This is a bit of a filler post. New job has hammered me with work. Anyway, I was sent this on Facebook so I thought I would knock the answers out. The original instructions suggest you don't italicise your titles though you want to, but I will do so anyway.
1) What author do you own the most books by?
E.M Brent-Dyer, all of whose 62 Chalet School stories I own
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Anna & I did manage to end up with three copies of Roddy Doyle's The woman who walked into doors
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I never really did this; in fact I cannot really remember major female characters in recent books(though this is a function of reading Powell who has no female characters)
5) What book have you read the most times in your life
I'm sure I've read many things multiple times as a child - I've definitely read E.M. Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School in Exile (it is the best) four times.
6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
I obviously cannot remember this, again probably M. Weis & T. Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight (but I may a year too early)
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
A. Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
V.Nabokov, Lolita
9) If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?
L.N. Tolstoy, War and Peace
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
It will be some obscure Asian, but probably is Roth's turn
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I just don't care
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
I just don't care
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
none
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
One Jilly Cooper's I suspect
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Joyce, Finnegan's wake, but I didn't finish it - because it is indulgent claptrap
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Cymbeline
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The Russians.
18) Roth or Updike?
Roth
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
No idea
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Milton to read; Bill to see
21) Austen or Eliot?
Auten above T.S., George above both
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
D.H. Lawrence
23) What is your favourite novel?
L.N. Tolstoy, War and Peace
24) Play?
I think you're formed by your early expriences on this: and I've never forgotten Romeo & Juliet as a kid. Still my favourite
25) Poem?
I remember barely any
26) Essay?
The first essay I really read was Berlin's What's wrong with negative liberty? which I think woke me up to the possibilities of a sustained work of that type, but I suspect I wouldn't think this on rereading
27) Short story?
I forget the title, but there is a wonderful story by Asimov about entropy and ends with the words 'let there be light'. Great.
28) Work of nonfiction?
P.L. Fermor, Mani
29) Who is your favourite writer?
P.L. Fermor
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Of the major literary fiction lot, I think McEwan is overpraised and lack substance
31) What is your desert island book?
If I could take anything at all I would take a the Talmud to really keep me busy. It's the though of running of things to read that frightens me
32) And... what are you reading right now?
I. Asimov, The Gods themselves
Friday, 24 April 2009
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Underappreciated
When we come to write the economic history of the 1990s (and there will be lots of them), people will be surprised at the hostility and reputation for incompetence that the Conservative government of the time will be held. Major's personal reputation may have been slightly rehabilitated in recent years, but largely as a result of him being seen a nice chap, with interesting sidelines, rather than anything he did in office.
Reading the obituaries of Eddie George, who died today, reminds me just how unfair this is. Given where we are now (as the centre-left finally realise that it is hard to get economies to work and stay working). it is striking how little credit goes to the mid 90s Tory policy on this issue, which actually took a deep-seated problem in the UK economy (high inflation) and fixed it. This of course contrasts with our current position where we took a positive position and tanked it. Labour claimed credit for this once, but they did nothing towards achieving it, only reaping the rewards.
Eddie George gets an enormous amount of credit - it's never easy being a central banker, especially when (as in the 90s) the Chancellor can override you as Clarke did a couple of times. Yet, despite the heightened tension of a recovering, but still weak, economy, he worked better with his meddlesome master than Brown and King appeared to have done. And he got the job done, while having time for jokes, the BBC obit reprises the old one about there being three kinds of economics, ones who can count and those that can't. Few other people will note his passing today, but he deserves to be remembered and he deserves to take credit for a very difficult job well done.
Reading the obituaries of Eddie George, who died today, reminds me just how unfair this is. Given where we are now (as the centre-left finally realise that it is hard to get economies to work and stay working). it is striking how little credit goes to the mid 90s Tory policy on this issue, which actually took a deep-seated problem in the UK economy (high inflation) and fixed it. This of course contrasts with our current position where we took a positive position and tanked it. Labour claimed credit for this once, but they did nothing towards achieving it, only reaping the rewards.
Eddie George gets an enormous amount of credit - it's never easy being a central banker, especially when (as in the 90s) the Chancellor can override you as Clarke did a couple of times. Yet, despite the heightened tension of a recovering, but still weak, economy, he worked better with his meddlesome master than Brown and King appeared to have done. And he got the job done, while having time for jokes, the BBC obit reprises the old one about there being three kinds of economics, ones who can count and those that can't. Few other people will note his passing today, but he deserves to be remembered and he deserves to take credit for a very difficult job well done.
Normal service resumed
I've been relatively silent of late, for good and bad reasons. My absence abroad accounts for much of the missing time, but - and viewers of the photos will have noticed already - I've managed to break my right arm.
More accurately, a rollerblader broke it for me. So, mere days after highlighting how good cycling has been, the experiment came to a sudden stop (an irony that has not gone unoticed). It went on Monday 29th March and I won't be allowed back on bike for eight weeks. As a result, typing has been a bit difficult, but seems to be close to OK now.
So back now.
