Books
I read nearly all of Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee while on holiday, as well as Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth It takes concentrated effort to read real books these days. It used to be that there was always a bit of spare time here or there, but these days I spend that time checking my email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or reading today's newspapers on my Kindle.
I thought that The Third Chimpanzee was good, but not as good as his later work Guns, Germs & Steel (the subject of which he covers briefly in a small part of The Third Chimpanzee).
Diamond uses some nice points to illustrate evolution, the niches that evolve, and the paradox of inefficiency when it comes to sexual selection beating natural selection. But the book isn't as tight as his later work. However, I'm still looking forward to reading Collapse.
McEwan's Sweet Tooth is a sensational return to form -- his best since Chesil Beach. There were a couple of interesting bits on the journey. One, where the narrator talks of the stories of a writer whom MI5 is going to fund, has her saying that she wished he hadn't spent so much time describing a recipe and the cooking of the meal -- a criticism I remember making myself about Saturday. Then, when our fictional author wins a prize for a short novel, the critics seem to come out with the same words that were uttered at the time of Chesil Beach. So our (fictional) author obviously has things in common with Ian McEwan. Now, google up the cover of the book. Who is that silhouette in the doorway?
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I'm not blogging here about holidays any more because, well, I'm not doing it. Uploading the photos to Facebook is so much easier; and there's more people to see it. Maybe I shall return when I am in Vegas, or when I quit Facebook. I just don't know.
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I thought that The Third Chimpanzee was good, but not as good as his later work Guns, Germs & Steel (the subject of which he covers briefly in a small part of The Third Chimpanzee).
Diamond uses some nice points to illustrate evolution, the niches that evolve, and the paradox of inefficiency when it comes to sexual selection beating natural selection. But the book isn't as tight as his later work. However, I'm still looking forward to reading Collapse.
McEwan's Sweet Tooth is a sensational return to form -- his best since Chesil Beach. There were a couple of interesting bits on the journey. One, where the narrator talks of the stories of a writer whom MI5 is going to fund, has her saying that she wished he hadn't spent so much time describing a recipe and the cooking of the meal -- a criticism I remember making myself about Saturday. Then, when our fictional author wins a prize for a short novel, the critics seem to come out with the same words that were uttered at the time of Chesil Beach. So our (fictional) author obviously has things in common with Ian McEwan. Now, google up the cover of the book. Who is that silhouette in the doorway?
+++++++++++++
I'm not blogging here about holidays any more because, well, I'm not doing it. Uploading the photos to Facebook is so much easier; and there's more people to see it. Maybe I shall return when I am in Vegas, or when I quit Facebook. I just don't know.
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