Chaos – it’s not just a state of mind

I’m pretty sure I got Chaos; Making a New Science by James Gleick from the library because my friend rhapsodized about its wonders – and I’m a sucker for a good David vs. Goliath story. I will admit, it took me awhile to finish this book. The narrative was decent, but I would often get bogged down in the science and crave more lyrical pastures.  Chaos was also around while I was riding The Wheel of Time, so it was renewed a half-dozen times before I finally finished it (no one lining up to read this one). Gleick wrote this book in 1988(ish) and the edition I read is a 20th anniversary edition. For the book, he spoke to many of the early scientific explorers as well as those who dragged the ideas out of obscurity.

Chaos theory is the discipline that brought us the idea that ‘a butterfly flapping its wings can cause storms half the world away’. Now, anyone who knows me (in person or on the interwebs) knows that science is not my area. I love to learn new things, and I find the world a fascinating place, but I’m much more interested in the story of things than the details of atoms or vectors or whatever.  I took the require science classes in both high school & college (took a psychology class for my lab requirement) and ran back to my humanities courses.

I was going to try to summarize the basics of chaos theory – but I’ve decided to spare us all from such folly (and my ego can’t take the beating that will come from the mistakes I’ll surely commit to print).  If you are interested, there is good information here and here, and of course, you could read the book like I did. But here are some of the ideas I took from the book.

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1) A never-repeating but not unpredictable pattern is inherent in the design of nature.

As a person with poetic leanings, I love this idea – and it’s not just an idea, but indeed a fact! So much of the world around us can be predicted with these short little equations that even I could understand, but can result in the myriad of living things all over this planet. The equations are simple, but initial conditions have a huge effect on outcome (a relatively new thing to the scientific world, apparently, but seems pretty obvious to me).

2) Complete understanding is not required to predict outcomes.

It seems that, for decades, engineers have been designing airplanes without understand why they were able to achieve liftoff, or how turbulence would affect them (comforting, yes?). And before that, the turbulence of rivers/streams/oceans was also a mystery to the scientific community.  Equations were built by trying to account for every single possible variable, and it was assumed that if you could not account for everything, you could not predict anything. And since no one had been able to grasp every single variable which influenced – say – cloud formation, predicting the weather (or examining turbulence) was deemed impossible and therefore largely ignored as an area of continuing study. If you were building an airplane, you built a prototype and spent a lot of time in wind tunnels testing it (ok, I feel a little better).

Of course, in our personal lives, this should already have been obvious (though not scientifically proven).  I don’t understand exactly why I’ve been having difficulty getting up in the morning, but that doesn’t mean I can’t predict that I will have that same difficulty next week.  But (at least in the empirical plane), science has found a way to predict turbulence and weather without understanding each piece of the puzzle individually.

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Narratively, the most interesting part of the book (for me) was the fact that many different people had stumbled upon chaos in their scientific pursuits, but either ignored it as a coincidence, or were not taken seriously by their peers and ignored. The early guys who understood that they’d found something interesting were in disparate disciplines and it wasn’t until decades had passed that they discovered each other, and realized how wide-ranging this phenomenon truly was. And I love it when the little guy proves the establishment wrong.

Also – the pictures are stunning. The visual representations of the Mandelbrot equations and whatnot (I don’t remember all the names) are incredible. And I love that math created them – beauty in unexpected places.

I’m glad I read the book.  I know that some of the science has sunk into my (thankfully) subconscious understanding of the world. But it also reinforced my first love – literature – as the place I belong.

Fangirl post: Barbara Kingsolver

I’m not much of a ‘best-seller’ reader anymore.

I used to be – I’ve read every Dean Koontz/Stephen King/John Grisham/Piers Anthony novel up to about 1997 or so.  Then I went back to school and became a book snob. I discovered writers that could blow my mind while entertaining it, and soon those books cranked out by writers once a year started to feel tired and formulaic.  I’ve got absolutely nothing against those books, and some of them are still on my shelf as favorites (The Stand, Lightning, etc).