More accurately, a rollerblader broke it for me. So, mere days after highlighting how good cycling has been, the experiment came to a sudden stop (an irony that has not gone unoticed). It went on Monday 29th March and I won't be allowed back on bike for eight weeks. As a result, typing has been a bit difficult, but seems to be close to OK now.
So back now.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Bibliography, March 2009
Acquired (3)
J. Lees-Milne, Another Self
S. Sturlsson, King Harald's Saga
B. Unsworth, Land of Marvels
Read (13)
BOTM: B. Bryson, Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
J. Lees-Milne, Another Self
S. Sturlsson, King Harald's Saga
B. Unsworth, Land of Marvels
Read (13)
BOTM: B. Bryson, Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
J. Darwin, After Tamerlane
M. Drabble, Jerusalem the golden
H. Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
T. Mann, Death in Venice
G. Menzies, 1421: The year China discovered the world
G. Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
S. Sturlsson, King Harald's Saga
G. Vermes, The Resurrection
F. Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo covered the world
A. Wilson, Late Call
Some major disappointments this month: Hesse, like all his work I have read save Steppenwolf, was disappointing, with a good premise vanishing into absurd mysticism and a rubbish end. Vermes, sadly, is past it. BOTM was deserved, though for a fun filled romp through my favourite post-war decade (and constrasts strikingly with Drabble which I read immediately after covering a not dissimilar period). Bryson literary skills are well known, and it's a mark of how effective they are that he manages to essentially write about nothing for 300 pages or so without the reader feeling this drags at all, and to evoke that feeling of optimism and fear that characterised the 1950s, and in some ways, children of all (recent) times. There are other works here with more lustrous reputations, but Bryson was better.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Freecycle
In principle, I think freecycle is a brilliant idea. We have things we just want to get rid of, and we can give them to people who want them. eBay is all very well, but requires things to be useful and effort around packaging them up.
However, it falls down on the total uselessness and unreliability of individuals. I have found people's behaviour to be shockingly bad. We're trying to get rid of a plant, which at 6 foot is simply too big for our bathroom. I've put it up on freecycle and twice have arranged to have to it picked up, but once the lady in question forgot and the second time, another lady decided on the day that she couldn't wait for half an hour having moved the time of collection without giving me chance to react.
The issue is of course the discipline of pricing. Without it, people are just rubbish. Conventional economic theory argues that transaction costs should be zero, but this suggests that people are reliable - when they are not. One of the fundamental benefits of putting transaction costs on things is that people don't do this kind of stuff. And here's hoping they don't do so; otherwise it's going on eBay.
However, it falls down on the total uselessness and unreliability of individuals. I have found people's behaviour to be shockingly bad. We're trying to get rid of a plant, which at 6 foot is simply too big for our bathroom. I've put it up on freecycle and twice have arranged to have to it picked up, but once the lady in question forgot and the second time, another lady decided on the day that she couldn't wait for half an hour having moved the time of collection without giving me chance to react.
The issue is of course the discipline of pricing. Without it, people are just rubbish. Conventional economic theory argues that transaction costs should be zero, but this suggests that people are reliable - when they are not. One of the fundamental benefits of putting transaction costs on things is that people don't do this kind of stuff. And here's hoping they don't do so; otherwise it's going on eBay.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Two wheels good
I've bought a bike - it's very exciting: I reckon, once I stop getting lost, it will cut my time to work by ten minutes and do some valuable exercise. I'm very pleased.
Even more exciting is this little toy, which plots the places where accidents happen - most of the way along my route I discover, though there are worse routes. I am now definitely avoiding the Kings Road. I love this kind of thing and I love the people who took the data (which the government published last week). I need to work out how to plot geodata, save for the risk I may spend much of my time doing it.
Three further observations on cycling:
Even more exciting is this little toy, which plots the places where accidents happen - most of the way along my route I discover, though there are worse routes. I am now definitely avoiding the Kings Road. I love this kind of thing and I love the people who took the data (which the government published last week). I need to work out how to plot geodata, save for the risk I may spend much of my time doing it.
Three further observations on cycling:
- There's a lot of kit to buy. I've been delayed in really getting going for the lack of reflective clothing, but I now have a shiny jacket that will stop me getting killed on the way home
- Tube pricing is still going to be a problem: if only cycle in on 3 days a week (i.e. because I am going out in the evening), it will be economical to retain my annual travelcard. Surely this is bad pricing in a transport system that encourages bike use.
- And why is there no good cycle map online. TfL Directs you to order them so they can send you a pamphlet.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Back to baptism
In one of the filler passages on the excellent BBC website (I'm contractually obliged to say that) there is a rather silly article on people wanting to be debaptised. I can never resist a good argument about baptism, and I'm on my way to Oxford at present, so can really get going.
Theologically, baptism (Christening for those who think about this in other language) seems to get a relatively easy rise in sacramental controversy. No disputes its position as second only to the Queen of Sacraments (I'll save my thoughts on whether that's out of two or seven for later), but whereas the Eucharist has been the subject of wranglings about its significance for most of the history of the church, and continues to excite doctrinal controversy, both around traditional areas - I wish I could persuade my church to revert to red wine - but in new directions as well. I find the inculturation debate around the use of bread and wine in particularly African liturgy fascinating.
