Buying books online – cheaper than local bookstores?

Practical money-saving advice for online book buyers not part of the civilized world (the US and wherever else Amazon has local sites):

If you buy from Amazon (or really any other site that charges for delivery), consider BookDepository, a UK-based online shop which ships books worldwide for free. Yes, that’s right, no shipping costs! Books are somewhat more expensive, but shipping + VAT (at least in Israel) is more expensive still. Case in point:

I want to make a purchase of 8 books (all popular non-fiction). Subtotal in Amazon was slightly less than US$100. If there’s only one shipment, that’s $7 for the shipment, plus $4 per item, that’s a total of around $140. Israeli VAT is 15.5%, so my final payment is around $160. If I want to avoid the VAT, I have to split into at least three shipments of less than $50 each, but the per-shipment cost makes this a pointless endeavor.

On BookDepository, the subtotal is roughly $120 – about 20% more expensive than Amazon. No shipping fees, so if sent in a single shipment, that’s about $140 after VAT. However, since shipping is free, I can split this into three separate shipments with no added costs, avoiding the VAT, saving me $40! Woo!

Furthermore, Israeli bookstores usually sell popular titles for NIS60-80, that is $15-20. Taking the cheaper price, that matches BookDepository. However, the titles I’m interested in are usually not available in Israel (unless translated, and I greatly prefer originals), and certainly the convenience of online shopping is much better than physically hunting obscure geek titles. I’m a bit miffed by the economics involved, but the numbers speak for themselves.

Another perk is the possibility to buy books on a whim, without waiting for the wishlist to fill up (this can actually be catastrophic if you’re impulsive, but hey…).

Mileage outside of Israel may vary, since VAT may be  lower or non-existent in other countries, but Amazon’s worldwide shipping charges are still more than 20% of popular titles.

One caveat is that I’m yet to actually buy anything, so can’t report on the gruesome details of the delivery. Still, I imagine it can’t get worse than standard international shipping, which I’d get in Amazon anyway.

Giant hat tip to Mark, who allowed me to cram more enlightenment into my salary.

If you know even cheaper online book deals, please let me know.

Adventures of Ideas by Alfred North Whitehead

Perhaps it is a flaw of character, but I have a need to finish the books I started. They may be boring, incomprehensible, stupid, but once started, they must be finished. It may take me a month or a year, but by God I will read it through! However, what if it turns out that the book is so bad I shouldn’t have started it in the first place? Write a damning review, of course.

Enter Adventures of Ideas – “a brilliant history of mankind’s great thoughts”. I sure am a sucker for such tag lines. And even though there was a major warning sign in the form of Richard Feynman’s experience with Whitehead, I pushed through, the naive pup that I am. But enough weak wit. More to the point, the book, while having potential, fails at a number of important points.

First, false advertising. The book consists of four parts – Sociological, Cosmological, Philosophical and Civilization. Only the first part deals with ideas and their historical significance, while the only history in the other parts are Whitehead’s sporadic mentions of Plato and a few other influential philosophers. Whitehead forsakes actual history for his own prescriptions in philosophy and civilization.

Second, intended audience. The book is advertised as “popular”, but I can imagine it being popular only among the tenured staff of theology departments. Whitehead is certainly a very learned individual, and he assumes that so are everyone else. He talks about ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Jews, ancient Egyptians, Christians and the multitude of denominations within Christianity as if their history and culture with all their intricacies were a matter of common knowledge. But they’re not, and that’s precisely the gap historians are supposed to bridge. But facts are flung about like nobody’s business, with no contextual glue to make anything coherent out of them. The same problem plagues the philosophical parts. It reads like a doctoral thesis, not a work for the general audience.

Third, the pretense of the language. Perhaps an English expert would be able to defend “rôle” and “coördination”, “relata” and “percepta”, but not my spell-checker. In some parts he quotes the original Greek, at least once without translation. These are minor examples, but they illustrate the overall tone, and some peculiar detachment from reality.

