Just Put the Fracking Cheese Back and Nobody Gets Hurt

This week I have mostly been reading Who Moved My Cheese a self-help guide which is apparently An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Life.

The book takes the form of a little parable about the inhabitants of a maze who live on the cheese they find in it. There are two mice, Sniff and Scurry who live by their simple mouse instincts, sniffing out new cheese and scurrying into action. Then there are two miniature humans who are encumbered by human thought patterns, expecting their cheese to go on forever and scared to venture out into the maze when their cheese supply runs out. One of the little people learns to laugh at himself for hanging around waiting for the cheese to come back and plucks up courage to venture back into the maze and start searching. Eventually he finds all manner of great new cheeses of types never encountered before.

It sounds patronising, but at it's not as bad as Paulo Coelho and at least it's short. The most appallingly-written part is the wraparound story about a bunch of people listening to the cheese parable and using it to deal with the changes going on in their lives but I guess no one reads self-help books for fully-realised characters.

On his way through the maze our tiny hero chalks up useful advice for anyone following him on the walls. My favourite was, "It is safer to search in the maze than remain in a cheeseless situation.". Very true. In contrast the least useful was,"What would you do if you weren't afraid?". Every time I try to answer that honestly I come up with something violent or unethical or just plain destructive. Basically, you should all thank your lucky stars that I am afraid.

Anyway, the advice is all very well but what about other people? None of the tiny people has tiny children looking up at them begging for cheese, or whining that the quest for new cheese has meant moving away from their friends. There are no spouses who carry on consuming cheese when there isn't any on cheesy credit cards (which are probably made of crackers). No one is an island and realising what you need to do does not necessarily make you free to do it. I have a horrible feeling that what you're meant to do is wheel out the cheese story and tell it to your family, employees or whatever. And I don't think that's going to wash this side of the atlantic. Not unless they're very easily led indeed.

In many ways the most interesting aspect of the is as an example at pacing and leading. These are rhetorical devices commonly used by hypnotists, politicians and other species of charlatan whereby you start with a statement everyone can agree with and slowly, step by step lead people by the nose into deeper, darker waters. One day I will use these techniques to write a self-help book of my own which will leave my victims, sorry, readers with a warm glow of empowerment and the overwelming urge to send me all their money. 

Youth-Speak

It seems like only yesterday I was enjoying youthful slang the older generation couldn't comprehend: phoning my 'rents, drinking pints of 'ken in student bars. Omg I used a lot of TLAs and had a rising intonation? Now I am on the outside and I have no idea whether the kids are alright because I don't understand a word:

A student I trained with at kung fu asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I was a software developer he said, "Aw, man, savage!". I don't even know whether that's good or bad!

Squealed by a youngster working in our sales dept, "Oooo, cool beans!". Makes me think of cold baked beans. Ugh...

From a conversation I overheard between two girls dressed like something out of Desperately Seeking Susan, "So, he's like, 'What's her complexion like?' And I'm like, 'Mmmm 'spretty vaz.'". WTF? Did I even hear that right?

Vampires vs Werewolves vs Bookclub of One

Don’t panic! Brain death resulting in reading “Twilight” books hasn’t set in. That, I think, is one of the compensations of encroaching middle age: I have now been round the block enough times to know that the Twilight series will be cock-awful without having to read the sodding things. So what nonsense have I been reading?

“The Fallen Blade” by Jon Courtenay-Grimwood. I don’t recommend it. I really enjoyed JCG’s Ashraf Bey books (Pachazade, Effendi and Fellaheen) and I would urge both my readers to go out and buy them. Don’t part with money for Fallen Blade as it will only encourage the author to turn out more of this lazy crap – particularly upsetting since he’s capable of better. Why is this book so dire? Let’s take a look...

Firstly, it seems to be composed of a selection of rather tired memes (or “cliches” as we called them in my day): Vampires fighting werewolves and vampire assassins.  I quite like the fact that the novel is set in a sort of renaissance Venice and I quite like the way that Othello and Desdemona have been borrowed into it, but sadly I don’t like either facet enough to undo the vampire-assassins-fighting-werewolves rubbishness.