By contrast, there is a brief flurry of activity over baptism in the early church around validity (hence Nicaea - Constantinople's one baptism), a gradual movement towards infant baptism, which remained rare even in late antiquity, and another flurry about that adult issue in the reformation period (note: I know this isn't a full review of the history, and I am aware of the role of baptist ministry in the US and Africa, but time, time). And that's odd, because baptism is the defining feature of Christians: good Christians take communion; all Christians are baptised.
I think that is changing and the issue is coalescing around what it means to be baptised, and the article made me think about precisely this point, though the views of the individuals in question are absurd. However, their reaction (though they don't realise it) is against the theological position, originally in Paul, of being sealed in Christ, but he is really wrestling with circumcision and the Law here; this isn't the root of baptism - it's John (one of my favourite saints) and his sense of baptism is very different - it's a creed of repentance and of cleansing from sin, and this is clearly absurd to offer to infants. It also leads to a slightly odd position where it is clearly logical to delay baptism until death so that the value of the forgiveness of all sin might be maximised - pace Constantine - a kind of Russian roulette of forgiveness: after all, you wouldn't want to mistime that. BTW, this is easily and obviously argued against. No need for that here.
However, we have another rather important meaning in the gospel account of the baptism of Jesus, where the baptism is clearly a commission and the beginning of the ministry of Christ. I would argue this is where we must root our conception of baptism, of a commission, or as we have it in Acts 2.38, receiving the gift of the Spirit. In some sense those who argue for debaptism are right, they have - in theory - chosen to lay down their divine commission. Of course that's not how we understood and it's very unclear why they care (I've often noticed that about atheists). That's clearly wrong. Baptism isn't like a membership card you hand back. Baptism clearly does fulfill a number of overlapping roles: initiatory, soteriologically (there are massive difficulties in renouncing God's role: once in, never out), and in relation to sin as well as this sense of commission.
But it does strengthen my belief around the unsatisfactory nature of infant baptism and the inability of such a sacrament to be reconciled with either its original conception or its theological significance. Where adulthood starts in this context (and it's not 21) is harder to define and the subject of a long running argument between A and me, but some time to go before we resolve it.
Theologically, baptism (Christening for those who think about this in other language) seems to get a relatively easy rise in sacramental controversy. No disputes its position as second only to the Queen of Sacraments (I'll save my thoughts on whether that's out of two or seven for later), but whereas the Eucharist has been the subject of wranglings about its significance for most of the history of the church, and continues to excite doctrinal controversy, both around traditional areas - I wish I could persuade my church to revert to red wine - but in new directions as well. I find the inculturation debate around the use of bread and wine in particularly African liturgy fascinating.
By contrast, there is a brief flurry of activity over baptism in the early church around validity (hence Nicaea - Constantinople's one baptism), a gradual movement towards infant baptism, which remained rare even in late antiquity, and another flurry about that adult issue in the reformation period (note: I know this isn't a full review of the history, and I am aware of the role of baptist ministry in the US and Africa, but time, time). And that's odd, because baptism is the defining feature of Christians: good Christians take communion; all Christians are baptised.
I think that is changing and the issue is coalescing around what it means to be baptised, and the article made me think about precisely this point, though the views of the individuals in question are absurd. However, their reaction (though they don't realise it) is against the theological position, originally in Paul, of being sealed in Christ, but he is really wrestling with circumcision and the Law here; this isn't the root of baptism - it's John (one of my favourite saints) and his sense of baptism is very different - it's a creed of repentance and of cleansing from sin, and this is clearly absurd to offer to infants. It also leads to a slightly odd position where it is clearly logical to delay baptism until death so that the value of the forgiveness of all sin might be maximised - pace Constantine - a kind of Russian roulette of forgiveness: after all, you wouldn't want to mistime that. BTW, this is easily and obviously argued against. No need for that here.
However, we have another rather important meaning in the gospel account of the baptism of Jesus, where the baptism is clearly a commission and the beginning of the ministry of Christ. I would argue this is where we must root our conception of baptism, of a commission, or as we have it in Acts 2.38, receiving the gift of the Spirit. In some sense those who argue for debaptism are right, they have - in theory - chosen to lay down their divine commission. Of course that's not how we understood and it's very unclear why they care (I've often noticed that about atheists). That's clearly wrong. Baptism isn't like a membership card you hand back. Baptism clearly does fulfill a number of overlapping roles: initiatory, soteriologically (there are massive difficulties in renouncing God's role: once in, never out), and in relation to sin as well as this sense of commission.
But it does strengthen my belief around the unsatisfactory nature of infant baptism and the inability of such a sacrament to be reconciled with either its original conception or its theological significance. Where adulthood starts in this context (and it's not 21) is harder to define and the subject of a long running argument between A and me, but some time to go before we resolve it.
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