Rage in the Page

Shutter the Front Door

2012-02-10T19:26:00.000-05:00

Title: Shutter Island (graphic novel adaptation)
Author: Dennis Lehane
Illustrator: Christian de Metter
Bookmark: seriously? it's a graphic novel. I set it down once with a pen between the pages, then I finished doing the dishes and read the rest.

I noticed this on the shelf behind me while I was busy stealing the library's wifi the other day, and decided to pull it because I was too cheap to see the movie. It wasn't until I got home that I realized the movie was not based upon the graphic novel, but that they were both based upon one of those books with lots of words and no pictures.

That other book might have been a better choice.

I don't always get the point of graphic novels. I read the two which formed the basis for the Surrogates movie (I never posted them. Sue me.), and while the story seemed kind of interesting, the art looked choppy. It was kind of hard to view. Hard enough that I read all the text, and glanced at the images enough to give me some idea of where the speakers were (it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the scratchy lines of one character from the scratchy lines for another, so if they didn't address one another by name, I wasn't always certain who I was reading). I found that I had to remind myself that I was reading a graphic novel, and I missed the point of that if I never looked at the graphics, so I'd go back a few pages, glance at the art, and then go back to just reading the text. I had that problem with Shutter Island, too--the two main characters wore identical clothing, so I could only distinguish them when they took off their hats, and that wasn't often. Most of the time, it was in such a dark space that I still couldn't tell who it was. And without the pictures to explain what was happening, the plot is even harder to follow. I would have been better off with a wall of text to explain things.

My best effort:

US Marshall Ted Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule take the ferry to Shutter Island just before a hurricane hits to try to find a woman who has somehow escaped the mental facility which is isolated there. The facility houses criminally insane and dangerous people. During the course of four or five days, Ted becomes obsessed with cracking a strange numeric code left by the woman and finding the mysterious Patient 67 to which the code alludes. The hurricane isolates them from the mainland, shuts down communication, and plays hell with their power. The hospital staff seem to be hiding something, he has strange dreams which seem to lead him closer to the truth, and rock piles on the island's beaches seem to spell out a message from the missing woman in the same code he found in her notebook. Pretty reachy.

If you've seen the movie, then you probably know the rest. Maybe you can explain it to me. Maybe I'll get the real book and have another go at this.

you and me and Smelly makes three

2012-02-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

Title: Very Hard Choices
Author: Spider Robinson
Bookmark: that business card, again. It was handy.

A few months ago, I started an office library. People could bring in books they owned, add a Post-it with their name, and drop them on a shelf for anyone to access. Knowing how some people treat books (curling the covers of paperbacks, dribbling food in them, smashing bugs between pages--I even know someone who used to read in the shower. Appalling.), I was hesitant to involve books which were important to me, but I sent a cautionary email about handling other people's stuff, and the project has gone pretty well. It gets less use now that someone has claimed that room as an office and moved all the books to a bottom shelf, hidden behind his desk, but I still managed to find a book with the coolest author name ever. I would have read it just for that. As it turns out, there's plenty of reason to read a Spider Robinson book.

Sure, his politics are all through it, but there are great lines (even paragraphs) comparing the US and Canada, and sentences which simultaneously mock and laud our neighbors to the north. The book can be both hilarious and terrifying, and despite the fact that it's a sequel, I had convinced myself while reading that it only seemed that way. The story is so complete on its own that it doesn't need something else to lead into it, although I admit that I spent most of my time wishing I knew the story to which they kept alluding, because it seemed even more wrenching than Very Hard Choices.

Russel Walker, a reclusive national columnist, was college roommates with Zandor "Smelly" Zudenigo. Smelly never bathed, and is described as looking like the Michelin Man with a childlike version of Winston Churchill's head. Oh, and he's a telepath. But Walker doesn't learn that until the previous book, when Smelly comes to him for help after discovering that a very bad man is planning to do very horrible things to a completely innocent family. They enlist the help of police constable Nika Mandic to stop the bad guy.

This book covers what happens next, after the bad guy is no longer a problem, but a new bad guy appears on the scene, and he wants Smelly (usually referred to as "Zudie" in this book, because his island hermitage, far away from the noise of other minds, allows him to have a more conventional hygiene schedule, as he had previously used the stench to keep people away while protecting his secret mental powers). Russel, Nika, and Russel's son Jesse must deal with the mysterious agent tracking them across the island of Heron Rock, contact the elusive Zudie, and figure out what to do to protect themselves and each other. The whole book (except for a couple obligatory flashbacks) takes place over one night. It's excellent, even if the ending is a bit pat.

Tinker, Biker, Beggerman, Nerd

2012-01-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

Title: The Urban Biking Handbook
Author: Charles Haine
Bookmark: a business card with a ludicrously long title

For Christmas, I asked for a book on building (and repairing) one's own bicycle. I had been inspired by an event I attended in November (the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show), and an article from a magazine I picked up at said event. Beautiful bikes, custom-built to be a perfect fit for both the size and riding preferences of their owners. Pricy, of course, because they involve someone making a frame to fit your frame, but I figured it could be a good project for me; I love biking, and I feel that a mechanical engineer who doesn't know the second thing about his car's engine should at least be able to take care of his own bike, or stop calling himself an engineer.

The book is specifically targeted at people who do the majority of their biking in cities. So far, that isn't me, but while that is the book's promise, the scope is a bit broader than the cover might imply. It even has good information no matter how much biking experience you have. Some of the chapters (what to wear while biking) and How-Tos (jumping a curb or fixing a flat) are stuff I've known since my early teens, but others (the wide variety of, and subtle differences between frame types; how to grease and re-pack bearings) were fascinating new stuff for me.

Haine would benefit from a good proof-reader--there were some weird typos, and a couple instances when the large intro to a chapter, printed bold in the margin, was just a paragraph of text from that chapter (including one instance where it was the entirety of the chapter)--and I was disappointed both that the very brief section on the cases for and against helmets had ANY case against helmets. For that matter, it also bothered me that many of the pictures which showed bikers wearing helmets (there were at least as many without) showed helmets that were improperly adjusted. Hopefully, anyone looking to get into biking would consult more than one book, but as someone who's been bounced off one or two cars who weren't paying attention to me OR road laws, WEAR YOUR DAMN HELMET! And take a look at the book--good information, lots of pictures.

Marathon Moron

2012-01-05T16:24:00.000-05:00

Title: Marathon Training for Dummies
Author: Tere Stouffer Drenth
Bookmark: a four-year-old note to myself.

Shortly after I announced to family that I was going to run my first half-marathon, I got this book for Christmas. It has since spent a few years largely unregarded. This past fall, I started training for my third half-marathon (I did not get my fastest half-marathon time, but I am most proud of this particular race, if only for the respectable time on a grueling course) and picked up the book in earnest.

Originally, I had joked that I'd only read half of it because I'm only a half-marathoner (by the same logic, I tell people that I only run half-marathons because I'm only half in shape), but of course that wasn't the case. The book is focused on marathon training, but it covers lots of good habits for running, even if I disagree with some of the information in the nutrition chapter. The section on running injuries also gave me an exciting and painful way to avoid shin splints, which are usually the reason I stop running for months at a time. So far, so good.

The book was published in 2003, so some of the information may already be out of date, but it was still a good resource for me, and allowed me to have slightly more solid footing when arguing with my own running expert. More importantly, it made me feel a little better, if not wholly confident, in my own running ability (especially when the book would mention a marathon goal time I found absurdly long, allowing me to think "even I could do that!!"). My first marathon is still somewhere in my indeterminate future, but it's nice to have this resource at hand, even if I didn't really finish reading it until last night, three months after my race. (don't judge me--once I crossed the finish line, the book became a little inconsequential to my race)

bones to pick

2011-12-06T16:01:00.001-05:00

Title: City of Bones
Author: Michael Connelly
Bookmark: a bookmark

Many years ago I read The Concrete Blonde (so long ago that it predated this blog), and was reminded of it recently when I saw someone reading it on a Kindle during a flight. I saw enough to recognize the story, but I had no memory of how it ended. Connelly's good like that. Even if a step or two in the investigation is predictable, there are enough weird turns to make the ending feel clever.

City of Bones opens with Connelly's usual hero Harry Bosch fielding calls on New Year's Day. After two suicides, he gets called into one of the canyons of LA where a doctor's dog has retrieved a bone from the woods, which the good doctor assures Harry is from a child.

As Harry and his partner Jerry Edgar investigate a case which hits home for both of them (Edgar has a son; Harry was a foster kid after his mom died), Harry gets close to the rookie beat cop who was on scene at the doctor's the first night, and the deputy chief takes every opportunity to try to force Harry out of his department.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
I just wish there were more depth in the death of one of the main characters. When it happens, it seems abrupt and perfunctory, and we never get a clear explanation of what happened. Character traits explained by Bosch to the department shrink at the funeral feel like they were introduced at that very moment; there really isn't much sign of any of it before he mentions them. It feels like Connelly ran out of ideas for her and killed her off so she wouldn't be his problem anymore, which is unfortunate for other characters and the reader.

the butler, but only once

2011-12-06T15:40:00.001-05:00

Title: Whodunits: More Than 100 Mysteries For You To Solve
Author(s): Tom Bullimore, Hy Conrad, Derrick Niederman, Stan Smith
Bookmark: a picture of a deer attacking a police cruiser

The book is split into four sections; it seems like each author did his own thing, because there are pretty obvious stylistic differences between them. I don't think they all got the same memo describing the collaborative project.

There are big differences in what each of them thinks constitutes a "mystery." The first does a solid job of laying out a short story, giving you just enough information to solve it, and explaining the answers well (all solutions are in a separate section in the back of the book). The second also does well, but the stories are more like elaborate logic puzzles, or simple logic puzzles dressed in a new story (lots of variations on "X always tells truth, Y always lies, Z just likes to set fires" kind of puzzles). The third apparently set up the stories on a website and invited people to ask questions to help them solve the mysteries. The questions asked and answered are not always very relevant, and certainly not what a real investigator would need to know. One particularly annoyed me because the solution hinged on obscure sports trivia and the date of the "crime," which was never mentioned until the solution. The final section was a long parade of simple (in execution and presentation, though not always in solution) logic puzzles. Several times I encountered one which I didn't think included enough information for pure logic to derive the answer, and at least once it was just flat-out wrong. Most annoying was that the solutions offered no explanation whatsoever, so that if you weren't clear on how to find the answer, you would always stay that way.

For the most part, it was still a lot of fun. The first two sections were great, and I think the third offered a neat concept, but the execution was a little bit flawed. If they ever make Volume II, they will hopefully have the wisdom to not call the fourth guy.

Swedish Mess

2011-10-26T16:07:00.004-05:00

Title: The Man From Beijing
Author: Henning Mankell
bookmark: a normal bookmark

This is the guy who wrote the Wallander novels (which I only know about because I saw trailers for the TV show when I watched the Sherlock series). Intro portion concluded.

