originally written 09/05/2010
I finished this last week, and I have to conclude even though I preferred the narrative structure of Dreams From My Father, I thought The Audacity of Hope was a better book. Obama’s writing style is superb, something which I vaguely knew from what I read and watched before we elected him but hadn’t realized in full until now.
It seemed an appropriate time to read this book because I’ve been embroiled in the UK General Election, which I couldn’t vote in. Audacity as well as Vote for Who? has made me think about my voting rights and (shock, horror) politics (which I try to think about as little as possible, for better or worse!). Obama admits in his book a liberal bias (naturally enough!)—I will have to admit to my own, which is one reason I enjoyed the book so much—there was a lot of head-nodding. It’s interesting, of course, to read the book with the knowledge the writer became the President of the United States and when he wrote he was “merely” a US senator. It’s interesting to see what policies Obama promised (or at least offered up as particular bugaboos) in the hindsight of a few years on.
You get the sense, whether it’s completely correct, that very little riles Obama; he says as much, that even when getting rebuffed or disagreeing, he keeps his cool. Case in point is the rather amusing way he deals with Peggy Noonan, who wrote prior to his election to the Senate,
“There is nothing wrong with Barack Obama’s resume, but it is a log cabin-free zone. So far it is also a greatness-free zone. If he keeps talking about himself like this it always will be.”
His response:
Ouch!
He also had a Movie Valjean moment during that general election campaign for US senate when he sorted out Justin, a guy hired by his opponent to stalk him throughout his campaign by filming everything on a camcorder. I also liked when he noted, without a note of vitriol, that Alan Keyes said “Christ would not vote for Obama.”
There were some, I thought, good insights into the 2004 election, incidentally the one I remember best as it was the first I could vote in. Instead of the “compassionate conservatism” that was part of Bush’s 2000 campaign, there was a policy of “absolutism,” “an idea of no taxes, no regulation, no safety net”—also the religious absolutism of the Christian right. I do remember very well the prominence of “moral values” in the 2004 election. Speaking of moral values, I agreed with Obama’s acknowledgment that despite our best intentions for faith, sometimes our religious differences fan flames and cause further ruptures. “For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closedmindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.”
Hope is certainly at the heart of this book. Obama scorns those who insist we in the US live in “the worst of political times”; he goes on to list historical and geographical precedents that make us grateful for what we’ve got. Among the values Obama singles out as “typically” American are “a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.” I remember even David Tennant saying that Americans seemed inherently more optimistic about everything; that I’m not sure about. But I do agree with some of the other values Obama highlights: the belief in individual freedom—something we as Americans may take for granted as it is so deeply ingrained in us. “We understand our liberty in a negative sense”—we are suspicious of those trying to regulate what we do in our private lives. Particularly relevant, in my opinion and in my life, are the values of “self-reliance, self-improvement, and risk taking . . . the values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.” I’m curious, readers—do you agree? What values do you associate with Americans? What values, British readers, do you see as typically British?
J and I were having an interesting conversation about self-awareness, our own most prominent flaws and mistakes, and being better people. “Lack of empathy” came up, and I posited that lack of empathy had caused many of the largest problems in the world today and ever. Obama’s mother agreed: “How would that make you feel?” was her guidepost for raising him, and his guidepost (he says) for politics.
Among the policies Obama seems to want to have a hand at changing (and that I agreed with enough to write down!): “Over the last five years, [University] tuition has risen by 40 percent” (absurd! Also, he mentions social safety nets: Social Security has traditionally rested on 3 pillars: being able to have a job that pays the bills and allows for savings, a package of health and retirement benefits, and a government safety net. When put that way, I was wrong to think for the past four years that Britain’s safety net was so novel—even before the national health care reform that has been rolling, Sisyphus-like, up the hill, we learned from the Great Depression not to leave Americans without some kind of respite. I also found interesting the way he faulted many conservatives for not trying to compromise on issues that violate their “moral values”: “They want a return to a bygone era” [without pre-marital sex or homosexuality].
The section on foreign policy was also interesting; Obama quoted John Quincy Adams that America should “not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy”; Theodore Roosevelt’s addendum to the Monroe Doctrine had become the Bush Doctrine, manifest destiny “a series of ad hoc decisions.” I think Obama did prove he could have more of a global perspective given the amount of traveling and living abroad he did even as a child (though not entirely voluntarily!).
If, like me, you spent much of the enjoyable Dear Fatty waiting for Dawn to get together with Lenny, you would be pleased by the end of Audacity, which picks up where Dreams From My Father left off: he meets Michelle, romances her, and marries her, yielding the memorable line: “I asked if I could kiss her. It tasted of chocolate.” I did really like what he had to say from the perspective, as it were, of the working woman. “But for the average American woman, the decision to work . . . is a matter of making ends meet.” I must be getting old: that’s something I’m thinking about more and more. With our gender roles having been incontrovertibly changed in the past hundred, fifty years, from what they were for hundreds of years, good things have certainly come about—but in some ways it’s put huge pressure on both men and women. I’m glad—and I admit I was surprised—Obama mentioned it specifically in the book.
I’ll admit I raced through the book as I had to give it back to the person who had lent it to me, but that was easily done as it was a good read and one I’d recommend to anyone.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Vote for Who?
originally written 26/04/2010
This book will change your life
If you can get through some of the rather juvenile humor, that is.
I wanted to know more about the general election in Britain that will be held on May 6th. I won’t be able to vote in it, not being a British citizen, but I have wanted to know for a long time more about the political system in my host country. J lent me Vote for Who? by Jonathan Maitland. It’s not, as you might expect, a book about Doctor Who and voting; it’s kind of a dummies’ guide to the British political landscape, not exhaustive but put in simple terms that everyone (even me) can understand.
