Classical Bookworm

Duolingo: First Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:59:00 +0000

After much begging and pleading I finally got my much coveted Duolingo invitation. In case you missed my previous post on the subject, Duolingo is a web-based application that teaches people languages by getting them to translate web pages. How this is possible will become apparent as you read on.

After playing with it for about a week my first is impression is: WOW! The user interface is absolutely flawless. Everything is clear, visually appealing, easy to navigate, and bug-free. I think the Duolingo people must be perfectionists to call this a beta. Perhaps they are not ready for a lot of traffic but the product itself looks more finished than a lot of things I’ve paid good money for.

As for the pedagogy, it is equally impressive. In the beginning you are led through a series of lessons that teach you different language skills and get you translating right away (see below—click image to enlarge).

Each lesson and translation you do earns you points and “unlocks” subsequent skill areas. You can also skip through a skill by taking a test. If you make too many mistakes you have to go back and do the lessons.

The lessons cover every aspect of language: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. They even cater to visual learners by introducing some vocabulary with pictures. However most vocabulary is presented in writing, with mouseover popups to explain each word.

Users are asked to translate from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish. When translating to Spanish it provides buttons for accented characters in case your keyboard is not set up for Spanish.

For a little variety there are multiple choice questions in both directions.

The lessons also include listening…

…and speaking.

Obviously these require the use of speakers and a microphone or headset. If you do not have a microphone you can adjust your settings so that Duolingo won’t asks you to speak. I don’t know how well it understands what I say but I find that if I speak too quickly it asks me to try again. As for Duolingo’s voice, it is a computer generated female voice with a neutral Latin American accent. It voices all the Spanish text in the lessons, not just the listening exercises, so you get a lot of listening practice. I find it quite easy to understand, though of course the intonation and rhythm are not completely natural. I can understand some Spanish already so I can’t say whether a total beginner would be able to understand it at first.

Each skill area also includes simple translation tasks from live websites. Again you can use the mouseover popups to see definitions of any words you don’t know. The more you use the popups, the less difficult the subsequent translations will be, and vice versa.

As you can see, Duolingo provides you with a link to the website so you can check the context of the sentence, and it also shows you thumbnails of any images that might be relevant. After you have taken a stab at the translation, Duolingo shows you some other people’s translations and presents you with one of them to rate.

This is where the power of crowdsourcing is unleashed. According to Duolingo’s creators, by soliciting multiple translations and then getting multiple users to rate them, Duolingo can generate translations that are good as what you would get from professional translators.

Duolingo has other features as well. It recommends daily review and if you skip a day, Duo the owl starts to cry, so it’s best to practice every day! If you make a typo or error it tells you what you did wrong, and if you make too many mistakes you have to do a little extra practice. Every time you reach a learning milestone you see a splash page with a big bright gold ribbon and hearty congratulations, with the option to share your success on Twitter or Facebook. It may not seem like much but it really is encouraging. One small detail I really appreciate is that after you type or speak a response, the focus of the page moves to the “Check” and “Continue” buttons so you can just hit Enter to proceed without having to use the mouse.

I haven’t tried Duolingo’s social features yet. The website has a section where you can ask questions that others can answer (more crowdsourcing!), and each skill area also has its own questions section. You can also follow other users and view their progress. I don’t know whether there will be opportunities for interaction as well. There is an option to enable Facebook Connect so perhaps that is where you can chat with your new Duolingo friends.

The screen scrape at the top of this post only shows a fraction of the skill areas available. There are 44 in all for Spanish, and it is going to take me quite a while to get through them all. I don’t know what happens after that or how fluent I will be at that point. The lessons do cover all the parts of speech and most verb tenses. I presume that once you get through all the lessons all you do is translate, but perhaps they have other surprises prepared.

One thing I would like to do after getting through the Spanish lessons is to try another language from scratch to see what that is like for a total beginner. I already know some Spanish so the lessons have been quite easy so far. The only other language available right now (other than English) is German, which is fortunately a language I would like to learn. They are also planning to add French, Italian and Chinese (by which I presume they mean Mandarin) in the future. I am not too interested in Italian but I could stand to brush up on my French and I’d love to learn Mandarin. I have the feeling I will be spending a lot of time on Duolingo!

If you want to try Duolingo you can get on the waiting list here. It can take a while to get in (unless you try some creative grovelling like I did), but it’s worth the wait!

Library Video Mashup

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:17:00 +0000

Anti-social networking

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:29:00 +0000

I’m in a bit of a quandary. I love socializing online but it seems that as time goes on the big social networking sites are becoming more and more invasive, controlling, exclusive, and downright anti-social. First it was Facebook with its data mining, online tracking, and ridiculously complex privacy options. Did you know that even if you log out of Facebook it is still tracking your every move online? It can even share your surfing activities unless you figure out how to turn that off. And that’s just today’s trick. Tomorrow they will find a new way to collect data about you and you’ll have to go through the same exercise again if you want to protect your privacy.