Picture a lovely tiny forest village in Sweden. Very tiny. About a dozen homes, and through marriage, most of the residents are relatives. Nice, if a bit creepy, right? Oh, one more thing: one night in February, somebody with a big damn knife (or maybe a sword) slaughters almost everyone in the village. Even the dogs, cats, and a parrot (who was decapitated). The police find out about it when a photographer fleeing in terror has a coronary and drives into an oncoming truck. His dying word is the name of the village.

Judge Birgitta Roslin finds out about it in the papers a few days later, recognizes the name of the village, and discovers her mother's foster parents were among the victims. Then, like any good fictional character, she launches her own investigation. Unlike every other fictional character investigating outside normal police channels, the cops blow her off.

Roslin keeps digging, pursuing a completely different line of inquiry from the police, and travels to Beijing and London before she has all the answers. Sounds great, right? Except... I still haven't decided whether I like the book. I can't really say it wasn't compelling, because I've started other books, gotten bored with them, and set them aside permanently. I kept reading this one. I'm just not sure there was a good reason for it. I liked that there was an unlikely protagonist, a sort of late-middle-age Miss Marple without as many unlikely gimmicks (I never bought how Marple could easily imitate anyone's voice, nor how she used that trick to get people to confess to the murder of the voice's real owner), but I never really cared about her. At one point, she realizes that someone has given her suspect her home address and thinks the man an old fool, but she spends a great deal of time in the book making really stupid choices and trusting people she's only just met with far too much. The final resolution feels forced, and there's a lot of discussion about China, its politics, economy, and leadership which would be fascinating if I had any idea what opinion the author actually has--it's never clear how we're supposed to feel about things.

Originally, I thought I might wrap up this book, recommended and loaned to me by a co-worker's wife, then try some Wallander, because as anyone can tell, I love a good mystery. After reading it and letting it marinate in my brain a couple days... I think I prefer to dig up some old Hammett or Chandler.

Brief? Yes. Interminable? Also Yes.

2011-10-07T20:58:00.007-05:00

Title: A Brief History of Time
Author: Stephen Hawking

There are a number of different varieties of quarks: there are six “flavors,” which we call up, down, strange, charmed, bottom, and top. … Each flavor comes in three “colors,” red, green, and blue. … A proton or neutron is made up of three quarks, one of each color. A proton contains two up quarks and one down quark; a neutron contains two down and one up. We can create particles made up of the other quarks (strange, charmed, bottom, top), but these all have a much greater mass and decay very rapidly into protons and neutrons.

In brief: disappointing.

Even for those not mathematically inclined, the possibilities presented by cutting-edge theoretical physics can be fascinating. Scientific theory tells us that black holes can stretch time and worm holes enable FTL travel. Scientific observation tells us how our sun breathes and how stars die. I love reading about stuff like that and imagining all the amazing stories waiting for us in the universe. Personally, I rather believe that little green men probably are (or were, or will be) out there, because the universe is a big place, and there’s probably a corner of it somewhere for little green men. And another corner elsewhere for pink elephants on roller blades.

But reading Stephen Hawking can sure take the fun out of all this speculation.

I’ve enjoyed a few popular books on astronomy/physics, but A Brief History of Time was a real chore for me to slog through. Hawking may very well be a brilliant theorist, but his writing style leaves much to be desired. I found his words neither informative nor entertaining, just rather dry and droning. The above paragraph is a good example. Hawking presents the reader with this absolutely fascinating nugget of information that there are things called charmed quarks out there. Wow, cool! So, what makes a quark charmed? I have no idea. Not one. Hawking never explains. I found this incredibly frustrating.

I was able to glean a few nuggets of understanding from A Brief History, but mostly about things I already knew (or had known once and forgotten). His explanation of red shift is fairly decent, and he does do justice to the basics of black holes. But when he then launched into more advanced theory (how black holes emit radiation, for instance) … well, I simply fell off that FTL rocket ship and could not keep up.

Admittedly, I may just be dim. At the very least, I know I learn far better through stories than through mathematics or memorization. (I think Brian Greene’s “Icarus at the Edge of Time” is simply brilliant.) But I thought A Brief History was supposed to be written for people like me: dim, perhaps, but eager to learn nonetheless.

Despite my dissatisfaction with it, I’d still recommend A Brief History. It's shiny gold cover will look good sitting on your coffee table, and you’ll be able to impress others by casually mentioning that you read it. (Although perhaps you’d be able to impress them even more by saying you found it to be trite and uninspiring!) But if you really want to understand topics such as relativity, blacks holes, and quantum mechanics, you’d be far better off with something like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. It may not be brief, but it sure goes down easier.

The [proper noun] [impressive-sounding noun(s)]

2011-10-05T13:43:00.003-05:00

Title: The Gemini Contenders
Author: Robert Ludlum
Bookmark: a bookmark

Having read a lot of Ludlum's later stuff, I think I can safely say that if I had started with his earlier stuff, I wouldn't have bothered reading more. Or maybe, like my friend Spider's disappointment upon rediscovering Knight Rider, it's more that what I loved when I was much younger just isn't that good when viewed with an older eye.

Gemini Contenders seems to be about an Italian industrial magnate, Ludlum's most unlikely hero ever. His father helped a secretive sect of Greek monks to hide a vault somewhere in the mountains. We come to find out that the vault contains ancient scrolls and parchments that are some sort of Big Damn Deal which could shake apart modern religions and set countries against each other. Years later, in the dawn of the Second World War, Junior arrives to a family gathering late, but just in time to witness everyone get slaughtered by Nazi troops.

Then the Brits give him some military and tactical training so he can mess with the German war machine by covertly mismanaging every factory they control, and there's some weird subplot with orchestrating his marriage to control him somehow, but that's never adequately explained. the whole time he's trying to do his job and mess up the Nazi scourge, there are other parties, all convinced that he knows the location of the vault, trying to get the information from him. Oh, and he gets tortured almost to death once or twice.

The Geminis mentioned in the title? They don't even show up until the books about two-thirds over. And they don't contend over anything for several chapters. Junior has twin sons that end up both going after the vault for very different reasons.

The whole thing is preposterous, convoluted, and way the hell over-the-top. Even for Ludlum.

stacks and tiers

2011-09-13T09:02:00.001-05:00

My favorite part of the article is the native Mainer's use of "wicked."

I hope you like meta

2011-09-01T11:47:00.003-05:00

Title: The Chancellor Manuscript
Author: Robert Ludlum
Bookmark: The UP bookmark has gotten a lot of action this month.

Typical Ludlum hoopla (this was also in my Discovered Crate of Unread Books). Except... nested inside itself, which was the only new twist.

Peter Chancellor starts as a grad student, ready to deliver his doctoral thesis, which is rejected as ridiculous and speculative. He is advised by a professor to re-write it as historical fiction, because ridiculous speculation is welcome in fiction. What he doesn't know is that the same professor is a member of that most treasured hallmark of the Ludlum novel: the secret cabal who deftly manipulates the country.

The same cabal (known as Inver Brass in this incarnation) enters Peter's life again years later, after his fiancee is killed in a car accident which almost kills him as well. After orchestrating the assassination of J. Edgar Hoover and attempting to steal his secret files, they discover that half of the files have already been stolen. Oops. Their brilliant plan is to manipulate Peter Chancellor into writing a new novel about the assassination (which the entire world thinks was a normal heart attack), knowing that his penchant for extensive, thorough research may unearth who has the rest of the files so that the entire set can be destroyed, freeing the company from the yoke of blackmail and corruption which Hoover had applied.

It works a little too well. Chancellor's manuscript begins to parallel, even to presage, his own life. At one point he meets an FBI agent who is eerily like a character he had created. Soon, he has to navigate conspiracies within conspiracies (some of them complete fabrications, told to him to misdirect or refine the aim of his investigation) while lots of people try to kill him or mess with his head, and he has no idea who he can trust.

As far-fetched and surreal as it often is, it's still a very entertaining read, and goes quickly, but it must be said: as good as Ludlum may be with suspense, he is terrible at romance. Chancellor beds three women in the course of the book. The first is married to the producer of a film based on one of his books, the second is a lesbian, and the third is his Primary Love Interest. The third is actually the most tiresome. Not as a character, but as a subplot. Listening to the two of them express their devotion to each other always sounds hammy and over-played, but it's obvious that he was trying for deep sincerity. As someone who's read way too much Ludlum... he should have stuck with the spycraft. At least when that's unbelievable and over-wrought, the only people who can tell are forbidden to do so.

Brain-puckering

2011-08-29T18:44:00.003-05:00

Title: The Dreadful Lemon Sky
Author: John D. MacDonald
Bookmark: UP bookmark

It's not that I'm on a sudden MacDonald kick; it's that I found books in my apartment I'd never read before. I don't even know why I have them, or if they've been borrowed, and I need to return them to a rightful owner somewhere. If I borrowed a book from you years ago, let me know.

I'm glad I found them. I'd never read MacDonald before Cinnamon Skin, but I really like his work, even if some of it is a bit dated (many times during both books I thought "Holy shit! ...Well, it was the seventies..." or pondered how very different the story would have been if the protagonists had access to the internet or cell phones).

This time, an old acquaintance of McGee's (the jacket and Wikipedia article refer to her as "an old friend," but it turns out she was a one-night stand who later borrowed his boat for her honeymoon with a toolbag) shows up in the middle of the night with a box full of cash and a request: hold the cash. If he doesn't hear from her for a month, he should send it all to her sister. As payment, he keeps ten grand (roughly ten percent of the total stash). He quickly surmises that the money was no acquired through entirely legal channels, but she refuses to answer questions, insisting that he is being paid to hold the dough, not ask questions about it.

Naturally, she's dead before the month is up, and he decides to investigate.

SPOILERS ABOUND
The weird thing about the entire story is that while Meyer and McGee gets lots of solid leads and dutifully follow them all over Florida, they don't actually solve the case. They push enough buttons that the answer sort of falls out at their feet, but the answer they get isn't the one they expected--even though their expectations change a couple times along the way. For instance, when a prime suspect gets killed. They may have cracked the case, but I don't know that I'd say they solved it.

END SPOILERS
As any reader of mysteries might surmise, there is a lot more going on than anyone realizes, and by the end they have tangled with a drunken marina master (McGee "tangles" with the man's widow), a serial rapist with political ambitions, a landlord drug dealer, and a big nest of fire ants. Good times!

Skinnamon Sin

2011-08-26T12:25:00.005-05:00

Title: Cinnamon Skin
Author: John D. MacDonald
Bookmark: the official bookmark of the Union Pacific Railroad

Generally, I really like OK GO, but they have one song called "Cinnamon Lips" that I hate. Hate. I can't even look at the cover of this book without that song popping in for a visit. Otherwise, I really liked it.

