We all do it

As the laundry is whirring away and Foy Vance is trying his best to make himself heard over the noise the spinning laundry makes I once again find myself at a familiar location in my house: The Spare Room. And you know what that means.... another one bites the dust.

No spoiler alert needed this time but if you do not want to now how come you speak the way you do then look away now.

The Seeds of Speech, Language Origin and Evolution - Jean Aitchison

I always love reading about language and about how it all works and came into being.

But this book was very different to what I normally read. It is a non-fiction one and it deals only in facts. The way it is structured made me feel like a student again. Every chapter it tells you exactly what it will do next. Then at the end of every chapter or section there is a little summary in case you forgot what you had read (handy for half sleepy late night reading or when the mind wanders off a bit). At one time I was getting really excited as there seemed to be this special chapter (6) that kept getting mentioned and it seemed that all the good stuff was going to be discussed there. Well, it was good... but not that good.

So... what's it all about then?

Well, basically it is about how we come to talk the way that we do and yet have no real idea on how that has happened. How we have come to do what we do in speech is not something that is only a linguistic question or even only a physically determined thing. There is various other elements to consider when you look at the development of language and it seems that we cannot even agree on the basics. Like when or how it started, was it very basic at first and then grew or vast first and we tidied it throughout time.

This language that we speak on a daily basis is so vital and important to all of us. Just try to imagine or one moment what it feels like not to understand the language hat is spoken to you... when you go abroad or watch Wallander without the subtitles. You feel lost, unable to understand even the most basic of commands. Makes me wonder if our ancestors felt that too. Were there these little groups of geniuses that developed some kind of basic communication system that made them more able to work together and did this increase their chances of survival and therefore the better development of their species... who knows? Anyway.... I digress. One interesting point that Aitchison makes at the start of the book is that contrary to popular belief language is actually quite bad at conveying basic information. She uses the example of explaining to someone how to tie a shoe lace. if you have to tell someone action by action how to do it... not showing them but just using language it makes it very difficult. A picture would be much clearer than just the words. Seems that language is however, very good a smoothing the wheels of society... we love to talk.

One thing that the book clearly shows is that language cannot be seen as an isolated thing. It developed in humans because our bodies were able to produce the sounds and our brains were able to build and process the information needed to start speaking. And yet, if our language has a place where it all came from why is it so difficult to find common elements between languages. Why do some put their words in one order and others do not? Why do some language use verb endings to indicate how many people are doing something and why do other use endings for nouns to do the same thing? Then there is the question of which type of words we got first and how humans built on their language.

One theory in the book I kind of liked is the one by Noam Chomsky. he suggests that when it comes to language children have a built in knowledge of some basic language principles but that they are also aware of some key either/or options (p192). As they learn their language they figure out which option is valid for their language and a "switch" is set in the brain that then closes off the other option for that variable and the parameters for the use and development of their language is set. Nice theory! ... this is what I always find fascinating about language. I guess that is part of why I did linguistics as well and it is reading a book like this that makes me understand why I loved that so much.

This book is a great read if you want to know a bit more about language and how it may have developed. It is basic and only touches on some theories briefly but it will give you a good overview on what is around to read up on.

Title: The Seeds of Speech, Language Origin and Evolution

Author: Jean Aitchison

221 pages (not counting the notes, index and further reading section!)

Cambridge University Press

ISBN #0-521-78571-5

Books to be read: 150

Scary Business

I know... it's not even Sunday and I am at it again. I kind of had to.. trying to clear the backlog before I finish the next one (only 20 pages to go on my language one)... don't want to have things stacking up do we? Ahem..... yes, well....