This is what I learned:
1) Where does your council tax go? If you live in Britain and aren’t a student and aren’t on benefits, you have to pay council tax. I found this out the hard way during a long and protracted battle between three renters (two of whom were students), their landlord, and Swansea City and County Council Tax Office. No one likes paying council tax, but everyone benefits from it so that is why it is tolerated. One of the points Maitland makes in the book is to paraphrase Colbert and note that it is the job of all governments to tax the people as much as they can without the people putting up too much of a fuss. Britain, as you’re no doubt aware, is taxed differently from the US. Is it a better system? It depends on what you think a government should provide. The money generated from council tax goes into these separate pots:
a) Education
b) Social Services
c) Housing
d) The environment
e) Culture
f) Planning
g) Highways
2) The money you pay in governmental taxes then ends up back in your local councils, but it’s apportioned out more evenly so that poorer councils still get an equal amount of the overall pot. This leads to a “Big Political Question”: how do we want to be governed, locally or nationally? From my experience in the US this is always a tug-of-war: how federalized do we want to be? How much decision-making power do we want to grant individual states?
3) Almost a third of all government spending goes to welfare. It was William Beveridge who decreed that the welfare state should be there for Britons from cradle to grave, and it’s a situation that I seesaw on all the time. I’m in favor of national health care (see below) and pensions. I’m in favor, up to a point, of benefits and dole money. I have found, in my experience, that it’s really easy to work the system so that benefits become a way of life rather than a safety net. There’s a streak of good ol’ American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” in me that feels like benefits should be limited, but who decides and how? Maitland says in the book that “slashing people’s dole money, or pensions, or cancelling benefits would of course be unthinkable.” Would it?
4) “Two-thirds of those who didn’t vote in 2001 said that if they’d been allowed to do it by phone, they would have.” While I’m pleased to accommodate people to be able to vote if they want to, it seems . . . weird to imagine votes for the running of a country being sent in the same manner people vote for The X Factor, etc. Maitland later suggests voter turn out might be increased by holding elections on a Sunday rather than a Thursday or by doing it over a three- or four-day period. I think these ideas have merit, but I wonder if the latter would present problems for counting accurately? I don’t like the conclusion that Maitland comes to, that he will be a non-voter but an “intelligent non-voter.” He later gives a chapter to other ways you can influence politics other than voting, but I still passionately believe one should exercise the right to vote. He trots out the chestnut that if a certain candidate gets 5,345,000 votes, it wouldn’t make a jot of difference for that candidate to get 5,345,001. However, the basic point that escapes him is that if everyone thought that way, no one would ever vote! I realize that’s a very distant possibility, but metaphorically it makes the point.
5) Our parents influence the way we vote. Obviously, but when you stop to think about that, it’s very true. It’s almost a crutch we can use instead of being informed.
6) Recently someone told me she wasn’t going to vote because all candidates all the time were interchangeable, it wasn’t worth voting in one or another, and they were all liars and crooks. Maitland’s assessment of dishonesty in politicians is very pragmatic: politics by its nature is predisposed toward little white lies. This is because politics is about gaining and keeping power. If you want to keep power, you can’t continually expose when you’ve made really big mistakes, because no one will vote for you. Ergo you have to keep quiet about the mistakes. This makes a lot of sense, alas, and I wonder about all those who enter politics with idealism. Are they all trumped by cynicism like this? Is there no other way to be a public servant other than to eventually succumb to deception?
7) At any one time, there should be around 660 Members of Parliament. This seemed like a staggering figure to me. For such a geographically small country (though with a large population) it hardly seems conceivable that there should be so many MPs, or indeed, the need for them. Like Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, most MPs spend their lives as backbenchers, not really getting to influence policy and very few of them ever become Cabinet Members. I was a bit stumped by the fact that they aren’t encouraged to pursue parallel careers, and the money isn’t great (though when Maitland says “60k is peanuts” WTF??). He does add, however, “the expenses are good.” Ohhh, hindsight is 20/20.
8) MPs are still among the 17 most powerful groups of people in Britain, according to the book. The Queen, I was rather surprised to find, still tops that list. I found out that in a neck-and-neck result in a general election, the Queen has the right to choose the PM. Is that a situation we might see?
a) Another group is the unions. As you may have guessed, they are not as strong as they were thirty years ago. One thinks about the struggles of the unions getting started in the 1850s as detailed in North and South. How things have changed . . .
b) The House of Lords is another holder of power. Maitland mentions their system of checks and balances with the House of Commons. Yet, as I learned later in the book, judges aren’t elected—to me, systems of checks and balances have always meant the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the US government which have checks and balances so each branch doesn’t have too much power. Does it work the same?
c) Civil servants, though what they are exactly I’m still not sure.
d) Focus Groups and Bright Young Things
e) Quangos. WTF is a quango? A Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation.
f) National Parliaments and Assemblies (such as the Welsh one)
g) Big Business
h) The Bank of England—which only fairly recently was given the power to set interest rates.
i) The Cabinet
j) Ministers
k) The Press
l) Europe
m) America
n) The Prime Minister
o) The Chancellor of the Exchequer . Interestingly, the book talks a lot about Gordon Brown and mentions that only three (now four) Chancellors since the War have gone on to become Prime Ministers.
9) I always counted it in Britain’s favor that it didn’t follow a slavish two-party system like we have in the US. Well, according to Maitland, “The system is biased in favor of one or the other of the two major parties . . . It can put you in the strange position of voting for a party whose policies you dislike.” While I have been assured that you shouldn’t let this lead to so-called tactical voting, it seems to be what is encouraged to happen. I have quite a hard time accepting this vote-for-the-party, not-for-the-person situation. Then again, as Maitland says, “The party system over there [in the US] is much weaker and more open than ours.”
10) Maitland gives some half-serious, half-tongue-in-cheek suggestions for influencing politics without voting.
a) Kill yourself. It worked for a suffragette.
b) Write to your local MP. But it won’t get you anywhere. Yet it’s hard to find another nation where so many people take writing strongly-worded letters to officials as a real course of action.
c) Try to become an MP yourself. Only attempt if you have money.
d) Start your own political party
e) The McBroom Method
f) Start a Consumer Boycott
g) Start your own pressure group
h) Take over your local council
i) Organise a rally
j) Lob a few bombs
k) Start a riot
l) Publicity stunts
m) Get a celeb on board
n) Help write the laws yourself. This seems to be Maitland’s favored choice, as laws are all available online for ordinary people to comment on, and their comments are actually read, logged, and mulled over. I admit, in theory it has some merit.
