how much of his rise was clever manipulation. It kind of sounds like he’s setting Pharaoh up when he suggests an overseer, but he’s so bland. Joseph marries the daughter of a priest, probably a sun worshiper. There’s no mention of religious tensions.

42: Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt. First Joseph tells the brothers that the test will be for all but one to be detained and the one to bring Benjamin. After three days, he changes it to detaining one brother and sending all the rest back to get Benjamin. Perhaps he believes that his brothers have also gotten rid of his full brother, who was also probably favored by Jacob. He detains Simeon, and when they return to Jacob, he acts as if Simeon is already gone, while telling them that he is the one who bears all the bereavement. Reuben steps up again as the one who appears to be trying to work things out – he was the one who wanted to spare Joseph – he promises the lives of his own two sons in return for Benjamin’s safety, something that would presumably not make their grandfather feel better.

The brothers act surprised twice when they find the silver in their packs, once on their return trip and once when they are emptying their packs at home. It’s unclear whether these are two versions of the story or if they’re acting out the story for Jacob.

43: Joseph’s brothers return with Benjamin. The ten brothers appear to lie to Jacob. In the previous chapter, they offered their family information to Joseph to convince him they weren’t spies, and here they tell their father that Joseph asked them specific questions about the family. This time Judah promises to be responsible for Benjamin, and Jacob accepts, perhaps a foreshadowing of Judah’s eventual inheritance of the birthright. Jacob was called Jacob in the previous chapter, but is called Israel here. Despite the famine, Jacob appears to still be wealthy, as he can offer more silver as well as many types of expensive goods.

Joseph seems to favor his full brother, perhaps deservedly since Benjamin was the only one not involved in his being sold into slavery. The Egyptians found it abhorrent to eat with the Hebrews, although presumably they ate with Joseph regularly. It seems a sign of contempt that might foreshadow their later slavery, but the commentary says that the Egyptians were prohibited from eating lamb, which was a primary Hebrew food.

44: Joseph frames Benjamin with stealing. Joseph’s household manager is responsible for putting the goblet in Benjamin’s bag and also for accusing him. It makes sense that he would be aware of both, if Joseph wanted to make sure no harm would come to his brothers because of the accuser’s anger. He tells them that Joseph uses the goblet for divining. Like when Rachel stole the household gods, the manager is promised that when the goblet is found, the thief will die, but this time the goblet is easily found.

Judah recounts the entire story of Jacob’s responses to Joseph. He acknowledges that Jacob acts as if Rachel were his only wife and elaborates on Joseph’s story of being allegedly killed by wild animals that wasn’t in the previous chapter. While I don’t condone the brothers’ past treatment of Joseph, I feel dully sad that they’ve acquiesced to being less loved, that losing Judah would be less terrible to Jacob than losing Benjamin. Judah asks to take Benjamin’s place.

45: Joseph reveals himself. Ugh at the moralizing. I think this is the first place that Hebrews/Jews as a remnant is introduced. Pharaoh is happy to have Joseph’s family come to live in Egypt. The thought that the ancestral land where Jacob lives is the land promised by God to Abraham doesn’t seem to come up.