But not all ‘best-sellers’ are formulaic and predictable.  A super-favorite author of mine – Barbara Kingsolver – also happens to be a big seller (which gives me hope for the world).  I can’t believe that I have barely mentioned her here before now. Maybe that is partly because she hasn’t had a new novel in YEARS, and I’ve re-read her stuff a million times already.

Lucky for all of us, her skills have not diminished in the passing years.  The Lacuna is everything one expects in a Kingsolver novel – fantastic writing, interesting themes, full-bodied characters and a striking moral core. To quote Judy Krueger (fellow Kingsolver fan and bookbrowse.com reviewer) – I love her “because she is a woman of heart and mind who is unafraid of using her mind to reveal her heart.”

I had put The Lacuna on hold at the library before it was even released (I have no desire to own hardbacks, and no way I was waiting for the paperback ). I think there was something like 67 holds on the book before they’d even received their first copy, so it was quite some time before I received that happy little email saying the book was waiting for me. Unfortunately, that email came when I was in the middle of re-reading The Wheel of Time series – 10, 500 pages (thank you, Wikipedia) of kick-ass fantasy adventure.

I picked up the book, but continued with my series.  I would look at Lacuna on my bookcase and think “I should really take that back, I’m not going to get to it before my three weeks is up.” But I didn’t, I just left it there as I burned through more Jordan.  Finally, I received that dreaded email – “the following item is due in three days, please return.” I tried to renew it, but of course there were 100 people behind me waiting for their turn, so I could not.

Suddenly, the thought of returning the book was unbearable. “No! I haven’t read it yet. You can’t have it back.” I think no one but Barbara Kingsolver could have distracted me from The Wheel of Time.  I decided right then that I’d finish it in the three days left to me (lucky for me, it was a weekend). And I’m so glad I did.

Harrison Sheppard is a lonely, virtually parent-less boy who keeps journals to have someone to talk to, even if only himself.  His life is split between Mexico and America, where he runs into famous people (such as Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky) and scary circumstances (like food riots and McCarthy-ites), but never feels at home anywhere.  Kingsolver shows us the world through his boyhood imagination, youthful enthusiasm, and adult disillusionment.  Her writing, as always, is lush and her world almost visible between those black dots on the page.

Now, if I’d bothered to write about this book soon after I’d read it, I’d have much more to say about it. But I didn’t – and I’m old, so the details fade. The book is fantastic, go read it. ‘Nuff said.

Bad blogger! very bad!

You all know that I’ve been less than faithful about blogging regularly – and it should be clear that I am reading all the freakin’ time, even though I’m rarely blogging about it.  So maybe today’s embarrassment will come as no surprise to all two of you, but it was quite a slap in the face for me.

I looked at the list of books On The Shelf and discovered that I have read all of them, every single one.  Some of them months ago. One of them, twice already! Shameful and slacker-like and thoroughly unacceptable for a girl who says she wants to be writing more.

So, in the interest of kicking my own ass and maybe building better habits, I am going to write about at least one of those on-the-shelf books every day until I’ve written about all of them. Then try to get through the list of one/two/three dozen books I’ve read in addition to these (it’s been a slow month or two).

Today’s Book: The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt

This book was a first for me in a couple of ways. It was my first A.S. Byatt book (Booker-prize-winning author of 10+ books), and my very first (paid!) book review subject for BookBrowse.com. You can read some of that review at the link above (though you need a subscription to read all of it).

Thankfully, I liked the book.  But I didn’t love the book. It got rave reviews in lots of places, and I certainly am not here to rebut those claims – the book is fabulously written and really held my interest for most of it.  I was just let-down by the ending. And not so much what happened at the end, but the quality of the writing at the end.  And maybe I was expecting too much or missing what she was trying to do, but I don’t think so.

Most of the book focuses on the inner lives of several children in England, the generation that grew up to fight in WWI. And I loved all of it.  Then the kids grow up… and suddenly we see a lot less about what’s going on inside them, more plot-driven stuff instead.  So – in my mind – what could have been an incredible book became just a good book from that point on. It’s likely that most people wouldn’t be bothered by that at all – and many would see it as a step in the right direction. To each his own, I like to see what makes people tick.

