What I'm reading ...

I have started Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling by Philip Pullman. It was time for some non-fiction. I very much enjoy this author’s work, so his and on various matters around storytelling cannot fail to be interesting. Here’s the blurb:

In over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world’s great story-tellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining and, above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin and composition of Philip’s own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to Philip.

The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts: a single, sustained engagement with story and story-telling.

Gut Symmetries - by Jeanette Winterson

 This was a very unusual book. Initially, I felt that it was very word - going on and on about details, but I gradually understood that this was a way to convey a detailed idea of the feelings of the characters as well as the events of the story. The story itself, whilst somewhat unlikely and a little surreal, was basically quite simple. The richness of the book came form the details: the back story of the characters, the details of their parents and childhood etc. Eventually, I started enjoying the rich language; it was like rich food, which can be indigestible if you’re not used to it.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson. A well-known author whose work I have enjoyed before. Here’s the blurb:

Travelling across the Atlantic on board the QE2, Alice - a bright, young physicist - meets Jove, short for Giovanni, one of the world's most respected experts on time travel and a confirmed lothario. By the time the pair land in New York, Alice has become Jove's mistress, an affair of the heart which is only complicated further when Alice meets Jove's, wife, Stella; a tempestuous beauty born with a diamond at the base of her spine. As this love triangle turns into a menage-a-trois, Alice, Stella and Jove struggle against the currents immersing them, while their romance pulls into its wake the stories of other generations, philosophies, quantum physics and time travel. A celebration of the human heart in all its frailty, confusion and excess, Gut Symmetries is a lyrical evocation of parallel lives, loves and universes, from one of Britain's best loved authors.

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters - by Tom Nichols

Overall this was a good book and covered an interesting subject, which is very topical. As it is a fairly recent publication, it is even more topical than might otherwise be expected. The analysis of the subject was detailed, enlightening and interesting. I guess that I find myself neither reassured or surprised by the conclusions.

The book is somewhat typical of this type of American publication. It follows a formula:

1. Tell ‘em what you’re going to say.
2. Say it.
3. Tell ‘em what you just said.

The result is a lot - a lot! - of repetition. This is a good 100 page book that is buried in >250 pages ...

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols. I forget how I came to have this book - maybe someone recommended it. But it seems to address a very topical subject. Here’s the blurb:

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

Rough Music - by Patrick Gale

This was a great read. There are two timelines that involve mostly the same characters, but it is always clear where you are. The story has a very good pace, with a few surprises and a number of “mysteries” - aspects of the story that keep the reader wondering until they are resolved. My only tiny, tiny reservation was that I didn’t really understand the last few paragraphs. In any case, I will be reading more of this author’s work.