The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos

George Pelecanos is one of America’s foremost crime writers. He is also one of the writing team who worked on David Simon’s The Wire TV series. It shows. His novels are beautifully natural, unaffected, slices of life. Full of the detailed concerns of the everyday and yet struck through with grander themes, all carried in the vehicle of a crime novel, his stories verge on masterpieces. Certainly it is hard to think of another American crime writer who writes with this panache. He is in many ways a modern Hammett or Chandler – he seems to have that sort of stature. This latest story is about the murder of a black teenager and the two men who become entangled in trying to find the killer – one a cop, the other an ex-cop – against a backdrop of their every day lives. Nothing is ordinary in this case or its resolution.

Being Pakeha Now by Michael King

This book feels like a significant waypost on the journey of a country to understanding their identity. Reading it feels like a re-tracing of that journey for an individual. Michael King is trying to understand (through autobiography) what it is to be a Pakeha New Zealander: a non-Maori New Zealander – but to define this in a sense that is not merely negative, not defined by a lack, but in a positive sense. On the way the book raises uncomfortable questions about race relations in New Zealand, about our past Pakeha-Maori relations. King argues that Pakeha are distinctively New Zealanders (rather than Europeans or immigrants), that they are indigenous in some sense by their belonging and relationship to the land and country, while not denying that Maori – tangata whenua – have a privileged position as “first comers”. He also argues that there is a shared set of values that all New Zealanders, both Pakeha and Maori, have. A  realisation that came to him (as it does to many of us) as he returned from travelling overseas, best summed up in this passage (pp 178-9):

All this contributed to a conviction that New Zealanders, for all their faults, had virtues that were precious: an unwillingness to be intimidated by the new, the formidable, or class systems; trust in situations where there would otherwise be none; compassion for the underdog; a sense of responsibility for people in difficulty; not undertaking to do something without seeing it through…a lesser degree of racial prejudice (though not an absence) than that apparent in many other parts of the world…I also became more conscious of the value of my Maori associations – of what New Zealand would lose…if it were left solely with its Anglo-Saxon-Celtic heritage.

If you are interested in the history of New Zealand thought and identity, or are just trying to make sense of what being a Pakeha in the 21st century is all about, then this is a must read.

The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans

If you have ever pondered that great mystery of the twentieth century – how did a supposedly modern civilised western country like Germany let itself be led into the barbarities of World War Two – then this book (and indeed the trilogy of which it is the second part) is for you. Evans examines every aspect of German society and culture and shows how it was “co-ordinated” by the Nazi party as part of their thorough-going totalitarianism – their attempt to control everything about a person’s life. He covers youth groups, universities, schooling, art, music, literature, work…there was nothing too trivial for the Nazis to control, they even took over sports clubs, making them parts of the party’s apparatus serving the racial and political agenda! This mammoth book can be hard going – it is hardly pleasant subject matter after all – but it is well worth it. Masterful in its treatment, immense in breadth and depth as well as being persuasive and humane. It sets a new standard for scholarship in its field.

The Late Levitt on Steve Fuller’s Defence of Intelligent Design

From badscience - Steve Fuller lent a fig-leaf of academic credibility to Intelligent Design in the Dover trial in the USA. Norman Levitt died recently which Steve Fuller used as the occasion to write a rather nasty ad hominem attack on Levitt. Here is the explanation for Fuller feeling the need to write such a worthless screed: Levitt’s scathing review of Steve Fuller’s book defending Intelligent Design.  I don’t feel comfortable with some of the ad hominem’s and downright abuse of Fuller that LEvitt indulges in, but most of the review is bang on the money, especially the stuff about computational complexity and randomness. Worth a read if you are interested in Intelligent Design and its flaws.

The Reason of Things by A.C. Grayling

This volume of essays follows on from Grayling’s earlier book: The Meaning of Things – a favourite of mine.  The essays in The Reason of Things are all about applying philosophical reasoning to everyday concerns – sex, religion, politics, identity – the things that are important to us as we live our lives. It is fascinating seeing Grayling tease apart what is important about these topics, what is central and what is inessential, bringing the clarity of philosophical discourse to them and helping the reader understand what the implications are for living our lives. Recommended if you are interested in living your life consistently or in a principled fashion.