#### SPOILER ALERT ####

Strangers - Dean R Koontz
Yep, another one from the "No 1 Bestselling Master of Menace".
If I had to break this one down into a few key sentences they would be: several people are scared but do not know why. They go on a mission to find out what happened and then it all comes back to them. Also involves a Government cover up and an alien space ship. What's not to like? Koontz sets the scene and introduces all the players. Connect the dots and then delivers the grand finale. Simples, to quote a famous Meerkat.
As I said, the book starts with painting the picture of the main characters who are all scared but do not know why. We have Dominick Corvaisis who is sleepwalking and ends up barricading himself in his own house afraid that someone or something is going to get him. He is a writer and relatively new to it. It seems our Dom has been through a few changes recently and he has never really stopped to think why. He has a "loyal Sidekick"-friend who advises him on what to do and ends up playing a small pat in all of it too. 
Then there is Ginger Weiss. A successful doctor from a Jewish background who is so capable of handling herself it makes you almost envious of her. She initially gets seriously scared of black gloves and has no idea why. She ends up so unable to cope that she as to go and stay with her boss for a while to get her balance back.
Next up is Ernie Block. Good old solid motel owner Ernie. He has a doting wife and a motel to run so he does not have time to get scared. Yet he is... of the dark. He is sure something is there and he keeps feeling he should get away. Oh, and then there is that spot by the highway....
Another day sees us meet another character. This time it is Father Brendan Cronin he is having some major issues keeping the faith and would probably even go as far to say as that he lost it completely. He is not sure why but it is just gone.
As if all these are not enough to get to grips with we now meet Jack Twist. A master criminal who used to be in the army but decided that after the army left him why should he care. Well he does care, about his wife who has been in a come for years. But that is all he cares for, all he lives for, all that makes him feel good and alive. Not even the most daring of crimes does that for him nowadays. What is it all worth if you have no-one to share it with anyway?
There are some late stragglers (Sandy and Ned) to be added to the list of those affected but they almost seem like a by product of the whole thing... just some more people whose story Koontz has to explain to file some more pages. They do not add anything to the story and it almost seems that they just happen to be affected as well and just happen to live near Ernie. The serve the convenient purpose of being an extra pair of hands in the final plan. Someone had to hold up that door and cook the dinner. Oh, and let us not forget Jorja and her cute moon obsessed daughter Marcie. Cute kid Marcie just keep her away from doctors.
Someone who is connected to the story but not completely involved is a really interesting character called Father Stefan Wycazik. God's very own little trouble shooter. The kind of priest you believe could probably blow up the Hoover dam as well as preach the living daylights out of Sunday Mass. He is a powerful man and an honest one. He is Father Cronin's boss and he tries to do the best for his charge in finding his faith again. He also serves as a very handy vehicle to move the story along in the right direction and to help us gather some vital clues.
Bit by bit you find out some clues to the story that connects these people. There are some mysterious pictures that some if the cast receive , Ginger goes as far as to undergo regression therapy (which does not end well for the therapist) but mostly it is their memories that draw them to the same place where the great reveal takes place. Some weir stuff happens along that way to. Father Brendan becomes a bit of a healer and hen there is this obsession with the moon for some of the characters. Through no small amount of freakish coincidences all the pieces to the puzzle get puzzled together. one by one the characters find out where they need to go and then what happened to them while they were there. Naturally this is partly thanks to some government agents who managed to grow an conscience somewhere between taking part in the cover up and participating in the events several months earlier. There is also the obligatory mad general with delusions of... well who knows really. Once the characters end up at the same place.... the pace where it all started. Things pick up the pace and there is wild driving, shooting, escaping and running around involved before we finally get to find out what has really gone on. I will not bore you with the details but as I said there is a government institution nearby and you did not hear it from me but conspiracy is rife over there in Nevada.
I thought is was a good read but it did seem to have a lot of characters to get to know and I have to say I did win a bet with myself about who was going to end up with who and I am really chuffed about that! However, in the end the "what happened to them" seems relatively small to the amounts of people you have had to meet to get to it. There were so many bits that had to come together and it was spread over so many characters that is almost seems to lose its impact. You wonder who brought what to the table again and where did that little bit of info come from. I would not be surprised if there are parts of the riddle that actually did not come from anyone. I never would have remembered!
Koontz' characters are nice enough and although stereotypes they are entertaining and fun to be around for 700 pages or so. What the book did do is draw me in. Its fault may be the amount of characters but the clever thing is that each of them remembers something different in a different way about what happened to all of them and you kind of need all of them to help you piece it together. What it also did is make me want to do was get to the end of it. I stayed up till about 1.00am to finish it one night because I just had to know how it ended. Partly because I just wanted it over with, partly because I wanted to see if the bad guys really died and the good guys really lived... most of them do.