11) His assessment of political Islam in Britain and in other countries is interesting, though somewhat forced into a footnote at the end. “In several countries, hardline and intolerant interpretations of the Sharia are being challenged and even shelved.” A cynic might also write a corollary for the US, “Among American Christians, hardline and intolerant interpretations of the Bible are being challenged and even shelved.” In any case, I think Maitland makes an excellent point in noting how to bridge the traditions of Islam with the Western 21st century: “In Morocco . . . the religious scholars were consulted, and cooperated, every step of the way.”
12) I learned recently from a work colleague that a mixed economy system is what Britain has used, with certain aspects of capitalism (free enterprise and private money-making) and socialism (keeping tight rein on the economy, running a very generous welfare state system). In theory I think this is very smart and has worked well. But you can see my objections up in #3.
13) Have you heard of the West Lothian Question that has come about since Scottish devolution? How can it be right that Scottish MPs at Westminster can vote on English matters, while MPs from England have lost the right to influence Scottish affairs? I think it’s something worth thinking about, though Maitland does anticipate some of the possible answers to this, pre-empting with: too bad. The English have dominated Scottish politics for so long, doubtless the West Lothian Question doesn’t worry too many Scots overmuch.
14) I don’t know how I feel about the fact that Britain does not have a written constitution. People who prefer it didn’t say that it’s worked fine for hundreds of years and if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Coming from a country where we constantly go back to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, finding new ways to interpret them and still struggling with things like the Second Amendment, I feel uncomfortable that so much of British law can just be magicked out of the air using tradition and unspoken rule. I’m with those in favor of a written constitution; it would make things clearer and protect the country if mad extremists ever took over. It’s a possibility!
One thing I wish Maitland had included was a “Further Reading” section so I could continue to improve my knowledge of British politics.
This book will change your life
If you can get through some of the rather juvenile humor, that is.
I wanted to know more about the general election in Britain that will be held on May 6th. I won’t be able to vote in it, not being a British citizen, but I have wanted to know for a long time more about the political system in my host country. J lent me Vote for Who? by Jonathan Maitland. It’s not, as you might expect, a book about Doctor Who and voting; it’s kind of a dummies’ guide to the British political landscape, not exhaustive but put in simple terms that everyone (even me) can understand.
This is what I learned:
1) Where does your council tax go? If you live in Britain and aren’t a student and aren’t on benefits, you have to pay council tax. I found this out the hard way during a long and protracted battle between three renters (two of whom were students), their landlord, and Swansea City and County Council Tax Office. No one likes paying council tax, but everyone benefits from it so that is why it is tolerated. One of the points Maitland makes in the book is to paraphrase Colbert and note that it is the job of all governments to tax the people as much as they can without the people putting up too much of a fuss. Britain, as you’re no doubt aware, is taxed differently from the US. Is it a better system? It depends on what you think a government should provide. The money generated from council tax goes into these separate pots:
a) Education
b) Social Services
c) Housing
d) The environment
e) Culture
f) Planning
g) Highways
2) The money you pay in governmental taxes then ends up back in your local councils, but it’s apportioned out more evenly so that poorer councils still get an equal amount of the overall pot. This leads to a “Big Political Question”: how do we want to be governed, locally or nationally? From my experience in the US this is always a tug-of-war: how federalized do we want to be? How much decision-making power do we want to grant individual states?
3) Almost a third of all government spending goes to welfare. It was William Beveridge who decreed that the welfare state should be there for Britons from cradle to grave, and it’s a situation that I seesaw on all the time. I’m in favor of national health care (see below) and pensions. I’m in favor, up to a point, of benefits and dole money. I have found, in my experience, that it’s really easy to work the system so that benefits become a way of life rather than a safety net. There’s a streak of good ol’ American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” in me that feels like benefits should be limited, but who decides and how? Maitland says in the book that “slashing people’s dole money, or pensions, or cancelling benefits would of course be unthinkable.” Would it?
4) “Two-thirds of those who didn’t vote in 2001 said that if they’d been allowed to do it by phone, they would have.” While I’m pleased to accommodate people to be able to vote if they want to, it seems . . . weird to imagine votes for the running of a country being sent in the same manner people vote for The X Factor, etc. Maitland later suggests voter turn out might be increased by holding elections on a Sunday rather than a Thursday or by doing it over a three- or four-day period. I think these ideas have merit, but I wonder if the latter would present problems for counting accurately? I don’t like the conclusion that Maitland comes to, that he will be a non-voter but an “intelligent non-voter.” He later gives a chapter to other ways you can influence politics other than voting, but I still passionately believe one should exercise the right to vote. He trots out the chestnut that if a certain candidate gets 5,345,000 votes, it wouldn’t make a jot of difference for that candidate to get 5,345,001. However, the basic point that escapes him is that if everyone thought that way, no one would ever vote! I realize that’s a very distant possibility, but metaphorically it makes the point.
5) Our parents influence the way we vote. Obviously, but when you stop to think about that, it’s very true. It’s almost a crutch we can use instead of being informed.
6) Recently someone told me she wasn’t going to vote because all candidates all the time were interchangeable, it wasn’t worth voting in one or another, and they were all liars and crooks. Maitland’s assessment of dishonesty in politicians is very pragmatic: politics by its nature is predisposed toward little white lies. This is because politics is about gaining and keeping power. If you want to keep power, you can’t continually expose when you’ve made really big mistakes, because no one will vote for you. Ergo you have to keep quiet about the mistakes. This makes a lot of sense, alas, and I wonder about all those who enter politics with idealism. Are they all trumped by cynicism like this? Is there no other way to be a public servant other than to eventually succumb to deception?
