Book Log – Letters from the Age of Reason

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Letters from the Age of Reason by Nora Hague

I’m not sure how this book ended up in our house.  I think Stacey got it as a gift several years ago.  It’s been sitting on the To Be Read shelf for longer than I can remember (though, since it was written in 2002, that’s our earlier limit).

I picked it up a year or two ago, I think for lack of anything better to read on hand.  I’ve been picking it up on and off since then.

This is another historical fiction from the era of slavery (set just before and during the Civil War), and like The Unknown World, it’s not my typical fare.  But it’s a well written first novel, and like Jane Austen’s first novel, it is composed entirely of letters.  The book tackles the oddity of relationships between slaves, owners, and those with uncomfortably mixed ancestry.

I like to look up authors I’m unfamiliar with, but Nora Hague hasn’t got much info out there.  A few reviews of this book, no wikipedia page, and a Facebook page with the french edition of this book as the profile picture.  Her author note at the back of the book says she’s working on her second novel… it must be a long one.

Book Log – Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy & Expressive Anatomy

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Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy by Christopher Hart
Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books) by Will Eisner

So here we have two books on drawing… one by a relatively young guy, and another by a giant in the field, published posthumously from his notes.

It surprises even me that, while I liked both books, I found the young guy’s more educational.

It’s obvious that Will Eisner is the better artist.  There are many drawings from Christopher Hart’s book that I find… less than publishable-quality.  But Christopher Hart is the first person to really make me pay attention to skeletal and muscular structure.  I don’t know why; Almost all the figure drawing books I have go over this.  But there’s something in the way Hart breaks it down that made it easy for me to digest.  Amazingly Easy, I guess.

Granted, the books don’t have the same aim.  Eisner is addressing expressiveness and storytelling.  Hart is trying to communicate the basics.  It’s entirely possible I’m just not ready for the Eisner.

I can accept that.  I’ve got it in my library for later.

Book Log – Un Lun Dun

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Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

Curt Holman loaned me this book, a favorite of his daughter’s.

My only experience with China Mieville thus far has been Perdido Street Station, which is a quirky but engrossing book. Mieville seems like the writer that the term “speculative fiction” was coined for, as one hesitates to call it fantasy or science fiction.

Un Lun Dun is a surprising and creative book intended for kids, but entertaining for adults.

Jumping between what I’ll call an Un-World and this world, it has a down the rabbit hole feel, but more grounded than the Alice surrealism. The world of unLondon thrives on the cast-offs of the real London, where animated garbage and eccentric creatures abound. A crisis that threatens unLondon and London alike can seemingly only be thwarted by a prophesied young girl, but Mieville is not so pedestrian to allow that to play out as you would expect.

The vivid description of the action and oddball characters is crying out for a movie adaptation.

Dreams of My President

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I dreamed last night that I participated in two unrelated press conferences with President Obama.

The majority of the dream was me trying to figure out how to compress the description of the experience into 140 characters.

This is my brain trying to tell me something.

On Money

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Sometimes, I think it would have been fun to be an economist. Then I blink my eyes, shake my head a bit, and the feeling passes.

But my interest in the mathematics behind sustainable incomes and considering the big picture economy doesn’t fade.

So, there have been two articles in the past few weeks that caught my eye. One on IKEA’s U.S. plant woes, and the other on a “realistic wage“, i.e. the minimum salary to live in a sustainable way and be able to plan for retirement, etc.

IKEA’s $8/hour starting wage would be sufficient for a part time job for the second earner in a two income household with no kids and renting (31.5 hours a week, 50 weeks a year). To sustain a single person on their own, the worker would need to work 75 hours a week, 50 weeks a year (less if they get higher pay for the overtime). In Sweden, the minimum wage is $19/hour, with 5 weeks paid vacation.

New York Times

Essentially, anyone making less than $15/hour1 is going to be dependent on someone else in order to make a sustainable living, get healthcare, plan for retirement. Add a kid into the mix, and the number goes up to $23/hour.

These numbers are based on the New York Times table, developed from the report by the Wider Opportunities for Women and Department of Health and Human Services.

So what happens in America if we take these numbers as real, and seek to improve the minimum wage? As labor costs go up, so do the cost of goods and services. As the cost of goods and services rise, the “reality wage” goes up. If the minimum wage is increased to counter that… is there a unstable feedback loop happening, or does the system stabilize?

If we purchase fewer goods and services to counter the rise in costs, does the economy take a nose dive? Or is the cost of goods and services kept in check by the lowering of the “wages” of the upper classes, thereby closing the income gap that has reportedly been growing over the last twenty years? (Is there enough money being earned at the top such that “re-distributing” some of it could make a meaningful difference at the bottom?)

It is easy to see why one might want to leave it to the Invisible Hand to set minimum wages… messing about with a complex system can have very undesirable results.

On the other hand… $8/hour just ain’t enough. The Invisible Hand is not necessarily wise, or correct.

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1This is using my 50 weeks/40 hours, no paid vacation model.