David John (le Carré) Cornwell

Shout out for the most sophisticated and skilled author I read.

John Le Carré is “one of the finest writers of espionage fiction in 20th century literature”.

The former MI5 & MI6 operative published his first novel in 1961. He’s still going strong.

A pseudonym was required, way back when, because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

In 2008 he named his best books:

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Tailor of Panama
The Constant Gardener

For some reason The Little Drummer Girl is his novel I best remember. Perhaps because I liked the movie with Diane Keaton, too.

I recently listened to Absolute Friends (2003). Every 2-3yrs I feel obliged to read one of his books, to up the intelligence quotient of my average. (The Dune Franchise books are like kindergarten readers, by comparison.)

Next for me is The Mission Song (2006) as I want to learn more about the Second Congo War. (25 armed groups, 5.4 million dead).

I hear the narration of that book by David Oyelowo is superb.

In real life Cornwell’s a harsh critic of the Iraq War.

why are novels so long?

I listened to two audio books lately:

• Under the Dome ~ Stephen King (1088 pages)

• Magic Street ~ Orson Scott Card (416 pages)

Both successful writers, obviously.

I can’t particularly recommend either novel. Both I enjoyed. But both were too long. Long sections that didn’t add anything to the story. Filler.

Novels these days are mostly 80,000 – 120,000 words. But why?… Is it some legacy of the dead tree publishing industry?

As an audio book fan, I’d like to see more concise novels. Shorter novels.

On Audible.com you can search their collection by number of hourse, “Running Time”.

100 Books! Have you read them?

this is a Facebook meme … I’ve read about 40.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. …

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Azimov version)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger … movie
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot … I read the other Middlemarch
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (in French) … only in English
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

iPod Nano watch

This is the best watch band designed to fit the new Nano I’ve yet seen.

It’s not available now. But I’m expecting to see them in the Apple store by early 2011. $40.

I’ll be back to wearing a “wrist watch” after many years wrist naked.

details

Johnny Cash – American Legend

I really enjoyed listening to Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon by Stephen Miller.

That’s surprising, since I never liked Johnny Cash. … Not until Rocco insisted I listen to one of his last albums, one of the Rick ReubenAmerican Recordings“.

The original DJ of the Beastie Boys, and co-founder of Def Jam Records, Reuben was the last person one might guess would decide to rejuvenate the failing career of a has been.

After his success with Johnny, …

… MTV called him “the most important producer of the last 20 years.” In 2007, Rubin was listed among Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. …

… Rubin introduced Cash to Nine Inch Nails‘ “Hurt“, and the resulting cover version of it on The Man Comes Around would become the defining song of Cash’s later years….

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That biography and all the Rubin produced songs are highly recommended. Especially if you’re prone to reflect on death and loss. Cash is incredibly eloquent.

be happy – by Monica Sheehan

… the illustrations and the captions are from the book “Be Happy: A Little Book to Help You Live a Happy Life.” by Monica Sheehan, dedicated to Andrew Kroon …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube

shout out for Climate Change activists

My buddy Morgen Hartford is on the road (by bike) …

… on a memorial journey through the Pacific Northwest. Honoring old friends, creating new connections. Learning about the systems that power and shape the way we live.

Here he is with a broken spoke on his most recent 1200mi ride.

His excellent blog – A Wild and Sacred Day – documents the trip.

Two of his causes are healthy food and Climate Action.

My main source of information from Climate Change activists is the excellent audiocast Living on Earth, Steve Curwood’s news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues.

Personally I’m a Climate Change agnostic having done almost no research on the topic aside from reading The Skeptical Environmentalist.

My friend Brian Mason has done exhaustive research concluding that there’s almost no evidence (yet) that man has significantly altered climate. … My gut tells me that’s probably true.

Even if it is, Climate Change activists are doing far more good than harm. Improving Life on Earth. Kudos!

What inspired this post? … I started reading this book, Ectopia (1975) …

The book is set in 1999 (25 years in the future, as seen from 1974) …

Ecotopia, a newly formed country that broke from the USA in 1980. … The new nation of Ecotopia consists of Northern California, Oregon and Washington; it is hinted that Southern California is a lost cause. …

Though the book was a serious vision of ecologists in 1975, it reads as a most hilarious parody in 2010. Funny because the author didn’t intend it to be funny.

Cars are banned. Farms are run by collectives. Women run the government. They enjoy a 20hr work week. And marijuana.

Who today could believe that California would legalize marijuana?

… The link above is an Economist audiocast of Roger Salazar of Public Safety First and Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance debating California’s proposition 19, by far the best analysis of the issue I’ve ever seen.

Invictus – a review

Nelson Mandela is a great hero of mine.

I can’t think of any actor better suited to play him in a Hollywood movie than Morgan Freeman. Nor any director better than Clint Eastwood.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

Loved it.

Invictus is a 2009 biographical drama film based on events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, hosted in that country following the dismantling of apartheid. …

The story is based on the John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation. Invictus was released in the United States on December 11, 2009.

Here’s the real Mandella with captain François Pienaar. (much bigger than actor Matt Damon, you notice)

Invictus – the poem

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

hmmm …

How do I get to the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand next year

The Dune Universe

Frank Herbert
The best desert planet sci-fi novel, all would agree is Dune.

Here’s the original series of 6 novels by Frank Herbert, each IMHO weaker and more confusing than the last:

Dune (1965)
Dune Messiah (1969)
Children of Dune (1976)
God Emperor of Dune (1981)
Heretics of Dune (1984)
Chapterhouse Dune (1985)

Much later Frank’s son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson expanded the series, adding many new books. They try to make sense of Frank’s vision.

I’ve now read 6 of the dozen or more Dune books in chronological order:

• Dune: House Atreides (Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson)

• Dune: House Harkonnen (Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson)

• Dune: House Corrino (Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson)

• Paul of Dune (Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson)

• Dune (Frank Herbert)

• Dune Messiah (Frank Herbert)

Frank was a genius in conceiving Dune, I concede.

But the son’s books are far better, more accessible, than his Dad’s.

In Dune Messiah, for example, almost nothing happens … aside from a poorly unexplained nuclear explosion that seems to do no damage except render those nearest to it blind. Was Frank a mad genius? … There was something wrong with his brain, I’m thinking.

I’m not burned out yet. Next up is Winds of Dune.

Last I’ll read the 3 earliest books, the prequels, which look to be excellent.

will humans go extinct?

Eventually, certainly.

But will we go extinct in the next 100yrs?

Professor Frank Fenner thinks we will:

… in an interview with The Australian, the well-respected microbiologist expressed his pessimism for our future. “We’re going to become extinct,” he said. “Whatever we do now is too late.” …

I’m inclined to disagree. Even after reading The Road, a horror story of post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.

In the same article (forwarded me by Dave Adlard) …

In a paper published in the journal Futures last year, researchers approached the question: “Human Extinction: How Could It Happen?”

… “The human race is unlikely to become extinct without a combination of difficult, severe and catastrophic events,” Tobin Lopes, of the University of Colorado at Denver, said in an interview with Discovery News. He added that his team “were very surprised about how difficult it was to come up with plausible scenarios in which the entire human race would become extinct.” …

details on MSNBC – Will humans go extinct within 100 years?

The world might look like this “soon”. …

But some humans will survive.