7) At any one time, there should be around 660 Members of Parliament. This seemed like a staggering figure to me. For such a geographically small country (though with a large population) it hardly seems conceivable that there should be so many MPs, or indeed, the need for them. Like Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, most MPs spend their lives as backbenchers, not really getting to influence policy and very few of them ever become Cabinet Members. I was a bit stumped by the fact that they aren’t encouraged to pursue parallel careers, and the money isn’t great (though when Maitland says “60k is peanuts” WTF??). He does add, however, “the expenses are good.” Ohhh, hindsight is 20/20.
8) MPs are still among the 17 most powerful groups of people in Britain, according to the book. The Queen, I was rather surprised to find, still tops that list. I found out that in a neck-and-neck result in a general election, the Queen has the right to choose the PM. Is that a situation we might see?
a) Another group is the unions. As you may have guessed, they are not as strong as they were thirty years ago. One thinks about the struggles of the unions getting started in the 1850s as detailed in North and South. How things have changed . . .
b) The House of Lords is another holder of power. Maitland mentions their system of checks and balances with the House of Commons. Yet, as I learned later in the book, judges aren’t elected—to me, systems of checks and balances have always meant the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the US government which have checks and balances so each branch doesn’t have too much power. Does it work the same?
c) Civil servants, though what they are exactly I’m still not sure.
d) Focus Groups and Bright Young Things
e) Quangos. WTF is a quango? A Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation.
f) National Parliaments and Assemblies (such as the Welsh one)
g) Big Business
h) The Bank of England—which only fairly recently was given the power to set interest rates.
i) The Cabinet
j) Ministers
k) The Press
l) Europe
m) America
n) The Prime Minister
o) The Chancellor of the Exchequer . Interestingly, the book talks a lot about Gordon Brown and mentions that only three (now four) Chancellors since the War have gone on to become Prime Ministers.
9) I always counted it in Britain’s favor that it didn’t follow a slavish two-party system like we have in the US. Well, according to Maitland, “The system is biased in favor of one or the other of the two major parties . . . It can put you in the strange position of voting for a party whose policies you dislike.” While I have been assured that you shouldn’t let this lead to so-called tactical voting, it seems to be what is encouraged to happen. I have quite a hard time accepting this vote-for-the-party, not-for-the-person situation. Then again, as Maitland says, “The party system over there [in the US] is much weaker and more open than ours.”
10) Maitland gives some half-serious, half-tongue-in-cheek suggestions for influencing politics without voting.
a) Kill yourself. It worked for a suffragette.
b) Write to your local MP. But it won’t get you anywhere. Yet it’s hard to find another nation where so many people take writing strongly-worded letters to officials as a real course of action.
c) Try to become an MP yourself. Only attempt if you have money.
d) Start your own political party
e) The McBroom Method
f) Start a Consumer Boycott
g) Start your own pressure group
h) Take over your local council
i) Organise a rally
j) Lob a few bombs
k) Start a riot
l) Publicity stunts
m) Get a celeb on board
n) Help write the laws yourself. This seems to be Maitland’s favored choice, as laws are all available online for ordinary people to comment on, and their comments are actually read, logged, and mulled over. I admit, in theory it has some merit.
11) His assessment of political Islam in Britain and in other countries is interesting, though somewhat forced into a footnote at the end. “In several countries, hardline and intolerant interpretations of the Sharia are being challenged and even shelved.” A cynic might also write a corollary for the US, “Among American Christians, hardline and intolerant interpretations of the Bible are being challenged and even shelved.” In any case, I think Maitland makes an excellent point in noting how to bridge the traditions of Islam with the Western 21st century: “In Morocco . . . the religious scholars were consulted, and cooperated, every step of the way.”
12) I learned recently from a work colleague that a mixed economy system is what Britain has used, with certain aspects of capitalism (free enterprise and private money-making) and socialism (keeping tight rein on the economy, running a very generous welfare state system). In theory I think this is very smart and has worked well. But you can see my objections up in #3.
13) Have you heard of the West Lothian Question that has come about since Scottish devolution? How can it be right that Scottish MPs at Westminster can vote on English matters, while MPs from England have lost the right to influence Scottish affairs? I think it’s something worth thinking about, though Maitland does anticipate some of the possible answers to this, pre-empting with: too bad. The English have dominated Scottish politics for so long, doubtless the West Lothian Question doesn’t worry too many Scots overmuch.
14) I don’t know how I feel about the fact that Britain does not have a written constitution. People who prefer it didn’t say that it’s worked fine for hundreds of years and if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Coming from a country where we constantly go back to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, finding new ways to interpret them and still struggling with things like the Second Amendment, I feel uncomfortable that so much of British law can just be magicked out of the air using tradition and unspoken rule. I’m with those in favor of a written constitution; it would make things clearer and protect the country if mad extremists ever took over. It’s a possibility!
One thing I wish Maitland had included was a “Further Reading” section so I could continue to improve my knowledge of British politics.
Private Casebook
It’s good to know that you can always find a Batman writer you can rely on: I’m talking about Paul Dini, Harley’s creator and in my opinion the most consistently good writer of the comics I’ve yet come across. After reading several lacklustre titles, Batman: Private Casebook made me sit up and take notice. Dustin Nguyen is a curiously variable artist, not in ability but in style—he seems to veer toward a more painterly approach and then go back to very crisply, inked-in lines. I always find Ra’s al Ghul a bit of a yawn, so we’ll skip over “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul—Epilogue.” “The Wonderland Gang!” is a lot more fun, using the now-popular motif of Alice in Wonderland as a vehicle for one of the second-tier of Batman’s costumed foes, the Mad Hatter (here he has Tweedledum and Tweedledee along with March Harriet, and the Carpenter goes after Batman with some power tools). “The Suit of Sorrows” felt very different for Batman, as it took him out of Gotham and into more Hellboy-like territory. “Opening Night” and “Curtains” both give us interesting new twists for Zatanna, a sultry magician who is interested in Batman, and the (female) Ventriloquist. It’s been a long time since a Batman comic story has enthralled me like “The Riddle Unanswered” did—it was ostensibly about the Riddler, but Catwoman made a memorable cameo, and I loved the way it used instant messaging forums as the way Batman got his scoop. Brings a whole new meaning to the series title, Detective. I also really liked the short “Kcirt Ro Taert,” again featuring Zatanna but also the Scarecrow, where Nguyen really let his artistic, painterly talents run wild. It’s rare that witticisms in Batman will actually make me laugh.