Then there is Google+ which initially seemed like a much freer alternative to Facebook, until it turned out that it was designed as an “identity service.” With the recent harmonization of the Google privacy policy, that means that they can now track your activities across the entire Googleverse, as well as any page with a +1 button on it. Add to that the idiotic “real name” policy whereby anyone who tries to sign up with an unusual name or pseudonym can be suspended and their other Google services frozen. You could create a hundred spam accounts with “normal” sounding names with no problem but if your parents were hippies and named you Starflower your account will be flagged and you will be asked to submit government-issued ID. That’s like a coffee shop asking for your passport before letting you chat with your friends. It’s draconian and excludes a lot of people who have perfectly legitimate and sometimes life-and-death reasons for not using their legal name online. Moreover, now you cannot even create a Google account without joining Google+ and providing a “real” name. This applies to Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, the entire Googleverse. If you have anything to say that you do not want publicly associated with your legal name, Google is no longer the place to go.

Now Twitter, which has been credited with helping dissidents under repressive regimes to organize protests, is getting into the censorship business. They have announced that any government that wants to censor tweets on certain subjects or by certain users in their country can do so if they supply the appropriate paperwork. Twitter says “the tweets must flow,” just not the ones that any government finds inconvenient. Some have pointed out that Twitter is being quite transparent about this, compared to some websites (like Yahoo) that censor silently. Tweets won’t just disappear, they will be grayed out with a message that it has been banned in your country. But for a company that garnered such fame by facilitating the Arab Spring to now collaborate with governments to censor on demand seems particularly monstrous. Freedom of expression is a universal human right, not to mention a constitutional right in Twitter’s home country, so why are they denying that right to others?

I seem to have painted myself into a lonely corner with my ethical objections to these giant social networks. There are certainly alternatives. There’s Diaspora, a distributed, open source social network where you fully own and control your own data. It’s great but the problem is that about 99% of the people on it are software developers talking about software development. There is also identi.ca, which is an open source alternative to Twitter, but is also dominated by techie types. There are plenty of great subject-specific web communities out there, but obviously they don’t offer the convenient one-stop-shopping of the big social networks. Then there is the little problem of the good friends I have already made, mainly on Twitter. Just moving on and leaving them behind is not an option.

I honestly don’t know what to do. It does seem as though the free and open internet we used to know and love is being eroded, bit by bit. Both governments and corporations are getting more and more control over what we can do, share, and be online. The question of who owns the internet is being answered by those with the money and political influence to stake a claim in cyberspace. At the same time the open internet movement is strong, and as we saw with the SOPA/PIPA protest, the virtual masses are aware and willing to stand up for a free internet.

I am faced with the age old question of whether to vote with my feet or try to create change from within. I’ve seen some people leave Google+ in protest and others stay to fight the good fight. I cannot say which is better. It remains to be seen what will happen on Twitter after today’s #twitterblackout boycott. Perhaps people will decide to up and leave for identi.ca, Disapora, and other free and open social networks. It doesn’t seem too likely though. It also seems highly unlikely that Twitter would bow to pressure, refuse to censor, and allow itself to get banned in every country that stifles dissent. Those are some pretty big markets we’re talking about.

I guess I will just have to wait and see and try to learn more. I recently started reading the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog, which explores all these issues in detail. At the very least we should be well-informed about the forces that are shaping our online lives.

Learn a language while you translate the web

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:22:00 +0000

I was listening to Spark yesterday and heard about Duolingo, a new web project that aims to translate the entire web with volunteers who want to learn a new language. The way it works is that Duolingo presents sentences in the new language and the user tries to translate the sentence into their mother tongue. If you don’t know a word you can mouse over it and a suggestion will pop up. Computers are very good at translating individual words but terrible at putting them together into meaningful sentences, so that is what the human part of this equation contributes. How much you mouse over the words determines the complexity of the sentences you get, so the experience is always tailored to your level of proficiency.

According to creator Luis von Ahn (who also invented ReCaptcha, which helps digitize books), people are actually learning languages on Duolingo as quickly as they would using conventional methods. The system also asks people to vote on the best translations for each sentence, and they say the results are as good as you would get from professional translators.

Since I am interested in learning languages and like to play on the web I am very eager to try Duolingo, but it is still at the private beta stage. All you can do is submit your email address and get on the (reportedly massive) waiting list for an invitation. So far only Spanish, German, and English are available, but they plan to add more languages as they work out the bugs.

At this point Duolingo is entirely free with no ads, and von Ahn wants to provide translations for free at least for non-commercial content. However, Von Ahn has a habit of getting bought out by Google and it’s hard to imagine every web page being translated into every language without Google-sized computing power behind it. But it’s clear that von Ahn is not doing this to make his fortune but to allow the people of the world to understand each other. Perhaps this is the beginning of Web 3.0, where the world wide web will be truly accessible to the whole wide world. I can’t wait to try it and will report back when I do. In the mean time, watch the introductory video and sign up!

Lady Susan: Busted!

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:18:00 +0000

Facts are such horrid things!

—Jane Austen, Lady Susan

I just finished reading Jane Austen’s early epistolary novel, Lady Susan. It could almost be called an unfinished novel because of its precipitate ending. Just when the truth about Lady Susan’s scheming comes fully to light, the letters stop and all matters are concluded in scarcely three pages of prose. Did Austen not know how to proceed or did she simply tire of the project? It does seem as though she was following a form from the waning 18th century—correspondence around a scheming female—but that was simply not her style, to judge from her later novels. Lady Susan is not a nice person, and the only one who seems like a typical Austen heroine, her daughter Frederica, is only allowed a single, desperate letter (though we are assured she marries well in the end).

