Dickens and Cavemen

I have 2 books on the go at present. Well, two that I still recognise a commitment to. The Crabby Cook Cookbook, which is still on the bedside table isn't quite doing it for me as a representative of the recipebook/memoir genre, sadly. (Although I may yet change my mind having looked at her blog). I partly picked it because the author is Jessica Harper, who once starred in a deliriously enjoyable film that mysteriously flopped: The Phantom of the Paradise. A take on The Phantom of the Opera (you guessed? well done you!), Jessica Harper was Phoenix, the beautiful pop singer, coached by lovestruck composer Winslow. Sadly, evil record producer Swan (played by Paul Williams) seduces her, steals Winslow's music, and disfigures Winslow in a horrific record pressing incident. Winslow vows revenge on Swan's decadent new nightclub, the Paradise.

So the first one of the books that I am reading is Nicholas Nickleby. By Charles Dickens, but you knew that. I like Victorian literature, and I like Dickens, and Nicholas Nickleby is a fun read. Packed with incident, and including:
1. Outrageous villains like the evil uncle Ralph (boo, hiss) who makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like your grandfather.
2. The expose of contemporary social injustices in the shape of Yorkshire schools, represented by Dotheboys Hall and the loathsome Squeers family.
3. The depiction of early Victorian theatre with the Crummles family, who cast Nicholas as Romeo in a very unusual version of Romeo and Juliet.
4. Not one but two virtuous but imperiled heroines - Nicholas' sister Kate and Nicholas' love-interest Madeline. They are sweet but one can see Miriam Margoyles' point (in Dicken's Women) that they are 'rather icky'.

Writing about this is also making me remember going to the 8+ hour stage version of NN, which came to Wellington sometime in the 1980s or very early 1990s. Particularly the part where Nicholas does play Romeo, which he does like 'a demented typewriter', as a critic once wrote of Richard Briers in the role of Hamlet. (As quoted in No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews, compiled by Diana Rigg.)

I'm about a quarter of the way through. Nicholas, having left Dotheboys Hall after thrashing the sadistic Squeers (see photo - Jim Broadbent as Squeers in the 2002 film), is now rooming with Newman Noggs and attempting to teach French to the four Kenwig daughters. I've hit pause on it, to read Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live, by Marlene Zuk. This turned up on the new books shelf at Massey, and while I was the first person in the queue, that also means that I have to get it back by this Friday.

Marlene Zuk is a professor of ecology, evolution, and behaviour at the University of Minnesota, so is well placed to comment on the various popular books recommending dietary and other practices supposedly followed by pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer societies (aka cavemen). Books like The Paleo Diet argue that since the adoption of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, there hasn't been enough time for our bodies to adapt. Or that since we were hunter/gatherers for much longer than we've been farmers, we must be 'better adapted' to the former lifestyle.

Zuk cheerfully points out that this is not true - adaptations can appear and become widespread in a very short space of time. A non-human example she cites is of male crickets in Hawaii who no longer make noise with their wings, an adaptation that became widespread in about 20 cricket generations - about 5 years! She also repeatedly points out that we have very little knowledge of how early humans actually lived; and that there would have been a wide variation in early societies as there are in modern societies (including modern hunter/gatherer societies).

I've finished the section on diet, and have just started the chapter on exercise. I look forward to finding out why I shouldn't worry too much because I can't remember the last time I hunted down a wildebeest or fled a snarling sabre-tooth.

Pacific explorers, odd beliefs, and cycling

I didn't blog at all in July? Well, I assure you I was visiting libraries and reading. However the urge to go back and fill in the gaps is death for any kind of diarying, so most of what I read and borrowed in July will now stay between me and my reading notebook.

I belong to a book circle, which is a WEA book discussion scheme one. I've belonged to it for - at least 10 years? Probably 15? Or more. Ages anyway. The quest for origins: who first discovered and settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, by K.R. Howe is our current book, and I very much suspect I will be one of the few people in the group who will have finished it. I started it early because a friend had warned me it was a slow read. Luckily, for me it wasn't.

Howe, who is a History professor at Massey's Albany campus, was approached by Penguin to write the book after a couple of his responses to various breathless media reports about 'shocking new revelations  about the discovery of New Zealand'. The book covers the history of (European) ideas about where Pacific Islanders came from, and most interestingly, why the assumptions behind these ideas, and often the prejudices that these ideas served. One of the main ideas behind several older theories was the idea that cultures didn't change unless under the influence of another culture - usually a superior one. Gosh, I wonder what sort of cultures they had in mind? Howe argues that this sort of thinking is often behind a lot of the more odd-ball ideas that come up today, whereby pre-Tasman visits to NZ are claimed for the Spanish, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Celts, and for all I know, probably the Inuit!

It's quite an academic book, however I appreciate that. If I'm reading non-fiction I want the nerdy stuff like indexes, bibliographies, and footnotes. In fact, my main complaint about this book is there is a quirky little comment about people once believing people would melt if they crossed the equator. Reference needed, as Wikipedia would say.

The book I'm currently reading is from Massey Library, and is Cycle space: architecture and urban design in the age of the bicycle, by Steven Fleming. One of the things I appreciate about Palmie is its cycle friendliness. (Well sort of. We still get spluttery letters in the paper complaining about the audacity of cyclists actually using the roads.) We have wide flat roads, and about a year ago the council tarsealed the bridle track that runs along the Manawatu River, which means that for most of my bike commute home I'm cycling along gazing at the river and the meadow, counting how many dogs are out walking with their owners, and in no danger of being hit by a car. Thanks PNCC! Tho' again there were spluttery letters in the paper about bikes being allowed on walkers' rightful territory. Sigh...

Back to Fleming's book! There are vignettes of various cycling cities (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Sydney, etc), but the bulk of the book is about what the subtitle says. Because he references a lot of buildings and objects and designers its the sort of book that I read wanting Google beside me. Besides the architecture and design side, he also reflects on the class aspects of cars and cycling, and the various romantic cliches of cycling. He's unashamedly pro-cycling and keeps asking why you'd walk when you can bike. Must be rubbing off on me. I had to walk across campus the other day and thought how much quicker (and more fun) it would be if I could just hop on a bike.