Domesday, Part 2

Due to overwhelming reader demand (i.e. one comment from a spambot, which I deleted) here is the long-awaited second part to my award-winning inventory of books I own. First up is the non-fiction:

• Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas, John Burnett. The focus is mostly on the well-trafficked and inadequately patrolled shipping lines through the Malacca Straits, though there are some brief bits about piracy elsewhere in the world. Burnett isn't a particularly good writer, but he's not terrible either, and the subject matter more than makes up for his deficiencies.


• Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, Dan Savage. The popular sex advice columnist (I still can't read Rick Santorum's name in the paper without snickering) writes about the seven deadlies while attempting to commit them. Sometimes the attempts go nowhere, such as when he goes to a shooting range for the section on anger and finds out he likes guns, but Savage always writes about things in an engaging manner.


• Paper Fan: The Hunt for Triad Gangster Steven Wong, Terry Gould. "Paper Fan" was Steven Wong's rank within the North American Triad structure and the book tells the story about his gang life, right until he vanishes. The narrative suffers when Wong disappears after faking his death and Gould occasionally lapses into purple prose, but all in all it's a fascinating read.


• Samurai William: The Adventurer who Unlocked Japan, Giles Milton. Well-researched account of William Adams' life, from what little is known of his English origins to his eventual death as an advisor to Ieyasu Tokugawa's xenophobic son. Also includes bits about contemporaneous Japanese society.


• Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, Simon Winchester. I read this shortly before the tsunami happened, so it was strange to read eerily familiar accounts in the newspapers.


• Shakespeare's Face, Stephanie Nolen. The first time I read Nolen's article in the Globe and Mail (from which this book grew out of) I thought it was weird that a foreign affairs reporter ended up with a story about the discovery of a possible portrait of the Bard in an Ottawa suburb. The circumstances are detailed here, as well as some waffling commentary from the experts.


• White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves, Giles Milton. Milton once again writes another well-researched book of historical narrative, this time about Thomas Pellow, the Barbary corsairs, and the Mediterranean slave trade.


• How to be Alone: Essays, Jonathan Franzen. A collection of essays and articles Franzen wrote for various magazines. They weren't originally meant to be read together like this, but the cumulative effect of reading these essays on the alienating effects of modernity is depressing.

Next, the textbooks. They're non-fiction too, but I thought it would be better to put them in their own section. They're all pretty useful since I sold all the useless ones to the student book exchange, though I probably should have hung on to a math book or two and maybe the introductory physics text as well. Now I'll never get around to really understanding "moment of force".

• Organic Chemistry, 7th ed., Graham Solomons and Craig Fryhle. Pretty informative text.


• Study Guide and Solutions Manual: Organic Chemistry, 7th ed., Graham Solomons, Craig Fryhle, and Robert Johnson.


• Inorganic Chemistry, Catherine E. Housecraft and Alan G. Sharpe. Pretty good, though I sometimes wished they'd used more in-depth examples.


• Quantitative Chemical Analysis, 5th ed., Daniel C. Harris. The definitive analytical chemistry textbook, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, I'm not well-read on analytical chemistry textbooks but I thought this one was pretty good.


• Advanced Organic Chemistry, 4th ed., Part B: Reactions and Synthesis, Francis A. Carey and Richard J. Sundberg. My orgo prof said he likes to recommend this book to people in the industry who ask him what's happening in the world of research. I can see why.


• Organometallics: A Concise Introduction, 2nd ed., Christoph Elschenbroich and Albrect Salzer.


• Environmental Chemistry, 2nd ed., Colin Baird. Interesting introduction to environmental chemistry. The hard part of this kind of chemistry, though, is not the reactions and such but actually getting the stakeholders (the local and general public, regulatory committees, various levels of government, and so on) to agree on anything.


• A Primer to Mechanism in Organic Chemistry, Peter Sykes. As far as I'm concerned, reactions are just black boxes where you feed things in one end and it comes out as something else on the other, but mechanisms are a big part of understanding reactions so I guess this is an important book.


• Organic Laboratory Techniques, 3rd ed., Ralph J. Fessenden, Joan S. Fessenden, and Patty Feist. Basic lab techniques with some illustrations. Useful, I suppose, in case I ever forget how to set up a fractional distillation.


• The Elements of Reasoning, 3rd ed., David A. Conway and Ronald Munson. Logical reasoning text. I wish I'd taken the class before I'd already done my English and Philosophy electives - I'd have been able to use this book to write better argued papers.