To me, Frederica seems to be the direct forerunner of Fanny Price. She is young, mild, bookish, affectionate, sensitive, neglected, and subject to the schemes of powerful adults. Her aunt writes:

“Though totally without accomplishment, she is by no means so ignorant as one might expect to find her, being fond of books and spending the chief of her time in reading.”

Books are clearly her saving grace, having lost her (presumably superior) father early in life and being neglected by her mother, both emotionally and educationally, though in the latter case that was perhaps for the best. I wonder if Austen was acquainted with any girls in similar circumstances? She evidently thought enough of the plight of such girls to create Fanny Price twenty years later. Obviously the public sympathized with the shy, overlooked, friendless girl because Mansfield Park ended up being Austen’s best-selling book in her lifetime. Today we may prefer the beautiful, talkative, swash-buckling female, but I’m glad Austen paid some attention to those who do not naturally attract it.

Reading Austen in the 70s

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:08:00 +0000

From Margaret Drabble’s introduction to Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon:

We may tend to think Elizabeth Bennet a sensible girl not to mind getting her skirts muddy, and the Darcy and Bingley women ridiculous for noticing, but eighteenth-century mud was doubtless much more substantial than our own, and long skirts picked it up more, as those who now wear long skirts again will surely have noticed…. The Austen family wore pattens when young, to negotiate the country lanes round Steventon, a practice which seemed as archaic and vulgar to Jane Austen’s nephew, as the wearing of clogs would have seemed to us now, had not a freak of fashion brought them very nosily back again in 1972.

I confess I did wear clogs in the 70’s, though I preferred pants to maxi-skirts. I wonder what cultural trends we could relate to Jane Austen today? Perhaps laptops are today’s writing desks, and instead of daily letter-writing today’s young ladies check Facebook.

“Jane’s Fame” by Claire Harman

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:24:00 +0000

Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World
Claire Harman
Henry Holt and Co.
2010
304 pp.

While I was tidying up the list of books I read in 2011 I noticed that I began the year with a short biography of Jane Austen, read the wonderful A Jane Austen Education in the summer, and finished the year with Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. Add to that a re-reading of Persuasion (my favourite) and much munching of popcorn in front of various film adaptations and the enjoyable Lost in Austen spinoff. This all happened without even trying, which just goes to show how ubiquitous Jane Austen has become. Jane’s Fame traces the development of Jane Austen’s popularity, which was by no means a sure thing in the beginning. She was nearly forgotten after her death in 1817, but a biography published by her nephew in 1869 revived interest in her, which prompted the reprinting of her books, and her renown steadily grew from there to today’s all-Austen-all-the-time proportions.

I found it interesting that for a long time the most ardent Janeites were male scholars. No doubt it only seems that way because they had the floor, but in any case her books were certainly not considered to be particularly for women until recently. She was also much-loved by soldiers in World War I, who read and discussed her books in the trenches to escape the hell they were going through. Austen was also prescribed to wounded and shell-shocked soldiers for comfort and solace in their convalescence or their last days.

Claire Harman points out that one of the reasons Austen is so easily appropriated by generation after generation of readers is that her books lack details of time and place that would make it seem dated or foreign to future readers. Apparently she did this quite deliberately and mentions it in her letters. Though some criticized her books for failing to mention the great events of the time, such as the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, in retrospect she made the right choice if she wanted her works to be enduringly accessible. Two centuries later, references to contemporary issues and obsolete facts of life would only get in the way of the stories. Today’s writers might do well to question the conventional wisdom about describing the setting of a novel in vivid detail. People are people, whether they communicate by text message or penny post.

Jane’s Fame is quite a thorough examination of the reception of Austen’s books, and even describes the huge success of the recent film adaptations (including a discussion of the wet shirt), and mentions the most popular Austen blogs and web communities. Nothing is left out, as far as I can tell, though it is understandably UK-centric. If you want to know what people have thought about Jane Austen and her books over the last 200 years, this book will tell you. The tone is scholarly but with enough Austen-like wry humour to make it enjoyable.

After reading this book I realize that I have been remiss in not reading Austen’s unfinished novels, now called Sanditon and The Watsons, as well as the story Lady Susan. I even have a Penguin edition of them sitting on my bookshelf so I have no excuse. I believe that will be my first new book of 2012!

My little low-tech e-reader

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:37:00 +0000

As we all know, e-readers are all the rage right now. E-books are flying off the virtual shelves, and according to reports, there is hardly a Christmas tree in the world right now without an e-reader under it. This is definitely the year e-books went mainstream. My library is lending out Kobos and even my murder mystery-loving landlady has a Sony Reader now. I resisted as long as I could but as a lover of both techie gadgets and books it was only a matter of time before I jumped on the bandwagon.

