January Reading

So much for updating "soon." Oh well. During January I read:

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Continuing on my mission to read every work by Jane Austen, I read Northanger Abbey, the shortest of the author's novels. Overall, NA was enjoyable. More of a mystery/gothic novel than Austen's usual romantic fare, this novel provided a bit more plot than the author's other books. Following this trend, the characters were also more melodramatic, less realistic than the characters from P&P or S&S (though not including Lydia Bennett, of course). The villainous scoundrels, Isabella and John Thorpe, were very aggravating indeed. Tinley is the type-cast hero, and Catherine is a good-enough heroine. The first half of the novel reads like a typical Austen romance with chance encounters and misunderstandings between our protagonists, and we do not arrive at the eponymous Northanger Abbey until halfway through the narrative. There the romance is subverted by mischief of a more gothic kind, including secret murders. In the end, of course, everything is put right, as is always expected in an Austen novel. NA was a very short and engaging read. It definitely tops Persuasion (what doesn't?), and for me, probably ties with Sense and Sensibility. Number 1 on my 2011 Free Choice Reading Challenge! (But probably the last one for a while)

Philosophy of Technology by Val Dusek

Read this for my class on human enhancement and bioethics. A good introduction to the history of philosophy of technology/science, which fits right into my interests in science fiction studies. A very good primer on the subject.

A Practical Companion to Ethics by Anthony Weston

Also read for my bioethics class. Not so much a history of ethics as an overview of the current state of things. For me, it was too didactic and relied to heavily on religious traditions and texts. Although, it did include a very nice chapter on creative problem solving. I wasn't quite sure how it fit in with the rest, but that chapter at least was applicable to my life.

Into the Unknown by Robert Philmus (which I can't find a picture for)

Read this as part of my independent research on the emergence of science fiction. It started off as very informative, with an analysis of early SF's links to utopian and satire writing. Then, however, it digressed to definitions of the field as well as close readings of certain texts. In the end, it was marginally helpful, but it wasn't really what I was looking for.