Finished Harry Potter last Sunday. It’s the best book in the series; not without its flaws, but an incredibly engaging read.

Time posted an interesting editorial on the atheistic nature of Harry Potter:

Harry Potter lives in a world free of any religion or spirituality of any kind. He lives surrounded by ghosts but has no one to pray to, even if he were so inclined, which he isn’t. Rowling has more in common with celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens than she has with Tolkien and Lewis.

What does Harry have instead of God? Rowling’s answer, at once glib and profound, is that Harry’s power comes from love. This charming notion represents a cultural sea change. In the new millennium, magic comes not from God or nature or anything grander or more mystical than a mere human emotion. In choosing Rowling as the reigning dreamer of our era, we have chosen a writer who dreams of a secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred.

More here.

I read this (spoiler-free) article before reading the book, and as I read the book I was struck by the “sacramental” nature of Harry Potter’s magic. Although it’s true there is no God (though Harry does say “Thank God” at least once, and the nature of souls is discussed at length), there is a strong emphasis on the idea that our actions have meaning beyond the physical world. Character’s choices and especially their decision to protect, love, and kill others factors heavily into the plot and the “magic” of the world.

Voldemort (like Milton’s Satan) is twisted into an evil form because of his choice to hate; Harry is protected and powerful because of his mother’s sacrifice of love. Characters in the novel often find that their actions (love vs. hate) dictate who they are, and the decision to perform “evil spells” (adava kedavra, imperio, etc) can have serious effects on one’s soul and outward appearance. Dark magic in the book is literally dark: the villains dress in black, appear in dark locations, and often have a snakelike or bedraggled appearance.

Often a character is surprised to learn that his or her actions have affected their personality, without their realizing it. I was reminded a bit of Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which proclaims that our bodies are a sacrament and what we do with our bodies shows how we treat this sacrament. This is not to say that Theology of the Body is just a form of Catholic magic, but it’s interesting to see how this supposedly atheistic text reflects the sacramental nature of reality.

Finished reading Solaris in only 3 days. It felt great to speed through a fascinating novel with a strong driving plot and a mystery that’s never fully explained. The book’s protagonist and most of the characters are scientists themselves, and took a logical, Sherlock-Holmes-like approach to the planet’s surface.

I actually watched the movie about a year ago, and kept expecting the book to follow the movie’s plot. I did like the movie, but thought the novel did a good job of leaving certain mysteries unsolved and making the unknowable nature of the planet a main theme of the story.

Lem himself had a great commentary on the movie vs. the book:

[Some critics] speculated that while the producer won’t make a lot of money and there will be no crowd at the box office, the film belongs to the genre of a more ambitious science fiction - since no one got murdered and neither star wars, nor space-werewolfs nor Schwarzenegger’s Terminators were present.

In the US an atmosphere filled with very concrete expectations usually accompanies the release of every new film. I found it interesting that although my book is quite old - almost half a century means a lot in present times - someone wanted to take the risk despite the fact that the plot did not meet the abovementioned expectations. (Along the way he might have gotten scared a bit, but the latter is a pure speculation on my part.)

The full article can be found here.

Lem’s comment on the “deep, concrete ruts of thinking” and “stereotypes of American thinking regarding science fiction” are a good commentary on the dangers of unoriginal sci-fi writing.

CNN (among others) reports on a used bookstore owner who’s burning his inventory:

Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero’s Books. …when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn’t even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.

So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.

“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/05/28/bookburning.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Sounds more like a publicity stunt than a protest, but whatever. Seems like he has the same bitterness of other used bookstore owners, such as the now-defunct Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston.

It’s interesting to see Fahrenheit 451 coming to reality, not due to overt censorship, but due to the fact that there are so many used books that you literally can’t give them away.  I’d also add that if Prospero’s Books had a glut of old cookbooks or poorly written novels, losing them may not be a great loss.

After skimming a few hundred pages as quickly as possible, I finally finished Leon Uris’ A God in Ruins. It’s one of the rare books that I debated putting down - usually no matter how bad a book is, I keep going to the end rather than leave the story unfinished.