Travis McGee is some sort of salvage expert who lives in a houseboat (the Busted Flush) that he won in a poker game, so I immediately thought of Jack Spratt and his troubles getting into the Detective's Guild because he didn't have enough entertaining quirks. McGee is also prone to philosophizing over everything from domestic violence to proper physical regimens:

One very sound rule for the care of the body is always to keep in mind what it was designed to do. The body was shaped by the need to run long distances on resilient turf, to run very fast for short distances, to climb trees, and to carry loads back to the cave, so any persistent exercise you do which is not a logical part of that ancient series of uses is, in general, bad for the body. A succession of deep knee bends is destructive, in time. As are too many pushups. As is selective muscle development through weight-lifting. As is jogging on hard surfaces. A couple of years of such jogging and you are very likely never to walk in comfort again. Man is a walking animal, perfectly designed for it. The only more efficient energy use is the bicycle.

This book is not about a salvage operation; McGee's friend Meyer's boat is blown up, with Meyer's niece aboard (his only remaining family). Meyer was in Canada at the time; as a world-renowned economist (who also lives on a boat, until it blows up) he is frequently invited to lecture all over the place. It seems that while McGee handles the physicality and rawer, animal intelligence of the investigations, Meyer provides all the book-learnin' and soft speaking--to great effect. The two of them set out to find out why the niece died, why Meyer's boat was reduced to flaming shrapnel, and to find Meyer a new boat on which to reside. They end up solving a decades-old series of murders that nobody realized had been committed, and traveling as far as the Yucatan to track down the culprit. Good stuff.

On a side note, I did some internet poking to remind myself of Meyer's name, and discovered that all twenty-one Travis McGee novels have a color in their title. I have to wonder whether that was an afterthought, because I read two of them this month, and in both cases, the phrase which names the book doesn't appear until the penultimate or last chapter. I spent most of The Dreadful Lemon Sky wondering why the sky was lemony, and what the hell made it so dreadful (besides being a very unusual color for sky)

ghg

double-oh-jerk

2011-05-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

Title: Casino Royale
Author: Ian Fleming

The James Bond of the movies, as anyone who has read any of the books knows, has surprisingly little in common with the Bond of the books. Movie Bond is a suave, smooth ladies' man, ever cool and unflappable. Book Bond is... kind of a douchebag. Harder-edged, with no regard for anyone else. At least, he is in this first book. I've read a couple of the later Bond books, and he softens a little from what I remember, but in this... still an ass.

However, I have to give the Daniel Craig version (there have been at least three other Casino Royale movies, one of them entirely unauthorized, another a farce/parody) credit: it follows the source material almost exactly, right up to the line "The bitch is dead," but BookBond really means it. MovieBond seems to try to hide throwing up a wall and using his hard edges as a defense against any pain he might otherwise feel at Vesper's betrayal. That, and there's no sinking Venetian building scene.

bum-ba-BUMBUM

2011-05-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

Title: The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
Author: Henry Jones, Jr. (OBVIOUSLY)
Bookmark: built-in

Yeah, I know he's not real, and I know someone else filled the book with made-up stuff as some distantly connected movie tie-in for The Crystal Skull, but I don't care. It didn't even matter that I never got to see the Young Indy Chronicles TV show. The book has bits and pieces of the entire Indy legend, referring to episodes of the show and key points of all three original movies (before TCS, but with allusions to its beginning), depicted in "handwriting" and drawings that improve with Indy's age and experience and illustrations made to look like taped-in photos, maps, cocktail napkins, and plane tickets. I can admit that it's a gimmick, but it's a very well-done gimmick, filled with sly humor (there is a pro/con list for the shrill femme of Temple of Doom which includes pro: not afraid of snakes and con: loud) and clever references.

Three Stories for the Price of One

2011-05-07T19:12:00.005-05:00

Title: The Shadow Rising (a.k.a. the longest book in the Wheel of Time series)
Author: Robert Jordan

Well, this book was so long (and I lost the first part of April to doing our taxes) that I didn't finish it in the month allotted. I'm only a week behind though, and ready to start flying through The Fires of Heaven (which is almost as long).

So, let's see, what happened in this massive book....

SPOILERS

Word reaches Rand, Mat, and Perrin that Whitecloaks (devout hunters who root out followers of the Dark One - in the extreme) are besieging their hometown, Emond's Field. Rand has other plans to follow through, and Mat is drawn to follow him, which leaves Perrin to journey to the Two Rivers and defend their town. Perrin feels it is his fault that the Whitecloaks are invading - they are looking for him because he killed several of them and they have concluded he is a Darkfriend (follower of the Dark One). Faile, Loial, Gaul, Chiad, and Bain go with him (the latter 3 are Aiel).

Rand and Mat travel to Rhuidean, the sacred city of the Aiel located in the Waste (a dessert where only Aiel reside). Rand goes to prove he is the Aiel's long-awaited "He Who Comes with the Dawn" and Mat goes because these weird people whom he spoke to when he went through a ter'angreal (magical thing that uses the One Power - in this case, kind of a portal) told him he had to.

Nynaeve and Elayne head to Tanchico where they suspect that thirteen Aes Sedai of the Black Ajah are up to no good. Along the way they run into Egeanin, whom they befriend before discovering that she is a member of an enemy people. Realizing she is not that much different than they are, they stick together and she helps them out of a tight spot.

The book ends with climax after climax after climax as first Perrin, then Elayne and Nynaeve, and finally Rand work to accomplish what they set out to do.

All in all, another excellent book. Jordan jumps between the different plot lines, but not so much so that I can't remember what is happening in each. I remember this becoming an issue in books 5 and 6, so we'll see how that goes.

Strong, silent typecast

2011-05-05T10:48:00.002-05:00

Title: Night Passage
Author: Robert B. Parker

Ever see one of those CBS mystery movies with Tom Selleck as Police Chief Jesse Stone? Yeah, me either. Maybe part of one, a very long time ago, but that was it. And it's too bad, because Tom Selleck is pretty fantastic, and not just because the man knows how to wear a Hawaiian shirt. However, I'd seen enough commercials for the movies that while reading this book (the first of many Jesse Stone stories), I always pictured the protagonist as portrayed by Selleck, even though there's about thirty years difference between them. That's ok. Selleck is ageless.

Stone starts in LA at the bottom of a deep hole: his wife cheated on and left him, which led to him drinking way too much and often on the job (as an LAPD homicide detective), which got him kicked off the force. Then, somehow, things get worse. When he looks for a law enforcement job Anywhere But LA, he eventually interviews for a job as Chief of Police in Paradise, Massachusetts while completely blotto. He gets the job because Hasty Hathaway, the man running Paradise doesn't want a good cop at the helm of his force; he wants someone he can control. That's why he fired the last chief when he discovered what Hasty was doing.

On the surface, Paradise is a sleepy little New England seaside town. This surface is mere angstroms thick. Underneath is corruption, murder, money laundering, a nutty militia group, and a local psychopath who has an early confrontation with Jesse which leads to an eerie dance between the two for the rest of the book. By the way, it seems that the only people with whom the good citizens of Paradise do not have sex are their own spouses. Especially Hasty's wife. Wow.

Lately I've wondered a lot about the definition of a "mystery" novel. I usually think those are the stories in which enough information is provided for a clever reader to solve the mystery themselves. However, it often seems as though books labeled "mystery" just give the reader a ride: the story is fed out, and you just accept whatever you are handed, then the ending is revealed. There's never any question of who's guilty in Night Passage, but it's fun to watch Jesse make all the connections. Especially if you picture him with a thick mustache.

the other Dynamic Duo of mystery

2011-04-29T18:36:00.002-05:00

Title: Black Orchids
Author: Rex Stout
Bookmark: paper sleeve from chopsticks

Nero Wolfe is a big enough deal (no pun intended, but if you didn't know, besides brilliance, his defining trait is obesity) that other mystery writers mention him in their own stories on a parallel with Holmes. In fact, there is even a theory that Wolfe is the son of Holmes and Irene Adler, but that seems unlikely to me because... the dude's huge. They weren't.

Anyway.

Despite Wolfe's fame, and my long-standing love of mysteries, I'd never read any Wolfe, so I thought I was due. This book had two mysteries, linked only by the eponymous blooms. In the first, our rotund hero demands three pots of black orchids (a special hybrid, the only ones of their kind) as payment in clearing a client's name in a murder at a flower show. In the second, he has blooms from them delivered to the funeral of another client. Wolfe is both a gourmand and a gardener, and spends something like eight hours a day with his plants.

I get that the stories are mainly interesting for Wolfe's quirks (he doesn't like to be touched, he hates leaving his home, and he does not believe that "contact" should ever be used as a verb, among others) and the interplay between him and Archie Goodwin, his long-suffering Man of Action assistant. It seems like there is only enough information divulged to the reader to make guesses at parts of the solution, but never to solve it before the Great Man. It also seems like Archie deserves far more credit than he receives. He does all the legwork, observing, tailing, information gathering, and reports back to Wolfe, who puts the pieces together. Considering the amount of abuse he takes for his efforts, he must have an outstanding ego to keep working for that pompous ass.

The Sandman

2011-04-26T05:30:00.003-05:00

I'm very bad at sitting down to review books properly, but I am going to try to at least NAME the ones I do read. It can't be that difficult, right? With a sentence or two saying whether I liked it or not? Anyway...

I read volumes 1-3 of The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman, on loan from a friend at work. (I get volumes 4-6 when I return the ones currently in my possession.) The story begins with the "Sandman" -- aka Oneiros, Morpheus, or the Dream Lord -- trapped by a grasping, evil magician. Spoilers: He escapes, and then spends the rest of vol. 1 trying to regain his Kingdom of Dream. The other volumes deal with other stories: the first performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream, a muse trapped by a writer, a woman who becomes a dream vortex. Some of them I liked more than others, but all of them were worth my time. I definitely plan to continue with the series. I've always loved mythology, and Gaiman uses a lot of it in his stories.

I read V for Vendetta this summer and didn't really like it ... the "graphics novel" format was very confusing to me and I genuingely did not know what was going on at times. The Sandman was much easier to understand, although there where still places I had to read a page or two twice to get the full meaning.

Can't touch this

2011-04-21T09:37:00.003-05:00

Title: Touching the Void
Author: Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, both experienced climbers and mountaineers, set out to complete a first ascent of the west face of Siula Grande (an icy, storm-thrashed mountain in the Peruvian Andes). With a few difficulties and minor close calls, which are to be expected on a major ascent like that, they made the summit. Then everything went wrong.

The book is subtitled "The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival," before I was even a third of the way through, I was impressed that either man had survived. Both of them had terrifying falls which could have ended the trip and their lives. The biggest difference is that when Yates fell, he was caught by the rope, dangled free of the snow cliff, and managed to climb back up to Simpson. When Simpson fell, he landed on ice and shattered his knee.

I'm not providing any spoilers by telling you this; the whole story is well known. Even the back cover of the book tells you that Simpson broke his leg (bad news anywhere, but especially bad when you manage to break it in as spectacular a fashion as Simpson did, on top of a mountain, days from any medical support) and Yates had to help him down. It tells you that during the process of lowering his friend, something else went wrong, and Yates was forced to cut the rope, letting Simpson drop. Both men expected themselves--and each other--to die, but both survived. You don't read this book to find out what happened; you read it to find out how it happened. How both men struggled with the circumstances, their own decisions, and the harsh environment surrounding them. You read it to find out how they pushed themselves to survive, and find yourself wondering whether you could have done the same.

