2004-12-01: Ordinary Jack
Review: Ordinary Jack, by Helen Cresswell
Publisher: Hodder
Copyright: 1977
ISBN: 0-340-71651-7
Pages: 231
This is not even close to the first time I've read this book, although it's
been about fifteen years. Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe books about a wildly
eccentric British family and their daily adventures were some of my
favorite books as a child. I must have read this book in particular at
least a half-dozen times, checking it out of the local library. I've been
keeping an eye out for copies for a while, which is far harder than it
should be. The Bagthorpes were apparently popular enough in Britain to
have spawned a sitcom (shudder), but they're practically unheard of in the
US.
Jack is the second-youngest of four kids and is surrounded by geniuses.
All of his siblings have multiple Strings to their Bows, whether it be
music, electronics, mathematics, or painting, except for him. Finally fed
up with this, he hatches a plot with his Uncle Parker to make them all
believe that he is truly unusual.
Ordinary Jack is the first of the series, and I think the weakest
because of it. Cresswell's wonderfully witty and dry sense of humor, the
whole point to the Bagthorpe Saga, is already quite present, but the
overall plot always leaves me vaguely unsatisfied. While there's plenty of
opportunity for funny things to happen, the story itself is not that funny
and doesn't have the same degree of charm and chaos as some of the later
books.
It does, however, feature the first appearance of a bit that I have always
remembered and which remains a standing joke between my mother and I:
Jack said nothing. He was well acquainted with Uncle Parker's theories
about other drivers. Uncle Parker put all drivers other than himself into
one of various categories, none of them flattering. Rock bottom of these,
Jack knew, was the Hat Category.
"The minute you get behind a Hat," Uncle Parker would say, "you know you're
finished. Doesn't matter whether it's a man or a woman. And a Flat Cap --
you get behind a Flat Cap and you might as well reverse back to where you
started and try an alternate route."
It's true, too. I've seen it proven on multiple occasions.
Humor is particularly difficult to review, since it's such a matter of
personal taste, and Cresswell's humor is particularly hard to capture. The
book revolves around setting up situations that are just a little slanted
and larger than life and then having both the characters and the narrator
deal with them in an understated, matter-of-fact manner that turns into a
perfect dry jape. It works wonderfully well for me, and may fall
completely flat for you. If you see a copy, though, give it a try; if your
sense of humor turns out to match mine, you'll quite enjoy it.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2004-12-03: Term::ANSIColor 1.09
Only documentation and test suite changes, but since someone sent me the
compatibility information for Mac OS X Terminal, I figured it was a good of
a time as any to push out a new release.
You can get the latest version from the
Term::ANSIColor
distribution page.
2004-12-03: lsmounts 1.5
In using this to fix the registered mount points for a whole bunch of our
class volumes, after we moved some paths around, I found that it had a few
bugs when being run in the mode that calls loadmtpt. It's now been fixed
so that it never tries to register backup or read-only volumes and never
recurses into backup volumes. It also now has a second recursion mode that
does traverse normal directory structures, but which will not cross mount
points.
You can get the latest version from the
lsmounts distribution page.
2004-12-05: faq2html 1.21
I'm working on a new project to see how much internal documentation I can
put up on the web with just a little bit of effort, so I put faq2html
through some more brutal paces than it had been through before.
Accordingly, I found a lot of little things and cleaned them up, as well as
fine-tuning the recognition of headings even more since I was still getting
too many false positives.
I also found some time to make the big change that I'd been thinking about
for a while, namely overhauling how faq2html thinks about block elements so
that one can nest lists properly. Nested lists were supported before, but
when the inner element closed, all the outer elements were closed as well.
Now the outer elements continue properly.
You can get the latest version from my
web tools distribution
page.
2004-12-05: spin 1.58
Nothing major here. Just warning fixes when the external translator fails
horribly, improved handling of [ and ] when one has to
escape unbalanced square brackets, and better documentation of that
escaping.
You can get the latest version from my
web tools distribution
page.