BATMAN: There was a fire at Johnny Sabatino’s new club earlier tonight.
PENGUIN: As I have often noted, it sucks to be Johnny Sabatino. Anything else?
And:
ZATANNA: You sure were quick to say “no.”
BRUCE: Did I lie?
ZATANNA: No, but you’ve never investigated the option, either.
BRUCE: I wasn’t aware that option existed.
ZATANNA: Well, it’s here and it’s wearing a top hat.
BATMAN: There was a fire at Johnny Sabatino’s new club earlier tonight.
PENGUIN: As I have often noted, it sucks to be Johnny Sabatino. Anything else?
And:
ZATANNA: You sure were quick to say “no.”
BRUCE: Did I lie?
ZATANNA: No, but you’ve never investigated the option, either.
BRUCE: I wasn’t aware that option existed.
ZATANNA: Well, it’s here and it’s wearing a top hat.
The Color of Earth
originally written 18/04/2010
The Color of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa is a beautiful and frank volume about the growing up a young girl named Ehwa in rural Korea. I didn’t realize until halfway through that Kim Dong Hwa, famous as a writer/artist of manhwa (the Korean equivalent of manga), was a man, which is quite a feat considering it’s a sensitive book that talks quite unabashedly (but also with candor and understanding) about the mother-daughter bond and female sexuality in a non-exploitative way. While the afterword suggests that the Color of Earth trilogy stands out “in the Korean comics market, which is dominated by books whose stories are based on a male worldview,” I would go so far as to say comics in general are still dominated by a male worldview; if you look at how female sexuality is treated in this universe versus that in Love and Rockets, you see something entirely different. For all the gender politics—Ehwa’s mother is a widow who runs a tavern and is exposed to the chauvinistic gossip of her clients—the humor and universality of this book is what makes it endearing.
The art is simple but beautifully rendered, and the characters range from the cartoon-like to express emotions of embarrassment and surprise, to the lyrical. I’ll admit I was attracted to reading it in the first place because the drawing of Ehwa on the cover looked like Mulan from an English translation of the original poem about Fa Mu-Lan. Little Ehwa first realizes the differences between boys and girls when two village boys tell her she’s deformed for not having a gochoo (chile pepper) between her legs (later the boys tell her to look for her “persimmon seed” which creates a whole new set of embarrassing problems for her!). As she grows older, she realizes the special relationship her mother is developing with the wandering scholar/artist who visits them and has her own awkward first crush on a young trainee monk. The book ends with her becoming a young woman, off to more adventures in The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven.
I think it’s a lovely book and a good meditation on the power and universality of good graphic novels.
***
I’ve also recently read Star Trek: TNG: Intelligence Gathering, which was beautifully drawn but rather dull, story-wise. I also read two more volumes of Love and Rockets, namely Human Diasporism and Love and Rockets, New Stories vol.1, which was just weird. Batman: Gotham Underground was a fairly good read, with competent art, and featured the Penguin, the Scarecrow, and a huge host of costumed freaks.
The Color of Earth by Kim Dong Hwa is a beautiful and frank volume about the growing up a young girl named Ehwa in rural Korea. I didn’t realize until halfway through that Kim Dong Hwa, famous as a writer/artist of manhwa (the Korean equivalent of manga), was a man, which is quite a feat considering it’s a sensitive book that talks quite unabashedly (but also with candor and understanding) about the mother-daughter bond and female sexuality in a non-exploitative way. While the afterword suggests that the Color of Earth trilogy stands out “in the Korean comics market, which is dominated by books whose stories are based on a male worldview,” I would go so far as to say comics in general are still dominated by a male worldview; if you look at how female sexuality is treated in this universe versus that in Love and Rockets, you see something entirely different. For all the gender politics—Ehwa’s mother is a widow who runs a tavern and is exposed to the chauvinistic gossip of her clients—the humor and universality of this book is what makes it endearing.
The art is simple but beautifully rendered, and the characters range from the cartoon-like to express emotions of embarrassment and surprise, to the lyrical. I’ll admit I was attracted to reading it in the first place because the drawing of Ehwa on the cover looked like Mulan from an English translation of the original poem about Fa Mu-Lan. Little Ehwa first realizes the differences between boys and girls when two village boys tell her she’s deformed for not having a gochoo (chile pepper) between her legs (later the boys tell her to look for her “persimmon seed” which creates a whole new set of embarrassing problems for her!). As she grows older, she realizes the special relationship her mother is developing with the wandering scholar/artist who visits them and has her own awkward first crush on a young trainee monk. The book ends with her becoming a young woman, off to more adventures in The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven.
I think it’s a lovely book and a good meditation on the power and universality of good graphic novels.
***
I’ve also recently read Star Trek: TNG: Intelligence Gathering, which was beautifully drawn but rather dull, story-wise. I also read two more volumes of Love and Rockets, namely Human Diasporism and Love and Rockets, New Stories vol.1, which was just weird. Batman: Gotham Underground was a fairly good read, with competent art, and featured the Penguin, the Scarecrow, and a huge host of costumed freaks.
The Taking of Chelsea 426
originally written 05/04/2010
It’s wrong to call this a paint-by-numbers Doctor Who book; it’s got all the elements of a good story, it’s well-written, it has an interesting setting and uses the Sontarans and the Rutans to the fullest of their possibilities as villains/monsters. It was written very much in the framework of a TV series two-parter. It didn’t really suffer at all from the lack of a regular companion. It was simply . . . a bit dull.
Chelsea 426 is an off-world colony for humans who believe that Earth itself has gotten too cosmopolitan. The people who choose to live there want a life similar to that of twentieth century Chelsea: twee, regulated, calm. They are very much the inhabitants of River City in The Music Man before the action in that story takes place. The easy comparison is to those in Britain who want “England for the English.” Some of the characters in The Taking of Chelsea 426 show an appalling xenophobia, and the fact that it continues to hamper the Doctor without him taking any real action against it is somewhat unnerving. It feels like he’s the Third Doctor in “Inferno,” running around trying to convince people to go along with him while he comes up against pig-headed resistance over and over.
