Book reviews
Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerI sometimes think my ideal job would be a book reviewer. You get lots of free books, and if you don't like them, then you can just skim a few pages and write something bitchy. I don't suppose anyone will offer me such a job, but for pure self-indulgent pleasure, here are some mini-reviews of books I've read, or failed to read, recently.
Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works
A rumbustuous romp through evolutionary psychology, this volume is so well-written that it seems to have much less than the advertised 660 pages, especially if you skip a few hundred of them. Pinker writes entertainingly, but some subject matter - notably visual processing - could not be made entertaining by a stand-up comedian, let alone a professor of linguistics. That aside, the book races along like a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jerry Seinfeld. Caution is advised, however, since there is a risk that reading it will make you exasperate your friends by offering evolutionary explanations for everything they do ("Did you know that's strikingly similar to bonobo monkeys practicing mutual masturbation to reduce inter-male hostility?").
Jose Amado: The War of Saints
I enjoyed Amado's Shepherds of the Night immensely, but I gave up on this after two chapters because I couldn't keep track of the characters. What is it that makes South American writers want to introduce a new character every second page? Maybe I'll wait for the summer holidays, then read it at leisure while maintaining a character database.
Franz Brentano: Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
The title of this book is enough to put you off: it makes it sounds like a student attempting to plagiarise Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality. Brentano, however, is as far removed from our wacky German friend as can be imagined; in fact, he makes Frege look wacky. Of all the branches of philosophy, ethics is the hardest to make boring, but Brentano manages it. As far as I could tell before I dozed off, he thinks that the purpose of ethics is to tell us what we should want, which, since "should" implies a desired end, is a semantic black hole.
Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality
Love him or hate him (and if you love him, I worry about you), Nietzsche is a fun read. I hold him partially responsible for continental philosophy's slide into stream-of-consciousness writing, but while Derrida or Irigaray are just word salad with italics for dressing, Nietzsche writes philosophy as poetry. Admittedly, some of the poetry sounds like something that might be written by a nerdy high school student who has watched too many Conan films, but it's not Nietzsche's fault that his words have become cliches.
John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism
This is Mill's most famous work, and one of the least enjoyable. Read On Liberty or The Subjection of Women instead - much more fun.
Immanuel Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morality
There are some books you return to like old friends, and others you return to like an unpleasant relative you are forced to visit at Christmas. Kant's Groundwork is in the latter category: rather like your awful aunt Delilah, he piles non-sequitur upon non-sequitur while maintaining an attitude of insufferable superiority. His main point is that we should act in such a way that we should wish our action to become a universal rule. Following that advice, I would bin my copy of the Groundwork, were it not that I may have to teach it again next year, a chilling example of Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence."
Reginald Hill: Recalled to Life
Dalziel and Pascoe - what more can I say?
This last comment is one reason why I am unlikely to find employment as a reviewer.
Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works
A rumbustuous romp through evolutionary psychology, this volume is so well-written that it seems to have much less than the advertised 660 pages, especially if you skip a few hundred of them. Pinker writes entertainingly, but some subject matter - notably visual processing - could not be made entertaining by a stand-up comedian, let alone a professor of linguistics. That aside, the book races along like a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jerry Seinfeld. Caution is advised, however, since there is a risk that reading it will make you exasperate your friends by offering evolutionary explanations for everything they do ("Did you know that's strikingly similar to bonobo monkeys practicing mutual masturbation to reduce inter-male hostility?").
Jose Amado: The War of Saints
I enjoyed Amado's Shepherds of the Night immensely, but I gave up on this after two chapters because I couldn't keep track of the characters. What is it that makes South American writers want to introduce a new character every second page? Maybe I'll wait for the summer holidays, then read it at leisure while maintaining a character database.
Franz Brentano: Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
The title of this book is enough to put you off: it makes it sounds like a student attempting to plagiarise Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality. Brentano, however, is as far removed from our wacky German friend as can be imagined; in fact, he makes Frege look wacky. Of all the branches of philosophy, ethics is the hardest to make boring, but Brentano manages it. As far as I could tell before I dozed off, he thinks that the purpose of ethics is to tell us what we should want, which, since "should" implies a desired end, is a semantic black hole.
Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality
Love him or hate him (and if you love him, I worry about you), Nietzsche is a fun read. I hold him partially responsible for continental philosophy's slide into stream-of-consciousness writing, but while Derrida or Irigaray are just word salad with italics for dressing, Nietzsche writes philosophy as poetry. Admittedly, some of the poetry sounds like something that might be written by a nerdy high school student who has watched too many Conan films, but it's not Nietzsche's fault that his words have become cliches.
John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism
This is Mill's most famous work, and one of the least enjoyable. Read On Liberty or The Subjection of Women instead - much more fun.
Immanuel Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morality
There are some books you return to like old friends, and others you return to like an unpleasant relative you are forced to visit at Christmas. Kant's Groundwork is in the latter category: rather like your awful aunt Delilah, he piles non-sequitur upon non-sequitur while maintaining an attitude of insufferable superiority. His main point is that we should act in such a way that we should wish our action to become a universal rule. Following that advice, I would bin my copy of the Groundwork, were it not that I may have to teach it again next year, a chilling example of Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence."
Reginald Hill: Recalled to Life
Dalziel and Pascoe - what more can I say?
This last comment is one reason why I am unlikely to find employment as a reviewer.
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"I never read a book before I review it....
Rev. Sydney Smith
Re: "I never read a book before I review it....
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