Books in May

Lots of nonfiction this month, mostly on account of research. And for a short story, not even a novel. Considering how much I get paid for short stories, compared to how much I spend on research books... While, I'm not in it for the money, am I? (I think I'm in it to justify the really cool books I use for "research").

At any rate, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer is a great overview of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, etc. with lots of photographs of the artifacts. Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization by Sir John Marshall is older, and reads like it. Many was the night I sat down to "do research" only to be woken up an hour later by some family member asking how the research was going. I've also been working a lot of extra hours, so I can't totally blame Sir John for that, and the book does have a lot of really cool fold-out maps of the buildings. In fact, this book was too massive to read in the bath, which is a large part of why it took so long to finish it (that and the naps).

The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan wasn't intended to be research. After watching several movies that dealt with Partition and its fallout I was just curious to connect the dots I already knew. This is an excellent, informative book, an engaging if disturbing read. I was continually reminded of one of my favorite episodes of Angel, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been", when a Thesulac demon is whispering to the inhabitants of a hotel, playing on their insecurities and feeding on their paranoia until the entire place erupts in violence and Angel is left swinging by his neck from the chandelier. In fantasy worlds, Angel can't die because he's a vampire and slaying the demon takes care of the problem. The real world is no where near that easy to deal with. Whispering paranoia demons are easier to understand than the real world, though, when people just get caught up in paranoia spirals. It's clear from this book that no one involved in the creation of Pakistan as a separate state had any inkling of how bloody a process it would become (and still is).

Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman was a nice antitode to that, a picture book of a poem he wrote for Tori Amos' daughter. It reminds me a bit of Rudyard Kipling's "If", filled with all the hope of a young life just starting. Gorgeous illustrations to boot (I even caught Aidan looking at this one on his own).



Two more Larry Niven books this month, both written with Jerry Pournell: Inferno and its sequel Escape from Hell. I enjoyed these, retellings of Dante that only occasionally rubbed me the wrong way (hard to avoid with a topic that by its nature is going to get preachy). I'm not sure how particularly the second one is going to age, some of the references are very current events (will any of us really remember Anna Nicole Smith in 20 years?)

OK, time to get back to teaching math...