Fourth, and this was Feynman’s observation as well, Whitehead talks a lot but says very little. The entire Philosophical part, for example, is dedicated to building a new metaphysics. And so Whitehead feels compelled to prove that causality exists by lengthy discourses. However, what most of the talk is for I couldn’t understand. The general idea became clear only near the end. Whitehead claims that we know the world through more than our five senses. We also “feel” the immediate past (this is somehow distinct from mere memories), or our own connection with our bodies. Rephrased by me, more than five senses can be identified. Thus causality exists because we feel it in a very direct sense. But consider:

It is now possible to determine the sense in which the future is immanent in the present. The future is immanent in the present by reason of the fact that the present bears in its own essence the relationships which it will have to the future. It thereby includes in its essence the necessities to which the future most [sic] conform. The future is there in the present, as a general fact belonging to the nature of things. It is also there with such general determinations as it lies in the nature of the particular present to impose on the particular future which must succeed it.

And he goes on and on. This verbal Sahara damns the book beyond redemption.

Very recently I’ve finished The Cosmic Code, which deals with quantum mechanics. And according to Feynman, nobody understands QM, and he got a Nobel prize for work in that field! Still, The Cosmic Code is very readable. It is not simple – some parts I will have to reread and maybe consult other works – but Pagels did an exemplary job of explaining what cannot be understood due to the limitations of our minds not evolved for the world of the very small. How is it that some can communicate the incomprehensible itself, while others make a mess of everyday human experiences? It becomes even more ironic when you consider Whitehead’s background as an educator.

Thus, a suggestion – nay, a plea – to any educator from one who does want to be educated: make sense, please. I don’t think I have the strength to go through another such Adventure, and most won’t even bother with the first one.

Blindsight by Peter Watts

Damn. I guess it had to happen eventually.

2082. Firefall – 65,536 objects envelop the earth in a perfect grid, burning up in its atmosphere. Cameras. But whatever took our photo with our pants down doesn’t want to to talk, or to be found. By chance, some obscure comet is found to have the peculiar property of transmitting a signal to somewhere outside the solar system. A manned ship is dispatched, but is too late – the transmitter destroys itself along with the comet upon detection. Scanning the sky in the direction of the transmission yields a destination more than half a light year away from home. Not the time to chicken out.

Humanity’s best and brightest are on that ship – professionals augmented with so much machinery and neurological hacks they’re not comprehensible to baseline humans anymore. There’s the biologist, a bionic human who can can see x-rays and taste ultrasound, but barely feels his own body. There’s the linguist, who spliced her brain to let in three other personalities – helps with understanding communication, see? There’s the pacifist soldier, sent to increase our chances of survival should we be caught in a fight to slightly above zero. There’s a synthesist, whose job is to translate the incomprehensible into something a baseline can understand, from mere observation. Half of his brain was lost to epilepsy treatment, replaced with technology. And to command the mission, man’s recently resurrected nightmare of yore – a vampire, coupled with the ship’s AI. Humanity’s ambassadors. Freaks.

And then there’s the alien. Ahoy!

So begins one of the best science fiction books out there. First contact with a truly alien intelligence, and the best technology can offer in a hundred years from now to help us get through it. But of course it’s a study of humanity just as much as it is a study of a possibility of such an encounter. I have a strong urge to compare it to Solaris – there’s even a girl involved. But Watts takes it farther. Lem didn’t try to explain how Solaris came to be, although the mechanisms of the evolution of life were known since 1859. Not constrained by any explanation, Lem’s alien could be anything at all, bordering on the mystical. But since we do know the mechanism of its evolution, we can at least try to reason about the nature of an interstellar intelligence. Of course we shouldn’t expect aliens to be our mirror images with big heads and green skin, or giant ants that defy the laws of physics by not collapsing to the ground. What might we expect?

Watts also touches on the nature of consciousness and intelligence. Do they necessarily come together? What good is consciousness anyway? How much are we really in control? This is the main issue of the book, and you’ll have to read it and be sucked in just as I was. You’ll also be compelled to pick up the books for further reading, listed at the end section of Notes and References.

Now, readability. Blindsight is “hard” science fiction, which means that Watts isn’t just making stuff up. It’s grounded in real science, and the jargon flies around like nobody’s business. And although scientific literacy isn’t a must for plain understanding, it is for full enjoyment. Blindsight is a book of ideas, and Watts – sometimes unfortunately – doesn’t feel like expounding on the basics he thought his readers should already know. But then, you’re more than welcome to fire up Wikipedia and fill in the blanks.

