A long way round to the truth: Shake Hands Forever (Ruth Rendell)

Ruth Rendell. Shake Hands Forever (1975) Mrs Hathall, an unpleasant mother-in-law, arrives at her son Robert’s carefully cleaned and polished home, and finds her daughter-in-law Angela dead on her bed. Robert’s reactions are oddly muted, which convinces Wexford he did it. It takes a year, and his nephew Howard’s help, for Wexford’s suspicions to be justified, with a twist that only the most alert reader is likely to suss before Wexford does. Burden for once is skeptical of Wexford’s theory, and does nothing to help.
     Well done, with Rendell’s usual psychological insights. Since we believe with Wexford that Robert is guilty, the story deals with how Wexford solves the puzzle. A good read for any Wexford fan, but not the best introduction to Wexford and Burden. **½

Everything Connects: The Knowledge Web (James Burke)

     James Burke. The Knowledge Web (1999) Many years ago, when students complained that the stuff they had to learn was useless, I pontificated: “There’s no such thing as useless knowledge. At the very least, some fact will connect two other facts. You just don’t know which ones, until you do it.”
     James Burke’s books and TV programs inspired this insight, and this one demonstrates another fact about knowledge: it’s all connected, somehow. It could be two people who know each other. It could be a problem to which someone else’s published insight provides a clue. It could be an idle question about some oddity. It could be deliberate speculation about possible answers. It could be knowledge brought into an apparently unrelated field. It could be – well, you get the idea.
     The book also attempts to use a kind of hyperlink. Every now and then, numbers in the margin direct you to another reference to the same person or fact. You don’t have to read the book one page after another. The links lead through the web by another path.
     Nowadays, we can click our way from one link to another. And with all such links, you depend on some other person recognising the connection and inserting the links. Most such links these days are designed to lead you to another product to buy.
     Burke’s TV series Connections of 1976 predates the world wide web. This book builds on the insights and methods presented in that series and the book based on it, The Day the Universe Changed. Worth reading just for the fun of recognising how the bits and pieces of history link up. Good index and bibliography make this a reference book as well. ***

The body's afterlife: Stiff by Mary Roach

     Mary Roach. Stiff (2003) Roach writes about the afterlife of cadavers, from providing organs for transplant to testing the effects of bullets to giving medical students understanding of human anatomy to uses you would never have thought of yourself. She writes well, has a nice sense of humour, and demonstrates a good deal less squeamishness than most of her readers. Highly recommended. ****

More about Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker: Milk and Honey

     Faye Kellerman. Milk and Honey (1990) Number three in the Rina Lazarus-Peter Decker saga. Driving home late at night, Decker catches a glimpse of something. U-turns, drives back, sees nothing, stops and walks, finds a toddler on a front-lawn swing. The woman in the house says the girl is not hers, so Decker takes her down to the station and starts the process of finding her family. That leads to four murders, a dysfunctional family, and miscellaneous cross-currents and subplots. In addition, Decker’s old army buddy has been accused of rape and violence. Rina returns from New York, where she’s been for six months as she and Peter try to confirm their love. Peter continues his talmudic studies. The resolution includes more backstory about Peter’s Vietnam war service.
     Well written, with good use of dialogue to advance story and reveal character. Weak on ambience: Kellerman doesn’t spend much time on city- or landscape. We do feel the weather, though, it’s hot. A bit heavy on gore. Nevertheless, I liked the book. **½

Fay Weldon on Jane Austen, writing, reading, and life. (Letters to Alice, 1985)

     Fay Weldon. Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen (1985). An epistolary novel, in which Weldon gives advice about reading, writing, and life, and expatiates on how they intertwine and react on each other.
     Alice is at university, doesn’t like Pride and Prejudice, and is writing a novel. Will she take Aunt Fay’s advice? Will Aunt Fay mend her relationship with her sister and brother-in-law? Will Alice finish her novel? Read the book and find out. It’s worth reading for many reasons, chief of which is Aunt Fay, whose company and opinions are exhilarating. Is she a version of Fay Weldon? Probably, but as Aunt Fay says, there is the truth of real life and the truth of fiction. Recommended, worth searching for. ****

Kinsey finds more family: W is for Wasted

     Sue Grafton. W is for Wasted (2013). Two apparently unrelated deaths, one a murder, eventually tie up each other’s loose ends. Kinsey’s investigations garner her some relatives on her father’s side. Homeless people are a problem. Kinsey’s love life stutters, maybe in the next book (the last one Grafton wrote) there’ll be some kind of resolution.
     So the backstories move along a few steps, Kinsey discovers she likes cats afer all. Grafton has to use 3rd person interludes to move one of the plots along, and the reader knows all the guilt and innocence before Kinsey does. A long novel, more of a character study than a mystery. The plot focusses on how Kinsey discovers what the reader already knows. Grafton’s interest has shifted from solving crimes to understanding them and their effects. ***

Money and Nature: Lapham's Quarterly I-2 & I-3

 

    Lewis Lapham, ed. Lapham’s Quarterly: Vol.1:2 “About Money” & Vol.1:3 “Book of Nature” (2008) The excerpts about money are in roughly historical order. They form a summary of the developing understanding of money, as well as a sometimes entertaining account of what can go wrong when people mistake money for wealth. Money is either the elixir of life or the worst invention of humankind.
     The earliest ideas ascribed intrinsic value to money: a gold coin had some objective value simply because it was gold. That idea began to unravel when the Spaniards brought tons of the stuff from South America and promptly triggered almost ruinous inflation. The latest ideas about money emphasise that it’s information: Almost all money these days exists as electronic data about some account balance. Money is a system of abstract IOUs. Instead of an IOU for, say, 10 bushels of wheat, we have an IOU for, say, $50. That $50 could be used to buy 10 bushels of wheat Or 8 measures of oil. Or a cask or two of wine. Or whatever.
     There are several accounts of bubbles, eg, the Dutch tulip mania of the 1600s. Ponzi schemes and other frauds also appear. These debacles occur because people want money. They see the bubbling trade in tulips as a means of amassing money. They see the fraudster’s con as a means of amassing money. Since both bubbles and frauds depend on credit for their initial success, they debase the value of money: they are one of the drivers of inflation.
  

There’s more, but I won’t enlarge further. See my other posts aboiut money for further
comments.
     Lapham claims he doesn’t understand the concept of  “The Book of Nature”. This collection belies the claim. It records the full range of human responses to the natural world, from denial that we are part of it (we “have dominion” over it, after all) to acceptance that we wholly depend on it (but on current evidence are destroying it). These two responses are present in the earliest myths. For example, Genesis records that God made Adam from the dust of the ground. That make humans part of the natural order. It also records that God gave humankind dominion over the every living thing. That puts humans above and outside the natural order. Or so the standard interpretation goes. More recent theology argues that “dominion” means stewardship. We rule the Earth on behalf of the Creator.
     Lapham’s quarterly collections add up to a history of the ideas that govern our choices. They show that our ancestors expressed every current notion about how the world works and how we should live. ****