Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[Arakhor]

All the same, there's nothing objectionable about Iain Banks deciding that he wouldn't allow certain publishers to print his books since he didn't like the country they came from?

Well, if you find him objectionable because of that, don't read his books. That's a win-win then.

 

[Mouthwash]

Well, if you find him objectionable because of that, don't read his books. That's a win-win then.

I've heard that his books are good, though. I'm just pointing out that Banks seems more objectionable than Card is.

 

[Ajidica]

Spoiler thread derail :

A person opposed to widely criticized actions of the Israeli government is more objectionable than a genocide apologist?

I've been working through Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space after recommended by a friend. The book is pretty decent but it feels like it takes forever to get anywhere and there is a lot of filler. The situation isn't helped by the author leaving a lot of things as 'mysteries' or explained later. While that is good in small doses, every major plot point or theme being subjected to that gets tedious quickly.

 

[Mouthwash]

A person opposed to widely criticized actions of the Israeli government is more objectionable than a genocide apologist?

No, a person who boycotts organizations/people which happen to come from a country whose government he disapproves of is more objectionable than someone who doesn't think two people of the same sex should receive marriage licenses. That's almost certainly what Warpus was talking about. I don't know what genocide Card has justified, unless you're talking about Mormonism and its racial baggage?

 

[Cutlass]

warpus, you might like the Expanse series. https://www.amazon.com/James-S.-A.-Corey/e/B004AQ1W8Y/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

 

[Spidernova]

I ended up reading Lord of Light in a single sitting last night. I'm amazed that I hadn't read it sooner.

 

[BvBPL]

I just read "Maze of Death" by Philip K. Dick. This novella touches on many themes common to his latter works like the nature of perception and intercessional theology.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Just recently finished Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. Now I'm giving Yoshiki Tanaka's Legends of the Galactic Heroes series a try. Its supposed to be a halmark of Japanese Si-fi, and I'm becoming a little interested in Japanese literature after reading Shūsaku Endō's Silence this summer.

 

[Lexicus]

No, a person who boycotts organizations/people which happen to come from a country whose government he disapproves of is more objectionable than someone who doesn't think two people of the same sex should receive marriage licenses. That's almost certainly what Warpus was talking about. I don't know what genocide Card has justified, unless you're talking about Mormonism and its racial baggage?

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/orson_scott_cards_unconscionable_defense_of_genocide/

 

[Mouthwash]

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/orson_scott_cards_unconscionable_defense_of_genocide/

This is pretty high on the moonbattery scale.

Graff blames violence on “genes.” He conflates evolutionary psychology just-so stories both with science and with common sense, so that genocide becomes not merely a moral choice but a biological necessity. You need to murder millions the way you need to defecate. Birds do it, bees do it, and if they don’t, what’s wrong with them?

Graff is saying that humans are hardwired to do almost anything to survive. It's not relevant that this can conceivably be genocide.

Committing genocide against humans also requires systematically killing civilians, which is something I can't imagine ever being necessary for survival. And it's questionable that this kind of equivalency can be applied to a hive mind. Graff's point is that it is a species vs species competition, and there's a lot more evidence for that being the case than there was for Germans and Poles.

Card makes a similar point during Speaker for the Dead, when

Spoiler :

a primitive alien species murders human colonists because their own lifecycle requires death and metamorphosis, and they think humans are the same.

…we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as tragic sisters, changed into a foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been the miracle to make us human in each other’s eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets; they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

That’s probably the loveliest passage in the book; it made me tear up. But while it is, in some sense, a plea for peace, acceptance and forgiveness, it is also a kind of final, irrefutable defense of genocide. Even those murdered recognize that they had to be wiped out. Even the victims recognize the justice of WMD, mass murder and imperial occupation. And even those he killed — especially those he killed — love the guy who massacred them. And they love him not despite the massacre, but because of it; we are told that it is because he was the one fighting them that they knew him and grew close to him.

I'm not seeing how this conclusion is supported by anything Card says. The buggers realize that they provoked the humans, and don't hold a grudge when the humans retaliated against what appeared to be an attempt to wipe them out- how is that a justification for mass murder, or imperial occupation? It's supposed to be tragic.

 

[Ajidica]

Guy Halsall Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West: 376-568. I've already read Peter "I don't like immigrants" Heather's book and I don't feel like going anywhere near Bryan "UKIP Endorsed!" Ward-Perkins.
I'm liking it so far. Halsall isn't the best writer and I feel he reads a bit too much into grave goods but his thesis of continuity between the Roman Empire and the successor states feels a lot more coherent than Heather's thesis.

 

[Takhisis]

Does he delve deeper into the largely-ignored Siagrian (Syagrian) Kingdom and the Bretons taking over a corner of Gaul?

 

[Ajidica]

Haven't gotten to that part yet, still working through his setup of Rome and the barbarians. Given his major research focus is on Merovingian France; I'd presume he would talk about the Dominion of Soissons/ Kingdom of Syagrius and the Franks. Not sure how much he talks about Armorica given all we really know about it is that it was full of bagaudae, runaway slaves, may have been involved somehow with Constantine "III"/Magnus Maximus, and was ruled by a guy identified as Riothamus.

 

[sophie]

Does he delve deeper into the largely-ignored Siagrian (Syagrian) Kingdom and the Bretons taking over a corner of Gaul?

I don't believe he does.

 

[Takhisis]

Ajidica, we do know about one small village of indomitable natives holding out against the invaders.