This book is subtitled

Now featuring cognitive dissonance

2011-04-11T18:58:00.002-05:00

As long as we're throwing up (pun not intended, but appreciated in afterthought) book-related posts in addition to the usual reviews, I feel I should link to this Onion AV article I came across today, and add, in response, No.

I've only read a couple Marple mysteries, and only seen a couple Garner movies (never watched Alias), so I'm probably not versed enough in either to officially have this opinion, but I repeat: No.

Touch the sky

2011-04-07T12:26:00.002-05:00

Title: Contact
Author: Carl Sagan

Many years ago, when the movie came out, I saw it. Somehow, I never got around to reading the book until recently, after I picked it up cheap at a library book sale. Parts of it are much more entertaining (from a slightly meta- standpoint) knowing what I've learned since the movie came out, like all of the references to legalized marijuana seen through the lens of knowledge that Sagan smoked a lot of weed. To anyone, the story is compelling. The scope changes a lot; early chapters discuss the development of our protagonist's young mind, and how she came to love math and science. Small chapter-starting snippets describe the voyage an alien signal takes across space, and the enormous structure from which it emanated. Later, after the signal's discovery, the scope goes global. Sagan theorizes (in an admittedly super-optimistic way that somehow just misses feeling naive) how a global community, still learning to trust one another, might receive such a message and try to use it. How nations might come together to build a device of unknown purpose and power, and of the subversive elements who might try to stop such an undertaking. And, because it's a novel about scientists who receive a cryptic message from the heavens, there is prolonged discussion of the schism--and similarities--between science and religion. Sagan manages to make these conversations sound balanced and reasoned for both sides.

The story was great. But that's not why I love the book. Well, it's not the only reason. Contact has earned a spot on my Shelf of Favorite Books because it is mainly a book about how great it is to be a scientist. It revels in its own nerdiness while making nerdiness seem like the most fantastic quality anyone could have. Ellie's discoveries, whether of a method to create artificial rubies to improve radio telescope performance, or the secret childhood tinkering to repair a broken radio, or her receipt of a message from an advanced alien society, are all written to sound exciting and fascinating. There is disappointment late in the book, but Ellie is unfazed. She has made more discoveries, and widespread acceptance is not as important as the discovery itself. By the end (SPOILER), there are many people who simply don't believe what she says she has done. Only those who experienced it with her know the truths that she knows. Everyone else is required to do something Ellie has never done: take it on faith. Sagan creates an overlap between science and faith, because there are times in both fields when you just can't prove what you know. But scientists know that someday, that proof will vindicate them. We proved that the earth orbits the sun, we proved that Pi is infinitely long, and we proved that all that we are is tied to a tiny molecule in every cell of our bodies. Given enough time, scientists can discover anything. Proving those mysteries doesn't destroy the magic; it is the magic.

WTF, Ray?

2011-04-04T12:20:00.002-05:00

Title: We'll Always Have Paris
Author: Ray Bradbury

I really enjoyed Ray Bradbury in high school. After Fahrenheit 451 introduced us, I found some of his short stories and plowed through a couple collections. His Mars adventures were inventive, though ridiculously unscientific, his robots seemed specifically designed to expose human flaws and foibles, and I enjoyed the idea of a sociopathic, homicidal infant years before Stewie Griffin hit the scene. We started a lending library at work, adn when my boss brought in a collection of Bradbury short stories I'd never heard of before, I grabbed it before it had settled on the shelf.

I wish I'd left it on the shelf.

When a writer known for sci-fi writes something else, you have to expect that it will be a little different, but many such writers have succeeded in branching out beyond their familiar genres. But this collection... it won a National Book Award, and I can't figure out why. Remarkably few of the stories made any sense at all, and the few of them that are memorable enough for me to recall now are not memorable for good reasons. Disappointing, because I really like Bradbury, and I really didn't like this book.

Jane Austen Drinking Game

2011-03-28T12:40:00.003-05:00

Official rules, per Mostly Water Theatre:

Gearing up for Tear

2011-03-25T18:50:00.004-05:00

Title: The Dragon Reborn [find in a library]
Author: Robert Jordan
Series info: Book 3 in The Wheel of Time

Oh geez, what happened in this book? When each book in the series, in hardback, is 550-800 pages long it gets really hard to recall it all, or even remember what happened in the first 400 pages.

SPOILER ALERT, as per usual.

Thirteen Black Ajah, a group of Aes Sedai who follow the Dark One, leave the White Tower after killing several other Aes Sedai and stealing ter'angreal (artifacts that help them channel more power). Not coincidentally, it takes 13 Aes Sedai to remove a channeler's access to the True Source, so the fact that 13 left is worrisome at best.

The Amyrlin Seat, the head Aes Sedai, charges Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne with the task of tracking down any other Black Ajah that may have remained behind. As Accepted (one level up from Novice but not yet full Aes Sedai), no one will suspect them of this task. They find clues as to where the 13 have gone and decide to follow them to the city of Tear.

Elayne, daughter-heir to the throne of Andor, worries her mother, Morgase, will become even more enraged at the White Tower if she disappears yet again. So she requests that Mat take a message to her mother. Along the way, Mat picks up Thom, a gleeman (storyteller) who first appeared in book one. Upon his arrival at the palace, Mat overhears a plot to kill Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne. He soon finds himself feeling duty bound to save them and sets off toward Tear with Thom in tow.

Meanwhile, Rand has been having dreams of a sword that is not a sword called Callandor. The Dragon Reborn is the only one who can remove this sword from its location in the Stone of Tear. Rand grudgingly embraces his destiny and begins to make his way, alone, to the city of Tear.

Loial, Perrin, Moiraine, Lan, and a new recruit, Faile (a female hunter for the Horn of Valere who chose the name Faile because it means falcon. This is significant because a seer of sorts has told Perrin that there is a falcon in his future), are following Rand. To the city of Tear.

As the various groups travel, they discover that many of the Forsaken have taken positions of leadership in many cities, including Tear. The Forsaken are 13 Aes Sedai from the previous Age, when Lews Therin was the Dragon Reborn fighting the Dark One.

The travelers also encounter people of the Aiel race. The Aiel have not left their home in the Aiel Waste in many years. And they all seem to be traveling to one location: Tear.

What lies await in Tear? Will the Forsaken thwart the travelers? Will Rand claim Callandor?

Slightly off topic, but great for a Friday

2011-03-25T13:51:00.004-05:00

Next time we, the bloggers of RitP, get together, I suggest we follow the lead of these fine gentlemen:

This was the best?

2011-03-11T11:21:00.002-05:00

Title: Year's Best SF7
Edited by: David G. Hartwell

I've read other compilations like this, collecting the "best sci-fi of the year," but I think most of the collections I've read were from a different publisher. Maybe it's our nature to remember only the good stuff, but I think those were better. I read this long enough ago that already it's far easier for me to remember the good stuff, but I still remember that there were a few bombs, too. Several times while reading, I thought "this was the best? All those writers out there, and this was the best they could find??" but maybe it's a matter of the "best for which we were able to obtain publishing rights."

There were some very imaginative, clever, well written stories--but there were also some that seemed like half-efforts, or those few that seemed far too over-ambitious: someone trying to reinvent a genre by doing something really ridiculous.

How deep DOES the rabbit hole go?

2011-03-07T13:59:00.002-05:00

Title: Blind Descent
Author: James M. Tabor

Everest is old hat. It's a tourist site. All you need is a big pile of money, and two months off work, and you can hire someone to guide your sorry keister to the summit, assuming you are also physically capable (but pretty much everyone uses bottled oxygen). Some explorers decided to go the opposite direction; they sought the deepest cave on earth.

Problem is, you can look at mountains and tell they're really big, and even get a good idea of which one is biggest (although some clever trigonometry settled it in the case of Everest), but you can't tell how deep a cave is--or even which caves might be promising--without trying to find the bottom and measuring. And finding the bottom of caves that big is a royal bitch. People die.

In Mexico, Bill Stone believes the Cheve cave system will win the title of World's Deepest Cave; in the Republic of Georgia, Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk believes Krubera will prove deeper. Both caves offer unique challenges; both men have very different styles of leadership and caving. The book covers both, and I'm a little torn on how I feel about it. The story is fascinating, but the writing was a little disappointing. Tabor spends a lot of time stressing how dangerous caving can be, but it feels a little like he's trying to crank up tension to drive the book, and the effort seems forced. If you're submerged in 40 degree water, belly-crawling in the dark, nearly a mile underground, you don't need anyone to tell you it's dangerous. At the same time, very little explanation is given to topics that need it--and that's coming from someone who's spent a lot of time dangling from climbing ropes. If I can't figure out what's going on, people who have never climbed or caved will be completely lost. There's a lot of good information, but it feels poorly organized.

Detecting Murder by Poison

2011-03-06T16:01:00.005-05:00

Title: The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York [find in a library]
Author: Deborah Blum

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Deborah Blum, details the fascinating tale of the "birth of forensic medicine" in New York City in the 1920s. Each chapter is entitled with the name of a poison and describes various murders using the poison, the poison's effects, and how forensic medicine discovered the way to detect that poison in bodies during autopsy. Poisons covered include chloroform, methyl alcohol, carbon monoxide, cyanide, arsenic, radium, and many more.

The book also chronicles the development of the coroner's office in NYC into a far more scientific medical examiner's office. Prior to this time, the city coroner was an appointed position in which medical knowledge didn't always receive highest consideration. The lack of knowledge led to murder by poison being virtually unsolvable and frequently not even suspected. When pathologist Dr. Charles Norris was appointed Chief Medical Examiner, he quickly changed all that. He hired Alexander Gettler, a great chemist, to head the toxicology laboratory. Together, the two solved many murders by poison.

One of the things I found very interesting and horrifying was the government's attempts to stop people from drinking during Prohibition. Drinking actually increased during Prohibition with people frequently consuming poisonous alcohol, either methyl alcohol or denatured alcohol - a byproduct of industrial processes that had been purposely poisoned by businesses at the government's behest. Prior to Prohibition, it was already a requirement for businesses to poison the byproduct alcohol. However, when they realized that people were willing to take their chances with this poisoned alcohol and that bootleggers were employing chemists to remove as many toxins as possible from the alcohol, government officials concluded that "perhaps the best way to enforce Prohibition was to make alcohol so deadly that even the sellout chemists working for crime syndicates couldn't rescue it. If alcohol was truly undrinkable, the argument went, even the most devoted boozer would have to give it up" (p. 153). In effect, the government was actively mandating the murder of its citizens because everyone knew that people were still drinking a great deal.

All in all, a well-researched, well-written, fascinating book. I highly recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in the topic.

The Saga Continues

2011-03-02T10:50:00.006-05:00

Title: The Great Hunt [find in a library]
Author: Robert Jordan

If there's one thing Robert Jordan really gets right, it's the climaxes in his books. You may find yourself slogging along, and then suddenly you're cheering, fist pumping, or squealing in excitement at the fabulous characters and their heroic deeds.

I had to take a break from reading for a day or two after finishing The Great Hunt. The end was that good.

