jhgowen

10:18 pm: C. S. Lewis and possibly Tolkien.
Just watched the last half of a fascinating programme on BBC 4 about C.S.Lewis, and a new theory, now available in all good bookshops, that each of the Narnia books has a planet as its primum mobile. The seven planets of mediaeval cosmology, something that Lewis in his academical hat, knew a great deal about.
The programme then plunged into the mire of debating about scientific atheism vs. theism, at which point it became rather tedious, but in the credits, they had clearly been doing some dramatisation, as they had "young Lewis" and "J.R.R.Tolkien" amongst the dramatised people.

Can't get iPlayer in Geneva sadly, but if there are any Inklings-junkies out there, they might want to give it a whirl.

09:06 pm:

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09:05 pm: Alexander

Alexander likes to climb on things that say 3-6 years, although he is only two. This can be quite scary. He gains confidence every day.

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09:09 pm: Random Photo

Alexander practising his climbing skills

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09:10 pm: Quicksilver
So I am ploughing my way through "The System of the World", which I am guessing needs no introduction except to say "Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver Enormous Book 3".

Not sure how to describe this trilogy. There is enough history to only appeal to a history buff, or possible repel them, enough science to only appeal to scientists, particularly historians of science, and enough nerdy humour that surely only appeals to Stephensons usual audience. The born and bred Londoner, who knows its geography and component suburbs? Dare I mention the audience of people who can sustain their memory of characters and events across very long books, and is not afraid of them?
I think I fit neatly into the intersection of all these audiences, thus get the most out of this series. It's simply wonderful. Not a slow moment. I love the conversations going on at multiple levels, the feeling that the reader is being given pieces of a jigsaw, which can be put together before the plot reaches that point, some of the references and expositions of science et al. are a little long, and heavy-handed, but it is easy to pass swiftly over those. I know enough of the history of the period (all my European geographical knowledge comes from studying the Thirty Years' War, and designing a wargame set in that period) to appreciate the description of it all, but probably not so much as to be annoyed by any deviations from actuality.

Although I have read much of the rest of Neal Stephenson, I had assumed that he would have bitten off more than he could chew trying to write a novel across a grand sweep of history, and that it would be full of a tedious American viewpoint on Europe and history that completely misses everything. Thus I have delayed reading this for ages. But now I am glad I did. I got Quicksilver on my last trip to a conference in Boston (where, ironically some of the action takes place), and The Confusion I picked up at Heathrow on my way to Geneva for a week, and had finished before I returned to Japan, so now I am some way through System of the World, which I got in Heathrow on the way back from Geneva. (Japan doesn't have good bookshops.)

I realise that I haven't said anything about the actual story, but almost this is incidental, because the books are just so much fun.

Any thoughts?

11:30 pm: Greetings from Geneva

The big news for me this year is the arrival of Alexander, our son, 3 weeks ago.

So I know I said I am in Japan, but we are moving to Geneva on 1st June, so we will be much closer to England.

Salut!