2004-12-06: lsmounts 1.6
I discovered that lsmounts was recursing into .., the parent directory,
which was obviously bad. Not sure why it was doing that; I thought
File::Find had enough sense not to do that by itself. Something weird
going on, I think. In any case, I added an additional check just to make
sure.
You can get the latest version from the
lsmounts distribution page.
2004-12-07: lsmounts 1.7
Having looked at this with a more rested eye and realizing what was
probably going wrong last night, I've fixed the problem with recursing into
.. in a much better way. It wasn't File::Find's problem at all (which
didn't make sense); I was passing .. in as one of the directories to search
through for the new partially recursive mode.
Anyway, fixed now. You can get the latest version from the
lsmounts distribution page.
2004-12-07: The Tombs of Atuan
Review: The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Copyright: 1970, 1971
ISBN: 0-689-84536-7
Pages: 180
While The Tombs of Atuan does stand on itself fairly well, the depth
of the story is aided in a few places by knowing what happens in
A
Wizard of Earthsea. I recommending reading that book first.
My memory from the first reading years ago told me that this was the best
book of the original Earthsea trilogy, and I was gratified to discover that
my memory didn't disappoint. If anything, it's better than I remembered.
This is the story of a young girl, taken as a child by a religious sect as
the high priestess reborn of the Nameless Ones. It is the story of her
life there, of how she grows into her role, of the woman that she becomes,
and of how she reacts when someone comes from outside of her world to
challenge everything she was taught. It is, in short, a coming of age
story nearly as full of archetypes as
A
Wizard of Earthsea, but told in a way that I found far more engaging.
Le Guin is an exceptional writer, and with a single setting on which to
lavish her skill, she builds a sense of place that runs remarkably deep.
With sparse, evocative descriptions, a mere 180 pages creates a stronger
feel of location than I've felt in far longer books, and I think part of
the key is what she doesn't describe. The places that are important to
Tenar stand out in the writing, while the places that don't matter to her
fade into the background even if they are part of her day-to-day
experience. The reader's attention isn't squandered on unimportant detail,
and instead the distant background is left to fill in itself while the
story concentrates on its heroine.
Unusually, Tenar is allowed to have power in her own sphere even before she
comes of age. So often in coming of age stories, nothing that happens to
the hero before they are discovered by the great events of the world really
matters; they're just biding time before they become powerful and
prophesied. Tenar, however, truly is the priest of her gods. While she
knows nearly nothing of the world, Le Guin recognizes that if one is
trained one's whole life for a function, one does actually become quite
good at it even if young. Tenar knows her gods, understands their holy
places, and takes initiative from early in the story to become better at
what she thinks her role should be. This gives her far more influence over
the outcome of the story, making it less something that simply happens to
her.
It also allows for a far more realistic aftermath. Many lesser writers
have halted this story earlier, after the obvious climax, but Le Guin goes
on to write another 25 pages that bring to a beautiful second climax
Tenar's emotional journey. I was engrossed by the entire book, but I fell
in love with the ending.
Contrasting this story with
A
Wizard of Earthsea reveals much about what styles of storytelling work
best for me. Wizard is a travelogue, showing bits and pieces of
many places without enough for any location except Gont to really feel
complete to me. I like Le Guin's descriptions much better when more
focused, giving her a chance to slowly build up the feel of a single place.
The narrative tone in Tombs is also much closer, letting the reader
see how Tenar feels and reacts, letting us get some sense of what is going
on inside her head, while Ged always remains distant in Wizard, his
emotions described as part of the legend but not truly felt. Tombs
touched me on a far more personal level, making me care deeply about the
character and cry at her pain. (Partly, this is also because I think Ged
makes a stronger supporting character than viewpoint character. He has a
certain inscrutableness and quiet inwardness that I find more approachable
when seen through the eyes of someone else.)
