I bought this book based solely on the back cover, not knowing that it’s a classic and has been included (by very respectable SF writers) in lists like “if you are only going to read 3 SF books, here’s the ones you should read”.

Here’s what it says about the book (minus the usual gushing quotes from major newspapers):

The atomic Flame Deluge was over.
The earth was dead.
All knowledge was gone.

In a hellish, barren desert, a humble monk
unearths a fragile link to a twentieth-century
civilization. A hand-written document from the
Blessed Saint Leibowitz that reads:

Pound pastrami
can kraut
six bagels
– bring home for Emma

Civilization has been destroyed, and in a subsequent backlash against the science that enabled this, anyone who can be somehow considered responsible (meaning anyone with an education) is killed. All books are destroyed, and most of the world becomes illiterate.
In an effort to save at least some knowledge, a man named Leibowitz founds a monastic order dedicated to gathering and preserving whatever scraps of written material they can find. Most of it is incomprehensible to them, but they store it all, for many long centuries, in the hopes that some day it will prove useful.

Generally classed as science fiction, but there is no science in it. There’s far more religion than science, in fact. I guess it’s really speculative fiction – what-if fiction. It’s one of the classic post-apocalyptic novels, written in the deepest depths of the cold war and a fear of nuclear destruction. It’s a very pessimistic book in one sense. History keeps repeating itself: the fall of Rome and the loss of the knowledge of antiquity is followed by the Deluge, which in turn is followed by another apocalypse that we see coming at the end of the book. Knowledge is lost, rediscovered, and grotesquely distorted in history’s mirror. Our efforts are futile and our lives ultimately achieve little.

But while the book is about man’s everlasting hubris and folly, it’s also about his hope and persistence. Man knocks himself down flat and still stands up again and again. And while the monks’ lives may be filled with years of futile striving, there is also belief, a sense of meaning and community.

There is a lot of religion in the book, naturally, but although it is generally presented as a force for good, Miller is not uncritical of it. The monks combine commendable persistence and patience with blind veneration of random scraps of paper. Their abbots have a tendency to oppose scientific progress and, later, stubbornly insist that euthanasia is always wrong, etc.

Two quotes that really summarise what I think Miller’s main intended message was (pages 252 and 139 in my edition):

… there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you ‘know’ good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

“How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?”
“Perhaps […] by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.”

On the whole this is a wonderful book, well written, thoughtful, beautiful, funny and grim and also optimistic. It hasn’t aged at all in the 40 years that have passed since its writing, and it is still absolutely worth reading.

Amazon UK, Amazon US.

Cobbled together some PHP code (all of 40 lines) for the second time in my life. An educational experience.

I’ve put up a few holiday photos in the gallery, some of Ingrid and some of the two of us together.

Raining off and on, but not while we went to the market, and not during our afternoon walk either. Autumny feelings: I actually wore things with long sleeves when we were out.

Ingrid ate half a plum, after having totally rejected plum when we last offered it to her (maybe a month ago). I ate many plums – lovely sweet juicy greengages from Waitrose.

Catching up with 300+ blog posts, 100+ email messages, and other assorted accumulated to-do’s.

Today for the first time I was pretty certain that Ingrid was saying “mma” for “emme”.

Ten months this Tuesday.

There have been lots of changes every month, of course, but this past month it feels like Ingrid has really blossomed. Was it the vacation, perhaps, with all the new people and places, the crawling in the grass, the extra attention? It seems like she has suddenly learned to think more.

There’s no one major thing she’s learned to do, but a lot of small ones. Clapping her hands. Crawling around obstacles rather than trying to go straight over them. Trying a lot more varied facial expressions and speech-like sounds. (I believe that in the last few days she has just learned to say “mmme” or “mmma” for “emme”. She doesn’t seem to differentiate between myself and Eric yet, we’re both “emme”.)

She is spending more and more time standing, holding on to whatever she can. She also practices standing up and sitting down a lot, as well as squats, which look like hard work. She is less picky about her choice of support – while she would previously only accept something steady (such as a chair), wobbly and flimsy things (such as trouser legs) will now do as well, or even just a wall. When she finds something good to hold on to, she is now happy to let go with one hand, maybe look over her shoulder, and even walk longer distances, not just a few steps – back and forth along the bookshelf or the edge of a garden deck, for example.