I resisted in part because I did not want to get trapped in a corporate walled-garden where I could only buy e-books from one particular store in one particular format. Not that I had any intention of paying to rent an e-book (one never really owns a commercial e-book), but devices like that tend to be unfriendly to public domain and library e-books. Yes, the various vendors offer bazillions of free e-books and you can download programs to convert public domain e-books into the appropriate format, but that’s just not good enough. The big name readers were out of the question.

Much to my surprise, I found that there are quite a lot of alternative e-readers out there. These are e-readers with no strings attached—no exclusive affiliation an e-book store, and better support for different formats. I won’t even try to name them because there is such a variety, and that is not even counting the alternative tablet and mini-tablet computers that can be used as e-readers. The powers that be would like us to think that we must choose between two or three megabrands, but that is not the case.

After much sleuthing and comparing features and reading reviews, I finally settled on a humble but able e-reader that does exactly what I want without making me work for it. I chose the Ectaco jetBook. Never heard of it? Neither had I until I went on a quest to find every available e-reader. The jetBook is more popular in Europe because of its multilingual ability. That is one of the main reasons I bought it. It can display a plethora of languages including right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. Since I am interested in learning languages that was important to me. No other e-reader supports as many languages as the jetBook; indeed I could not find any others that supported non-Latin alphabet languages, and I gather that many of them have trouble with anything other than English. Ectaco is a company that specializes in translation devices and software, so language support is naturally a priority for them.

The other main reason I chose the jetBook is its pragmatism. For starters, the hardware is generic. Aluratek also makes an e-reader using the same device but different firmware. For me the “design” or “style” of my e-reader is irrelevant, so if they can keep the price down by using an existing technology, that’s fine with me. The screen is a 5” reflective LCD, which means it does not have the annoying page-turn flash of e-ink readers and does not cause eye strain like the backlit tablets. The pages turn instantly, and I can read it outside without glare. The buttons, of which there are many since it is not a touch device, are crisp and intuitive. Just about anyone could start using it right out of the box without much trouble.

As for the firmware, the jetBook is incredibly flexible. It supports more e-book formats than any other e-reader, including Adobe DRM, which many libraries use. I especially like the fact that it can “reflow” PDF e-books, basically reading them as text files, though it does preserve tables and figures. Not all e-readers can handle PDFs that way (or any way, for that matter). As I mentioned before the jetBook can display many languages, and it also includes a few language dictionaries, but they can only be accessed while reading a txt file and are limited to common words. An advanced language learner would still need a conventional dictionary standing by, but that would be true of any other e-reader as well. The jetBook also supports mp3 audiobooks (or music), but it lumps all the files together in one menu so it’s not quite as slick as I might wish if it were my primary audiobook reader. As it is my Zune (with the help of Overdrive) does a great job of playing audiobooks so I don’t need the jetBook for that.

Managing books on the device could not be simpler. There is no software to install; one simply connects the jetBook to the computer and uses the computer’s file manager to move files around. The jetBook only has a small built-in memory but you can add an SD card of up to 16GB, which is enough for several lifetimes’ worth of books. On the SD card you can create as many folders and subfolders as you like, arranging and rearranging them in any way that suits you. I really like a device that does not tell me how to organize my files.

As you can see, simplicity and openness are the hallmarks of the jetBook. It lacks some of the bells and whistles of the big name e-readers, and costs a little more since it is not subsidized by e-book sales, but if you are looking for a device that does not put any obstacles between you and your e-books, this may be the e-reader for you. When I bought mine I was not even sure that I would get much use out of it. I do not travel or commute so when would I need such a thing? As it turns out, it has many uses even at home. I’ve used it to read e-books from the library, online PDF e-books and articles that I did not want to read on the computer, and public domain books that the library does not have or that are simply more convenient to load on the jetBook and keep for as long as I like. I still do most of my reading from paper books and audiobooks, but there are many cases where the jetBook is the best way to read something and then I am very glad to have it.

If you’d like to know more, check out the Ectaco website, and to see the jetBook in action watch the video tour below. Just note that you can get a better price than this reviewer did by buying directly from Ectaco.

The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin: The Passage of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:16:00 +0000

He opened a book he had borrowed from Posulov and stared with distrust at the even lines of print:

“They all promised to cling to one another, to help one another at all times, to rescue one another from danger, to sacrifice their lives for one another if necessary and to avenge the death of any of their number.”

Kozhemyakin drew the lamp nearer without taking his eyes off the book.

“So sacred was this vow that a father would take vengeance on his own son to fulfil the demands of the blood-contract made with the brotherhood.”

He closed the book for a second, then re-opened it cautiously at the first page, put his elbows on the table and began to read. He read as long as his eyes could see, and when at last he raised his head he discovered that the room was light and the trees in the orchard had thrown off the heavy robes of night.

Surprised, he got up and walked about the room, smiling to himself and shaking his weary head.

So that’s what books are for, he thought. So that you don’t notice the passage of time.

Snatches of what he had read floated through his mind like clouds, changing colour and shape, merging, separating, vanishing. He made no effort to hold on to them, so astonished was he by the magic force that could make him forget himself so utterly.

A little later he undressed, lay down and feel fast asleep.

Next morning, as he was washing himself in the kitchen, he said to Shakir:

“Tell anyone who asks for me that I’m not at home.”

