A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson

Everyone likes bumble bees, don't  they? They are so plump and furry and vibratey like tiny flying cats with too many legs... So I have been reading this amusing book about them by the founder of the bumble bee trust.

I enjoyed the section on Dave's childhood attempts to help bees which frequently ended disasterously. Such as the time he finds some soggy ones struggling along after heavy rain, decides to dry them out on the kitchen hot plate and accidently grills them.

Much of the book deals with the challenges faced by bumble bees. These basically boil down to manmade problems caused by modern agriculture (loss of hedgerows and flower meadows) and the shortcomings of the bees that make them particularly vulnerable. Only the queen bees can hibernate to survive the winter... so a whole hive of bees has to find enough flowers throughout the spring and summer to make a few queens. Then the queens are unfortunately a bit rubbish at finding holes to hibernate in. They can get damp and go mouldy, or drown in wet winters or fall prey to a variety of fascinatingly disgusting parasites.

One useful but rather disappointing piece of information to come out of this book is that bees don't seem to particularly like the little encourage-the-bees houses for them that you can buy in garden centres. This is a shame as I'd like to provide bees with some quality accommodation, but at least it has saved me some money. Apparently the best we can do is to hope that bees decide to come and live in out walls or under our sheds.

Much of the day-to-day business of scientific bumble bee research turns out to be coming up with good ideas and then watching them fail. For example at one point Dave and his phd students reason that if dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs or explosives it should be possible to train them to find bumble bee nests. And so a couple of bumble bee sniffer dogs are expensively trained and paired with handlers. Although the dogs are able to demonstrate their skill in tests, when they actualy get out into the countryside they prove to be rather less good at finding bumble bee nests than their handlers. Effectively the sniffer dogs function as affable companions to human bee finders.

It would have been nice to have had a bumble bee identification chart so I knew which bee he was on about at any given time, but I guess you can look them up on the bumblebee trust website. And besides, Dave himself admits that some species can only really be told apart by cutting their toes off and sending them for DNA analysis.

The first and last chapters of the book deal with Dave's involvement in a project to reintroduce the short-haired bumble bee which has become extinct in Britain. I got quite excited a while ago when I spotted a story on the BBC, saying that these bees had been "successfully reintroduced". Unfortunately when I looked more closely this turned out to mean "haven't all died yet" rather than that a self-sustaining population had been estblished. Hang in there short haired bumble bees! And try not to go mouldy over winter...

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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I think it might have been Dr Johnson* who said that if you want to understand what nobody else does, you should read what everyone else is reading one year later. If, on the other hand you aspire to total cultural irrelevance, you should wait as long as I have waited to read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

In case you have forgotten in the intervening years, the book is set in a sort of alternative version of Regency England where magic has existed at one point, but the art has subsequently been lost. It is about two rival magicians who reinvent it: the dry-as-dust Mr Norrell and his sometime pupil the charming, cavalier Jonathan Strange.

So, about a decade ago my bookish friends either thought that this was the book the printing press was made for or over-long, over-hyped and impossible to finish. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Yes, it is very, very long. And most of the story seems to happen in the final 25% of the pages. But it's the kind of book you can loose yourself in.

And it's set in the Regency. In the time of Jane Austen and of Blackadder II. A time of fops and dandies and highwaymen! The Romantics! The Enlightenment! The era of Georgette Heyer's bodice rippers! I don't like to think of myself as a dreamy romantic but I think I have a bit of a thing for the Regency...

I like the way faeries are presented in the book; pitiless, inhuman creatures with powerful magic, driven by pride and vanity. Another aspect I enjoyed is the way that the Raven King, John Uskglass lurks in the backstory throughout the novel. A medieaval magician who ruled northern England then vanished abruptly leaving behind legends of his return. By the end we see that he has been manipulating the entire cast of the book in aid of political machinations in Faerie.

I think what I really liked about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the fact that underneath it all the story is actually a bromance. The two main characters have a natural antipathy but eventually learn mutual appreciation. The world comes between them in the form of the Napoleonic wars, Strange's wife, malevolent faeries and Norrell's sychophantic hangers-on. In spite of all this, by the end of the book they are "chained together like Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis"** but kind of loving it.



*One of very few historical characters from the Regency period not to feature in this novel.
**Thankyou, Mr Rimmer.

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...