Title: Strangers
Author: Dean R Koontz
710 pages
Headline
ISBN #0-7472-3516-3

Books to be read: 151

Add and subtract

Another Sunday has come around and sees me sitting at the desk again. The weekend so far has been quiet. Went to see Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday, which was absolutely brilliant. Today has, for a change not been a reading day but a cryptic crossword day. I decided to take a break from them as my brain seems only to be ale to manage to figure out two clues an hour and that does not seem very productive to me. Writing this blog however, far more productive, far easier to do!

Went to the British Library last weekend and saw the exhibition Murder in the Library. It was all about crime fiction throughout the ages. Very, very interesting and it has given me lots of ideas on what books I can buy next. I did promise myself that going to London and an exhibition about books that if the urge to buy overtook me that I could buy a book or two. The one stipulation that I made for myself was that they would have to be second hand. Did I stick to that???? Well, really.. do you have to ask?!?! About five minutes after the words were uttered I was the proud owner of two new Oliver Sacks books. Fair enough, they were on sale but they were not second hand. They were on the mental list of "books to look into to get" but that does not really matter does it? Anyway... two more books to declare.

Books bought: 2
Books to be read: 153

To even out the scores a bit I am going to do a bit of work on the outstanding reviews now. It may not decrease the count a lot but it will make me feel like I am making some kind of headway.... maybe I should listen to my friends and go and find that phone number for bookaholics anonymous after all?

#### SPOILER ALERT ####

A Prayer for Owen Meany  - John Irving
I finished this one a fair few weeks ago now and I am not completely sure if I like Owen any better than I did when I just finished it. 
For most of the book I found Owen an annoying little, snivelling, arrogant, know it all, self centred, weirdly unbalanced character. Oh, and Irving made him really small as well. I do not know if I found it more annoying that Irving gave him a high pitched freakish voice in the fictional reality of the book or that he insisted on having everything that Owen said printed in capital letters in the text of the book? Both grated on me. Both the fictional and the real. I guess that is the point. Irving found a way to make Owen equally annoying  in the fictional and the real life. He made Owen a real character for me. Someone I could imagine hearing in the real world.... and find annoying! What Irving seems to have also done really well is to give you a "hero" that is not really a hero until the end. He has made Owen annoying (at least to me) but in the end you kind of feel for him and you are moved by his story. To say that Owen is a bit of a weird kid is an understatement. Irving has made him almost into a freak. Yet the freak does okay in the end.
Owen's story is told in flashbacks by his best friend Johnny Wheelwright (who is now trying his best at being a Canadian, and failing miserably). For someone who says he does not care about America any more he seems to spend a lot of time not getting annoyed at American politics. He gets upset by the things the American government does and has to ban himself from reading news from the USA to stay on an even keel. He never really seems to enjoy what he has around him and seems a bit bitter and even angry. He says he believes in God and goes to church regularly but something tells me that he is still angry with God for taking away his mum and then his best friend.
Johnny is of founding father stock and has deep and powerful links into the community through his family. The family has a powerful matriarch at the head of it in Grandma Harriet Wheelwright. She rules the roost with an iron fist. She seems an impatient woman but yet she has taken in her former maidservant and given her a home for life. One of the first surprises if the book is that you find out that  Johnny is the product of an affair his mum had (you will never guess in a million years who she had the affair with! I never saw it coming). The next surprise is that Johnny's mum  is not long for this world when we meet her and that Owen actually kills Johnny's mum.. not intentionally! It is a case of a ball game gone bad. The one time Owen swings for a ball and tragedy strikes. In a strange way it also cements Owen and Johnny's friendship. They do not really talk about what happened but in some weird way Owen does try to make things easier and better for Johnny.
To be kind to Owen... he is a very special one of a kind kid. The size, the voice and the fact that he always seems to know something no-one else does or no-one else understands just yet. He seems to have a kind of instinct about things and a way of finding out things that is slightly eerie. Then there are the weird things he does. Why does he keep the mannequin that Johnny's mum had, dressed up in his favourite dress of hers and has it standing by his bed side? Is he a prophet or just some weirdo? With Owen there are always a lot of questions. You ask yourself why he is so convinced that he will die and so eager to get out to Vietnam? Why does he let Hester beat him up? Why do both Johnny's mum and grandmother want to do their best for him and help him along with his education. Why does Owen bother to keep at Johnny to study harder, be better? So many things do not make a lot of sense in the book and Owen is a bit of a riddle and does not seem to have a great fondness for helping you to understand what he does and why.. His actions seem to be random but I have a feeling that because he senses (maybe not even really knows for sure) that he is doing exactly what needs to be done to help those he loves along their life paths the best he can. Perhaps more so as he knows his life path may not be very long. He saves Johnny from the army, he helps him find out who his mum really was, he also helps him find his father. He is a great friend to Johnny in his own special way and I think this is what Johnny's mother and grandmother see in him. Sure Owen may be weird and unpredictable, not come from founding father stock and from a peculiar family but he is important to them all at one point.
I feel that Owen really comes in to his own at Gravesend Academy. I like him more there than as a smaller kid. He is an excellent student and also a very critical student. He is not prepared to just accept what he is told. His voice becomes the VOICE. He clashes with students, teachers and the headmaster (who is a total idiot!). His time at the academy comes to a bit of a tumultuous end but he seems to have picked up the essentials anyway. He has been educated by his teachers, by the criticism he was allowed to vent and by those who wanted to stop him from venting it. 
It is not really a surprise that Owen ends up in the army. He has always been interested in politics and the war during the academy days and as his visions of his future seem to involve war the decision to join is kind of made for him. It is kind of surprising that he becomes the person who accompanies the caskets of dead soldiers home. Seems that for all his protesting, radical ideas and weird childhood Owen Meany is one of the most compassionate men the army have to offer grieving families. I will not give away the ending of the book but Owen does die and it is not pretty but the way he dies is somehow fitting. It explains a lot about his life and about the choices he has made.