We have tried a number of new activities, including bicycle trips, playing with sand (both in a sandbox and on the beach), and swinging on a playground swing. Likewise a range of new “toys” have been explored, and new uses found for old toys. Toys that can be banged against the floor have been particularly popular. Not everything goes straight into the mouth: rattles can be rattled, book pages can be turned, and paper can be torn in pieces before being stuffed in the mouth.

Due to all this exploring we’ve also had our first case of baby damage. Ingrid explored a paper lamp and the lamp was seriously (but not fatally) wounded – it looks rather ragged now.

Her teeth are still only two, and not yet fully out, so most of Ingrid’s food is still mush, but she has also accepted pieces of real food. Previously she would carefully spit out any lumps in her food. Now she’s eaten small pieces of fish, potato, cabbage and such. When she gets a piece of bread crust, most of it now ends up being eaten rather than crumbled on the floor. And last week she happily attacked a whole apple. More and more it seems like she prefers food with more complex flavour to simple pureed veggies.

We’re back home today.

Two things I learned from this vacation:

• I watch too much TV and spend too much time on the Internet. Cutting both radically over 10 days felt good. I can think of better ways to spend my time. I don’t understand how people who actually own a TV get anything done at all.
• Vacationing / travelling with a baby is not exactly a carefree activity, but it can be relaxing if you realise and accept one ground rule: thou shall focus on being a parent and taking care of the baby, and thou shall have no other ambitions. This way both are happy and relaxed, and even though you have no ambitions you will still get a little done here and there.

Well, it took me a bit more than a day to get back to a computer, but here I am now.

We spent Saturday and Sunday in Kaunispe, doing the sort of things that one tends to do in the country: walks in the woods, playing and swimming at the beach (cold!), lazing around under the apple tree, eating gooseberries from the bush. Plus, of course, the sort of things that one tends to do with a small baby: feeding, cleaning, washing and putting to bed.

Monday morning we started back towards Tartu, and most of the rest of the day was spent driving.

Tuesday (today) I made a brief shopping expedition in the morning (children’s books and DVDs). Then during the day I met my three oldest friends, whom I have known since I was about 3 years old. We all lived in the same block of flats, played together a lot and went to the same school as well.

Two of these friends now have children who are a few months older than Ingrid. I met them for the first time today. I had seen photos of both babies before, so even though I hadn’t actually met them they felt very familiar to me. It was interesting to see how much difference just a few months can make – although if I think back to what Ingrid was like a few months ago, it really was very different from her current self.

Tomorrow I will spend more time with the same friends. Thursday, on to Tallinn to meet another old friend, and Friday back home.

Saaremaa, middle of the night. And I’m typing on some sort of laptop Mac thingy which is turning out to be surprisingly difficult. Things keep happening on the screen even when I don’t think I have touched anything special.

Monday we got up at 4 and flew to Tallinn and then drove to Tartu. An uneventful flight and an uneventful drive as well.

Tuesday morning we (my father and his wife and myself with Ingrid) drove to my father’s summer house in Kapsta. The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, plus half of Thursday, we spent hanging around the garden.

Ingrid got a sandbox and a little wading pool, plus a large expanse of grass to explore, and an assortment of plastic and rubber toys to play with, as well as new interesting things such as a little wooden stool (which could be banged against the floor), a dustpan and brush (which could also be banged against the floor with far more interesting outcomes than the ones at home).

Thursday around midday we drove towards Saaremaa, stopping in Pärnu for the night. The weather was really warm so we went to the beach in Vana-Pärnu: Ingrid’s first encounter with the sea. She wasn’t much interested in the water, but the heavy dark muddy sand was great fun.

Friday we continued to Saaremaa, to visit a bunch of relatives in Kaunispe, and that’s where I am now, being attacked by vicious midges.

To be continued tomorrow because it is bedtime now.

I’m on vacation in Estonia for 10 days so posting will be light for a while. The apartment in Tartu is not quite childproof so I have to keep more than one eye on Ingrid, and there’s no Internet in the summer house in the country. I’ll catch up when we’re back instead.