Recent reads: quick takes

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett. Another pleasantly fluffy fantasy souffle from the creator of DiscWorld.

It's a bird..., by Stephen T. Seagle, artwork by Teddy H. Kristiansen. Working on Superman is one of the most prestigious assignments available in the world of comics, according to one of the characters in this graphic novel. So a struggling writer with a beautiful-but-skeptical girlfriend should, logically, leap at the chance to do so. Unless, of course, one has issues with the character.... The cool, pastel watercolors of Kristiansen's illustrations are very different from the simplified lines and bright colors typical of the Man of Steel's usual print appearances, and well suited to Seagle's tale of a cynical and self-doubting writer who has his own reasons to think twice about the job.

Naturalist in Two Worlds, by Alexander G. Ruthven, president of the University of Michigan from 1929 to 1951. Ruthven's training in biology seemingly predisposed him to view all activities and organizations as ecosystems; the four sections of his memoirs are titled "Adaptation", "Stimulus and Response -- Presidential Years", "The Experimental Process", and (the odd one out) "Retirement". This is far from a comprehensive autobiography or history of the University during his tenure; it's more a collection of anecdotes and episodes and recollections. It's quite possible that he has portrayed himself in a favorable light, but what he's chosen to remember and record makes him seem like an intelligent man comfortable with both scholarship and practical administration, and with a sense of humor as well. I particularly liked his reaction when a visiting artiste complained to him about the way the campus newspaper mocked her performance: "She was assured that the editors would be disciplined. I had my secretary call the editors and the drama critic to my office. As they stood before me I explained that the complaint had been made and I intended to discipline them. There was a period of silence and then I remarked, 'You are to understand you are disciplined, good morning.'"

Digital Hemlock, by Tara Brabazon. Brabazon, a lecturer in history at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, discusses the problems with internet-based education. She's dead-on-target with her skewering of the lack of human contact, the unseemly lust for digi-dollars, the sloppy standards of grammar and communication prevalent on the Web, and the foolish infatuation that many university administrators have with "E"-anything. Less so, to my mind, with her chapter on "Reclaiming the body of the teacher". (Do we really need more university professors flaunting their bodies, or students ogling them?) On the whole, though, a needed corrective.