• Writing to Learn: An Introduction to Writing Philosophical Essays, Anne Michaels Edwards. I'd actually meant to sell this to the student exchange but it fell into the back of my bookshelf and I never noticed until I moved. This is pretty useless - I don't know why this was on the list of required texts. Maybe the prof was getting tired of reading poorly written essays and put this on the list while in a hopeful mood. I hope it worked since I wasted five dollars on this.


• Random House Roget's Thesaurus. I use this all the time.


• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. I don't use this as often as the thesaurus, but sometimes you just really need to know the meaning of "uxoricide".

Finally, the comic books.

• Calvin and Hobbes, Something Under the Bed is Drooling, Attack of the Deranged Killer Mutant Snow Goons, Scientific Progress Goes "Boink", Weirdos from Another Planet, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, The Indispensible Calvin and Hobbes, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, The Days are Just Packed, There's Treasure Everywhere, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, It's a Magical World, Bill Watterson. That Watterson guy sure is funny. I hear he's got a new collection out but I don't really see the point of getting it - I already have every single Calvin and Hobbes strip.


• Flight Volume One, edited by Kazu Kibuishi. Up-and-coming illustrators and creators show their chops. They tend to come from outside the mainstream of comic book writers and artists so there's a feeling of freshness to the stories. Some of the tales are a bit weak but they're all well-illustrated.


• Flight Volume Two, edited by Kazu Kibuishi.


• Paul Moves Out, Michel Rabagliati. Semi-autobiographical work by Rabagliati. Even though his life doesn't seem to have been that noteworthy it's still an engaging read.


• Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography, Chester Brown. Here's someone that lived a fascinating life. It sucks how he got railroaded by the establishment, but that's Whitey for you.


• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi. Girl grows up in revolutionary Iran, has wacky adventures.

The Domesday Post

So I've started packing and it looks like I'll be able to take most of my clothes. The ones I'll have to leave behind are those I probably should've given to Goodwill when I moved a year ago. When one is moving one is supposed to bemoan all the random junk you've collected over the years, but since I threw most of that stuff away at the last move the only things left behind are non-essential.

There are always exceptions, though. It took me a while to make my meager book collection but until FedEx introduces extremely cheap bulk shipping anytime soon the whole of it will have to stay behind. I can, however, write an inventory of said items so as to be sure I don't lose any of them. I'd write it on an ordinary piece of paper but I'm afraid I'll end up losing it somewhere. Besides, this way I am utilizing a cutting-edge technology to solve an old problem, sort of like wiping your ass with a laptop.

Most of the following I bought when my university bookstore was having a "Hurt Penguins" sale. They are by no means my favourite books - just some stuff I was able to buy cheap. I've included descriptions of some of them so I can remember what they're about. The list is not in any particular order.

• Generica, Will Ferguson. A harried editor receives a self-help book (from the slush pile, no less) that actually works. Funny story about the destruction of contemporary American culture.


• The Thief of Always, Clive Barker.


• Weaveworld, Clive Barker. I remember this hardcover mostly because I was able to bargain down the lady at the sidewalk sale from five dollars to one. I think there's a magic carpet in this story or something.


• You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard. An anthology of short fiction. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't, which is typical for any anthology. One of my favourites was an apocalyptic resurrection story told by a cow (written by James Agee).


• Freak: A Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography, John Leguizamo with David Bar Katz. This is pretty much a transcript of John Leguizamo's act. Funny if you haven't already seen it but kind of a waste if you have.


• Mistress Masha's Repose, T.H. White.


• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy.


• The Universe and Other Fictions, Paul West. Short stories by Paul West. They all suck.


• The Haunting, Shirley Jackson. Horror story in a haunted house. It's good, but I liked how the movie tightened up the story (the original black-and-white one, I mean, and not any of the crappy remakes).


• The Garden Party and Other Stories, Katherine Mansfield. Short story collection by the New Zealand writer. Too bad she died before writing a novel.


• The Once and Future King, T.H. White. I bought this because it included The Book of Merlyn, the fifth book that's usually left out in the collections. It turns out there's a good reason for this as the important bits of the story got transplanted into the first book, The Sword in the Stone.


• The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, D.H. Lawrence.


• The Penguin Book of Scottish Folktales, edited by Neil Philip. I thought this would be fun to read but it turns out I only like folktales when they contain some illustrations. Hopefully I'll finish reading it someday.


• Belarmino and Apolonio, Ramon Perez de Ayala, translated by Murray Baumgarten and Gabriel Berns. I can't quite recall what this was about, but it took place in pre-Civil War Spain.


• Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis. Note to self: read this book someday.


• Dracula, Bram Stoker.