For each book I review, I also have to do a write-up on something in the book that I found interesting, or wanted to know more about as a result of reading the book. And, since one of the main characters is a potter’s apprentice, doing ‘pottery as art’, I did a side-bar on the Studio Pottery movement of the time (the book is full of great historical references to all kinds of cool stuff).

I was completely stressed out about it. I wasn’t too worried about the review itself (I’ve been writing about books and getting As for quite some time), but everything about the side-bar worried me. Was it interesting to anyone else? Is my research thorough enough? I can’t find anything to say, are pictures good? What if they hate it and don’t ask me back for another review?

Turns out, pictures are good, my research was fine, and the side-bar is not intended to be a torture device. Both Davina and Lucia (the brains and wits behind BookBrowse.com) are very nice people who don’t wield nasty red pens or detention slips.  And they did indeed ask me back (I’m starting my fifth book for them as soon as I finish this).  I relax a little bit more each time the dreaded side-bar question comes up.  Maybe someday I’ll consider myself a journalist.

This cowgirl was a little sad…

I recently borrowed the audio book for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins for another road trip to see the Sista. I chose it 1) because there were a limited amount of books in the correct format available on the library website, and 2) because I’ve been a big fan of Tom Robbins since high school (Jitterbug Perfume was my first) and hadn’t read this one in years. And I have never seen the movie – I was just looking stuff up and realized it stars Uma Thurman & was directed by Gus Van Sant.  Maybe I’ll give it a shot on a slow night.  However:

Sometimes, it’s a bad idea to re-read books.

I know, that’s practically blasphemy, coming from me.  But, while I had remembered the good stuff about this one, I’d forgotten the bad stuff.  Or maybe, being older and (presumably) wiser, I noticed the bad stuff more.

ECGtB is the story of Sissy Hankshaw, a woman born with thumbs twice the size of regular thumbs.  Of course, she becomes the greatest hitchhiker the world has ever know, but can’t unbutton her own shirt.  She falls in love (several times) and learns all kinds of interesting things about herself, whooping cranes, the nature of time and other wonders in her travels.

There is a lot of great stuff in here about finding your own path, and not letting public opinion tell you who you are – none of that has changed. And Robbins is FUNNY, and a master of the interesting metaphor. It was a good choice in a lot of ways.

And the bad stuff isn’t terrible stuff.  It’s just that all the fun/sexy/strange stuff totally came off as masturbatory – it’s supposedly about a girl/woman being open with her sexuality, but is really about the kinds of fantasies young men have about a woman being open with her sexuality… ya know? In a book otherwise populated with deep-thinking and light-heartedness, it was disappointing and distracting to listen to (since I was listening, not reading) the kinds of stereotypical crap you can get anywhere.

And to top it all off… I was missing the last two sections of the book on my iPod. I have yet to determine if it was operator error or a glitch in the matrix, but either way – I was a bit pissed off! Luckily, I had two other books in reserve (of course!). So I listened to a few chapters of Tom Sawyer until I got home.  phew!

Extremely Sad & Incredibly Wonderful

I read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer again this week and fell in love with it all over again.

I heard about the book from a fellow student in my Studies in Fiction class.  I never did thank her for that, or tell her how much I loved the book.  We were reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson and Falling Man by Don DeLillo in class – two books that deal with the aftermath of 9/11 in New York.  Emily did not like either of them (both of which I loved) and recommended EL&IC.

EL&IC is probably the most powerful, stunning, achingly sad book I’ve ever read – and I’m a fan of beautifully sad books.  Some are more lyrical (The God of Small Things by Arundhati  Roy comes to mind), and some more profound (such as The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje)  but this book allows you to experience the sadness of an 9-year-old boy who’s lost his father in the Twin Towers.   It also touches on the losses his family experienced in WWII that are not so far removed from the present as you’d imagine.  It is a map of heartbreak and guilt and loss that seemed abundantly human and intimately personal. I cried hard, more than once, and it helps me believe that personal redemption is possible and I can survive almost anything if this young boy can find a way to survive what happened to him.  Everyone in the world should read it.