This story intriguingly integrates the life of a young Edgar Allan Poe into a larger story. Poe, in fact, is a rather marginal figure in the story, only really interesting because of who he is, and I kind of like that. It illustrates the way in which ordinary people can turn out to be extraordinary, given half a chance.

The mystery is involved and a bit complex, and there’s a fair dash of conspiracy and some macabre humor. While it is set in 19th century England, Taylor doesn’t really do a very good job of adding in historical flavor. This is kind of disappointing, since I think that the whole point of reading historical novels is being able to get a taste of what life was like then.

There’s an obligatory scene at a cold country house, ice skating on a pond, some riding around in carriages, and antiquated language, but I didn’t feel like I was immersed in the world of 19th century England. I felt like I was immersed in the story of the character, which was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but I kept wanting more, turning the page and wishing that things were more vivid and fleshed out.

The story is told in the form of a document written up largely after the fact, with an afterward discussing the provenance of the story, ostensibly written by another character. I couldn’t help but wonder about the things that the narrator elided or modified slightly to make himself look better, and I think it might be kind of neat to read the same story from another point of view, but that might just be the nerd in me coming out.

I also couldn’t help but note that none of the characters were very deep. We didn’t get much of a background with anyone, and while the narrator’s story seethed with resentment and comments made in hindsight, I didn’t feel like many of the characters had dimensions and personalities and interesting traits which would have made me engage with them. The most interesting character is a mute maid, who turns out to be a pretty minor figure in the tale, although she does have a few surprises up her sleeves.

Demographics:

An Unpardonable Crime, by Andrew Taylor. Published 2004, 496 pages. Fiction.

Reading Bottlemania reminded me of an issue which I have long been interested in: water.

It’s kind of hard to not be interested in water when you live in California, because water is a bit of a theme here. The entirety of Southern California is maintained with the use of stolen water, and there have been a few pretty outstanding water grabs in California history (including attempts to steal water from us in the North). We’ve generally had reasonable levels of water access in the North, but we have experienced chronic droughts and water shortages, and growing up in a house which used collected rainfall as a water supply, I tended to be especially aware of water issues.

Access to drinking water is a huge problem. In Africa and Asia, a surprising amount of the population cannot access water which is safe to drink. There are a variety of reasons for this: changing weather patterns, contaminated waterways, chronic droughts, growing populations, and, yes, the privatization of water by corporations which then sell that water at very high cost in little plastic bottles.

Make no mistake, because water is the issue right now, and I think that we are going to be seeing a serious escalation of conflicts about water. Communities all over the world are already fighting viciously over supplies of available water. Look at what’s happening in Darfur, where one of the huge pressures is a lack of available water. People are dying for lack of water, and they are dying over water supplies. That is not going to change unless we break some rather entrenched patterns.

Here in the West, we are polluting and spoiling huge amounts of water with agricultural chemicals, discarded pharmaceuticals, byproducts of manufacturing, overflowing manure from factory-farmed animals, and sundry other materials. I think about this every time I flush my toilet with potable water, adding fecal coliform bacteria and pharmaceutical byproducts to water which was perfectly drinkable a moment before.

What are we supposed to do about the water problem? I don’t know, but I think we had better find an answer soon. We need to be using water more efficiently, and we need to be thinking of ways to rework our attitude to water. Like most other resources, water can be recycled if it’s being managed in a responsible way, and we should be fighting to re-use as much water as possible while cleaning up our rivers, streams, and aquifers, and fighting to keep pristine bodies of water intact. We should be establishing and upholding higher standards for water cleanliness, and we should be promoting the development of technology and policy which preserves water supplies.

Water is already a problem in the United States, and it’s going to keep getting more serious unless we do something pretty radical. This is the kind of issue which I would like to see the Obama administration focusing on, because as it is now, we are leaving a pretty costly legacy to our descendants.

Is it capitalism, or a giant ponzi scheme?

Being a location scout looks like it would be a lot of fun.

People who make virginity pledges are actually more likely to get pregnant.

Should we tax like it’s recession time?

A researcher just repeated an infamous Milgram experiment, and found that not much has changed.

Speaking of psychology, the DSM is under attack (again).

More best of, this time in viral videos.