A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person -- perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millenia, the author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can do magic.
Passage: Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I have been involved in a lot of new things these past few days: learning things on the computer, reading interesting books, listening to different types of music, watching films, trying to play the guitar, ad infinitum.
Here are some recommendations from me:
- Music: Try both Bach and Porcupine Tree. Before listening to Bach: understand the type of music you're listening to - what exactly is a canon or a fugue and you will appreciate the music even more.
- Books: Prisoners of Birth (Jeffery Archer) - a must read modern version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Moab is my washpot - an autobiography of Stephen Fry - an excellent read with splendid English and an frighteningly honest account of the author. Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid: A look at "strange loops"; how logic, music, art all address the concept of self. How the thing being defined is defined by itself.
- Films: The animated Sinbad, Johnny English and of course, Iron Man.
Miscellany
Another passage that I enjoyed very much.
Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
They don't fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There's no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won't know they've lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.
Yet again: Another Passage.
Disclaimer: This is not a book review. Nor will I be labeling sections as "Spoilers". The people who will really understand what I mean are those who have read 1984, a few Terry Pratchetts and State of Fear by Michael Crichton.
Big Brother is watching you.
Perhaps this is the single most famous sentence from George Orwell's 1984. But the concepts of a dystopian future (future as in for George Orwell) include many more ideas and observations apart from the all-intrusive two-way observation screens prevalent in Oceania.
What I will be focusing on first is the concept of immortality through loss of individuality. That any organization- or rather any individual can be rendered immortal by the fact that even if he passes away there are hundreds more exactly like him (perhaps not in physical appearance, but rather in ideology, actions and beliefs). The overall change is unnoticeable. Something extremely similar is alluded to by Terry Pratchett in his discworld novels: the Auditors of reality, who arrange all the fundamental laws (including that of gravity) are exactly the same: in appearance, thought, actions. Everything is done after achieving a consensus; whenever an auditor starts displaying a personality, something that distinguishes it from others - it can die.
While surrounding the same concept, the two approaches are extremely different. The auditors are exactly the same; they are fictional- what one auditor knows is known by all others. 1984 on the other hand, has something which is possible, perhaps making the concept even more scary.
Another concept is that the controlling powers- either the inner party in 1984, or the normal, democratic governments in State of Fear use fear, hate for unifying as well as controlling the people. There is an enemy (real or fabricated) which must be overcome: It can be another country, some phenomenon, anything.
There are many more topics addressed, and of those that I have written about I have only scratched the surface. What I enjoyed most was the fact that these novels had something in common inspite of belonging to different genres.
1984
As can be evinced by the lack of posts for so many days (for any of you who actually noticed), my little, broken, overworked brain has stopped working (the change was barely noticable).
Thud! by Terry Pratchett
'War, Nobby. Huh! What good is it for?' he said.
'Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?'
'Absol-- Well, okay.'
'Defending yourself from a totalitarian agressor?'
'All right, I'll grant you that, but--'
'Saving civilisation against a horde of--'
'It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together,' said Fred Colon sharply.
'Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?'
Passage 2
Whenever the machinery I call a brain breaks down (which is often) I shall unabashedly commit plagiarism. My sin shall be exculpated by the fact that I will give the source.
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
Life in this world,' he said, 'is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, "Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . it's my favourite. " '
Recent Comments