Maeve Binchy. This Year it will be Different (1996)

     Maeve Binchy. This Year it will be Different (1996) These are definitely “women’s magazine” stories. Most seem to have been written to fit a double-page spread, “A story complete in two pages”, as my mother's Woman’s Own used to describe them. They establish plot and character swiftly, mostly through displaced interior monologue, the kind where the narrator rather than the character presents the thoughts and reactions. Most deal with the healing power of Christmas. A few tell of single women entangled with married lovers; all are disentangled by the end of the story. The men are either paragons of male virtue, impossibly kind and sensitive, or else cads, that is, very much like real people. Pleasant but forgettable entertainment. It’s difficult to recall much of any of the stories. ** (2006)

John Keegan. Intelligence in War (2003)

     John Keegan. Intelligence in War (2003) Case studies focussing on the role of intelligence. As always, Keegan has found a variety of examples illustrating the full range of his subject. The case studies are exhaustive (and exhausting to a person with merely bystander’s interest in the history of warfare), but are presented clearly and precisely, so that one can follow the conduct of the battles easily. However, I did not like the monochrome maps. Colour would them easier to read.  Most of the photographs add little more than weekend magazine interest. The last chapter summarises Keegan’s take on the varying roles and value that intelligence has played, and his disapproval of the confusion of intelligence and subversion instigated by Churchill (a failure, as it turned out).

Keegan directs his book to the student and professional. The publishers seem to think the book also has appeal to the interested amateur, but in this they are mistaken. A good popular book lurks in these pages, at about half the length, with coloured maps, and chapter introductions to guide the reader. *** as a professional book, *½ as a popular book. (2006)

Alexander McCall Smith. Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004)

     Alexander McCall Smith. Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004) M-S calls this an “entertainment,” and so it is, a very mild one. Smith makes fun of German academia in the person of Prof. Dr. Moritz Maria von Igelfeld, but the joke wears thin fairly quickly. I read this in much the same mood as I eat potato chips, expecting the next one to be utterly satisfying. But the short tales that make up the narrative of v. Igelfeld’s life merely play variations on the same themes, the obtuseness of the professor who believes that his is a higher calling, and his incompetence in the ordinary matters of life. In the end, v. Igelfeld’s life held little interest for me. He’s a doofus, and despite Smith’s best efforts, his mishaps never attain the distinction of farce, and barely hover above the level of the shaggy dog story. *½ (2006)

Laurence Waters. Oxfordshire Railways (1991)

     Laurence Waters. Oxfordshire Railways (1991) Peter gave me this book, a collection of photographs covering the main and branch lines in the (present) Oxfordshire. Since most of the lines in Oxon were GWR, most of the photos show that line. The emphasis is on locomotives, with precious little rolling stock, but there are a few interesting shots of stations, junctions, and the like. The lower photo on page 85 shows a the Great Western Society excursion lined up in front of No 17 Sapper at the Bicester Ordnance Depot in 1973. Roger, UP and AR are easily recognisable. Cool!
     Photo reproduction is fair, considering when the book was printed. The map is too small, and is clearly drawn for someone already familiar with Oxfordshire and its railways. Like most books of its kind, it has little appeal outside the world of railway enthusiasts, however. Modellers will find some useful information here and there, but on the whole it doesn’t add to the typical modeller’s information. But I liked it. **½ (2006)

Arnold Bennett. A Man from the North (1912)

     Arnold Bennett. A Man from the North (1912) I’ve not read any Bennett before this, so I don’t know how characteristic this is. It tells, in a rather discursive style, the story of Richard Larch, a young man who arrives in London with dreams of literary and cultural success. He has the imagination, but lacks the application and obsessiveness needed for literary success.
     Essentially, he drifts, spending his money on mild amusements such as the theatre and good restaurants. But he does his work diligently and well, although with no apparent enthusiasm, and gets his reward. He is promoted to what amounts to the third-in-command at the law firm for which he works, a reward that moves him to accept his place in society: a solicitor’s clerk with good prospects. He courts an old acquaintance, Laura, the red-headed cashier at a vegetarian restaurant that he initially patronised to save money. The book ends with his imminent marriage to this good woman, one of his own class, whom he sees as providing pleasant physical company, a suitable number of children in due course, and the domestic comforts and support he needs for his work.
     Along the way to this settling for mediocrity, he almost makes a permanent liaison with Adeline, a woman of livelier disposition, whom he meets through her uncle, another dreamer with too much imagination and not enough persistence. But he then still expected the spark of desultory romance to flare into passion. Absent that bright flame, he lets her go. He attempts a novel, which he recognises as trash, a recognition that puts an end to his career as a writer. Yet even as he prepares for marriage to a good and decent woman, he imagines that his son will inherit his literary talents, and dreams of encouraging and nurturing the talents of an as yet unborn child.
     Apart from an amiable disposition, diligence at work, and a willingness to help others, Larch has no major virtues. One gets the impression that he is as incapable of great viciousness as he is of great art. Fundamentally lazy, terrified of failure, yet too often recognising its signs in himself, he is a man whose success consists of adapting himself to his circumstances. He experiences some happiness, and provides some for others, and may, in the end, become a contented man, but one with a faintly melancholy memory of the great ambitions of his youth. In other words, a very ordinary man. It’s Bennett’s talent to make us care about him. **½ (2006)

