The earth hums in B flat by Mari Strachan

The Earth Hums in B Flat

This is a charming novel despite the darkness of much of the subject matter; adultery, depression, domestic violence, and even murder. Yet these events do not become sensationalised, there is no move towards the voyeuristic here, these become the ordinary backdrop to the life of a young girl moving across that line between childhood and adolescence.

What Gwenni refuses to do is give up the child's view of the world, despite the fury of her mother, she allows the world to remain enhanced despite pressure to "grow up" and the darkness that surrounds her.  This is what made it such a delightful read, I believe, or try to believe, in that enhanced world and so it is joyful to share for a while the life of another believer.  As the novel moves on it is clear that there doesn't need to be an either/or choice between "reality" and "enhancement" - and I hope that we misunderstand St Paul's putting away of childish things when we interpret it as a rejection to the childlike wonder this novel is so richly populated with.

I for one will now be trying to learn to fly while I am awake again...

The Problem of Knowledge by A. J. Ayer

The Problem of Knowledge

I am a bit of a sucker for a Pelican and the subject matter of this one took me back to the great lectures I had in Durham with Richard Smith - but I never quite got my head around those lectures and it is safe to say I didn't get my head around this book, but the pleasure is in the trying.

And, I think, that is really Ayer's point, he can not give us a philosophical proof on the existence of the past, of feelings of others (or even the existence of any other conscious being other than oneself), but at some point we have to acknowledge that despite the philosophical uncertainty the only practical explanation for the world is that there was a past, the only practical explanation for what appear to the numerous other conscious human being you encounter in daily life is that they are in fact conscious, and so on.  Any explanation I seek for the apparent existence of the Pelican Original in front of me other than the fact that there is a thinking being A. J. Ayer who wrote it is beset with greater difficulties than excepting A. J. Ayer exists, however it remains the best explanation and not the 'only' explaination.

But not finding certainty does not mean we should give up the search for truth, and the philosophical models that try and give certainty are clumsy and inelegant.  It is better that we learn is how to hold the two in tension, to acknowledge the philosophical uncertainty while still continuing to life in the world.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 

Finally got around to actually reading this - it has been on my to read list since 2nd year at Durham (ie over a decade ... opps!). It is a book that is so often referenced that by a kind of osmosis you know it even before you read.  This means that you have to pay an extra special kind of attention to it so you actual encounter the book itself and not an amalgam of hearsay about it.

It is a classic and it holds up under the weight of its own reputation, in many ways seeming to be speak more to us today than to the early fifties (which we now tend to paint as a golden age of civilization). 
What would Bradbury make of us watching live streams of people sleeping in the Big Brother house and everywhere everyone in their personal ipod world tweeting vacumously to the planet?