Edward W. Said (1978)

It’s hard to criticise such a classic, and I really expected to like it more than I did. It still reads well after over half a century.

But… do we really believe that the behaviour of an entire continent – Europe – was shaped by the writings and fantasies of a few pioneers? Do we believe that we can extract the fundamental beliefs of a myriad of managers and workers from close reading of a few key texts? Do we believe, indeed, that those key texts have such internal consistency that it’s meaningful to parse them sentence-by-sentence to extract the author’s own beliefs and expose their inconsistencies?

We academics would like to think that our writing was read in this was, was important in this way. But I find it hard to believe, and I don’t think the situation was different a century or more ago. The valid criticisms made of “Western” attitudes to “the East” (accepting that these are gross generalisations) neglect the fact that similar criticisms were made of other, “Western” groups. Substitute “working class” for “oriental” in many works of the nineteenth century and you’ll see the same points of sloth, mistrust, and dependency being made.

The besetting issue seems to actually be a lot simpler: the danger of treating any group as a group, and eliding the individuals’ characteristics in search of general schemata. It’s something that still goes on, and still has to go on if we want to make sense of the world. It’s just that we need to be conscious of the limitations that this imposes on our reasoning.

2/5. Finished Saturday 17 November, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Peter F. Hamilton (1999)

This trilogy is an impressive achievement. More so in the detail than in the broad sweep, I think: the individual episodes, characters, technologies, species, and other elements are all wonderfully creative and varied, deeply envisioned and carefully described. So at a micro level, the plot is a success. But at the macro level, it’s less satisfying. (Spoiler now coming.) A large number of plot twists and difficult pathways are set up, ready for a clever resolution. What happens instead is that a character encounters an alien god-like entity who … well, allows anything to happen, which means that any possible twist can be straightened out. It’s only slightly improved on the stereotyped “and then she awoke from a dream” ending, and really isn’t respectful of all the efforts the author went to in the rest of the books.

3/5. Finished Saturday 17 November, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Peter F. Hamilton (1997)

4/5. Finished Saturday 17 November, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

2/5. Finished Saturday 17 November, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

David McCullough (1977)

The long, twisted history of the Panama canal told with a wonderful eye for detail,. both personal and political. It’s hard to imagine that that a work of construction was considered so vital that it survived the changes of engineering direction, political about-turns, and financial upheavals that bedevilled Panama. It left me wanting to transit the cabal for myself, just to see it and imagine its tortuous construction.

4/5. Finished Thursday 15 November, 2018.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)