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Dec. 8th, 2008 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupOh my god, you guys, I tried, I really tried, but this book is so fucking boring.
It's called "Labyrinths of Iron" and it purports to be A history of the World's Subways. According to his foreword the author was just, you know, curious about subways! And wanted to know how they came about, how social pressure and historical events formed the Subways Of the World. Which is amusing in retrospect, because I got to page 132 of about 300 pages and still have no ability at all to untangle the actual narrative thread of subway formation from his millions of pointless digressions. Plus, we're still on London, and I think he just totally skipped Chicago's mass-transit system, which is kind of one of the reasons I got this book from the library in the first place.
And now I know why nobody has checked this book out since the library acquired it.
I did get two good quotes out of it:
"Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants and symmetries." -- Jorge Luis Borges
"Neanmoins, si je l'avais à refaire je ferais mieux." -- Isembard Brunel
("Nevertheless, if I had to do it over again, I'd do it better.")
In happier news,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittiword has a poll going for Whovians about where you would go if you could go anywhere in the TARDIS. Have fun!
It's called "Labyrinths of Iron" and it purports to be A history of the World's Subways. According to his foreword the author was just, you know, curious about subways! And wanted to know how they came about, how social pressure and historical events formed the Subways Of the World. Which is amusing in retrospect, because I got to page 132 of about 300 pages and still have no ability at all to untangle the actual narrative thread of subway formation from his millions of pointless digressions. Plus, we're still on London, and I think he just totally skipped Chicago's mass-transit system, which is kind of one of the reasons I got this book from the library in the first place.
And now I know why nobody has checked this book out since the library acquired it.
I did get two good quotes out of it:
"Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants and symmetries." -- Jorge Luis Borges
"Neanmoins, si je l'avais à refaire je ferais mieux." -- Isembard Brunel
("Nevertheless, if I had to do it over again, I'd do it better.")
In happier news,
kittiword has a poll going for Whovians about where you would go if you could go anywhere in the TARDIS. Have fun!