The Tombs of Atuan tells a story that I have a particular liking
for, with a main character of a mold that I love. I'm not sure the story
would feel as strong or strike as close to home to those of other tastes
(although even with that caveat, I have to flatly disagree with the reviews
that call this the weakest of the trilogy). It is, regardless, a story
beautifully told, with more subtlety and nuance than innumerable stories
more than twice its length. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 10 out of 10
2004-12-08: multilog-watch 1.12
Aaron Wilson pointed out that multilog-watch, when converting timestamps,
wasn't adjusting for the UTC vs. TAI offset. I've added the simple
conversion that works for systems keeping UTC time with no leap second
adjustment file for the TAI library, which is all the systems I care about.
You can get the latest version from the
multilog-watch
distribution page.
2004-12-09: spin 1.59
I finally added support for something that I'd thought about for quite a
while, namely cleaning up the output directory. When given the -d flag,
spin will now remove from the output directory any files that don't
correspond to files in the input directory. (I ended up needing this for a
project at work, which got me to finally go write it.)
While I was there, I also made it easier to call spin on a single file,
since my co-workers tend to want to do that and don't use the -f flag.
You can get the latest version from my
web tools distribution
page.
2004-12-10: Web page fiddling
Tonight, I started fiddling around with the layout of my software pages a
bit. The top-level index has been getting rather long, and given that I
have another twenty-odd software packages that need to get added to it over
time, at some point I'm was going to need to try to make it shorter.
I've now rewritten the
software index to use tables
and single-line descriptions, which I think I like better. I'm still not
completely happy with the way that the page looks, but I'm not sure that
anything will be much better, and at least it's consistent with my other
pages. I also tweaked the front page
of my web site a little bit (likely too subtlely for anyone to notice), and
I've been slowly working on remedying the fact that many of my software
pages are missing introductory quotes. Three down, lots and lots to go.
This was a wonderful, marvellously productive week at work. I need more
weeks like this. The only drawback was very, very little time for my own
projects and volunteer work, but I have a nice, long vacation coming up.
2004-12-11: Gang aft agley
I don't know how the mice did today, but I certainly got nothing done that
I was scheming. I did get a few more quotes added to some of my software
pages, which is good but done at a whim, and other than that I pretty much
zoned in front of the TV or read.
I have The Farthest Shore to write a review of still, and didn't get
to that. I was going to play video games and didn't get to that either
(although that meant that I got to watch curling on TV, rather a rarety
around here). I was going to get some other things done, and basically got
nothing done.
Oh well, vacation soon. And since I have this strong urge to curl up with
a book lately, I expect vacaction will be heavily concerned with such
pursuits.
2004-12-13: Steroids rant
The coverage of steroids in baseball and Barry Bonds has been annoying me
no end, so I wrote a long rant about it. Behind the cut so that I don't
take over anyone's friends page (I ended up going on and on about it).
So, the current hot story in the sporting world is that Barry Bonds, home
run hitter extraordinaire for the San Francisco Giants, admitted in
testimony a year ago to having at least once used substances that were
almost certainly steroids. He's claiming that he didn't know what they
were and that his trainer just gave them to him and said they were lindseed
oil and an anti-arthritis cream. Basically no one, including me, actually
believes that; Bonds isn't that stupid.
First off, this is at most a mild surprise. Sure, Bonds has been claiming
for years that he doesn't use steroids, but it's pretty much certain at
this point that somewhere between a significant minority and an outright
majority of Major League Baseball players are using steroids. (Personally,
I think the same could be said of just about any other major sport and the
only thing that changes is how subtle and careful they are about it, but
that's another rant.) To listen to portions of the sporting news, you
would think that this is some sort of devastating revelation. That's
nonsense. We've known this for years.
Now, of course, people are freaking out. Ban him from baseball. Strike
all his records. Footnote all his records. We must have drug testing now.
The same kneejerk litanies over and over again, and just as with the
idiotic War Against Some Drugs, few people seem to actually be thinking.
Let me pose a question: What's actually wrong with steroids?
The strongest argument is that using them is cheating. The definition of
cheating is doing something against the rules, and sporting rules don't
require any inherent defense. They can be completely arbitrary as long as
they're applied uniformly. You don't need any justification for making
steroids against the rules any more than you need any justification for the
allowable size of the bat or the weight of the baseball.
This also means that the rules of the game carry no moral weight.