Secondly, The Fallen Blade has an amazingly rubbish heroine. Gulietta’s job, as far as I can make out is simply to be fought over by werewolves, vampires and various human political factions. JCG keeps telling us she is, “every inch a Millioni Princess” but she is just helpless flotsam washed about the place by the actions of other people. Conversely Desdaio (the Desdemona character) is described as soft and privileged, but puts her wealth and good looks to use doing whatever she thinks is right. She’s a bit of an innocent abroad (particularly in the scenes where she’s negotiating with Atilo in the belief that the worst that will result is a slap while he considers having her murdered) but ultimately a much more sympathetic character than the useless, standy-there Gulietta.

I think you can probably guess that the characters I found most interesting in this book were the ones borrowed from Shakespeare. Atilo is a Moorish pirate forced to serve Venice who has risen to become the Duke’s chief assassin. Desdaio is the wealthiest heiress in the city who, to the disgust of nearly everyone else has chosen Atilo for a husband. Already there are cracks and jealousies appearing in their relationship.  I’d have liked to have seen more of their tragedy played out – I guess that is saved for the next books (this one is, as always, the first in a trilogy) but I won’t be reading them as life’s too short!

More easy reads for the middle of the night

High Lord by Trudi Canavan

I have reached the end of the Black Magician trilogy! Finally I have closure and Trudgy Caravan and I can go our separate ways! In this final instalment it turns out (rather disappointingly) that the High Lord is not in fact evil. He has been practising black magic but only because it was necessary to protect the kingdom from a bunch of evil, foreign magicians. Sonea choses to help him, but they are caught practising black magic and drummed out of the guild leaving the country undefended with evil magicians marching towards it...

Tithe by Holly Black

Now this was good fun! 16 year old Kaye Fierch was able to see fairies as a little girl. When her mother's latest relationship breaks down they move back to the town she grew up in. The fairies are still there but now they seem to be involved in very adult machinations...

Escardy Gap - Peter Crowther and James Lovegrove

Basically this book is Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury rewritten in the style of Stephen King with added postmodern wankery of an author trying to write a horor novel as the wraparound story. The sad thing is that I read it from cover to cover, more fool me! Going to try to ebay it to buy stuff for Tiny Daughter...

The Eclipse of the Century by Jan Mark

When 20 year old student Keith Chapman is involved in a car crash he has a near death experience, but rather than seeing a vision of heaven and speaking to his dead relatives he sees a town square and hears a woman's voice telling him that they will meet again in Qantoum, under a black sun at the end of a thousand years. Keith does some research and discovers that Qantoum is a real place; a town which sprang up round an oasis on the silk road it has been conquered by Alexander the Great,the mongols and Russia but with the collapse of the Soviet Union it is now in a disputed territory on the boader of Tajikistan. He determins to visit to see whether it is anything like his vision. Years of fighting have left Qantoum a wreck without power and miles from any kind of authority. It has two distinct populations: the Sturyat, descendants of a tribe of nomads who settled there a thousand years ago and a motley collection of westerners living in and around the town museum. Feeling very pleased with his own political correctness, Keith moves in with the natives, but are they Sturyat as peaceful as they first appear? Why is everyone who crosses them "taken by the sand" and is there any truth to their bizzare assertion that their race comes from space and will be heading back there soon?

I really enjoyed this book; once again there was an upside to being hauled out of my lovely bed! My favourite character was the phlegmatic Russian Lt Kije. I can still see the image of him that built up in my head, sardonic, unshaven and with a filthy Russian cigarette on the go (the text never really describes him, this is just how I think he ought to look).

The Code Book by Simon Singh

Hurray! I think my brain is finally beginning to recover!

I've had this book on my shelf for years, but while I was going to work programming everyday it just looked like more work. Maternity leave was the right time to read it. Either my brain is starting to work properly again or Singh writes with enough clarity to penetrate the mum-fog. Probably a bit of both.