I didn’t realize until halfway through the book that there isn’t the customary young female companion that many of the books in this Tenth Doctor on his own range of book have relied upon. Rather like the First Doctor and his grandchildren à la the early comics, the Doctor’s companions in Chelsea 426 are Jake and Vienna Carstairs, a pair of tween twins, smart, talented, and good to have in a crisis. They are also slightly skeptical of the Doctor and somewhat desperate to escape the death-by-quiet in Chelsea 426.
The Rutans’ scheme reminded me of the plot to “The Gift” in The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Sontarans presented here are a bit more fleshed out than we have ever seen them before: General Kade is tough but fair (well, as fair as Sontarans can be), which is why Chelsea 426 doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. He commands the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division, which has been created to counter-attack the Rutans’ battle strategies. The Sontarans’ dialogue doesn’t seem to be quite right, in my opinion; calling everyone “sir,” even the useless Mayor of Chelsea 426, doesn’t seem a privilege they would afford to weaklings.
Likewise, although the Tenth Doctor has some general Tennant-y-ness, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense of his character. It wasn’t necessarily that any other Doctor could have filled the role, as the sprinklings of “molto bene!” showed David Llewellyn could hear the Tenth Doctor’s voice as he was writing. Perhaps there was a sense of shell shock in this version of the Tenth Doctor, as despite the brave façade he was putting on, he didn’t seem his mad, dashing self.
The writing was clever and more than satisfactory for the well-paced adventure story, but no characters besides the Carstairs (and possibly General Kade) were allowed to develop much. It was an enjoyable diversion.
It’s wrong to call this a paint-by-numbers Doctor Who book; it’s got all the elements of a good story, it’s well-written, it has an interesting setting and uses the Sontarans and the Rutans to the fullest of their possibilities as villains/monsters. It was written very much in the framework of a TV series two-parter. It didn’t really suffer at all from the lack of a regular companion. It was simply . . . a bit dull.
Chelsea 426 is an off-world colony for humans who believe that Earth itself has gotten too cosmopolitan. The people who choose to live there want a life similar to that of twentieth century Chelsea: twee, regulated, calm. They are very much the inhabitants of River City in The Music Man before the action in that story takes place. The easy comparison is to those in Britain who want “England for the English.” Some of the characters in The Taking of Chelsea 426 show an appalling xenophobia, and the fact that it continues to hamper the Doctor without him taking any real action against it is somewhat unnerving. It feels like he’s the Third Doctor in “Inferno,” running around trying to convince people to go along with him while he comes up against pig-headed resistance over and over.
I didn’t realize until halfway through the book that there isn’t the customary young female companion that many of the books in this Tenth Doctor on his own range of book have relied upon. Rather like the First Doctor and his grandchildren à la the early comics, the Doctor’s companions in Chelsea 426 are Jake and Vienna Carstairs, a pair of tween twins, smart, talented, and good to have in a crisis. They are also slightly skeptical of the Doctor and somewhat desperate to escape the death-by-quiet in Chelsea 426.
The Rutans’ scheme reminded me of the plot to “The Gift” in The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Sontarans presented here are a bit more fleshed out than we have ever seen them before: General Kade is tough but fair (well, as fair as Sontarans can be), which is why Chelsea 426 doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. He commands the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division, which has been created to counter-attack the Rutans’ battle strategies. The Sontarans’ dialogue doesn’t seem to be quite right, in my opinion; calling everyone “sir,” even the useless Mayor of Chelsea 426, doesn’t seem a privilege they would afford to weaklings.
Likewise, although the Tenth Doctor has some general Tennant-y-ness, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense of his character. It wasn’t necessarily that any other Doctor could have filled the role, as the sprinklings of “molto bene!” showed David Llewellyn could hear the Tenth Doctor’s voice as he was writing. Perhaps there was a sense of shell shock in this version of the Tenth Doctor, as despite the brave façade he was putting on, he didn’t seem his mad, dashing self.
The writing was clever and more than satisfactory for the well-paced adventure story, but no characters besides the Carstairs (and possibly General Kade) were allowed to develop much. It was an enjoyable diversion.
Love and Rockets
originally written 3/30/10
Okay, now I see why it’s called Love and Rockets. There are actual rockets! Jaime Hernandez’s saga of the punkettes Maggie and Hopey started out with a decidedly surrealist/science fiction bent, and I have to say I prefer the later episodes as they are somewhat more grounded in reality (and the drawing style improves and gains confidence).
This volume sees Maggie becoming the mechanic assistant to Rand Race and traveling across the world with his entourage, a fact which doesn’t seem to faze her much despite the fact the world at large is full of hovercrafts, dinosaurs, failed coups, bombings, and stuff that just doesn’t happen in Hoppers! She’s head-over-heels with Race, but they never quite hit it off right.
The Hernandez Brothers are not afraid of nudity, something that should be clear to all readers of Love and Rockets right away. I don’t think I would charge them with sexism as even though Hopey, Maggie, and Penny Century spend a lot of the comics in various states of undress, they are for the most part drawn realistically (unlike DC or Marvel women, that’s for sure!) and usually have good reasons for being unclothed—for example, Maggie and Hopey sleep in the same bed. Perhaps they overdo it a bit, but I think I can honestly say as an artist it can be more fun to draw bodies than clothes all the time!
The early years of Las Locas are clever and punny and quite meta-fictional; they refer to themselves as being in a comic and also to their artist/writer! One of my favorite pieces is “Locos,” which is told from Speedy Ortiz’s perspective: Maggie, Izzy, and Speedy’s relationship with them. It’s interesting that, as fun as Hernandez’s forays into the fantastic are, I prefer the more grounded stories.