“Even Nikon?”

Kozhemyakin considered.

“Yes, even Nikon. Anyone at all. I shall be very busy.”

After breakfast he seated himself by the window and opened the book again.

Reading came to be essential to him It was as if he had been going down a long pathway through open fields and had been stared at from all sides by hostile eyes which seemed to be demanding something of him; he longed to hide from them but there was nowhere to hide; and now he had found a sequestered niche from which he could not get so much as a glimpse of the irritating life around him, a niche in which he could live without noticing the dull monotonous passage of time. He read slowly, going again and again over the lines that pleased him most, and whenever he approached the end of a book he would anxiously finger the diminishing pages that remained….

“…I want some more history,” he said to Posulov.

“There is no more history.”

“What do you mean?” asked the startled and incredulous Kozhemyakin.

“I haven’t got any more books on history.”

“Then get some. When you go to Vorgorod for goods I’ll give you some money to buy books. Serious ones. Ask somebody what to buy.”

So accustomed had he become to reading that he could not get through the day without it, and if he had no new book he would re-read old ones. Amazed by the strength of his passion he said to himself:

Fancy that! I used to look down on people who had a passion for cards and other things, but look at me now….

When Posulov returned and brought him a big box of new books he was overjoyed. He instantly cut the pages of all of them and arranged them in two high stacks on the floor beside his desk; from them he selected Solovyov’s History, put it on his desk, opened it at the first page and walked up and down in front of it for some time, postponing the pleasure of beginning.

Soon he was again reading all day long; reading until his eyes ached, jealously guarding his solitude, going nowhere, taking no interest in anything, hardly bothering to glance at the hands of the clock that noted the passage of time on the yellow fly-spotted face.

—Maxim Gorky, The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin

The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin: Sweet Tranquility

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:34:00 +0000

Peace emanated from the pines, standing straight as candles, their trunks decked with the gold and amber of hardened resin, their boughs shedding the blessing of sweet shade upon the earth, their crowns blazing like emerald flames in the sunlight. Through the billowing green foliage gleamed the gold of the chapel domes, the silver of the river and the yellow of the sand. Apple- and pear-trees, lavishly hung with fruit, stepped in solemn procession down the hill-side, and everything was wrapped in the sweet tranquility of a beautiful dream.

—Maxim Gorky, The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin

This is one of many beautiful descriptions of the scenery in The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin. It’s a sad story, but Gorky’s appreciation of nature and the seasons inserts some much-needed beauty into the book.

The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin: Books

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:02:00 +0000

She talked a lot and willingly, and the most important thing he gathered from it all (and this raised him considerably in his own eyes) was that everything she said came from books; all her knowledge had been acquired by reading.

“As soon as you’re well you must get me books,” he insisted.

“Yes, indeed. I’m glad you want to read.”

“So am I.”

Mentally he added: Soon I’ll get to know as much as you do.

It was pleasant to realize that her superiority to him came only from books.

She kept saying over and over again that people must be taught, that then they would be come better and live like human beings. She told him about people who devoted their whole lives to trying to make others upright and to cultivate in them a respect for knowledge. And for this they were thrown into jail and exiled to Siberia.

—Maxim Gorky, The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin

The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin: First Lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:18:00 +0000

“What is learning?”

The quietness with which the question was put made the boy’s heart contract with a foretaste of mystery, and be edged nearer to his teacher trustfully.

“Learning,” said the deacon, stroking his pupil’s hair, “is the means by which we acquaint our minds with events in the past, with life in the present, and with human dreams for the future. Learning, then, binds one man to another; in other words, it is a link connecting him with the world as a whole. Now let’s see what that means.

“What are words? Words are the body of the human mind, just as these bodies, yours and mine, are the vesture of the soul, no more and no less. Further: take a book, any book; it is written by a man who lived, let’s say, a hundred years ago and left for our edification all the treasure the man’s soul accumulated in the course of a lifetime. And so we might say: books contain the souls of people who lived before our day or are still living; a book is, as it were, a man’s account to the world at large of his deeds; it is the life record of a human soul. Is that clear?”

—Maxim Gorky, The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin

Our Mutual Friend: Inner City School

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:14:00 +0000

The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book—was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.

It was a school for all ages, and for both sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But, all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the lady-visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women old in the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the good child's book, the Adventures of Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, neither did the sheep who ate them; who plaited straw and delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons, that you were to do good, not because it WAS good, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of the sublime history, as if they had never seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact, where black spirits and grey, red spirits and white, jumbled jumbled jumbled jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every Sunday night. For then, an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner's assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when and where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it, matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their wretched faces; sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to My Dearert Childerrenerr, let us say, for example, about the beautiful coming to the Sepulchre; and repeating the word Sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred times, and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled in High Market for the purpose.

Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school.

–Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend: The 1%

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:07:00 +0000

Georgiana had by this time seen a good deal of the house and its frequenters. As there was a certain handsome room with a billiard table in it—on the ground floor, eating out a backyard—which might have been Mr Lammle's office, or library, but was called by neither name, but simply Mr Lammle's room, so it would have been hard for stronger female heads than Georgiana's to determine whether its frequenters were men of pleasure or men of business. Between the room and the men there were strong points of general resemblance. Both were too gaudy, too slangey, too odorous of cigars, and too much given to horseflesh; the latter characteristic being exemplified in the room by its decorations, and in the men by their conversation. High-stepping horses seemed necessary to all Mr Lammle's friends—as necessary as their transaction of business together in a gipsy way at untimely hours of the morning and evening, and in rushes and snatches. There were friends who seemed to be always coming and going across the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, and Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par and premium and discount and three quarters and seven eighths. There were other friends who seemed to be always lolling and lounging in and out of the City, on questions of the Bourse, and Greek and Spanish and India and Mexican and par and premium and discount and three quarters and seven eighths. They were all feverish, boastful, and indefinably loose; and they all ate and drank a great deal; and made bets in eating and drinking. They all spoke of sums of money, and only mentioned the sums and left the money to be understood; as 'five and forty thousand Tom,' or 'Two hundred and twenty-two on every individual share in the lot Joe.' They seemed to divide the world into two classes of people; people who were making enormous fortunes, and people who were being enormously ruined. They were always in a hurry, and yet seemed to have nothing tangible to do; except a few of them (these, mostly asthmatic and thick-lipped) who were for ever demonstrating to the rest, with gold pencil-cases which they could hardly hold because of the big rings on their forefingers, how money was to be made. Lastly, they all swore at their grooms, and the grooms were not quite as respectful or complete as other men's grooms; seeming somehow to fall short of the groom point as their masters fell short of the gentleman point.

–Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

Editor and Editrix, a love story

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:42:00 +0000

1935 saw the start of a new quarterly, The Amateur Musician, edited and published by a Miss Elizabeth Voss. When I wrote an article on The Recorder or English Flute for the third issue I did not know that I should become co-editor by No. 8, and marry my co-editor before No. 15, but that is how it happened!

–Edgar Hunt, The Recorder and its Music

House of Books

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:10:00 +0000

This charming edifice is The House of Books Has No Windows by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. To me it looks like where I might have to live if I don’t stop buying so many books! Read more and see a video of how it was constructed at Flavorwire. (Warning: Books were harmed in the making of this artwork!)

via Win!

Bulgarian Book Bus

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:48:00 +0000

Here’s another one to add to the eclectic assortment of bookmobiles on this planet. This is the Otets Paisiy Public Library located in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It is named after an 18th century monk who wrote the first history of Bulgaria. See more photos and read more about it at inhabitat.

via Booklover

Byron’s Books

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:41:00 +0000

Newstead Abbey library.

Photo by Norma Bellini. Via Booklover.

Obama’s Book Shop

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:51:00 +0000

“Powell's Books—A Hyde Park institution… Pres. Obama also used to shop here. The shop has a great selection of small press and academic remainder books. You can see the many shelves of books on books, photography, literature, history...”

Looks like my kind of place!

Photo by Andrew Wertheimer. Via Booklover

My Bookmobile

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:17:00 +0000

I’ve had a weakness for paper models ever since I was 10 years old and bought a paper model book for a Victorian townhouse at a museum in England. (Windsor? The Tower? Hampton Court? Can’t remember.) It had everything, from coal bins in the basement to servants’ quarters in the roof. I still have that book somewhere because I could never bring myself to cutting it up, nor did I know what I would do with a four-storey paper house. I suppose that with modern technology I could now make a copy and do with it as I will. Something for the long winter evenings…

A much less ambitious project is this cute little bookmobile. Grab your cardstock and a bone folder and enjoy!

via Book Patrol

Our Mutual Friend: Mr. Wegg reads to Mr. Boffin

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:10:00 +0000

'Hem!' began Wegg, 'This, Mr Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off—' here he looked hard at the book, and stopped.
'What's the matter, Wegg?'
'Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir,' said Wegg with an air of insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book), 'that you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you right in, only something put it out of my head. I think you said Rooshan Empire, sir?'
'It is Rooshan; ain't it, Wegg?'
'No, sir. Roman. Roman.'
'What's the difference, Wegg?'
'The difference, sir?' Mr Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. 'The difference, sir? There you place me in a difficulty, Mr Boffin. Suffice it to observe, that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs Boffin does not honour us with her company. In Mrs Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it.'
Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air, and not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy, 'In Mrs Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it!' turned the disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a very painful manner.
Then, Mr Wegg, in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going straight across country at everything that came before him; taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan, and the Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs Boffin to be responsible for that necessity of dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with Commodus: who, under the appellation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and 'not to have acted up to his name' in his government of the Roman people. With the death of this personage, Mr Wegg terminated his first reading; long before which consummation several total eclipses of Mrs Boffin's candle behind her black velvet disc, would have been very alarming, but for being regularly accompanied by a potent smell of burnt pens when her feathers took fire, which acted as a restorative and woke her. Mr Wegg, having read on by rote and attached as few ideas as possible to the text, came out of the encounter fresh; but, Mr Boffin, who had soon laid down his unfinished pipe, and had ever since sat intently staring with his eyes and mind at the confounding enormities of the Romans, was so severely punished that he could hardly wish his literary friend Good-night, and articulate 'Tomorrow.'
'Commodious,' gasped Mr Boffin, staring at the moon, after letting Wegg out at the gate and fastening it: 'Commodious fights in that wild-beast-show, seven hundred and thirty-five times, in one character only! As if that wasn't stunning enough, a hundred lions is turned into the same wild-beast-show all at once! As if that wasn't stunning enough, Commodious, in another character, kills 'em all off in a hundred goes! As if that wasn't stunning enough, Vittle-us (and well named too) eats six millions' worth, English money, in seven months! Wegg takes it easy, but upon-my-soul to a old bird like myself these are scarers. And even now that Commodious is strangled, I don't see a way to our bettering ourselves.' Mr Boffin added as he turned his pensive steps towards the Bower and shook his head, 'I didn't think this morning there was half so many Scarers in Print. But I'm in for it now!'
—Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” by Richard Wrangham