Amazon.com has a bunch of customer reviews that explain what’s wrong with the book, but here’s a few issues I had:

• Handsome good guys, ugly bad guys. Every hero is a square-jawed, cowboy stud and every villain has weaselly eyes, loose morals and a thin moustache. Observe Uris’ description of a villainous senator:
  

  Form-fitting suit, Hoover collar, and the big mustache that small men of the world wear to send a message of their macho. The handshake told Quinn [the hero] that the counsel had not made his way up through hard labor.

  Read also this description of a heroine:
  

  Painted-on leather pants, bare midriff, an open blouse knotted under her breasts, glowing lipstick.

  Throughout the novel, Uris seems to equate physical beauty with goodness. Naturally every story has good guys and bad guys, but he goes out of his way to describe the gorgeousness of being good and the unattractiveness of being bad.

• Honesty = incredible crudeness. You can tell characters are having a heart-to-heart, soul-baring discussion when they start crudely insulting each other. The process usually goes: 1) casual conversation, 2) horrifyingly crude insults, 3) “I love you, man” make-ups and 4) ultimate truthful statement from the soul. Yes, people let their guard down when being truthful with loved ones, but not everyone swears like a sailor when they want to talk honestly.
• It’s outdated. Several times throughout the novel, the writer refers to the amoral debauchery of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as though Clinton’s affair were the absolute worst scandal the presidency had experienced. In some ways this is just bad timing - the book was published in 1999, and much of our ideas about the presidency and the executive branch have changed since 9/11. It’s also jarring to read of an American where gun control is the absolute worst evil in America, rather than terrorism or invasion of security.
  
• The writer is out of his depth when talking about the Internet. A major character in the book makes millions off a computer security device called the Growler, which is often described as a “rat’s nest of wires” and nothing else. I understand that the Internet is really just a plot device so that the eeeeeevil Republican president can rise to power, but it seems like the writer should at least have a basic idea of how those tubes get information around the Interweb.
• It’s a bit paranoid (SPOILER ALERT). The climax of the book comes when the Democratic candidate, adopted by Catholics, announces…due dramatic music…his birth parents are actually Jewish. In the novel, this triggers a “Krystallnacht” where Klansmen and Muslims across American begin rioting and destroying Jewish property. Meanwhile, the evil president holds back the National Guard and waits for the rioting to take its toll, so that he can swoop in and act like a hero.

I think the paranoia highlights my main issue with the novel - it just doesn’t ring true. It does not expand my horizons or bring me to a deeper understanding of the presidency, because the characters don’t act believably and the America Uris writes about does not illuminate any larger truth about America or the American people.

A friend of mine got this novel at a used book store for a dollar, but it’s currently selling for a penny on Amazon. Even at that price, I’d recommend skipping it and instead reading Uris’ glorious QB VII. It’s unfortunate that Uris’ career ended with such poor writing, but his many other novels establish his legacy as a great writer.

A blog called Pick the Brain offers 5 ways to make the most of your intelligence. They are:

1. Minimize Television Watching
2. Exercise
3. Read Challenging Books
4. Early to Bed, Early to Rise
5. Take Time to Reflect

Overall, sounds like good advice - the kind that seems self-evident once you read it.

Here’s how I stack up:

1. Minimize Television Watching - I could do better at this, and now that most of my shows (30 Rock, Heroes, The Office, etc) have ended I should have more nights free. For me this is related to number 3 - I’ve been mired in a poorly written book for the past few weeks but should probably learn to put down a book once I realize it’s going nowhere.
2. Exercise - I was in a pretty good workout habit until about a month ago. I still do pilates once a week but could hit it more often.
3. Read Challenging Books - Just finished A God in Ruins, currently rated as 1.5 stars on Amazon (with good reason). I’m now one part done with the thought-provoking Values in a Time of Upheaval, and am addicted to Solaris after only one chapter.
4. Early to Bed, Early to Rise - I was doing well on this for a while. This also relates to points 1 and 3 - I’ve gotten in the habit of watching TV reruns late into the night rather than reading before bed. After a while I’m just cleaning out the Tivo one half-hour at a time, rather than enriching my mind with good literature.
5. Take Time to Reflect - In my case, this takes the form of the Liturgy of the Hours twice a day, as well as long walks through Boston at night.  The other night I went on a bit of a walkabout around Boston without even using my iPod, and entered my place feeling refreshed.

So - overall I should watch TV less, work out and read more, and move my circadian rhythm up an hour or two.