Weirdest moment in he book: The Nativity scene preparations and the actual performance. Surreal... weird and frightening come to mind. The way that Owen chastises his parents is scary and unexpected for a kid his age.

Best moment in the book: involves a car, a stage and a number of basketball players and the teachers having a bit of a tough time getting it back out of the building. This bit cracked me up!! Owen should have been a lawyer as technicalities are his speciality.

Saddest moments in the book: Owen dying and also when you find out why Owen was who he was. Such loopy parents, the kid never had a chance 


Title: A Prayer for Owen Meany
Author: John Irving
637 pages
Black Swan
ISBN # 0-552-99369-7

Books to be read: 152

At long last

Finally I am able to sit down and do a little update... It has been long in the making and long overdue. I have been busy with work, keeping my back moving and flexible and holidaying. 

Mum and I had a really good holiday last week. I have managed to get a few more nice bits and pieces for the house and some new clothes as well. Some more good news is that after about 7 months my back is finally getting better. It seems that two extremely painful sessions with the Sports Masseur were all that was needed to get my muscles to pay attention and fall in line with the rest of my body again. It is amazing what you can do to remedy muscle pain by using a tennis ball and a sturdy wall.

On the book front I only have one more book buy to report. I blame my mum for this one as she kept dragging me into second hand bookshops everywhere we went and telling me to have a little browse around and take as much time as I wanted. I was bound to cave in and duly did in the Willen Hospice Bookshop in Stony Stratford. This means that the grand total of books to be read now stands at a lovely, whopping 151.

My current reading: slowly making my way through The Seeds of Speech, all about language creation and acquisition. 

Books left to review: 2 but I am afraid they will have to wait until Sunday. 

Book themed outing for  Saturday: British Library for the exhibition on Crime Fiction... cannot wait!!!