@Owen: Pity, I always try to learn about those little corners of history. The Romania submersa is a fascinating world.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Guy Halsall Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West: 376-568. I've already read Peter "I don't like immigrants" Heather's book and I don't feel like going anywhere near Bryan "UKIP Endorsed!" Ward-Perkins.
I'm liking it so far. Halsall isn't the best writer and I feel he reads a bit too much into grave goods but his thesis of continuity between the Roman Empire and the successor states feels a lot more coherent than Heather's thesis.

I read Halsall’s Worlds of Arthur book earlier this year. I completely agree that he seems to place waaaay too much emphasis on grave goods and burial customs. Not that their unimportant, just that he tends not to acknowledge that there are also religious and customary reasons for a culture’s burial rites outside of a political-economic “keeping up with the Jones’”. However, I like many of his contentions, particularly the ones about the English being on the island before 410 A.D., and that the migrations were less military invasions than an early medieval mess where the Anglo-Saxon culture won out as the new social-political norm for a huge chunk of the island.

I think ironically that Halsall in a way fails in success with Worlds of Arthur. He intended the book to a) give a readable history of the Romano-British and early Anglo-Saxon eras to those interested in the topic b) shed light and hopefully kill some of the more common, if silly, Historical King Arthur theories, & c) offer his own academic theories on early medieval British settlement and challenge some of the wrong headedness he sees in past and recent academia.

However, though it is a well written book with a lot to say, I don’t think (also many of the reviews I’ve read also seem to think) that it doesn’t please any camp. Casual readers will either reject the almost “meh” attitude he takes with the Arthur question or are already engrained in their views to accept a new theory which can be summed up as basically “You can’t say there was an historical Arthur, but you also can’t say there wasn’t either, so best guess is maybe, who knows!”

Academics also won’t (and didn’t) take too kindly to his broadsides to their research and theories. Also, personally I couldn’t tell the number of times I got frustrated when I read a particularly interesting section, went to find out his sources, and got a vague “here’s where you might find more” end annotated biblio.

I almost feel that Halsall should have left the pop and amateur history to the journalists and crackpots, and written a truly argumentative book for his interesting positions.

 

[Lexicus]

I've been reading this.

Fascinating stuff, about how geologists discovered that the Cascadia earthquakes were a thing.

 

[Traitorfish]

However, though it is a well written book with a lot to say, I don’t think (also many of the reviews I’ve read also seem to think) that it doesn’t please any camp. Casual readers will either reject the almost “meh” attitude he takes with the Arthur question or are already engrained in their views to accept a new theory which can be summed up as basically “You can’t say there was an historical Arthur, but you also can’t say there wasn’t either, so best guess is maybe, who knows!”

I don't think that's entirely fair. His argument, as I understood it, is that quibbling over the reality of Arthur misses what's genuinely interesting about the period, and that historical records should be read with more attention to what they say about how people in the author's time thought about themselves and their historical context, rather than trying to build elaborate shoestring-theories. It's more than just a long-winded "i unno".

That said, I do think that Halsall muddies his own point by spending too long engaging with pop-historical discussions of Arthur, devoting enough of the book to them as to make them seem in-themselves important, and allowing the "agnostic" interpretation you're making. The historiography of Arthur could be a useful way of making a largely-overlooked period in British history accessible to non-scholars, but Halsall lets them take up rather more of the book than is necessary. You definitely get the impression this is a guy taking an opportunity to grind a few axes.

(I can't comment on grave goods, because my historical education is exclusively Early Modern, a sub-discipline in which written records are plentiful and archaeology is a form of witchcraft.)

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think that's entirely fair. His argument, as I understood it, is that quibbling over the reality of Arthur misses what's genuinely interesting about the period, and that historical records should be read with more attention to what they say about how people in the author's time thought about themselves and their historical context, rather than trying to build elaborate shoestring-theories. It's more than just a long-winded "i unno".

That said, I do think that Halsall muddies his own point by spending too long engaging with pop-historical discussions of Arthur, devoting enough of the book to them as to make them seem in-themselves important, and allowing the "agnostic" interpretation you're making. The historiography of Arthur could be a useful way of making a largely-overlooked period in British history accessible to non-scholars, but Halsall lets them take up rather more of the book than is necessary. You definitely get the impression this is a guy taking an opportunity to grind a few axes.

(I can't comment on grave goods, because my historical education is exclusively Early Modern, a sub-discipline in which written records are plentiful and archaeology is a form of witchcraft.)

Actually I been meaning to ask you if you've got any good books on the early (North American)colonial period, preferably focusing mostly on the Native Americans and their interactions with the colonists. I watched Last of the Mohicans recently (great film, hadn't seen it in years) which piqued my interest in this stuff.

 

[Traitorfish]

Good place to start would be Facing East From Indian Country by Daniel K. Richter, which is a history of the colonial period from a broadly Native perspective. Colin Calloway's New World For All, is a good read on white-Native interaction and mutual change. Richard White's The Middle Ground is also a classic, and although it deals specifically with the Ohio Valley it gives a good insight to Indian diplomacy generally, but it's pretty hard to get for a reasonable price these days. Francis Jennings' Empires of Fortunes deals specifically with Natives during the Seven Years War, so may be of interest, and Richter's Before the Revolution is a very solid attempt to synthesize modern scholarship on both Native and European society in the colonial period into a coherent narrative.