Some book recommendations from a friend…

“Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883”
by Simon Winchester
Published: March 2003
ISBN: 0066212855

Simon Winchester re-kindled (mind the pun) my interests in history, geology and earth sciences in general right away with Krakatoa. Examinations of the rippling outwards of events and the effects of that rippling fascinate me, and this book was brilliant in this regard (in this case physically and metaphorically). While dense with facts, dates and names (the complexity of names compounded by the mixing of Javanese, English and Dutch namings of same places), Winchester quite wonderfully weaves a mystery from an event we know the outcome of, and almost as importantly manages to place the reader directly into the scene, feeling the impact and enormity of that moment to greater effect than most big-budget special effect films on similar themes. Highly recommended, and a definite “get back to” kind of book.

“Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World”
by Margaret MacMillan
Published: October 2002
ISBN: 0375508260

Six days that changed my world. No joking. This tome is one of the heaviest books I’ve ever read for pleasure, and I have carried its’ insights and revelations ever since. Anyone who wants to understand the root causes of current upheavals in the Arab world, in the Balkans and Central Europe; who wants to understand some of the post-modern mentalities of society-states like Japan and China, this is a must-read. Getting a handle on the 150-year old arrogance of isolationist America, the 200-year old transatlantic antagonisms between the Old World and New, and understanding the rise of (and current tension within) Common Europe is all brilliantly illuminated by University of Toronto scholar MacMillan. The notion that one seemingly innocent misstep in the grand pursuit of peace, stability and democracy can irrevocably destroy future generations of diplomacy and hope is exquisitely brought to life (wonderfully paralleling our global plight today) by MacMillan’s comprehensive weaving together of all the loosed threads of that one tiny missed stitch. Utterly brilliant, and a keeper for every book shelf.

“Brown: The Last Discovery of America”
by Richard Rodriguez
Published: November 2002
ISBN: 0670030430

Rodriguez is one of those iconoclastic thinkers who has carved a place as one of the most outspoken critics of status quo thinking in America today, vis-a-vis race politics. Inspired by the writing of James Baldwin (possibly one of the best American writers of the last century) to understand his paradoxical existence as a “queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city [San Francisco] in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation,” Rodriguez writes lucidly about the state of “brown” in America today. In his world view, brown is power, majority, sexuality, potency, vigour—and the future today. But Rodriguez is no reactionary leftie; he also “trusted white literature, because I was able to attribute universality to white literature, because it did not seem to be written for me.” Sometimes hard to follow in its stream of consciousness style, but a refreshing look through a different lens nonetheless. For anyone interested in different lenses.

“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”
by J. K. Rowling
Published: June 2003
ISBN: 1551925702

Simply to show that not all my reading is of the weighty and serious variety, I’ve been an avid reader and re-reader of the Harry Potter books for a couple of years now. I quite enjoyed this one for its beautifully drawn character developments, but found it less of a satisfying read than the previous volume, The Goblet of Fire. A few too many false contrivances in Phoenix, and the evolving actualization of a physical villain is proving much less satisfying than the spectre of same. But that’s always the case in fiction—that the imagination fills in blank bits far better than reality.