Okay, now I see why it’s called Love and Rockets. There are actual rockets! Jaime Hernandez’s saga of the punkettes Maggie and Hopey started out with a decidedly surrealist/science fiction bent, and I have to say I prefer the later episodes as they are somewhat more grounded in reality (and the drawing style improves and gains confidence).
This volume sees Maggie becoming the mechanic assistant to Rand Race and traveling across the world with his entourage, a fact which doesn’t seem to faze her much despite the fact the world at large is full of hovercrafts, dinosaurs, failed coups, bombings, and stuff that just doesn’t happen in Hoppers! She’s head-over-heels with Race, but they never quite hit it off right.
The Hernandez Brothers are not afraid of nudity, something that should be clear to all readers of Love and Rockets right away. I don’t think I would charge them with sexism as even though Hopey, Maggie, and Penny Century spend a lot of the comics in various states of undress, they are for the most part drawn realistically (unlike DC or Marvel women, that’s for sure!) and usually have good reasons for being unclothed—for example, Maggie and Hopey sleep in the same bed. Perhaps they overdo it a bit, but I think I can honestly say as an artist it can be more fun to draw bodies than clothes all the time!
The early years of Las Locas are clever and punny and quite meta-fictional; they refer to themselves as being in a comic and also to their artist/writer! One of my favorite pieces is “Locos,” which is told from Speedy Ortiz’s perspective: Maggie, Izzy, and Speedy’s relationship with them. It’s interesting that, as fun as Hernandez’s forays into the fantastic are, I prefer the more grounded stories.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Top Books 2010
Top Books 2010
I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but there won’t be time for me to do it nearer to the end of the year. Since the only books I’m likely to finish before the end of the year are War and Peace and Eclipse, if either of them are to go on the list, they will have to wait til next year.
Like last year, I’m not ranking these—I’m just going to put them in order of when I read them. I read some quite enjoyable books this year, some in my comfort zone and some out, but really none quite leap out at me as extraordinary (though I always, always enjoy Patrick O’Brian, but that’s a foregone conclusion).
I read more than 50 books this year, which makes it seem quite good (ie I read more than one a week), but that’s deceptive, given that 19% was poetry and 22% was Doctor Who-related. The split between fiction and nonfiction was pretty even (48% fiction).
News of a Kidnapping (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
This was the best book by Márquez that I have yet read. Totally different in style to the magic realism of his fiction—this was precise, to the point, well-structured, but full of humanity, and wholly gripping. The author’s roots are in journalism, and this is an accomplished and moving study of what happened in the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar’s terrorist faction decided to pressurize the Colombian government not to extradite to the U.S.—by kidnapping eight innocent people. I found it very hard to put down even though you know at the beginning who will live and who will die. In it, I believe, you can see the best and worst of humanity.
Not in These Shoes (Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch)
Maybe I really liked these poems because I identified with them-that was even before I got into the catering business! They deal with real life, in a distinctive voice. An experienced, cynical, yet self-deprecating approach.
Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lissa Evans)
This book was set on the Home Front of Britain during World War II, but what set it apart was its delightful tone and creative use of filmmaking techniques within a novel. It was entertaining, amusing, and full of authenticity but not in an ostentatious way, and had some quite strong characters. The three seemingly disparate parts of the plot met up briefly, as in The Night Watch (except in real time whereas that book moved backward), which was oddly and appropriately cinematic. My favorite parts were the imbedded “film” scripts and the accompanying metafictional technique.
The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)
I really surprised myself in that I loved this collection. If you want to go for all the symbolic stuff, there’s plenty to search for—but if you want to read it on a superficial level, it’s as fun as one of my favorite books of all time, Beauty by Robin McKinley. I can see this influencing McKinley, Disney, Sondheim, and on and on and on. It was a lot less erotic and explicit than I had been given to believe. It’s very in tone with Gothic horror.
The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian)
Well, what can I say? O’Brian did it again. Some exciting naval battles, wonderfully paced, and a real shift on focus, both character-wise and in setting. O’Brian’s handling of the War of 1812 is splendidly even-handed, and there were some great touches to the setting in and around Boston. Stephen Maturin’s adventures in espionage and affaires-de-coeur were riveting. Really love these characters and think these books are next to flawless.
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
For awhile, this is what everyone was talking about, so I jumped on the bandwagon. It’s familiar territory-the Tudors-but it’s an enjoyable novel about the fortunes of much-maligned Thomas Cromwell. An achievement in scholarship and imagination, rich, complex, full of character and effortless historical detail, particularly successful with Mary Tudor, Mary Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Thomas More, and Henry, of course. And kudos for constructing a convincing Cromwell from a dearth of historical information.
The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square (Jan Bondeson)
I’ve been reading a lot Jan Bondeson because of the research involved with my poetry collection, but there’s more than one reason I keep coming back to his output. This was a meticulously-researched read, thoughtful, sensitive, and not without a sense of humor. Bondeson seemed a little less impish than the first book of his I read, The London Monster, but then this subject is a bit more close to the heart. He clearly has a lot of compassion for the likes of Julia Pastrana, the Tocci Brothers, and Daniel Cajanus—but he also seems politely fascinated by all this business-I think I’ve found a fellow enthusiast!
The Dinosaur Hunters (Deborah Cadbury)
This is a very thorough and meticulous, but narrative-driven, story of the first discoverers and classifiers of dinosaur fossils in England in the first 40 years of the 19th century. It’s a superb history/science book focusing as much on the characters as the fossils and the theories. You could really sympathize with the humanity of Gideon Mantell and Mary Anning and could be astonished by the arrogance of Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley. I found it extremely gripping despite all of this played out more than a hundred years before I was born-my lifelong obsession with dinosaurs was subsumed (or elevated) by the part humanity played in the discovery of them.
Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
Epic—it certainly draws parallels as the 20th century’s War and Peace (as I’m finding out first hand!). This is a massive, well-written and unflinching account of the battle of Stalingrad-for all that, it’s surprisingly fair and balanced (which is why the KGB must have seized it immediately after it was finished!). I don’t normally like books about war-this was an uphill struggle all the way-a real downer, but certainly one of those “books you must read” for the sake of your humanity.