SPOILER ALERT: It is impossible for me to review Robert Jordan's series without spoiling the various plot lines along the way. If you have any interest in reading these books, you may not want to read further.

The Great Hunt tells the tale of the Hunt for the Horn of Valere (sorry, couldn't help myself, I love that it has a Wikipedia page), a horn that when blown will bring back historic armies of great strength and might. This horn will work for whomever sounds it, and therefore must not fall into enemy hands. So of course it does.

After finding the Horn (the first time), Rand and friends have very little interest in using it and simply want to pass it off to someone else who is worthy. Rand struggles endlessly with the fact that he has been told he is the Dragon Reborn. The one man who will "break the world" yet the only hope for mankind's defeat of the Dark One. Not a fate anyone would take lightly.

Then, the Horn is stolen by the unfathomably evil Padan Fain, who has been manipulated and imbued with various evil powers by The Dark One himself. Rand, Mat, Perrin, and an army of soldiers must follow the horn and retrieve it.

Meanwhile, Egwene and Nynaeve have moved on to the White Tower for training in becoming Aes Sedai. Until Liandrin (an Aes Sedai who seems likely to be working for the wrong team) informs them that Rand is in danger, and leads them right into the hands of those who wish to enslave them. Egwene is captured with Min (a friend who does not have the ability to channel the True Source, but who sees images around people that foretell their future, albeit not particularly clearly). Nynaeve and Elayne (a fellow Aes Sedai-in-training and daughter-heir to a throne) escape. Egwene's treatment during captivity leads the reader into a fist-pumping celebration at her escape (with Nynaeve and Elayne's help) and revenge.

Meanwhile, the hunt continues for the stolen Horn. Throughout the book, we learn that Rand is incredibly powerful and Nynaeve as well. Unfortunately, Nynaeve cannot channel the True Source unless she is incredibly pissed off. Luckily, that's a frequent state of being for her.

Will Rand, Mat, and Perrin retrieve the Horn? Will Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min find them? I'm sure I'll have to reveal the answers when I review the next book....

fractured nursery rhyme

2011-02-28T14:05:00.000-05:00

Title: The Big Over Easy
Author: Jasper Fforde

Neo-noir mystery, a carefully crafted alternative world, ridiculous jokes, sight gags, and wordplay, and clever tweaking of familiar characters and elements--is it any wonder why I love Jasper Fforde?

The Nursery Crime series is a spin-off of the Thursday Next novels in which Detective Inspector Jack Spratt (his first wife died of a diet consisting only of fat) leads his own strange little team in the investigation of crimes related to nursery rhymes in the world behind books which Fforde has craftily constructed. Because they are often aware of their roles in our literature (it's their day job), the characters are also aware of some of the odd patterns that emerge. Threes crop up often in Mother Goose-style stories and nursery rhymes, and detectives often have sidekicks, drinking problems, and classic cars, no matter how incongruous it may be with the rest of their lives.

This is Spratt's debut, and while his well-meaning second wife tries to get him to apply to the Detectives' Guild (it means better pay and benefits, but it also requires many tropes--she fills out his application with lies and omits herself, listing him as divorced and bitter, not the happy family man he is, driving a wreck and drinking only socially), his new partner (Sergeant Mary Mary) tries to muddle through her assignment for a better posting with one of the more respected and influential Guild detectives, while they both try to find out whether Humpty Dumpty was killed, who might have done it, what connection there might be to the local footcare companies, and simultaneously organize the protection detail for a priceless and mysterious artifact.

It's hilarious, clever, witty, ties itself up nicely, and I finished reading it a long time ago, so while I am full of praise, I am admittedly thin on all the details. But I'd happily read it again for a refresher.

Problems in Higher Education

2011-02-14T20:36:00.003-05:00

Title: Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids - And What We Can Do About It (find in a library)
Authors: Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus

Ridiculously long title aside, this book was an interesting discussion of the problems in higher education. And there are many. Some interesting tidbits:

Colleges and universities are extremely administrator heavy. The authors list some administrative titles that really do make you wonder: Director of Active and Collaborative Engagement, Credential Specialist, Coordinator of Learning Immersion Experiences, among others. "Between 1976 and 2007, the ratio of college administrators to students basically doubled" (p. 30). And not particularly surprising, there was no equivalent increase in full-time faculty. In fact:
The number of adjunct instructors has shot up exponentially because they are cheap labor. A typical adjunct makes about $3,000/course. Teaching a course load of 5 in a year (which is what many full-time faculty teach, if that) nets an adjunct a whopping $15,000 with no benefits. And there's no real evidence that adjuncts are any less effective at teaching than full-time professors.
The institution of tenure should be abolished and replaced with a contract renewal system to provide some accountability.
Colleges and universities providing undergraduate education should de-emphasize research in favor of teaching. Harvard gets a particularly bad rap in this area as an institution with faculty who are especially poor at teaching undergrads.
The authors also argue that colleges should refocus on the liberal arts and less on vocational majors. They define vocational as anything intended to lead to a job - engineering, business, etc. They believe that a recent grad will mostly learn on the job and won't be expected to apply principles learned in courses.
Colleges should seriously reconsider athletics, or at minimum, the amount spent on them. Almost all colleges and universities (even many with big name football teams) spend far more money on athletics than those sports ever bring in. Not to mention, rigorous athletic schedules take time away from schoolwork. In addition, "An NCAA study found that half its coaches are paid at least $252,000, over twice the salary of professors at most institutions" (p.158). That really gets me. An institution of higher education, where education should be the primary concern and sports coaches make twice what professors do, on average? Ugh.

All in all, some very interesting points were made. It is clear that higher education needs to be reexamined. The cost of a bachelor's degree has increased far more rapidly than inflation would warrant. Universities claim to spend tens of thousands of dollars per student when in reality, a sizable chunk of that money goes to faculty research. Should undergraduates really be paying to support that?

And just in general, students in PhD programs that are intending to go into teaching should be required to take education courses, or at least be provided with a program that helps them learn how to teach.

I look forward to reading the latest book published on the failings of higher education next: Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.

In space, only your crewmates can hear you fart.

2011-01-28T13:14:00.003-05:00

Title: Packing for Mars - The Curious Science of Life in the Void (find in a library)
Author: Mary Roach
Bookmark: a stick with a lizard in it.

Somehow, I had never before heard of Mary Roach. I'm glad that oversight has finally been corrected. Roach is apparently well-known for writing eye-watering funny books about science, presented with stunning frankness and candor and (if this book is any indication) filled with first-hand research. Not that she actually went to Mars to prepare for the book, but she did ride the Vomit Comet, visit space agencies in three different countries, and travel to NASA's research station on Devon Island in Canada, which is so lifeless and cold that it's the next best thing to an actual moon landing.

Packing For Mars isn't about space travel--not really. It's about how humans can travel in space (and a couple dogs, and a few primates). Hardly any time is spent on rockets, booster engines, and possible future drive systems. This book is all about what space does to us. How our bodies are affected by weeks (and months) without gravity, bathing, fresh food, privacy, and free time (astronauts' schedules are rigorously structured), and how each of those difficulties have led to astonishing breakthroughs in almost every realm of science. To get at those answers, Roach has gone to some unusual lengths to find the truth about space travel, and anything fascinating or hilarious that she discovered but didn't fit in the main text is likely to have found a home in her copious footnotes. One of my favorite examples comes from the chapter on sex in space, which found Roach talking to marine biologists to find out how dolphins mate, watching porn to find an elusive scene of sex unencumbered by gravity, and poring through an impressive amount of archive material to discover the truth about an alleged masturbating astrochimp:

*Further evidence of the difficulties of reduced-gravity sex comes from the sea otter. To help hold the female in place, the male will typically pull the female's head back and grab onto her nose with his teeth. "Our vets have had to do rhinoplasties on some of the females," says Michelle Staedler, sea otter research coordinator at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. (Sex can also be traumatic for the male otter, who endures aerial pecking attacks by seagulls mistaking his erect penis for a novel ocean delicacy.)

Roach focuses not on technology itself, but on how humans must interact with it to survive an environment we are not designed to survive. An entire chapter is devoted to the history and various advancements that allow astronauts to go to the bathroom without gravity (it's more difficult than you might think--without gravity pulling things down, our internal sensors can't tell when we're full. Astronauts have to set a schedule and stick to it, because they can't feel it when they have to go. Then there's the problem of getting detachment from both solid and liquids, both of which want to cling, and the danger of waste drifting out of a system that can't use gravity to contain it.). And that's good, because there are those that will ceaselessly point out that we can gather information from space more easily and with far less expense by sending robot probes instead of eating, breathing, sleeping, pooping, sweating, farting people who are fragile, susceptible to radiation and lack of gravity, water, and oxygen. People argue, stink, have individual wants and needs, and don't like eating the same colorless paste for days on end. And, as Roach points out in the final chapter, that is part of why people should go to space. Because we're people. We smell funny, we fart, we want variety in our food, we enjoy sex, we need to sleep almost a third of the time we're alive, but we dream, we innovate, we aspire, we wonder, and while we can represent some of the worst evils imaginable, we can also exhibit the greatest virtues imaginable. I've always been fascinated by space. I've always wanted to be an astronaut, and I've never needed anyone to convince me that we need to get up there. I cried when Challenger exploded, and kept a picture of Christa McAuliffe on my wall for years afterward. (Incidentally, the challenger disaster was 25 years ago today) Still, this book filled me with wide-eyed wonder, hope, and amazement just as often as it made me laugh hard enough to worry that the neighbors might be concerned.

In the spirit of Mary Roach's own footnotes, how great is it that a writer known for combining humor and science is named "Roach"?

Young People These Days....

2011-01-23T18:09:00.005-05:00

Title: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future (find in a library)
Author: Mark Bauerlein

I should start this off by mentioning that I fall at the edge, but within, the generation that Bauerlein is railing against. I am still, just barely, under 30, and certainly was when the book was published in 2008.

Bauerlein outlines all sorts of depressing statistics about the generation under the age of 30, often called the Millennials. Their knowledge of civics is abysmal, their interest in science and engineering all but nonexistent, and their preference is for celebrity gossip over an appreciation of the arts. One of the many disturbing statistics he cited was:

According to the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (Centers for Disease Control), 37 percent of high school students watch three or more hours of television per day. For college students the numbers may be higher. In 2005, Nielsen Media Research reported that the average college student watches 3 hours, 41 minutes of television each day (p. 24).

And it's a safe bet that none of that TV time is devoted to anything remotely educational.

Bauerlein also discusses how dismissive this generation is of books. They see them as antiquated and have little to no interest in reading any. Even if they did attempt to read them, they'd have a hard time. Studies of user behavior on the internet demonstrate that users skim webpages in an F-shape pattern. They thoroughly read the first few sentences at most, skim, catch another half-line or so, skim and leave the page. With as much time as they spend on the internet, this method of reading extends to print as well.