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Richard Wrangham
Basic Books
2009
320 pp.
9780465013623
When we think about what makes us human, we usually think about our upright stance, our large brains, and our ability to use tools and language. Those aspects of humanity are easy to see and leave durable traces, such as million-year-old stone hand axes from Africa and ten thousand year old cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. Yet it may be something more humble and difficult to spot that really set us on the evolutionary path to where we are now. According to anthropologist and primatologist Richard Wrangham, cooking is likely the one thing above all others that made us human.

It is possible to envision how it got started. Modern primates are known to throw rocks around, perhaps in conflict or play, and perhaps one of our tree-dwelling ancestors noticed that crashing certain types of rocks together would send off sparks that could catch grass on fire. Tending such a fire would certainly have been within the capability of our distant ancestors, as it is for primates today. Some can even start a fire if given matches. Fire would have been an excellent deterrent against predators, and would have made living on the ground and out of the trees safer. This would have been important during times of climate change when forest was replaced with savannah. It was probably not long before someone noticed that food dropped in the fire for a while tasted better, was easier to eat, and felt more satisfying. The rest is evolutionary history.

These days there a lot of theories going around about what humans are supposed to eat. Two of the most popular (and extreme) are the raw food movement and the (supposedly) paleolithic diet. Wrangham easily demolishes the former by pointing out that cooked food is far more digestible than raw food, and that our digestive systems are clearly adapted to easily digestible food. Compared to other primates, our teeth are small, our jaws are weak, and our intestines are small. We are simply not physically capable of chewing and digesting wild raw foods as other primates do. The proof of this comes from studies of raw food enthusiasts, which show that about half of the women stop menstruating, even on a diet much richer than you would actually find in the wild. No species can survive with half of its females infertile.

The other diet fad Wrangham addresses is the “paleolithic” diet, which emphasizes meat, meat, and more meat, and avoids carbs as much as possible. People on this sort of diet (as on the raw food diet) find that they are always hungry. This is something the native peoples of North America could have told them about. They call it “rabbit hunger” and scientists call it “ketosis.” A diet heavy in lean meat causes protein poisoning that damages the kidneys and liver, causes intense hunger, and eventually leads to death, as many early explorers discovered the hard way. In fact we know that the maximum safe level of protein intake is half of all calories, so at least half our diet must consist of carbohydrates and fat. Fat, whether animal or vegetable, is a rare commodity in the tropics where we evolved, so that means our ancestors ate at least half of their diet as carbohydrates. So much for that theory.

Although cooking can seem like a chore to some of us, it actually liberated us from the much more onerous chore of chewing and digesting raw food. Primates spend a good deal of their day just chewing tough raw foods like leaves and wild fruits (which are not as soft and plump as agricultural fruits). Furthermore, because their food was so low in digestible calories, they had to eat almost constantly throughout the day. Chimpanzees only get about 20 minutes off between meals, which doesn’t leave much time for doing anything constructive. Our ancestors, on the other hand, could get far more calories from cooked food, and so had hours of free time to go gather choice foods, such as carbohydrate-rich roots, honey, and of course, animals. All that travelling, hunting, digging, and carrying would have encouraged our bipedal stance and our ability to walk and run with our hands free. (See more on that here.) The more rich cooked food we ate, the less energy was devoted to chewing and digestion and the more could be devoted to our growing brains. And so, here we are.

I posted before about the downside of all this: due to the size difference between males and females, a male can force a female to cook for him in exchange for occasional meat and, more importantly, protection from other males who would take the cooked food by force. Wrangham calls it a protection racket, which sounds about right. This is the system that prevails in every culture ever studied, past or present, rich or poor, pastoral or agricultural, “primitive” or “civilized,” patriarchal or (otherwise) egalitarian. It may be dressed up with romance and marriage rituals, but the cooking compact is at its foundation an unequal bargain. What really impresses me is that women still know it. Our sense of equal worth has not been blunted by two million years of involuntary servitude. Anthropologists have recorded the complaints of women from diverse cultures saying exactly the same thing: “Here I am, slaving over the fire/stove while my husband sits around doing nothing.” The ability to cook has done wonderful things for our species, but perhaps it is the utterly unquenchable desire for equality and freedom that is the best human characteristic.