They're just arbitrary rules. And that means that when there's a rule on
the books that in practice isn't called on the field and is widely ignored,
it isn't some sort of moral flaw to play the game the same way the rest of
the players play the game. How many people out there think it's cheating
for professional basketball players to take extra steps when driving to the
lane, when travelling is rarely called? How about John Stockton sticking
his elbow in people's ribs on screens? When wide receivers pull tricks on
the field to make something look like pass interference that probably
wasn't, it's called a veteran move, a sign of an experienced player.
Pushing the edges of the rules is widely considered part of the game. What
makes steroids different?
The answer, of course, is that steroids happen off the field and they
involve drugs. Let's deal with the second of those first.
Here are the basic reasons put forward for why athletes shouldn't be
allowed to take drugs, specifically steroids: Drugs are inherently evil,
drugs have nasty side effects, drugs are illegal, drugs destroy a level
playing field, and drugs set a bad example for children.
The inherent evil argument is, of course, complete bullshit. The moral
high-handedness here reminds me of the self-righteous War Against Drugs
commercials decrying marijuana as the great evil, played immediately before
beer commercials. The level of hypocrisy and outright lying is disgusting.
The same argument applies to the supposed illegality -- for one, it's not
at all clear that anything actually illegal happened, and for another, why
are you so sure that law makes any sense in the first place? Why shouldn't
someone be allowed to shoot up steroids if they have the money and want to,
when they can drink themselves to death and no one even gives it a second
thought? I'd love to hear the logical explanation, and if you tell me that
steroids have more negative side effects than alcohol, I'm just going to
laugh at you.
As for the nasty side effects, yeah right. I don't see people being
particularly concerned with the long-term health of professional athletes
in any other area. It's widely known and acknowledged that those people
are out there killing themselves, giving themselves all sorts of serious
long-term muscular and skeletal injuries (not to mention, in some sports,
repeated concussions and brain injury) for our entertainment. Oh, yeah,
and for millions and millions of dollars in cash. Steroids might have
negative side effects on one's long-term health. So might getting tackled
thirty times a game by 300 pound defensive lineman. Let's ban running
plays in football. No? Then let's not be hypocritical about this, okay?
But what about the level playing field? If we allow steroids, then
everyone has to take steroids to compete, right?
I hate to break this to you if you didn't already realize it, but
professional athletes, regardless of whether they're taking steroids or
not, do not go down to the grocery story and buy their meals like the rest
of us, go work out at their local YMCA, and then go out and play in front
of a national television audience. There is a reason why we spend lots of
money to build Olympic training facilities and it's not because they look
pretty. And if you think that a dietary supplement is affordable to anyone
who wants to join the big leagues just because it's available over the
counter, you're dreaming. Professional athletes have a support staff that
costs a lot of money, steroids or not, and the few people who have so much
natural talent that they can become world-class athletes without that
support structure still get better when they have access to it.
Furthermore, while steroids may have more side effects and long-term
problems than over-the-counter supplements, I have a sneaking suspicion
that neither you nor I have really seen all of the data there, and again,
if you think that many of the other things that professional athletes have
to do to be competative at that level don't cause long-term damage, I think
you're dreaming. We can start from the widely admired practice of
playing hurt and go on from there. Professional athletics is simply not a
profession that you go into unless you're willing to destroy your body for
the money that you're getting, and removing steroids from the equation is
not going to change that.
No, I have my own theory as to why people get so worked up about steroids,
apart from simple ignorance, and it centers around the twin bizarre US
obsessions with drugs as evil and athletes as role models. We know that
what happens on the field is completely artificial and formalized, and we
don't apply the same moral judgements to what happens there, but when it
comes to conduct off the field, we expect athletes to be that mysterious
form of being known as a "role model." I've never been quite sure exactly
what that was supposed to mean, except that it clearly involves
volunteering for good causes, not doing things that we don't want our
children to do, and certainly not doing anything that might throw light on
the sacred tenet of US politics -- all drugs (except alcohol, which isn't a
drug, and caffeine, which is just normal) are evil. We want athletes to be
the best that human beings can possibly be, and we don't actually mind them
doing all sorts of incredibly artificial things to their bodies, but
whatever they do must not involve anything that looks like a drug. Even if
we can't point to any actual difference.
