Book Reviews IV

Being a review of books read while travelling, rather than a review of travel books, in less than more than around 100 150 words.


The Game-Players of Titan - Philip K. Dick


Dick's penchant for the mind-fuck is on full display throughout this novel, as the plot twists and turns, never really allowing you to see the main players, determine the goal or central conflict, or even identify what the staked of the game are. Not at least, until the very end, and even then only if you have been playing very close attention.

At turns a murder mystery, social satire, hard SF, and straight super-powered fantasy, Dick's sparse prose and dry wit move the story along at an exciting pace, and never leave you starved for action of humour.

Book Reviews III

Being a review of books read while travelling, rather than a review of travel books, in less than more than around 100 150 words.


Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut


One of Vonnegut's earlier novels (published 1952), Player Piano may be as close as he came to the true dystopic tales of Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury, though his prophetic warning certainly contained less mileage. It is perhaps one of the earlier science fictions to deal with the idea of a world in which the human workforce is replaced by machines, and is possibly unique in that it doesn't involve itself with the trite possibility of a robot uprising against human masters, but deals instead with the existential damage dealt to the now redundant workforce.

While we may have sidestepped Vonnegut's warning of a human revolution against automatisation, the essential question of how people assign value to the lives remains highly charged.

In typical Vonnegut style the story revolves around a depressed individual struggling (and failing) to make his own choices and being forced to react to pressures greater than himself. Player Piano may miss some of Vonnegut's later skill with irony, but is still a story convincingly, and humanly, told.

Book Reviews II

Being a review of books read while travelling, rather than a review of travel books, in less than more than around 100 150 words.


Hitch-22 - Christopher Hitchens


Christopher Hitchens has led a fascinating life. Perhaps best known as the author of god Is Not Great, he has also been witness, as a journalist, to almost every major conflict of the last 30 years. Despite bemoaning his own lack of skill at poetry and fiction, he is surely one of the most literate persons alive, and his autobiography is as laden with allusion and literary reference as it is with his signature cutting wit. The list of notables he counts among his friends are as remarkable as those he recounts duelling with, and the stories of friendship and combat are filled with pathos and intimacy, as well as well-delivered humour. The anecdote wherein he is paddled by the Iron Lady, future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is a hilarious, hardly-to-be-believed example.

The book also includes a brutal, honest account of both gulf wars, that will leave you sobbing tears of joy and despair. All told, Hitchens tells his own story with honesty and clarity, and if he occasionally comes across as pompous and proud, well he does so with inimitable style, and I for one cannot fault him.

Travel book reviews I

Being a review of books read while travelling, rather than a review of travel books, in less than more than around 100 150 words.


Bad Science - Ben Goldacre


As the man behind BadScience.net, British GP Ben Goldacre has spent years calling foul on inaccurate science reporting and medical claims in the public sphere. In this book he draws on that experience to give the reader insight into all the tricks of misinformation, incompetence hidden, and outright deceit practised, not just just by the "soft" targets of alternative medicine and homeopathy, but also by the pharmaceutical giants and the mass media. Along the way the reader receives a basic education in medical trial procedure and statistical analysis.

Perhaps lacking some of his trademark wit and energy in this longer form, Goldacre nevertheless conveys his enthusiasm for the subject, making for a fascinating and informative read.

Homage to the Beard

The male beard is a most magnificent accoutrement (the female beard, no less magnificent, has unfortunately been consigned to the ignoble rubbish heap of sideshow freakdom and daytime television by the ignorant, the uncultured, and the jealous), matched in dignity and bearing only by the monocle, the pocketwatch, and the halfcape.

As a social indicator, too, the beard can provide invaluable assistance in determining a potential bar-mate's caste and (therefore) ability to meet your tab.

For that purpose one can always rely on the bearer of a well-maintained (which is to say trimmed, brushed, cleaned, oiled, shaped, twirled, and/or permed) faceblanket, so long as it displays a pleasing quality of thickness or luxuriousness, howsoever long it may be.

On the other hand, persons who lack facial adornment, or whose whiskers are thin and straggly, should be treated at all times with the utmost suspicion and contempt, regardless of how well-groomed they appear to be. Such brigands are merely attempting to co-opt a respect and bearing to which they are not privileged.

What, then, to do with the third group, those ill-kempt mountain-men and rugged Russian novelists, possessors of jungle-wild tummy-ticklers, rude but proud?

