Beowulf
Seamus Heaney (translation)
With the new movie, Beowulf, I thought I would tackle the ancient (somewhere between the seventh and tenth century) poem upon which it is based. I was completely dreading the experience, as I thought it would be one of those impenetrable experiences of boredom and inaction that we all remember being stuck studying in high school and college. I was completely wrong.

The story is an action adventure starring the Geat named Beowulf. (The Geats were a people living in southern Sweden at the time.) Beowulf has heard about a horrible nighttime monster who has been beating up on the Danes, and he has decided that he is the one guy who can take care of it. He and his men come to visit and soon enough, he seeks out the monster, Grendel, has a mighty battle, one-on-one, and dispatches it. The Danes heap Beowulf with lots of goodies as rewards and everybody is happy and there are great feasts.

Soon enough, there is more trouble. I turns out that Grendel's mom is nearby and is very unhappy about the loss of Grendel. She starts making her own trouble. Beowulf, of course, takes it upon himself to take care of her too. Another battle, another win, another heap of rewards and partying.

Eventually, Beowulf and his men take off back to Geatland, where Beowulf becomes king and rules for fifty years. Everybody is living happily, until .... You will have to read the book.

The poem is written in Old English, which is impossible for anyone but a scholar in the language to read and understand. There have been countless translations over the centuries, and I read the edition by Seamus Heaney, which has also been used by many classes at Reno High School. Not being a scholar on the subject myself, I found the poem eminently readable, almost like prose. Heaney keeps the poetic meter of the original, yet turns the words into a very readable and enjoyable adventure. The actual poem, as translated, is about 110 pages long. There was surprisingly little "flowery" poetic stuff, and the poem turned out to be a very straightforward telling of an epic adventure. There was little description of the appearance of Grendel and its mom, and the battle sequences were short and to the point.

When one reads the poem, it is possible to see echoes of the work in many subsequent stories, especially in the Lord of the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien. It turns out, while Tolkien was a  scholar at Oxford, he wrote one of the major papers on Beowulf and its place in the history of literature.

I was very pleased with the unanticipated ease of Beowulf and will look forward to see what they do with the movie.

This Is Your Brain on Music
Brian J Levitin

This book surprised me a little, turning out to be somewhat more scientific than I had anticipated. It should not have, as the review blurbs include Oliver Sacks, Scientific American, and Ph.D.s from several universities. The result was excellent. How often have you asked yourself something like: What makes you tap your foot and want to sing along to a great tune, new or old? What is it about music that is not only pleasurable, but engenders such extreme emotions like utter joy and profound sadness? The author answers these and many other questions in a most comprehensive way. He goes into the musical compositions of everyone from Bach and Beethoven to Neal Young and Jimi Hendrix and explains how, with their musical composition virtuosity, they are able to suck us into their musical realms. He goes into great length how sounds enter our ears and are then processed by an amazing array of brain segments into what we perceive as music.What is the purpose of music? How can appreciation of music be of any value to our evolution? Levitin goes deeply into these questions as well. At first, I was fearful that my love of great music would be deconstructed by too much analysis. Just the opposite occurred. The author gave me an even deeper awe of good musical composition. I can recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to learn how and why we appreciate music.

Pegasus Descending
James Lee Burke

I kind of got this book by mistake. It was damaged, and several of our readers had recommended him, so I took it home and gave it a try. It turned out to be a great mistake. Dave Robicheaux is a disgraced New Orleans former detective, who has been relegated to being a cop in semi-rural Louisiana, where he gets an unanticipated and unwanted reminder of his past. There are grisly deaths, surprising turns, red herrings and much introspection. This would all be routine cop writing, except that Burke carries it off with a wonderful style. He gives his characters real dialog, things that real people would say, instead of using it as a means of advancing the plot and background. Burke's descriptions of Louisiana and its inhabitants are vivid and memorable and help take the characters and story several steps above other cop novels.Pegasus Descending is about the 15th Dave Robicheaux novel, so it would be worthwhile (and fun) to go back and catch up with his life, how he got where he is and enjoy his adventures along the way. (The first one in the series is The Neon Rain.) This is not Nobel Prize winning stuff, but is highly enjoyable. I recommend it.

The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. This is one of the best books I have ever read, not just on science. It is amazing how the author can take you from the simplest and most basic concepts of time and space and, after leading you through an intricate yet easily followable discussion, you suddenly find yourself working on string theory with its nine (at least) dimensions. On the way, we cover entropy, the arrow of time, quanta (and quarks), relativity (where the only mathematical equation in the book comes up: E = mc2), the big bang and much more. Greene ties it all together in a non-condescending yet thorough and well-explained book of just under 500 pages. This is the book for everyone that has some knowledge of physics but wants to have it all put together. Very highly recommended.

Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. If you have had a vague idea of who Genghis Khan was and cannot quite remember how he was related to Khubilai Khan (Khubilai is the grandson) this book will tell you all of that and so much more. You will learn about the life and times of the Mongol hordes, their origin, their ascendancy and their eventual decline. Their story of the conquest of the conquered peoples, their subjugation and their subsequent life, their eventual tossing off of their masters and the after-effects of their conquest is fascinating. I think the author makes a little stretch in his assessment of those effects being carried forward to the modern day, but the book is a marvelous read and perhaps even enlightening with its story of the decay of the ruling elite, the dangers of reaching too far (geographically as well as politically) and the attempt at the rigid imposition of a social order on a people.

BOY’S LIFE by Robert McCammon (Pocket Books, 1991)

This may be one of the most surprising books you will ever read, and I highly recommend it. I would venture to say that most people would associate McCammon with such books as Speaks the Nightbird, Judgment of the Witch and other Stephen King-esque books, but this books could not be any more different.

Boy’s Life follows the life of a young boy for about a year while living in the deep south in 1964. We meet his childhood friends and discover their ability to invoke a very special magic in their lives. We also meet his family, a mother with a quiet but steely determination to make the best life possible for her family, and a proud father doing his best to properly bring up his son in a world of bullies, poverty, hard times, racism and the KKK.

While not a coming of age story, Boy’s Life wonderfully captures the mystery and magic of growing up. I sure would like to know how autobiographical the story is. This book is often included on Washoe County School District Summer Reading lists.



INTENSITY by Dean Koontz (Bantam Books, 1995)
KILLING FLOOR by Lee Child (Jove, 1998)

I thought I would try a couple of mind-candy books for summer beach reading. The results were mixed.

Intensity was the lesser of the two. While the plot hooks you and you do care about the heroine, Chyna, sometimes making you want to scream “Don’t do that; get out of there!” at her, the writing gets in the way. While at times very simplistic, Koontz will from time to time wonder off into very florid descriptions of the landscape or wax poetic about Chyna’s “call” to help her friend in need. It’s just a serial killer story. An OK read, and it gave me an idea of what one of our more prolific authors writes. Many other people have said the same thing to me about Koontz.

Killing Floor was more fun, but it also had some problems. The writing was better (more consistent throughout). The hero, Jack Reacher, is “retired” out of the MPs and is now a drifter. He finds himself in Georgia and instantly in the middle of a murder investigation. We follow him as he reluctantly finds himself helping the local police department, much against his better judgment. The plot had some definite holes, but, once again, you begin to sympathize with Jack and you hope that he will work everything out. Of course, you know he will, because there is a whole string of Jack Reacher stories following this one.

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