Paul Weller: Wild Wood

Intrigued by this review at Elsewhere, my like of a couple of Jam records and it leaping out at me at the local record store, I picked up a copy of the recently released Deluxe Edition of Paul Weller’s Wild Wood. A somewhat speculative purchase then, but I don’t regret it. The first thing that i should say is that it bears very little resemblance to the Jam. It does show the stamp of its influences (Neil Young, Soul, Nick Drake) without being imitative. A hard thing to achieve, a thing that many britpop bands imitated, and consequently didn’t achieve. More contemplative and personal than his work with the Jam, it i less catchy, but in some ways more satisfying. Recommended for those who like their rock tinged with maturity.

Key tracks:

• Sunflower
• Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)
• The Weaver
• Moon On Your Pyjamas

Reading for/as pleasure

I have been reading a number of weighty tomes about great political crimes – communism, fascism, nazism – topics I find both fascinating and compelling, but not necessarily enjoyable. I can find immense satisfaction in reading good books on these topics, but they aren’t exactly light-hearted. In the middle of reading one of the best books in this area – The Third Reich in Power - I just had enough. I decided that I needed to read something more enjoyable even if of less moral weight. Something less worthy but more fun. So I have parked the weighty (figuratively and literally in the case of the aforementioned 700 page book) and taken up the more flighty. It is important I think to understand that reading is first and foremost a pleasure – otherwise it becomes a chore; work – that even reading about such serious matters can in some respects be pleasurable (the pleasure of discovery, of learning, of moral improvement, of comprehending) – but that when it ceases to be pleasurable one should stop, change and take up something else. I fully intend to return to The Third Reich in Power, but I will wait until I have recovered my sense of pleasure in that sort of reading first. In the meantime I think I will concentrate in reading about art, which is important but perhaps more fun.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain De Botton

Never look to Alain De Botton for answers. His philosophy is the kind that is thought provoking, that opens up questions, that unravels matters; not the sort that resolves things. That isn’t to say that you can’t arrive at your own answers after reading one of his books – but you’ll have to do some thinking yourself to get there. It also means that reading one of his books is a different experience from reading a “standard” philosophical work – he isn’t overly concerned with giving a systematic and consistent picture of his subject matter (in this case architecture) – and if you are expecting that you may find it frustrating. This book is an exploration of what makes architecture interesting to us as human beings, what makes us praise certain kinds of architecture, and what makes us claim that certain pieces of architecture are beautiful. The central claim of the book is that we call architecture beautiful if it promotes values that we wish to be central to our lives. He then tries to identify how architectures can promote those values, and which values are promoted by certain kinds of architectures. Both of these projects are approached unsystematically but with a view to pulling apart some important pieces of the puzzle of why we view architecture as important, how architecture can impact our lives (negatively or positively), and why we view certain pieces of architecture as good or beautiful. As a “theory of architecture” or a “theory of architectural beauty” I think this fails (though it fails in a beautiful manner!); but it succeeds – gloriously -  in highlighting a fruitful way of talking about architecture that readers may find helpful in understanding why they like certain things, and even quite different things in their homes and other buildings. If, like me, you can’t decide how you want to decorate or design your home, are pulled in different directions by the different things that you like, this way of thinking about it may help bring clarity to the chaos of your conflicting tastes. For those reasons, as well as the joyous style of its prose I heartily recommend it.

Comrades by Robert Service

This book does a great job of tying together the diverse histories of communism(s) and communist movements from around the world, highlighting what they shared as well as where they diverged. Through examining communism in Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, etc. we can see what was essential to communism (its authoritarianism and totalitarianism) from its inessential. However this is not as gripping as Service’s book on Lenin, and in attempting to be a broad survey of world communism it becomes too shallow in its treatment of particular instances of communism – and yet it is in only in understanding the particular that we can fully understand the general. It certainly enhanced my understanding of communism – especially in conjunction with his biography of Lenin, but left me feeling unsatisfied.

Towards the Light by A.C. Grayling

I have been a real fan of A.C. Grayling’s books of essays for some time. His wit and the directness of his thinking are unusual in this era of spin and style. So I was intrigued when I found out he had written this book – subtitled “The story of the struggles for liberty and rights that made the modern west”. It is certainly a subject that demands attention in this age of patriot acts, terrorism and counter-terrorism. The theme that the rights and liberties that we enjoy thoughtlessly in the west were hard won by our forebears is one that is an important reminder for us here and now, in New Zealand as in any other western democracy. After reading this book, though, I somehow left it much as I had entered it, feeling that it was a weighty subject that deserved a thorough treatment. It’s not that this is a bad book – it is in fact quite good – just that it feels like it should be a great book given the subject matter in order to do it justice. And, indeed, after reading this book I felt that I had only scratched the surface of the topic. So, a worthy introduction, but I am waiting for the in depth study.