Runners up: The Spy (James Fenimore Cooper) is supposed to be dull as dishwater, but I found it quite exciting and very pleasant reading. Considering this was the US’ first real novel set in its own locales and highlighting the Revolutionary War, I think it should be read far more than it is. But you don’t have to read it-it’ll be on Radio 4 next year! It may now be an unpopular choice, but I was quite moved by Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama). I thought the voice and the story were uniquely his, and he’s a solid, eloquent writer-even if some of the writing is speech-like. I felt after reading it that I’d done my civic duty AND had a good read. The Devil in Amber (Mark Gatiss) was an extremely well-written piece of fluff-it’s top of the class for its genre.
I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but there won’t be time for me to do it nearer to the end of the year. Since the only books I’m likely to finish before the end of the year are War and Peace and Eclipse, if either of them are to go on the list, they will have to wait til next year.
Like last year, I’m not ranking these—I’m just going to put them in order of when I read them. I read some quite enjoyable books this year, some in my comfort zone and some out, but really none quite leap out at me as extraordinary (though I always, always enjoy Patrick O’Brian, but that’s a foregone conclusion).
I read more than 50 books this year, which makes it seem quite good (ie I read more than one a week), but that’s deceptive, given that 19% was poetry and 22% was Doctor Who-related. The split between fiction and nonfiction was pretty even (48% fiction).
News of a Kidnapping (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
This was the best book by Márquez that I have yet read. Totally different in style to the magic realism of his fiction—this was precise, to the point, well-structured, but full of humanity, and wholly gripping. The author’s roots are in journalism, and this is an accomplished and moving study of what happened in the early 1990s when Pablo Escobar’s terrorist faction decided to pressurize the Colombian government not to extradite to the U.S.—by kidnapping eight innocent people. I found it very hard to put down even though you know at the beginning who will live and who will die. In it, I believe, you can see the best and worst of humanity.
Not in These Shoes (Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch)
Maybe I really liked these poems because I identified with them-that was even before I got into the catering business! They deal with real life, in a distinctive voice. An experienced, cynical, yet self-deprecating approach.
Their Finest Hour and a Half (Lissa Evans)
This book was set on the Home Front of Britain during World War II, but what set it apart was its delightful tone and creative use of filmmaking techniques within a novel. It was entertaining, amusing, and full of authenticity but not in an ostentatious way, and had some quite strong characters. The three seemingly disparate parts of the plot met up briefly, as in The Night Watch (except in real time whereas that book moved backward), which was oddly and appropriately cinematic. My favorite parts were the imbedded “film” scripts and the accompanying metafictional technique.
The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)
I really surprised myself in that I loved this collection. If you want to go for all the symbolic stuff, there’s plenty to search for—but if you want to read it on a superficial level, it’s as fun as one of my favorite books of all time, Beauty by Robin McKinley. I can see this influencing McKinley, Disney, Sondheim, and on and on and on. It was a lot less erotic and explicit than I had been given to believe. It’s very in tone with Gothic horror.
The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian)
Well, what can I say? O’Brian did it again. Some exciting naval battles, wonderfully paced, and a real shift on focus, both character-wise and in setting. O’Brian’s handling of the War of 1812 is splendidly even-handed, and there were some great touches to the setting in and around Boston. Stephen Maturin’s adventures in espionage and affaires-de-coeur were riveting. Really love these characters and think these books are next to flawless.
Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
For awhile, this is what everyone was talking about, so I jumped on the bandwagon. It’s familiar territory-the Tudors-but it’s an enjoyable novel about the fortunes of much-maligned Thomas Cromwell. An achievement in scholarship and imagination, rich, complex, full of character and effortless historical detail, particularly successful with Mary Tudor, Mary Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Thomas More, and Henry, of course. And kudos for constructing a convincing Cromwell from a dearth of historical information.
The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square (Jan Bondeson)
I’ve been reading a lot Jan Bondeson because of the research involved with my poetry collection, but there’s more than one reason I keep coming back to his output. This was a meticulously-researched read, thoughtful, sensitive, and not without a sense of humor. Bondeson seemed a little less impish than the first book of his I read, The London Monster, but then this subject is a bit more close to the heart. He clearly has a lot of compassion for the likes of Julia Pastrana, the Tocci Brothers, and Daniel Cajanus—but he also seems politely fascinated by all this business-I think I’ve found a fellow enthusiast!
The Dinosaur Hunters (Deborah Cadbury)
This is a very thorough and meticulous, but narrative-driven, story of the first discoverers and classifiers of dinosaur fossils in England in the first 40 years of the 19th century. It’s a superb history/science book focusing as much on the characters as the fossils and the theories. You could really sympathize with the humanity of Gideon Mantell and Mary Anning and could be astonished by the arrogance of Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley. I found it extremely gripping despite all of this played out more than a hundred years before I was born-my lifelong obsession with dinosaurs was subsumed (or elevated) by the part humanity played in the discovery of them.
Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
Epic—it certainly draws parallels as the 20th century’s War and Peace (as I’m finding out first hand!). This is a massive, well-written and unflinching account of the battle of Stalingrad-for all that, it’s surprisingly fair and balanced (which is why the KGB must have seized it immediately after it was finished!). I don’t normally like books about war-this was an uphill struggle all the way-a real downer, but certainly one of those “books you must read” for the sake of your humanity.
Runners up: The Spy (James Fenimore Cooper) is supposed to be dull as dishwater, but I found it quite exciting and very pleasant reading. Considering this was the US’ first real novel set in its own locales and highlighting the Revolutionary War, I think it should be read far more than it is. But you don’t have to read it-it’ll be on Radio 4 next year! It may now be an unpopular choice, but I was quite moved by Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama). I thought the voice and the story were uniquely his, and he’s a solid, eloquent writer-even if some of the writing is speech-like. I felt after reading it that I’d done my civic duty AND had a good read. The Devil in Amber (Mark Gatiss) was an extremely well-written piece of fluff-it’s top of the class for its genre.
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