• The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene.


• Come Along with Me, Shirley Jackson. I think I've read this but I have no recollection of what's in it. According to the back, it includes various short stories and lectures, as well as Jackson's unfinished novel.


• The Outsider, Albert Camus.


• The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, H.P. Lovecraft. Okay in moderation, but if you read it in one go all the weird stories start to blend together.


• The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North, Jack London. Like most of the rest of these books, I read this while waiting for my laundry to finish at this place close to where I used to live. As I flip through its pages I can almost smell the mix of soap, bleach, and dryer sheets. Ugh.


• Otherland, Tad Williams. I can't say I liked this book but I can't say I hated it, either. It's just there. I think someone gave this to me as it doesn't seem like something I'd buy.


• Expanded Universe, Robert A. Heinlein. Assorted stories and right-wing rants from Heinlein. This book turned me off from reading any more of his works. I still like Starship Troopers, though.


• Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King.


• Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies. "A practical joke sets off a chain reaction of malicious but amusing catastrophes." Part of the Salterton Trilogy, set in the town of that name. Salterton was actually based on Kingston, ON, where I used to live. Of course, the book was written fifty years ago so there have been some changes since.


• American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Gaiman picks up the gods-created-by-men idea he introduced briefly in The Sandman. The book is supposed to be a bit of an examination of contemporary American culture (with an emphasis on beliefs and values) but since Gaiman is a British expat it ends up a bit off. Still, an enjoyable read.


• The Right to Arm Bears, Gordon Dickson.


• Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer.


• A Whistler in the Nightworld: Short Fiction from the Latin Americas, edited by Thomas Colchie. This is supposed to be an introduction to contemporary Latin American writers outside of the "magic realist" camp. However, if this is the quality of the stories then I'm not surprised they're not more well known. The only one I liked was Javier Valdes's People Like Us for its Stephen King-like story. A disappointment.


• Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut. The unfinished novel by Vonnegut plus some related writings. It's no Slaughterhouse Five, but then again, what is?


• Farewell my Concubine, Lillian Lee. I think Leslie Cheung was really good in the movie. The book's good too.


• The Tesseract, Alex Garland. According to the blurb from the Washington Post, it "has the traits of a thriller, but it's also a love story, a character study, a portrait of life among Manila's street kids, even an experiment in narration." I like how Garland used the "Black Dog" myth; my only real complaint is that he has a weird way of writing Tagalog words. Really, how hard is it to look in a Tagalog-English dictionary? NB: Garland also wrote The Beach as well as the screenplay to 28 Days Later.


• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams.


• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card.


• Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card. Sequel to Ender's Game. I thought the first book was better. I didn't bother to read the rest of the series.


• I have a copy of About a Boy but I don't know where it is. Oh well, I guess it's lost.

This is getting too long so I'll have to leave the comic books and non-fiction for tomorrow.

The Implications are Astounding: An Old Proof

Do you admit that which becomes less must have been once greater and then become less?

Yes.
And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the swifter from the slower?

Very true.
And the worse is from the better, and the more just is from the more unjust?

Of course.
And is this true of all opposites? and are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites?

Yes.
Well, and is there not an opposite of life, as sleep is the opposite of waking?

True, he said.
And what is that?
Death, he answered.

Then suppose that you analyze life and death to me. Is not death opposed to life?

Yes.
And they are generated one from the other?
Yes.
What is generated from life?
Death.
And what from death?
I can only say in answer - life.
Then the living, whether things or persons, Cebes, are generated from the dead?

That is clear, he replied.
And one of the two processes or generations is visible - for surely the act of dying is visible?

Surely, he said.
And may not the other be inferred as the complement of nature, who is not to be supposed to go on one leg only? And if not, a corresponding process of generation in death must also be assigned to her?

Certainly, he replied.
And what is that process?
Revival.
And revival, if there be such a thing, is the birth of the dead into the world of the living?

Quite true.
Then we have arrived at the inference that zombies exist.

--- excerpt from Phaedo, translated by Benjamin Jowett

More pics and stuff

Stairs to the basement
Originally uploaded by armacen.

Ok, I've just uploaded some pics of my place and some miscellaneous stuff into my Flickr account, they're over here.

The pictures are from when I first moved in, I've added a lot of stuff since then.

I've also just uploaded 2 video tours of my place which I made with my phone, they're here:

HenrySt1
HenrySt2

The clattering sound in the background is the dryer running. You have to download Quicktime 7 to view them on a computer, and it comes bundled with iTunes, which is annoying, but I think you can just uninstall iTunes specifically.