Le Morte d'Arthur (Thomas Malory)

Thomas Malory

Le Morte D'Arthur

Started off an interesting read with excellently evocative illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. It's a long list of knightly adventures which after a couple of hundred pages starts to wane somewhat. There's only so many ways that a joust can be described surely, and this doesn't even go into much detail. There seems to bit a bit of exaggeration even for a legend as Arthur ransacked Rome & everywhere in between. And how many knights were there to kill in Britain at the time? There are also far too many damsel's in distress to be "comforted" for modern tastes. So fairly repetitive a bit like Homer's Greek legends or don Quixote but to be honest without the compelling descriptions. I was reading this alongside Gargantua and Pantagruel and thought why? when there is so much more relevant and interesting reads out there. So another stopped before the finish. I'm making a habit of it. Maybe I'll flick through and look at the rest of the pictures...

Gargantua and Pantagruel (Francois Rabelais)

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel

A beast of a book that is mainly about the exploits of a giant and his son written in 1500’s. The style is quite hard to read, despite a very good translation, as many of the people and places and customs listed are alien and so we don’t get the fully brunt of many of the attacks, or agreements. However it’s an interesting read especially the bawdy bits that are surprisingly frank, I guess from that time to this many people in Europe have become a lot more inhibited. The humour is childish at times and there are too many lists of things that don’t mean a lot to me and were probably only tolerable 500 years ago as entertainment was limited and stories the main one. Having got through the Pantagruel book and ploughing through Gargantua I thought life's too short to read the same farcical and juvenile exploits of a giant which obviously had a cutting social commentary half a millennium ago but means little now. So I stopped..

The Little Book of Philosophy for the Internet of Things (Petras various contributors)

Petras various contributors

The Little Book of Philosophy for the Internet of Things

An interesting book laying out various ethical challenges that society faces as computing power forges ahead following Moore's Law on steroids enabling many a multitude of sensors to be cheaply implemented with the resulting data being analysed through machine learning. With the results of that starting to rule our lives which is where the ethical bit comes in. Short readable pamphlet which is great food for thought. I assisted somewhat to the overall Petras programme in part by facilitating research students putting garden gnomes on the Olympic Park and having them chat to visitors. All tastefully painted and named by local school kids. Have given to my daughter studying Philosophy in Prague who by coincidence has just started an AI module. That coincidence may or may not support the theory of determinism. And thereby lead to the inevitability of machines taking over the world, if not the galaxy. For discussion...

The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)

Jack Kerouac

The Dharma Bums

Enjoyable story about Kerouac's time in California meditating and bumming around the country. Lots of beat generation celebrities are part of the story which lunges from drunken orgies (well, I'd consider it that) to full on meditating whilst fully sober to mountain trekking with the other main character in the story. Philosophical musings about like, on and off the road, make the book more than an adventure yarn. All builds up to a solitary summer job up a mountain the end of which ends the book. A good read and I should re-read more of his stuff.

Miseducation (Diane Reay)

Diane Reay

Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes

A very interesting read about how the education system has worked against the working class indeed has always been set up to do so. Many of the stats are unarguable and the theme of the book also. However most of the way through I started questioning the analysis and then looking again at the conclusions drawn. My issues are many...

Firstly, what has Brexit got to do with it. It's not happened yet. This has become a (mainly) left wing catch all for the wrongs of society which is a very easy way to blame right wing nationalists (the general brush by which "leavers" are tarred) for all of society's ills. Regardless of the fact that many on the left voted to leave and that Labour were in power for 13 years up until 2010 which is longer than Thatcher was in power. As an aside I've just been given a report by esteemed universities that says that "up to" 12,400 additional people will die of heart disease over 10 years because they can't eat vegetables due to Brexit. And agreeing with analysis of the adverse health effects put together by a retailer lobbying group that included such well known promoters of healthy eating such as McDonalds and KFC. Really shows how poor our university analysis is. Which comes on to...

Reay takes similar issues and concerns of parents and gives a very different analysis. For instance the usual and widely acknowledged parental fear of their kids first day at school is ridiculed by Reay for middle class mothers but is seen as perfectly valid for working class mothers. There is no empathy in any of the book for either parents or teachers, and very little for the kids to be honest. The cases are simply used to further Reay's argument. The specific cases of children are similarly treated indeed some of their statements are twisted by Reay to support her argument. The analysis is not consistent and to my mind flawed. As anyone knows kids won't necessarily say what they think especially if they are in a group with friends. The analysis is not about the root cause of societal inequalities that schools operate within except mentioned in passing and then Reay ploughs on to the next individual case to prove a point. The question of austerity is touched on but only to press home that working class schools suffer more than middle class schools and is mentioned in the same sentence as Brexit as if they are linked economically (austerity came before the leave vote, remember?). The other issue is that she has not defined working, middle and upper classes and therefore the whole book is confusing. The book only deals with English schools. Why not Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. And for that matter France or Germany. Is it because her argument that England is the worst place on earth for eduction will start to fall down? There is mention of USA but only in passing. Reay keeps on going back to the 60s and 70s as to how bad they were, but elsewhere says about how things have got worse which at times is contradictory.

In 200 pages there are six at the end on how to improve things and most of those six pages are used up in bemoaning that England doesn't do those things. With no case studies as to what will work despite telling us about how bad England is compared to all other countries.

The book is also extremely offensive to teachers trying to do their best (they are all dismissed as working within the system and therefore part of the problem) and very dismissive of middle class parents sending kids to comprehensives if they do not believe in selective education as Reay says that they know that their kids will be streamed anyway.

Maybe I started to feel a little defensive but this tome seems completely driven by Reay's bitter experience of Oxbridge. It's far too personal to be taken seriously. She herself says that people have accused her of having a chip on her shoulder. As this book is 200 pages of telling us how working class kids are not given a good education and those that are such as her are shackled by their background it does feel a little like a chip, yes.

In the end a poor analysis of an important subject. Ironically it is written in a fairly academic way and obviously for a "well educated" audience with a high command of English. Don't bother if you have English as a second language...