The code book is a history of cryptography from the Ceasar cypher (good enough for 1000 years then broken by Arab scholars) through to quantum cryptography. The Caesar cipher was followed by polyalphabetic ciphers (in the case of the one time pad the key is as long as msg therefore unbreakable but logistical problems distributing keys mean this method must be used sparingly). We then come to the mechanisation of encoding and the Enigma machine. The section on the breaking of the Enigma cipher was especially interesting as I had never realised the contribution made by the Polish secret service as well as the more familiar story of Bletchly Park. In many cases it was human weaknesses that made the messages decodeable ( for example, the choice of 3 letter day codes was left to the individual operators who would sometimes get lazy and use their own initials, or letters which were next to one another on the Enigma machine keyboard). Another trick was to realise that a certain message at 6am was always a weather report, so you could expect the word "wetter" near the beginning. We then move on to RSA and PGP. For the future we have the possibility of quantum cryptography. There are also interesting asides on the translation of the Rosetta Stone and linear b.

Great stuff. I feel enthused to have a go at the cyphers in the back. Then I'm going to decode the Voynich manuscript, solve the travelling salesman problem and sort out 3 body physics before the end of maternity leave...

 

Silly books to read in the middle of the night...

Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones

This is eminently suitable to read at 3am as the story is so good it's almost a pleasure to haul your sorry ass out of bed. Moril is one of a family of travelling musicians touring Dalemark. His father is killed and his mother takes up again with an old flame, leaving him with a moony older brother, a bolshy sister, a posh teenage refugee and a magic cwidder. Fortunately they have a very sensible horse...

This is the first of the 4 Dalemark books so there are still 3 more to go, hurrah!

Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz

One of a series of books about teenage spy Alex Rider. Amazingly, this is really too lightweight for even the most sleep-deprived of mothers. There's just so little too it. By the time you've done 2 night time feeds it's all gone!

Sabriel by Garth Nix

This is more like it! Sabriel's dad is Abhorsen; a kind of nice necromancer who makes sure the dead rest in peace. When Sabriel is 18 and just about to leave her posh girls' school an apparition brings her father's sword and bells. This is a bad sign and means her father has somehow got stuck in Death and Sabriel sets out to rescue him. Can she get the guy, kill the baddies and save the entire planet? I think she probably can ;-)

My only problem with this book is that the evil necromancer is called Kerrigor which I'm sure is a sort of Irish butter...

Viriconium by M John Harrison

This is not the best thing to try to read at 3am while feeding a baby! It is full of long words, rather overwrought descriptions and sections where nothing much seems to happen, making it hard going for the sleep deprived.

Viriconium is the patchwork city at the end of the world. A crumbling ruin left by a long vanished civilisation. Death, decay and dissolutiom are everywhere. If you like Gormenghast or The Book of the New Sun but find them a bit too cheerful, this is for you!

The book I have (from the Fantasy Masterworks series) is a collection of novels and short stories. My favourites are The Pastel City (which deals with a civil war - The War of The Two Queens - in which one side finds and reanimates hideous brain-stealing golems left behind by some previous civilisation) and The Shadow of Wings in which the world is invaded by giant locusts from outer space. Strangely, this seems a lot less stupid when you're actually reading it. Both these novels feature my favourite character, Tomb the Iron Dwarf. In a novel where every character spends a good deal of their time making epigrams on the nature of being, Tomb who says, "I'm a dwarf, not a philosopher." And hits things with his axe is a welcome relief.

If my review makes this book sound like standard, cliched fantasy of the Trudy Canavan style, that is a failing on my part. In fact I suspect that most of the problems I have with it are because it's just too bloody clever for me.

One of the things that confuses me are the inconsistencies between the different stories. For example in The Shadow of wings, the fortune teller Fat Mam Etieller is killed near the end. The she reappears in In Viriconium despite the fact that (I think!) this is set later. It is very hard to work out a timeline and pin down the order of events. Is this an intentional trick? Or were the stories never intended to be read together?

Another example is that both The Pastel City and Cromis and Lamia feature the warrior-poet teugus-Cromis. But the character seems totally different. The cromis who hunts the Lamia is a much more unpleasant person. Is this just a less developed version of the character for a short story who later changes?

The city of Viriconium itself appears inconsistent to me. At times it seems to be 19th century Paris, at others it is mediaeval, at others it is like a city state in rennaisance Italy. I can't work out how much is intentional, nor can I discount the possiblity that it all fits together, but I'm too tired and stupid to realise how at the moment. I think it would help me to know the order in which these stories were writen, and where they fit on a timeline of Viriconium.

I am going to reserve judgement on M John Harrison; there is another of his books, "Light" on my shelf and I will give that a go when baby is a bit older and my brain might have recovered!