Michael Pollan. The Botany of Desire (2001)

     Michael Pollan. The Botany of Desire (2001) Pollan looks at the relationship between humans and four domesticated plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. His begins with the thesis that these plants have become successful in the evolutionary sense by becoming domesticated. Just as bees and flowers have co-evolved, so have these domesticated plants and we humans. That is, we have adapted our social behaviour and technology to these plants. They supplied a human want; we reciprocated by cultivating them. We plant, water, fertilise and protect them. Not a bad bargain, for the plants. At least in the short term of a few millennia.
     Domestication works only when plants have sufficient genomic variability that they can produce variations that satisfy some human need or desire. That’s why trees, by and large, have not been domesticated, merely managed. The same principle holds true of domesticated animals, too, of course, as Jared Diamond has argued in Guns, Germs and Steel, a book that Pollan lists as one of his sources and influences. It’s helpful to take Pollan’s plant’s eye view, since it reminds us that we are not, after all, in control of nature. The Judeao-Christian take has been that God gave us the Earth to rule it. Fűllet die Erde, und machet.sie euch unterthan, it says in Luther’s version of Genesis: Fill the earth and make it subject to you. No doubt this view intertwines with the western notion that reason should rule over the passions of the body, and with the Christian suspicion of passion and bodiliness.
     Pollan begins with the thesis that domestication has been as much an advantage for plants as for humans. But when he has done tracing the history of the potato, it’s clear that the thesis needs a subtle refinement: we do not domesticate nature or any natural being. We can at best co-operate with them. His description of modern agribusiness, of monocultured crops growing (if that’s the word) in sterilised soil is terrifying. This business model is unsustainable, and will kill us. The hybris of thinking we can make nature do what we want will do us in. It’s part and parcel of the mindset that sees economics and ecology not only as disjoint but as in opposition. I think this mindset is insane. Genetic engineering will provide at most a short-term fix. Adding Bt-coding genes to potatoes, corn, and other crops will merely, eventually, produce beetles that are immune to Bt. It’s only a matter of time. Update 2013: this has already happened with corn.
     Although Pollan did not set out to write a tract against industrialised, corporate agriculture, that’s what his book morphed into. It’s to his credit that he didn’t rewrite the book as if that insight, stumbled on after many months of research and writing, had been his from the beginning, He takes the reader along the same path he took. What starts out as an entertaining survey of gardening and agriculture carried by a history of four emblematic plants becomes a plea for a truly ecological sense of economics. We should, I think, all know that the common root of these two words, eco-, is Greek for “house” or “home”. If we don’t keep our house in order, we will have no home.
     Not that the Earth will mind. One species more or less makes little difference. There is always something in the gene pool that will produce a creature to fill whatever niches are left empty by our disappearance. *** (2006)

James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small (1970-73)

     James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small (1970-73) I've had enough of politics for a while. Watched the debate of the Provincial party leaders last night. Steve Paikin is an excellent moderator, and kept the debate going smoothly. He really likes politics, and politicians, too, a rare sentiment these days.
     I've just finished reading the first Herriot omnibus, a very pleasant book. I didn't read his books when they first came out, but I watched the TV series several times. It reran for years on PBS. So while reading the book, I saw the characters as portrayed on TV, which both helped and hindered, as some of the descriptions were at odds with the appearance of the actors. Never mind, it was a pleasant read, a series of anecdotes that add up to a portrait of the writer and his clients.
     Herriot can be sentimental, and is at his best in straightforward story telling. He has a talent for the illuminating detail or remark. His courtship of Helen Alderson was expanded for the series; perhaps Herriot advised on some of the details of what he merely refers to here, the long walks they took, the times Helen came along on his rounds, and so on. Herriot doesn't pretend to be better than he is. He has a temper and self doubts. He doesn't let us in on his innermost thoughts very often, and when he does, we get a fair amount of his feelings for the Dales and their inhabitants. As I've said, these tend towards the sentimental, but his delight in the landscape, the people, and his profession is genuine, as is his regret for the passing of some of the old ways, tempered by his recognition of the value of the new. The book isn't exactly a page turner, but its anecdotal structure and plain style (leavened with a dry and pleasant wit) makes it a good bedtime book, one that one may put down and take up again without losing one's place. I will never read it again, but I will give it to someone who can appreciate its plain virtues and pleasures. *** (2006)