Look. I love watching sports. I like the drama of it, I like rooting for
teams, I like the statistics and the analysis, I like second-guessing
decisions, and I like the atmosphere of play on the field. But sports is
like sausage; if you really enjoy it, you probably don't want to know how
it's made. Sports involves a lot of money, a "power corrupts" quantity of
money, paid to people who are not any different than average human beings
except they're very good at some physical skill. Many of those people are
not nice people. Many of them could have been nice people but get sucked
up in the culture. Professional athletes are frequently amazingly sexist,
horrifically bigoted, self-centered, arrogant, and deeply unpleasant
people, and the money and bizarre pressures of athletics contribute to all
of those tendencies. They are kids often barely out of high school who are
getting paid amounts of money that defy human comprehension to do something
they will often only be able to do for ten years in front of a broader
audience than one can really imagine, after which the money will suddenly
disappear and they will most likely be in constant pain for the rest of
their lives.
But hey, they're still role models as long as they don't use steroids,
right?
I don't really care if baseball wants to try to really ban steroids; like I
said at the top, the rules of a sport are inherently arbitrary anyway. I do
mind when it's being presented as a moral issue, given the degree of
hypocrisy inherent in focusing on this issue while completely ignoring the
rest of sports, and I think the reasons presented for banning steroids are
just stupid. And I really think that Barry Bonds does not deserve to be
singled out. Welcome to the real world, folks. This is how baseball is
actually played. And we know Jason Giambi was also taking steroids,
and I'm not noticing him challenging Babe Ruth's home run record.
Sit back and watch the show or don't, as you choose. I stopped watching
rodeo because I couldn't stand what went into making the show. But I'm
really sick of the hypocrisy from people who seem to want reality kept
carefully away from their view, and who want to punish people, not out of a
reasonable analysis of what they personally might have done wrong, but
because they break the illusion.
2004-12-23: INN 2.4.2
Finally and at long last, I've gotten the new release of INN out the door.
I should have done this last summer. It's really hard to keep up a
frequent release cycle for some reason.
Lots and lots of bug fixes in the latest release. The Tcl filter has
finally been disabled, since no one has stepped forward who cares about it.
Overview generation should now be handled more completely correctly,
article size limits should work better, and make install should work more
cleanly.
You can get documentation and links to the latest version from
my INN pages.
2004-12-24: Happy holidays
The more times I live through this time of year, the sadder the nonsense
surrounding it makes me. Those who like the traditional US treatment of
Christmas get plenty of support and validation, so this is for all the
people who don't.
For all those of you who, like me, don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you've
had a chance to get away from work for a while, relax, do whatever you feel
like doing, and pause and take a deep breath before the next year. There
are others out there like you, and not just people who believe in some
other religion. You may not be able to tell it from television or even
from your friends, but you're not alone. If, like me, your preference for
this time of year is to find a quiet, warm cave to crawl into and stay out
of the way of insane people, I hope you've been able to find a good one.
To all the people who, rather than following the rest of the country in
bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas and then supporting it anyway,
have chosen to resist societal pressure and simply not participate, I
salute you. Again, you're not alone. Here's to giving people gifts when
it fits and when you find something good.
For all of the people whose religions or spiritual beliefs are ignored and
belittled, for all the people who are excluded by the attempts of
Christianity to co-opt and control the winter holidays, for all the people
who refuse to support religious discrimination even if it comes in the form
of a charity, for all the people who know that American is not synonymous
with Christian, I offer my little flame of support in a cold season.
For all of the people who understand that treating people decently,
humanely, and with dignity is not a seasonal issue, who give some thought
to how people are going to find food and shelter in February and October,
and who find an extra amount of patience during the rudeness and insanity
of the Christmas shopping season, you are my heroes. My gifts to
charity will continue and increase after the holiday season.
