Collapse

Phew, I finally finished reading Collapse by Jared Diamond! (Dearest AJ, if you're reading this, I'm sorry it took me so long, I confess to finding a chore and read a few other books 'at the same time').

Reading many of the chapters and stories was informative and interesting, learning about the paths past and present cultures have taken, but the bulk of the 'message', Diamond's theory, was left in the last couple of chapters, which took little time to read. I was somewhat worried that by the time I got to 'the point' I would have forgotten about all the details of the societies detailed before, since it had been quite a while since I read about them, but this really wasn't the case.

I understand that Diamond wanted it to be a thoroughly researched piece with numerous in-depth examples of many of his key problem areas, but to me, it seemed like overkill. Even though he was discussing different cultures, past and present, there was a lot of repetition. I believe the reason I read the last couple of theoretical chapters so quickly was because I was glad to finally get into the meat of the argument, and to have only littered examples where necessary to illustrate points. Of course, he did mention the societies of previous chapters in these arguments too, but I still couldn't shake the feeling I'd waded through a waterlogged pitch when I could have easily ran over greener grass to reach the same goal.

Although the level of research is definitely of value, and each study of a single culture is fascinating in its own right, for the purposes of a popular book I feel it would have benefited from more of an 'executive summary' approach. Like Stephen Hawking's 'A Briefer History of Time'.

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In other news, my first-ever news article has now been published in the student newspaper and online here. At first reading I was a little 'disappointed' (for lack of a better word) about some of the things the editor had changed, but realised these were mostly in the first couple of sentences, and understandable of course. Most of it is still my words ;-)

Ahh, I am an obsessive and an over-analyser, but perhaps that's useful when starting out, to help me learn my mistakes quickly and improve swiftly. Although it doesn't help with the restless leg syndrome.

Lastly, I remembered today my first published piece - published only online, but I was paid for it! It was for the Icelandic tourist board about my year studying there. It was a much freer piece and it was fun to write... I like indulging in lyrical writing sometimes. Never was any good at poetry though. Anyway, you can read that piece here.