However, the author doesn't rail against the Millennials alone. He also chastises the older generations for enabling this behavior. Working in higher education, I regularly see the dumbing down of education, the desire to cater to students, the repetition of "but they'll hate that class if we do that," and more. Sometimes what a student hates is what is best for him/her. An institution of higher education's job is to produce a more informed, well-rounded individual - not to cater to his/her every whim.

He ends with what basically boils down to a plea - "A healthy democracy needs a vigilant citizenry and a healthy citizenry needs a reservoir of knowledge" (p. 215). Bauerlein's worry is that if something isn't done, if this generation's lack of interest in anything beyond themselves and their peers doesn't change, "They may even be recalled as the generation that lost the great American heritage, forever" (p. 236).

Overall, an interesting and motivating read. I do feel his critique of this current generation is rather harsh at times, but not completely unfounded.

And now I'm off to read some heavy historical tome so that I can become a more informed, responsible citizen.

An Epic Beginning

2011-01-20T20:59:00.005-05:00

Title: The Eye of the World (find in a library)
Author: Robert Jordan

I have been talked into a second attempt at Robert Jordan's monstrous Wheel of Time series. Many years ago, I started reading it and got stuck halfway through book six. I found myself taking notes on the characters because there were so many and decided enough was enough. Plus, the series wasn't finished, and there was no end in sight.

But now the end is in sight. The fourteenth and final book will be published in March 2012. The series is being finished by Brandon Sanderson, whom I adore and who is very good at crunching out books on time. Robert Jordan passed away before he could complete it himself. However, he revealed the ending to a select few, who then chose Sanderson as the one to finish it. In all reality, I like Sanderson's writing better, so that's another motivator. I also really do want to know how the story ends. Plus, I told a friend that I might be willing to read the series again if there was a (support) group reading it at the same time, and he made that happen. So now I'm committed.

Book one - and frankly, probably the entire series - is so epic that I am having trouble figuring out how to summarize it.

The story opens in a town called Emond's field (well, after the prologue anyway) with the main character, Rand, accompanying his father from their outlying farm into the town proper with apple cider for an upcoming feast and celebration. Then, Rand sees a mysterious and terrifying stranger on horseback, but his father does not. Rand thinks he is crazy until he discovers that his two closest friends, Mat and Perrin, have also seen the this horseman.

Then Moiraine, an Aes Sedai (female who can wield The One Power - a magic-wielder, essentially) and Lan, her Warder come to town. Next Trollocs (nasty troll-like creatures) raid Rand's farm and the village, and it soon becomes clear to the Aes Sedai that they were searching for Rand, Mat, and Perrin. The three need to leave town or risk having their village destroyed. Egwene, Rand's flame, follows, looking for adventure.

The rest of the story is filled with colorful characters, tons of bad guys of many flavors, long journeys, an epic quest, and more. We learn that while females can wield The One Power, men cannot. The male version has been tainted by The Dark One, and any man who wields it ends up insane and extremely dangerous to those around him. We also learn that The Dark One has been imprisoned for a long time, but is slowly breaking free. And finally, there is a man, The Dragon Reborn, who is prophesied to be the only one who can really fight The Dark One. In this world, the ages cycle, and there have been many past Dragons, both false and real, who have attempted to fight The Dark One, but have not really succeeded. The number of false dragons is on the rise, and it seems likely that The Dragon Reborn will soon emerge.

I am eagerly looking forward to book 2, and hopeful that I can keep up the momentum. The reading schedule is a book a month, with one free month before the final book comes out.

Honey of a Diehl

2010-12-15T16:58:00.002-05:00

Title: Up In Honey's Room
Author: Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard loves Detroit. When modern Detroit doesn't have the flair that he wants, he apparently goes historic.

Carl Webster comes to town looking for escaped German POWs. One of them frequently escaped the camp in Oklahoma City to visit his girlfriend in town, but this time has gone further afield. Carl's a big deal Marshall--the "hot kid" of the Marshalls' service, with a book written about his many exploits and heroic deeds, though he remains very likable and down-to-earth. Of the two Germans, one of them disappears, running off with an American Jewish girl who needs his help smuggling goods out of Europe. They are never heard form again. (That really bothered me--it's played like a major character and plot point until the third or fourth chapter, when he disappears forever)

To find the other, Carl connects with Honey Deal (no, really. That's her name. Honey Deal), the ex-wife of Walter Schoen, who is a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler and believes himself to be his long-lost twin, with his own great destiny to fulfill in the service of the Fatherland. Carl thinks Walter is connected with a spy ring in Detroit and that he works on an underground railroad for German spies and POWs. He becomes more convinced when his car is shot up.

It's a good read, but I feel like Leonard is trying to channel James Patterson. Too much is ridiculous, and it doesn't feel like it was meant to be ridiculous. Honey is an even bigger tramp than I expected her to be, and while Walter provides some intentional comic relief, some of the otehr characters are just befuddling. The head of the spy ring, whose name eludes me, seems more like a Major Houlihan-Miss Haversham mix than Mata Hari, and her lover/houseboy, who is supposed to be a calculating killer, is more a slutty, bisexual, low-grade hitman. It feels like Leonard tried to give his secondary characters more depth and just muddied the puddles.

pacing problem pattern

2010-12-14T16:46:00.003-05:00

Title: Pattern Recognition
Author: William Gibson

I took four years of Spanish in high school, and have since had only fleeting encounters with the language, limited usually to crossword clues and menus in Mexican restaurants (though I'm still not clear on what "pico de gallo" is). Reading the first 50 pages of Pattern Recognition is for me like reading a book in Spanish. Many words are familiar, and I can often translate an entire sentence, though it still doesn't make much sense, but the first few chapters, taken as a whole, don't make any sense at all. It doesn't even get interesting until after the first 50 pages.

Cayce Pollard is a "cool hunter," which seems more like the apex of high school castes than a real profession, and Gibson chooses to illustrate her knowledge by filling the book with cultural references both pop and sub- so obscure and numerous that only Dennis Miller or Gibson himself could make any sense of them. When he does explain, it's pointless. An entire paragraph defines emoticons, but names of brands, stores, celebrities, and fashion icons bristle past so quickly that I couldn't tell how many were complete fabrications, much less what they might mean. And he actually invented the (word) "Internet."

The first 50 pages are wasted explaining Cayce's peculiar sensitivity to what will and will not succeed in brand imaging, her allergy to trademarks (that never made any sense to me, but she nearly has a nervous breakdown when somebody leaves a Michelin Man doll on her doorstep), and her wardrobe of Cayce Pollard Units (CPUs, a term coined by a man-friend of hers to describe the solid black, gray, and white clothing items she wears exclusively, after painstakingly removing all trademarks and insignia). Rather than impressing me with how very good Cayce was at her job, and suffusing me with sympathy for the loss of her father on September 11, 2001, Gibson instead turned me against his heroine by giving the distinct impression that she was a stuffy, fussy, neurotic hipster.

Which should probably make it more impressive that I liked the rest of the book.

Once the plot finally thickened (ok, once it happened at all), I got interested. Cayce is a regular on message boards devoted to mysterious pieces of footage that appear on the internet, and a founding member of the online community that seeks to discern some meaning or order from the brief clips. Then her boss, a media-marketing guru and possible sleazeball, hires her to find out who makes them. She does some globe-trotting, bribing, sneaking about, nearly has a thing with the handsome Japanese man who was hired to work with her, discovers all sorts of subterfuge, back-stabbing, mob connections, etc., and finally (naturally) succeeds. Oh, and there's a Russian prison run by gangsters.

varmints, lawmen, and the like

2010-11-18T10:34:00.002-05:00

Title: Law and Order Unlimited
Author: William Colt MacDonald

I read this a few months ago, then lost track of it in my book pile. I no longer remember my general feeling about the book. Lawman comes to town to investigate a murder, but the body's already in the ground, and the crime scene is someone's living room, so it's irrevocably contaminated. All he has to go on is various interviews and His Gut. Help from the local Barney Fife, who is generally competent but inexperienced, and hopelessly in love with the victim's estranged daughter. Lawman--and half the town's men--fall for the victim's new bride (he was killed on their wedding night. Romantic.) . Lawman talks to everyone in town, misses something obvious (I hated that I figured out the clue about the photo AGES before he did, but I couldn't solve the whole thing because he didn't tell all he knew until the Big Reveal, after most of the players went down in a shoot-out), uses contacts in several other western territories, and saves teh day, riding off into the sunset on the company train. Oh, right--he's retired from being an official lawman, but he's a detective for the train company.

fun, but fluff.

PAPERCUT WHILE READING

2010-11-08T17:54:00.002-05:00

Title: Machine of Death
Author: the internet!

Here's the premise: imagine that someone invents a machine which, upon sampling your blood, can accurately predict your cause of death. Not the time, not the circumstances, just the cause. Except that it can sometimes be vague, cryptic, or misleading. OLD AGE might mean you see 98, or it might mean that a 98 year old kills you. Drawing OBESITY could cause you to turn your life around, start eating right and exercising, only to be crushed to death when a fat guy falls on you. It's a twisted machine. And it's available in malls, next to the photo booths, at your doctor's office, or even as a party game.

Now imagine that someone posited this idea on the internet, originally as a joke, then thought... that's a great idea for a book. And the internet responded with hundreds of submissions for stories. Their only problem was visibility. Without any Big Name Authors submitting stories, no publisher was interested, despite many agents who really liked the collection. Thus, the editors asked the Internet People to prove the power and might of Internet People by making their purchase the day the book was released, November 26, and making it Amazon's Top Seller Of The Day.

I'm happy to say that not only was I one of the people who helped achieve that goal, but by doing so, we made Glenn Beck sad. I could have never opened the book and been happy with that purchase. And if Beck had read even a little of the book, or the website that spawned it, he'd know that it is not, as he said, a book celebrating a "culture of death," but a celebration of life. Most stories don't even include the death foretold within them, which is admittedly disappointing with predictions like "ALMOND," "NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING," and "FLAMING MARSHMALLOW." Most of the stories are about people who realize too late how they didn't want their predictions, or how becoming more acquainted with their own demise leads them to try to lead better lives. Granted, there are also many stories about individuals or even entire societies spiraling off in wildly unhealthy directions with the advent and spread of the Machine. Stories where "getting your ticket" is not only optional, but required at a certain age--even at birth, or as a pre-natal health scan. There's some pretty messed-up possibilities from the possibility of knowing how everyone will die.

The Machine is always right, though--there's no use trying to trick it or make it wrong. Some people will try to find another way out, but suicide attempts fail, or merely render you comatose until your real fate can get you. One story details how scientists work out a way to possibly send themselves a message from the future using the Machine and its inevitably correct predictions, while another tells of a young woman using Schroedinger-like reasoning to try to prevent a nuclear war by removing knowledge of it. Some are darkly humorous, a couple are deeply unsettling, but most are about hope above all else. All of the stories (even the one which is shorter than its own title) are very, very good.

I have only one problem: I don't like the idea that we can't control our fates. A couple authors get around that by pointing out that even though the Machine writes the end of our stories, it doesn't write the middle. And that's still a problem I only have witht he Machine itself; not the book. The book is fantastic.