I've found my hole to curl up into. I'm working on INN for fun, reading
when I feel like it, watching football, and ignoring Christmas. I'm having
a wonderful holiday break. I hope all of you do as well.
2004-12-25: Media reform
Here is a transcript of a speech by Bill Moyers to the National Conference
on Media Reform (Update: link is now dead). While the warnings
about the growth of consolidation and the loss of diversity in the news
media aren't new, Moyers's presentation of it is very good. He's one of
my favorite journalists; it's a shame (although good for him!) that he's
retiring.
One of the points I found the most interesting was the idea that it was
fine for early newspapers to be biased because there were a lot of
newspapers that were all biased in different ways, and more importantly in
pretty much all ways that were represented in the surrounding society.
This is an argument that's used by some supporters of organizations like
Fox News, but the reality of the current situation is that there are no
major news organizations that are actively anti-corporate. There are only
different approaches and different degrees of pandering to corporate power.
It's not about conservative vs. liberal, although that is a small
underlying part of the problem. It's really about whether we have a news
media that's willing to tell the truth, dig into the cracks, and expose the
secrets of corporate and government power before they become so
obvious that the media can't not cover it. And by secrets, I don't mean
who's sleeping with whom, I mean who's abusing their power and their
position to deceive, control, and fleece the public.
Personally, I subscribe to and read Salon.
They can be a touch shrill, and they're certainly not unbiased or
unpartisan, but I think they do try to do the real work of journalism in a
way that's hard to find otherwise. But they need competition, and not just
in the form of talk radio and pure opinion magazines. Salon has reporters
who actually go somewhere and try to find news, they interview the people
involved in current problems, and they seek out partnerships with other
news organizations elsewhere in the world who do this and whose writing
people in the US often don't see.
We need more journalism that does this, with more resources, with more
different viewpoints, and with more aggressiveness. There are a lot of
obstacles in the way of getting that, but one of them is clearly attention;
we won't get insightful journalism that tries to pull the rug off of real
issues unless we, the readers, support it and pay for it. Bush's
government, one of the primary benefactors of the current news media
atmosphere, certainly isn't going to be an ally.
2004-12-28: Holiday haul
Today was book shopping today; we hit a couple of used book stores and a
couple of new book stores, and I did significant damage to my want list.
We'll see if these will all fit on my existing shelves, although I think I
still have enough room.
Michael Bishop -- And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (sff)
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff -- The Meri (sff)
Suzy McKee Charnas -- The Furies (sff)
Arthur C. Clarke -- Tales from the White Hart (sff)
Storm Constantine -- The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit
(sff)
Rick Cook -- Wizard's Bane (sff)
Charles de Lint -- The Harp of the Grey Rose (sff)
Philip K. Dick -- Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (sff)
Greg Egan -- Diaspora (sff)
Maggie Furey -- Aurian (sff)
Kathleen Ann Goonan -- Queen City Jazz (sff)
Colin Greenland -- Harm's Way (sff)
Haven Kimmel -- A Girl Named Zippy (mainstream)
Gabriel King -- The Wild Road (sff)
Ursula K. Le Guin -- Tales from Earthsea (sff)
Valery Leith -- The Company of Glass (sff)
Robin McKinley -- Sunshine (sff)
Ken MacLeod -- The Stone Canal (sff)
Julian May -- The Golden Torc (sff)
Elizabeth Moon -- Hunting Party (sff)
Pat Murphy -- Points of Departure (sff)
Larry Niven -- Flatlander (sff)
Chaim Potok -- Davita's Harp (mainstream)
Terry Pratchett -- Sourcery (sff)
Kim Stanley Robinson -- Blue Mars (sff)
Marshall Saunders -- Beautiful Joe (mainstream)
Walter Scott -- Waverley (classic)
Charles Sheffield -- Summertide (sff)
Sharon Shinn -- Angelica (sff)
Robert Silverberg -- Lord Valentine's Castle (sff)
Mary Stewart -- The Hollow Hills (sff)
S. Andrew Swann -- Broken Crescent (sff)
James Tiptree, Jr. -- The Color of Neanderthal Eyes (sff)
Anne Tyler -- The Accidental Tourist (mainstream)
Jack Vance -- Lyonesse (sff)
John Varley -- Titan (sff)
Tad Williams -- Stone of Farewell (sff)
Tad Williams -- To Green Angel Tower, Part I (sff)
Tad Williams & Nina Kirki Hoffman -- Child of an Ancient
City (sff)
Jack Williamson -- Terraforming Earth (sff)
Connie Willis & Cynthia Felice -- Promised Land (sff)
Roger Zelazny -- Trumps of Doom (sff)
Beautiful Joe is to replace a hardcover copy that I have that's
falling apart.