Catching Fire: The double-edged chef’s knife

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:15:00 +0000

In Victorian England, the aesthetic writer John Ruskin argued that household labor was divided harmoniously and that women were superior to men. He credited women with greater organizational skills than men and explained that women were therefore better at managing households. But to philosopher John Stuart Mill, it was obvious that women were treated unfairly. Ruskin’s gallantry, he said, was “an empty compliment … since there is no other situation in life in which it is the established order, and considered quite natural and suitable, that the better should obey the worse. If this piece of talk is good for anything, it is only as an admission by men, of the corrupting influence of power.”

Mill’s accusation that Victorian British men used power to their own advantage might be applied equally well to all nonindustrial societies. The women living on Vanatinai had as much control over their lives as in any society. They were not regarded as inferior to men, and in the public realm they were not subject to male authority. But even when they were tired and men were relaxing, they still had to cook. [Anthropologist] Maria Lepowsky does not report what would have happened if a woman had refused to cook, but among hunter-gatherers who are similarly egalitarian, husbands are liable to beat wives if the evening meal is merely late or poorly cooked. When there is a conflict, most women have no choice: they have to cook, because cultural rules, ultimately enforced by men for their own benefit, demand it

The idea that cooking led to our pair-bonds suggests a worldwide irony. Cooking brought huge nutritional benefits. But for women, the adoptions of cooking has also led to a major increase in their vulnerability to male authority. Men were the greater beneficiaries. Cooking freed women’s time and fed their children, but it also trapped women into a newly subservient role enforced by male-dominated culture. Cooking created and perpetuated a novel system of male cultural superiority. It is not a pretty picture.

—Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

This is one of the most depressing chapters I’ve read in a while. Up until this point I was enjoying the idea that cooking made us human, that it shaped our bodies and brains to be what they are today. But the idea that cooking also made us patriarchal is decidedly uncomfortable, especially since I am on the receiving end of that patriarchy. I am fortunate to live in a time and place where I don’t need a husband to guard my food (or books!) from marauders, but men still do make most of the decisions in the world, and let’s just say that there is some room for improvement there. I can only hope that we will continue to evolve in the direction of equality so that we can all enjoy being human.

Catching Fire: Men, Women, and Cooking

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 03:36:00 +0000

This may explain why I’m not keen on either marriage or cooking:

Relying on cooked food creates opportunities for cooperation, but just as important, it exposes cooks to being exploited. Cooking takes time, so lone cooks cannot easily guard their wares from determined thieves such as hungry males without their own food. Pair-bonds solve the problem. Having a husband ensures that a woman’s gathered foods will not be taken by others; having a wife ensures the man will have an evening meal. According to this idea, cooking created a simple marriage system; or perhaps it solidified a preexisting version of married life that could have been prompted by hunting or sexual competition. Either way, the result was a primitive protection racket in which husbands used their bonds with other men in the community to protect their wives from being robbed, and women returned the favour by preparing their husbands’ meals. The many beneficial aspects of the household, such as provisioning by males, increases in labor efficiency, and creating of a social network for child-rearing, were additions consequent to solving the more basic problem: females needed male protection, specifically because of cooking. A male used his social power both to ensure that a female did not lose her food, and to guarantee his own meal by assigning to work of cooking to the female.

—Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

A while back I read a book that argued that our bodies our designed to run. This book argues that our bodies are designed to eat cooked food. Both theories seem to be correct, but it’s the cooking that would have made the running possible. Cooking dramatically increases the energy we can get from food, and this allowed our early ancestors to downsize their jaws and intestines in favour of growing bigger brains. It also cuts down on chewing time (our primate cousins spend much of the day just chewing raw food) which frees up time for chasing animals across the veldt. Of course one must cook on the ground, and it may be fire that encouraged us to leave the trees in the first place by making it safe to live on the ground full-time. From there it was just an evolutionary hop, skip, and jump to standing, walking, and running.

The trade-off for the technological miracle of cooking seems to be the subjugation of half of the species. Women are responsible for daily household cooking in nearly every culture ever studied, past and present, even though there is no biological reason for it. The division of labour in this case seems to be, as Wrangham so aptly puts it, a protection racket. “Cook for me and there won’t be any trouble.” Apparently it was an offer our foremothers could not refuse, and to this day women in every society are burdened with the vast majority of the cooking and other household work. What is amazing is that after nearly 2 million years of evolution, in every culture from the Kalahari to downtown Tokyo, women still know it’s a raw deal. Perhaps it’s time to renegotiate?

Book Sale Haul

noreply@blogger.com (Classical Bookworm) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 20:03:00 +0000

I really should not go to book sales, especially good ones. This one was so well-organized that they even had a table for Oprah’s books. I resisted as long as I could but I eventually gave up and just grabbed whatever struck my fancy.

The highlight of this collection is the pristine Folio Society boxed set of Robert Graves’ “Greek Myths.” Pretty. Also:

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
The Romance of the Rose (new Oxford World’s Classics edition)
Fighting in Spain by George Orwell (also new)
Middlemarch (older Norton Critical Edition)
Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez (autobiography)
Tommy Douglas by Thomas H. Mcleod and Ian McLeod (about the father of Canadian health care)
The Best of James Herriot
I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (autobiography)

Now the problem is where to put them!