Maize and Blue

2010-11-02T09:58:00.003-05:00

Title: Mr. Paradise
Author: Elmore Leonard

Kelly and Chloe are roommates. Kelly is a Victoria's Secret model. Chloe was a high-dollar call girl until Mr. Paradise started paying her $5,000 a week to be his girlfriend (this seems to mainly entail topless cheerleading while the eighty-four year old retired criminal lawyer watches tapes of old Michigan games--but only the games Michigan won). Chloe convinces Kelly to come cheerleading with her one night, but it happens to be the night that two armed men arrive to kill Mr. Paradise. Things get bad for Kelly and Chloe. Hitmen, extortion, identity fraud, good times.

Frank Delsa is a homicide detective and acting head of his squad while the Lieutenant is in the sandbox. He gets to deal with the murder of Anthony Paradiso while simultaneously trying to cultivate a confidential informant, discover who shot a local gangbanger, solve the McDonald's robbery/homicide, and find out who killed and butchered four Mexican drug dealers in a basement.

I liked the crime--it was well-plotted and while TV shows often make it look like cops only ever handle one case at a time (usually as a gorgeous 6-person team), I think Frank's active caseload is far more likely. There are still way too many coincidental overlaps in the cases to be truly believable, but I can look past that. The part I found hard to believe was how quickly the drop-dead gorgeous underwear model fell for the aging, jaded cop widowed by cancer.

Most intense reality show, ever.

2010-10-26T16:11:00.003-05:00

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins

I hate reality television. Hate it. Nothing about it seems real. I have often joked--joked!--that to really make a show called Survivor, it should be ten people and one knife thrown into a big pit.

But I was joking. Really.

In the future that Suzanne Collins found, they really do that, but there are twenty-four people, the pit is a huge outdoor arena that could include forests, desert, frozen tundra, lakes, and rivers, and there's a lot more knives. Oh, and all the contestants are kids age 13-17.

The Hunger Games are a tool used by the government to keep the people of the Twelve Districts in line. Watching them is mandatory. Participating is obligatory. Losing means dying, often horribly, at the hands of the other contestants. Some of the districts actually train children for this dubious honor, and those districts usually produce the winners. Those kids volunteer for the Games. Kids from the other districts are chosen by lottery, and usually end up as camera fodder.

Katniss Everdeen wasn't selected by the lottery, but she volunteers when her sister is, saving her sister's life. Katniss grew up poaching game in the forests surrounding her district, selling meat and berries in the black market with her hunting partner, a boy who obviously loves her and promises to take care of her family for her; Katniss's mother and sister depend entirely upon her work. She is joined from her district by a baker's son, and it eventually comes out that he also loves her. Ok, so there's some smarmy love triangle stuff going on, and it causes the complications for Kat you'd expect from a novel aimed at teens, but there's also a diabolically twisted government at work, and some interesting insights into how we entertain ourselves as a culture, and the skewed perspective people have with things they see on TV (at the end of the Games, people talk about major events during the competition in terms of what they were doing when it happened, i.e. "I was having my nails done when the boy from District 3 was killed with the spear"). There are a few things that don't quite seem to fit, like the skill and wisdom some of the characters have compared to their ages, but that can slide. Sometimes those can come from life experiences instead of years. Overall, it's really well done. I'd like to find the rest of the trilogy, because I suspect that it will somehow resolve some of the political machinations introduced in the first book, even though it's far more likely that they just screw around with the love triangle crap.

the beginning is the end

2010-08-06T13:00:00.003-05:00

Title: The Thin Man
Author: Dashiell Hammett

The more I find of Hammett and Chandler, the more I like them. They bear little resemblance to today's mystery novels, but still built the foundation for them. The hard-nosed tough-guy investigator? The weird twists? Hammett and Chandler. Sadly, while newer books show great improvements in technology and investigative techniques, they've lost some of the qualities that made the older books so great, like Chandler's descriptions, and the matter-of-fact badassery of both authors. What's more, you can reasonably assume that Hammett's stuff is pretty accurate, because he was a Pinkerton man for many years (and served in two World Wars).

The Thin Man of the book's title is an inventor, and despite being the title character, we don't actually see him until the book is nearly over. Letters are received, notes passed, but he has no direct contact with the reader for several chapters. Meanwhile, his secretary is murdered, a suspect takes a shot at Nick Charles (among Hammett's most popular characters, Nick and Nora Charles debut in this book, which takes place several years after Nick has retired from sleuthing), his entire family turns out to be a bunch of loons, and his lawyer calmly manages his business affairs, contacting the Thin Man through newspaper ads while he goes on the lam as the police's number one suspect in the secretary's death.

Nick and Nora deserve their fame. Despite a July-November marriage, they have a great rapport. Nora is not quite a full partner in Nick's investigation, but she often has ideas that inspire him to make the necessary connections, and backs him up well by tending to several minor crises along the way. They seem to almost have the sort of telepathy developed only after decades of marriage. There is also an entertaining ease with which they handle the more bizarre events of the book. When a gunman appears in their hotel room, Nick carefully calculates, and cold-cocks his wife to the side to get her away from the line of fire before receiving a grazing wound and taking out the gunman. When she comes around, Nora is upset that Nick hit her so hard not because it hurt, but because she missed all the action. Later, when five men beat the hell out of someone coming to accost Nick in a bar, she drunkenly tells him, "I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice, and you know such interesting people."

Hammett is full of sly, dark humor that would make the book worth reading even if the story were dull--and it isn't--and the characters boring--and they aren't. The caper is only convoluted enough to work, stays believable, and tracks well. Long live the greats.

Amphibious

2010-08-06T12:44:00.003-05:00

Title: Big Fish
Author: Daniel Wallace
Bookmark: Hard to say. Finished it a month or two ago somewhere above the western states.

I've forgotten the names of all the characters, but as with all fairy tales, the general story and important details are still lodged firmly in my brain. That's probably the most important aspect of the book: not that it's a story about a son trying to find a place in his father's life, or a father trying to be a "big fish in a big pond," or about a father slowly dying (though it is also all of those things), but a fairy tale. Maybe.

The son has grown up with stories of his father's life. Tall tales and spun yarns about how the father could talk to animals, or how every woman wanted him, or how he tamed a giant, or saved a water nymph, or escaped his seemingly mythical birthplace by passing through a shadowy duplicate of the same town, populated with those who tried to leave before him, broken dreams, and a mysterious, vicious dog. It is a story of the father's life, told by the son as a series of stories his father had told him, and since the one thing his father always wanted to be was important, a man of great impact, a "big fish in a small pond," there is some question as to the reliability of this second-hand narrative of his life. Did he really offer himself to a giant to be eaten? Did he really buy an entire town? Did he really have a second wife there, rescued from a pristine home in the swamp and... maybe... who brought the swamp with her?

It doesn't really matter. Maybe it's more a story of how children always see their parents as mythical, mysterious, powerful beings. Maybe the father in this story really is. Maybe his son, seeing his father slowly dying, just needs to believe in a power that seems to have left him.

Maybe, as the ending reveals, that power is still there.

Abracawhatthehell?

2010-07-06T17:19:00.003-05:00

Title: The Phoenix and The Mirror
Author: Avram Davidson

Turns out Vergil wasn't a poet; he was a powerful and respected sorcerer. He gets blackmailed into making a "virgin speculum" when a conniving power-hungry woman seduces him and literally steals his mojo. I'm not effing kidding. His "essence of manhood" is somehow snatched away from him, and he has to make a magic mirror to get it back.

Which brings us to the ridiculously funny alchemy theories. Each time you look in a mirror, you sully it a bit with your glance, and they will eventually cloud from overuse. If you look in a virgin mirror, it will show you the location of your heart's truest desire, but it has to be really virgin. This is when they still made mirrors of bronze, so they have to track down virgin copper ore, virgin tin ore, (do you know how hard it is to find a virgin ore? I'm not even sure they, though they might claim otherwise) and the purest water possible for quenching (Vergil's buddy gets this by starving a white goat in a box for days, then feeding it moss from a specific hillside and collecting its urine). Reading about their processes is very entertaining, especially because most of the metallurgy and actual manufacturing processes involved are real, and accurately portrayed. Then they haggle over which astrological signs to emboss in the border for greatest accuracy, and I started giggling again.

Pulp mills of Mars

2010-07-06T17:08:00.003-05:00

Title: Born Under Mars
Author: John Brunner

It's been well over a month since I've read this, and kind of a lot has happened since then, so I'm going to glaze over most of it.

Imagine a noir-ish pulp detective novel on Mars, centered around a conspiracy to create and control a baby that could alter the course of human evolution.

It's surprisingly well done (considering the outlandish premise), if you're able to think of it more as noir detective than sci-fi, and you're willing to ignore Brunner getting relativity backwards. Ray is a flight engineer, born on Mars (and due to a mere four or five generations of human life on Mars, has "evolved" to be very tall, lightweight, and physically weak, especially on higher-gravity worlds), and starts the book being tortured by operatives of one of the two primary factions of humankind. He is later revived by members of the opposite faction, and spends the rest of the book trying to figure out what everyone thinks he knows, and why his Yoda-like mentor erased twelve hours of his memory. Weird stuff, but perfect for a flight or a brain-dead evening.

A blast from the past

2010-06-17T16:40:00.007-05:00

It's been a while. Sorry. I decided I was more interested in reading another book than writing about the one I just finished.

But this post heading is relevant in another way. I'm not going to bother writing about everything I've read in the past year(?) - it seemed more efficient to just generally mention a few stand-outs. And those would generally be not-so-recent books.

Despite my general preference for trashy romances, of late I've been sticking to classic British mysteries (discussion of this shift to follow). We all know elizabeth has a thing for Peter Wimsey; I've enjoyed all of his books recently.

However, my preference is for someone who could be considered his contemporary - Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn. Also the younger son of British nobility, Alleyn is a bit more grounded and works at Scotland Yard. Marsh is a native New Zealander known equally well for her direction of Shakespearean plays, which would be why Alleyn gets pulled into several murders in theaters. Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, and Marsh were known as the "Queens of Crime" for decades, for good reason. It's too bad only Christie appears to be well-known these days.

And my love of Alleyn resulted in me wandering around the mystery section of the library, hoping to find a few more good Brits. I've also enjoyed Sara Woods, who writes about Anthony Maitland, a barrister (reading books set in Britain results in a lot of research on Wikipedia - apparently barristers are very different from solicitors).

But the best random finds feature Peter Shandy, a professor at an agricultural college set somewhere in New England that I swear must be the inspiration for all of Rose Nylund's stories about Saint Olaf. Charlotte MacLeod created a college president who grunts in Swedish, whose wife is obsessed with herring, and where Shandy is world-renowned for his creation of a massive rutabaga. Completely insane, and everyone other than Shandy features ridiculously Scandinavian names.

In summary, read something by one of these women.