2004-12-31: Tehanu
Review: Tehanu, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Copyright: 1990
ISBN: 0-689-84533-2
Pages: 281
Like the previous Earthsea books, Tehanu stands on its own
sufficiently to be enjoyable without reading the previous books. It does,
however, pick up directly after the events of
The
Farthest Shore and some parts of the story will be less confusing if one
reads the previous books first.
Tehanu returns to the characters and some of the structure of
The
Tombs of Atuan, which for me was immediately a point in its favor. Tenar
is perhaps my favorite of Le Guin's Earthsea characters, and leaving the
characters in one region for the whole story and letting the setting fully
develop adds a lot to the story for me. Ged is present again as a
supporting character, letting the narrative focus on Tenar exclusively
(except for the excellent ending).
Newly a widow after a quiet life as a farm wife, Tenar adopts a badly
burned, disfigured, and abused girl, trying to win her trust and find a
life for her as well as help a crippled Ged. In that search, she confronts
her decisions about her own life and place in the world. Le Guin moves
farther away from traditional fantasy plots and instead writes a story
about the quest for identity after a trauma or a significant change in
life. There is still a touch of clear-cut conflict, including villains
about whom there is no moral ambiguity whatsoever, but this is background
structure. The conflict just highlights the need put the past behind and
the struggle to balance the often unfair strictures of society or
capability with complex, mixed desires.
A secondary theme is prejudice and discrimination, and Le Guin confronts
some of the inequities of the world of Earthsea that were present but
largely unremarked-on in the earlier books. Why are all wizards male? Is
there something necessarily male about about wizard magic? Is it just for
witches to be distrusted and treated as lesser practitioners? Both Tenar
and Therru, the child, also face the prejudice of the small-town
environment of Gont, where the different or strange is treated with
suspicion and at best left alone, if not actively feared. The questions
are raised but not answered and the problems worked around rather than
solved, but there are hints that the question of female wizards may come to
a head in future stories. I hope so, as the setup and teaser in the ending
were wonderful and intriguing.
Tehanu is written in Le Guin's typical quiet, precise style. The
narrative voice took a few pages for me to get used to, and then I found it
particularly effective at creating a sense of place and an emotional
context. The tone is very introspective and contemplative, a different
reading experience than a plot-driven story and one of the things I liked
best about The Tombs of Atuan. The world has no easy answers, and
problems of identity can't be solved with simple action. Tenar understands
that, and she thinks deeply about what she does and why.
I like the Earthsea character studies better than the travelogue
adventures. While this didn't hit my personal buttons quite as directly as
The Tombs of Atuan, it is another excellent story, adding depth and
nuance to the Earthsea universe and featuring a wonderfully handled ending.
Highly recommended.
Rating: 9 out of 10
2004-12-31: Book statistics for 2004
It looks like Tehanu will be my last read for 2004, as I have
another 180 pages to go in Dreamsnake and probably won't finish it
until after midnight. This therefore seems to be a good time to gather
some meaningless statistics about books read in 2004.
| Books read: |
94 |
| Total pages: |
34,304 |
| Average rating: |
6.80 |
| Books per day: |
0.26 |
| Pages per day: |
93.7 |
| Days per book: |
3.90 |
Next year I'm going to aim for 100 books. That shouldn't be too much of a
difficulty, given that I've been steadily increasing the rate at which I've
been finishing books since I started reading regularly again.
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