The question remains open. In each case a multiplicity of confounding variables have to be taken into account: Beard size/ferocity relative to that of the viewer, the presence/absence of mania in the eyes, the stench of cheap/dear whiskey on the breath... and many others can either trigger your fight or flight response, or inaugurate a lifelong friendship.

These things aside, the principle uses of the noble throat-scratcher might be ennumerated thus:

1. To distinguish the dignified individual from the coarse; the bearded from the inbred.
2. To insulate and protect the organs of speech, that they might remain booming and baritone. To wit: Brian Blessed.
3. As a protector of the waistcoat from the stains and abuse of food misconsumed. In which capacity further,
4. As a dietary supplement, during periods lean. A well-established soup-strainer should, if well-seeded, always provide a nutritionally meritorious soup at the boiling, or chew-snack to assuage a more pressing hunger. It is for this reason that home-grown neckwarmers are so highly esteemed amoung the mountaineering fraternity and not, as commonly held, their ability to attract a mate.
5. As an actor's prop, to be stroked in the event that the bearer has nothing to say, and wishes to look contemplative while saying it.
6. As a field over which an employer can assert her tyranny, it having been determined by a committee of the garrulous and pale that business is best prosecuted in the smooth-cheeked style of a pre-pubescent.
7. As 6, except for employer replace: "lover/wife", and for business replace "romance/marriage".

Some lines in imitation of Byron

Though weary legs do crave a rest,

And blist'rd feet do moan and groan;

Still yearns my mind f'the mountain's test,

And not yet twists my heart to home

'Tis wise, I know, to hoard one's strength

'Gainst the up and down of future roads;

Yet to burn it fast in leap and length

The unbounded hillside ever goads.

Trek to ABC

ABC is Annapurna Base Camp, and this was the major activity I had planned for Nepal. Of course, you can't exactly go to Nepal and not make some attempt at the Himalayas. I booked a 10-day trip (big mistake, I should have organised it myself, and saved $200. Ah, well, now I know), and left on a Saturday with my guide, Nakul.

I admit I had expected the ascent to ABC to be quite a lot harder. I was badly sick on my first day, and throwing up. I hardly made it to Ghandruk, where we spent the first night. I don't think Nakul quite believed that I wasn't hungover, or that I am normally a fairly strong hiker. After Ghandruk though (and I credit my reaching there largely to the kindly Nepali lodge owner who gave me 2 litres of purified water (I drank 4 in total) as well as a rehydrating salt/vitamin mix when I desperately needed it), I was able to stretch my legs properly, and we ascended to ABC in just three more days, two days ahead of schedule, via nights spent at Chhomrong (the most idyllic mountain village I have ever seen) and Himalaya (a small collection of lodges).

The weather was iffy all the way up, and we got badly soaked on the second day, but mostly managed to avoid the heavy afternoon rains by finishing around 1/2 every day. At ABC I spent a whole day, apparently unusual, since I had a lot of time, and I was hoping for some good sunset views. Nothing doing. I got beautiful views, and pictures, around dawn on both days, but then the mist set in and we were lost in a cloud for the next 18 hours. I got a lot of reading done.

Finally, with 5 days to go, we started to descend. Some other travellers had told me of a lodge in Chhomrong that served delicious chocolate cake, and so we ran down to Chhomrong by 11:30 am (it took us three days to ascend from there), so I could add chocolate cake to both my lunch and dinner.

The next day, still with tons of time on my hands, we walked only about 45 mins to Jhinu, which features a natural hot spring, and is otherwise generally just very pleasant, and I spent the day there.

Finally, I spent the 8th day hiking to Dhampus, from where we would catch a 4x4 the following morning back to Pokhara. And so I finished almost two days early.

The views were stunning, and it was fantastic meeting and talking with the great variety of people on the route, of whom there was not too many. The whole trek, in fact, I felt like I was walking through a massive deserted theme park, or a computer game: lodges at regular and convenient intervals, shopkeepers manning little stalls and all selling the same list of goods at inflated prices, and a massive infrastructure set up for masses of people who simply weren't there. If you don't like crowds on your mountains, as I don't, then this is the perfect time of year to go, though the views are limited and the temperature/humidity stifling at lower altitudes.

Anyhow, pictures after the jump (many):