Yet what Blindsight lacks in the department of layman’s understanding, it more than makes up with a gripping plot and characters. It is part mystery novel (first contact is a mystery by definition), part horror (you try not to be scared when you’re practically alone with an alien whose intentions are anybody’s guess), part psychological study (how do humans behave so far from home?). But of course there’s no mysticism involved, and the fear is only that of the unknown.

But above all, Blindsight is a book that will make you think. It’s a thought experiment, carried through to disturbing perfection – dark and troubling but also powerful and insightful. A feast for the mind. Don’t miss it.

A Clockwork Orange

[WARNING: Spoilers ahead.]

I finished Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I’ve never watched the film, and I can say that the book is very good. It is about Alex, a very violent young boy, whose violence is later “cured” by mind-control methods. Along with violence, Alex loves classical music (it makes him ecstatic, inspiring even more violence). The “cure” of his violence makes music intolerable to him. In the battle between the Government and the Party, it is even used to drive him to suicide (the Party wants to show how disastrous the Government’s mind-control methods of “curing” violence are by sacrificing Alex).

In the end, the Government, in order to remain in power, reverses Alex’s treatment, not restraining him from violence any more, and he can return to enjoy the music he so loved. We see Alex returning to his old ways, but then “reforming” on his own – he feels more grown up now, wants to leave violence behind and start a family. His last comments are on how his children will invariably repeat the same cycle, and him unable to do anything about it.

The question is then asked (at least by commentators), which is better – to choose evil of your own accord, or be forced to always choose good (thus having no real choice at all)? The answer is apparently the former. Preserve the freedom, allow moral growth, etc. Better than any debilitating, anti-freedom mind control games. The title itself refers to the man who is not given a choice as a “clockwork orange”, a mere mechanical device. A denial of humanity, an usurping of God. Right?

But I wonder, what kind of choice did Alex have in the first place? Alex did what he did because he wanted to. In chapter 4, he ridicules the attempts in the newspaper to analyze and explain “badness”, for no such attempt is made with “goodness”. And it is not as if he is trying to thwart the good, it is simply that he does as he wants. “Badness is of the self”, he says. So how can he do any good under such circumstances? Supposing there was no mind control, suppose he lost a bet to a friend and had to be good for a while, what then? He would be extremely bored, very unhappy. He was not forced to choose the bad by outside influence, true, but neither could he choose the good in any meaningful sense but as a potentiality, a potentiality he would never take anyway. He knows he won’t take it, the author knows it, and the reader knows it. So where is the choice here?

Then there is his growing up. Here there is also no element of choice. It comes to him as a realization – he first feels irritated at his new friends and ways, and his new goal in life dawns on him only after he meets his old friend Pete, now happily married. And he understands full well that his son is apt to repeat the same things he did. This moral growth, apparently organic and natural, has no freedom in it. It just happens. And nothing will change in the long run.

Man already is a clockwork orange. The mind-control methods of the book are simply iron rods stuck in the mechanism that make it work differently. We may argue whether this new mechanism is better or worse, whether we have a right to interfere with it in the first place. But we should not confuse freedom with mere potentialities.

Comics

Well, I just finished reading Watchmen. Wow. The Wiki gives a good historical overview, and I won’t repeat it here, save to say that it definitely is one of the best 100 novels in English literature since 1923. Or since antiquity, if you take my word for it (not that you should, but that’s how much I liked it). I don’t think my description of it will do it justice without introducing spoilers. I’ll just say that it’s dark and morally ambiguous to the extreme, which is the sort of thing I like, since it gets you thinking. But anyway, this post isn’t about Watchmen, but comics in general.

Now, many people’s familiarity with the medium probably consists of super-hero comics for kids or teenagers, and the various series based on them (Superman, X-Men, Batman, etc.), and thus tend to dismiss anything in called “comics” as not deserving of their attention (since they’re all grown up now and read serious fiction, see?). That’s the way I thought about it, until I was, err, converted. It was Justen who had shown me the light, by brain-washing me into reading a few comic books.

I don’t remember the title of the first comic I read due to his recommendation, but I have read It’s a Bird, Midnight Nation and Transmetropolitan under his guidance, all of which I can heartily recommend, especially Transmetropilan, which takes place in a futuristic, decadent megalopolis. Drugs, prostitution, cheap mass-marketed religions, corrupt politicians, and various experiments to alter Homo sapiens, from cybernetic implants to genetic engineering to eliminating the physical body altogether, are all present in plenty. In short, society has gone bonkers. The protagonist is a nutty journalist, Spider Jerusalem, easily one of the coolest characters in fiction, who reluctantly returns to civilization after his publisher threatens him to complete the two books he was obliged to under their contract.

If you feel uncomfortable reading “mere comics”, then perhaps you’ll feel safer calling it “graphic novels”. Personally, I dislike the term. It’s a sort of silly political correctness, which might appeal to certain audiences, but I think is uncalled for.

So do your cultural self a favor, and get a comic today. My personal recommendation is Watchmen, that would give you a certain jolt, and a taste for the more “serious” side of comics.

Alchemy revisited

A few days ago I finished reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. I wanted to read it for a while now, as some my friends recommended it, and there's a lot of fuss about it. (It's sold in the store in my base, for example.)

The book tells of a young Spanish shepherd, Santiago, who dreams about a treasure hidden near the pyramids in Giza. He doesn't put much stock into it, and gets entirely discouraged after seeing an old gypsy chiromancer woman. Promptly after, however, he meets Melchizedek, who convinces him to follow his dream. Thus begins his adventure in Africa.

But, wait… Melchizedek?… I was growing suspicious. Actually, I became suspicious after reading the book's tag-line: "When you want something, all the world conspires in helping you to achieve it." Now, it should be said that I knew nothing about the book or the author beforehand (otherwise I might not have picked it up in the first place), so I read on, hoping. Well… hope dies last, don't you know.

The book is full of (monotheistic) religious references, allusions and general rhetoric, which is so embedded into the plot and narration that it's impossible to take it metaphorically. It's also full of capitalized words: the Soul of the World, the Universal Language, the Signs, the Path, the Hand That Writes Everything [this is actually my own translation from Russian, it may have been translated a bit differently into English], and so on. It's just a saturated collection of New Age wisdom and cliches, and it doesn't even add anything new to it. So even if it's presented as an otherwise readable fable with a very positive message, it ended up being mostly meaningless for me, and a disappointment.

What does alchemy have to do with this, you might be wondering? Well, properly understood, it's just another way towards the Soul of the World. Yes, he does meet the Alchemist eventually, although technically he didn't need alchemy – it's a means, not an end. The title is quite ironic, actually – after all, alchemy has been shown to be bunk, even if it was very popular for a long time.

Bottom line – not recommended. Don't believe the hype.

Hebrew books are costly

A while ago I wanted to get Lem's Solaris. Since I don't usually read in Russian (and that's bad, my vocabulary is suffering), and since I had to get some sort of translation anyway (I make a point of reading books in their original language, if I can help it), I figured I'd get it in Russian. I walked into the first store (lots of Russian bookstores in Jerusalem), and got a newly-printed paperback for NIS 18 (~US $4). How much does the paperback Hebrew translation cost? ~NIS 70 (~US $15). And in Amazon? US $10, plus a few bucks for shipment. And apparently, the book Amazon offers was translated from French, not directly from Polish. Even second hand books cost more than their newly printed Russian translations.

Turns out this is actually the rule. Hebrew books are costly. Literacy is costly. One book = two movie tickets = one or two music CDs (more music if it's from the internet, I suppose) = lunch for two (depends, of course) = a third or a fourth of a PC game… considering that reading isn't the most favourite pastime of most people, and that many young people (including yours truly) are on a tight budget, that makes literature simply less accessible.

There are libraries, of course. But I like to own my books, building my own library :-) Oh well. Just means that there'll be more Russian in my repertoire! Speaking of which, here are some titles I hope to read soon:

1. Mika Waltari, The Egyptian
2. Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
3. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
4. Albert Camus, The Stranger
5. Yasunari Kawabata, The Dancing Girl Of Izu
6. Kobo Abe, The Woman In The Dunes
7. Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Read or die!