So back to my issues with trashy romance novels. I'm apparently becoming too much of a feminist to really enjoy many of the books I've started recently. It goes along with my extreme hatred of commercials for food/laundry detergent directed at moms. No matter how independent, intelligent, and self-sufficient a heroine is, all of a sudden the man gets to make all decisions. For example, Nora Roberts has been a favorite author for years. I wasn't a fan of her High Noon, but Black Hills might be worse. Lil, the heroine, has a doctorate in animal studies, founded and runs a sanctuary for big cats, and has been riding and tracking in the wilderness for years, most recently 6 months tracking pumas in South America. All of a sudden, when her former lover Coop gets back to town after an absence of several years, shit starts to happen. Can she make her own decisions? Of course not. Her father insists that Coop move into her cabin to protect her. Coop insists that he's back to stay and that they're going to start dating again, even though she tells him to leave her alone, and won't move out. He also tells her she's not allowed to go into the woods anymore because it's "too dangerous", and SHE GOES ALONG WITH IT. She has a pet cougar! All she does is capitulate to his (and her parents') ultimatums, even when she's busy escaping from the killer, where her brilliant plan is to stall long enough for Coop to rescue her. This, from the highly educated and formerly independent heroine. Her best friend, with a doctorate in something else related to animals, falls in love with a farm hand who's one step above mentally challenged; nothing is written about him having any good qualities other than being nice, attractive, and persistent in his adoration. These are supposed to be inspiring stories making me want to have a similar romance of my own? I gave up on another book recently because a former PI was feeling guilty about getting dragged back into the business (after her son was brutally attacked) because her husband didn't like her being involved in that sort of thing. Hello? If you don't like her career, don't marry her. And yet the issue was all on her side, because she (and the author) seemed to think it was ok for the husband to be so righteously indignant about it.

I certainly hope there's some exceptions to this crap out there, because I'm quickly running out of vintage mysteries...

Magical

2010-05-10T15:56:00.010-05:00

Title: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Author: Susanna Clarke

“Our question,” continued Mr Honeyfoot, “is why magic has fallen from its once-great state in our great nation. Our question is, sir, why is no more magic done in England?”

Mr Norrell’s small blue eyes grew harder and brighter and his lips tightened as if he were seeking to suppress a great and secret delight within him. It was as if, thought Mr Segundus, he had waited a long time for someone to ask him this question and had had his answer ready for years. Mr Norrell said, “I cannot help you with your question, sir, for I do not understand it. It is a wrong question, sir. Magic is not ended in England. I myself am quite a tolerable practical magician.”

Reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell made me happier than anything else has made me in quite some time. This is a wonderful book, full of wit and wisdom and magic. Magic! I was completely spell-bound by the world Susanna Clarke created, and tried to leave work as early as possible each day so I could get home and read further.

The story takes place in an alternate England during the Regency era (that is, the time of Jane Austen). On the Continent, Napoleon is doing his best to wage war upon the world. In England, magic has been waning since the disappearance of a mysterious figure known as the Raven King – and indeed, no one has performed any magic at all for hundreds of years. The only magicians left are scholar magicians, idle gentlemen who study history and theory in dusty books, but never do so much as wash a dirty dish with magic. They are fond of societies, however, and one day the York Society of Magicians is astonished to discover that one practical magician remains – a reclusive man named Mr Norrell who can make church stones sing.

After astounding the York magicians (and forcing them to disband the society) Mr Norrell moves to London, becomes a celebrity, and begins to assist England in the war against France. But another magician soon appears, one who is as different from Mr Norrell as possible. Jonathan Strange is a young gentleman of fortune, who was aimless in life until he decided to take up magic and found that he had quite a talent for it. He has a long nose, reddish hair, and a sarcastic expression. He is also more ambitious than Mr Norrell, and soon journeys to Spain to join Wellington’s campaign. But as Strange becomes more and more engrossed in magic and its power, he leaves himself vulnerable to the machinations of an unknown enemy, a mysterious gentleman with thistle-down hair…

My favorite aspects of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (aside from the humor) were the characters and the writing. Clarke assembles a large cast of politicians, magicians, ladies, fairies, and vagabonds, each and every one of which is precisely drawn and brought to life. Stephen Black, Arabella, John Segundus, and Childermass were some of my favorites, and they’re only a few of the creations that Clarke depicts so vividly. I don't think I'll be forgetting any of their names very soon.

For example, while the dashing and adventurous Jonathan Strange may be the primary focus of the plot, the characterization of Mr Norrell is Clarke’s masterpiece in miniature. He’s a fastidious, fussy, cowardly man, narrow-minded and sometimes cruel. (In other words, he’s Mr Woodhouse with a mean streak.) And yet … I couldn't despise him. Instead, he made me laugh. I don’t know how Clarke made me like such an weak character, but like Norrell I did, even when he was behaving in ways that were completely despicable.

As for the language, it’s superb: witty, vivid, and simple. There's something to chuckle over on every page. And despite the length of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Clarke is very spare when describing emotions, which is just the sort of writing I like best. In this she is quite English. She keeps the reader at arm’s length from her main characters, but one can always read their emotions from their words and actions. And some of these emotions are wrenching. The best example I can think of is how Clarke broke my heart in a footnote. (For anyone who has the hardcover version of the book, the footnote I speak of is found on page 284.) I never would have thought a book auction could have been so poignant.

Speaking of footnotes, Clarke uses them copiously. They provide little tidbits and stories about her magical England, and reveal a playful imagination overflowing with ideas. Impatient readers might be tempted to skip these digressions, but I would not. They contain some of the best parts of the book and usually connect in some intriguing fashion with the plot.

Finally, a brief word about the ending. It made me gnash my teeth and protest inside, but was absolutely the right conclusion for the book. Anything else would have somehow read false. Bravo to Clarke for pulling it off so effectively. It wasn’t depressing, but it was bittersweet, and I dropped a few tears (both of anger and sadness) on the final paragraphs. Clarke knows that there is no such thing as happily-ever-after, and that something lost cannot be regained. I would not have liked this ending as a teenager, but the adult I am today can appreciate its value.

I don’t think everyone will enjoy this book. Some people might have no patience with it, and I can see why. Much of the reading pleasure comes from the way Clarke combines the linguistic style of Jane Austen with the British fantasy tradition. Readers familiar with Austen will understand Clarke’s humor better than others, and readers who have read works such as Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” will have fun spotting all the influences in Clarke’s work. Several historical personages make cameos as well, and you’ll enjoy these more if you already have an idea of who the Duke of Wellington and King George III were.

In short, I think a little dash of cultural education is necessary to appreciate much of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Still, I believe the book is adventurous and clever enough to appeal to readers unfamiliar with this period of English history. I would advise everyone to try the first chapter. If it doesn’t make you chuckle at least once, give up: this book is not for you. This book is for people like me, and I’m so happy that Susanna Clarke wrote it.

p.s. – Some people have called Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell “Harry Potter for grownups.” Let me make one thing clear: Susanna Clarke is a far, far better writer than J. K. Rowling. You know how the Harry Potter books became both darker and yet more poorly written as they progressed? Well, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the type of book Rowling tried – and failed – to write in those last few volumes. It weaves strands of darkness into the plot while maintaining its witty tone, and manages to convey its characters’ deep emotions without resorting to SHOUTING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!

p.p.s. – Sorry, that was a cheap shot at Rowling, but I couldn’t resist. Besides, it’s true. I like Harry Potter, but would have been happy if she’d stopped writing after book three.

p.p.p.s. -- I really want to do this as well.

Sweety-Pie

2010-05-10T15:51:00.003-05:00

Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Authors: Mary Ann Schafer and Annie Barrows

From Juliet to Dawsey [selected excerpts]

Dear Mr. Adams,

[…]

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive – all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

The red stain on the cover that looks like blood – is blood. I got careless with my paper knife. […]

If you have time to correspond with me, could you answer several questions? Three, in fact. Why did a roast pig dinner have to be kept secret? How could a pig cause you to begin a literary society? And, most pressing of all, what is a potato peel pie – and why is it included in your society’s name?

[…]

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

I feel that certain expectations are raised when a novelist puts the word “pie” in her title. For example, imagine a book entitled Blood Pie: Death in the Amazon ... with Scorpions! Something just seems wrong there, doesn’t it?

No, a book with “pie” in its title should be warm, comforting, and delectable. Like a pie! Its pages should celebrate small town values, but not small-town bigotry. And it should probably have good female characters. Some men might balk at buying a “pie” novel (unless it was the aforementioned Blood Pie), and a ~~mercenary~~ wise author will always flatter her chosen demographic.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society met all these expectations of mine, and was the perfect follow-up to the meat-and-potatoes machismo of Herodotus. I had been saving it for just this purpose, knowing that I would crave something funny and light after all that ancient warfare.

Told entirely through letters, the story takes place in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Our heroine is Juliet Ashton, an author living in London who is trying to come up with an idea for her next book. Luckily, inspiration soon arrives in the post. Juliet receives a letter from Mr. Dawsey Adams, a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The letter explains that Dawsey is in possession of one of Juliet’s old books: Selected Essays of Elia, by Charles Lamb. He would like to read more books by Charles Lamb, but there are no bookstores open on Guernsey since the war. Could Juliet send him the name and address of a London bookshop, so that he could order some via mail?

Juliet is intrigued, both by the letter and the Society’s unusual name. She responds eagerly, and doesn’t hesitate to ask curious questions of her own. Soon, a full-blown correspondence is established between herself, Dawsey, and the other Society members. The Society members are all quirky characters, and Juliet finds herself slowly becoming engrossed in their lives. She eventually decides that they are the perfect subject for her next book, and goes to the island to meet her new friends and write about their unique wartime experience.

The story might sound like it’s too sweet – all strawberry – but there’s just enough tart rhubarb here to make it interesting. Juliet can be very funny in her letters, and enjoys flinging teapots at nosy reporters.

Of course, Guernsey isn’t all sweetness and light. The characters suffered through WWII, after all, and the grim shadow of death in a concentration camp does make an appearance. But there’s no graphic violence or evil in these pages, and the book celebrates the strength that can arise from love, community, and friendship.

p.s. – I wrote this review months ago and am just getting around to posting it now. Guernsey was a good read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it’s not a book with staying power. I’ve forgotten much of the plot by now, and don’t even think I would’ve been able to remember the characters’ names without reading over the review. So it’s a good book, but not worth making the investment of a purchase. You probably won't read it twice, unlike my next review...

The Universe's Guide to Hitchhikers

2010-04-09T13:21:00.003-05:00

Title: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Author: Douglas Adams
Bookmark: built-in ribbon

I have no idea how many times I've read this series. My best guess is that this is my third run through, but the number could easily be higher. Each time, though, my impressions are the same:

Douglas Adams is a genius.
Absolutely anything can be satirized in a sci-fi framework.
Mr. Adams got tired of these books after number three (there are five books in the Hitchhiker Trilogy)
I don't care--they're still fun.

The first time I read these I had to poke around in the uncharted territory of the Adult Fiction section of my hometown library. That was before they moved to the new building, and there was a stark contrast between the kids/teen section (comfy chairs, carpeting, bright colors, lots of light) and the Adult Fiction section (concrete floors, high narrow canyons of bare steel bookshelves, sunlight creeping greenly through ivy-choked smoked glass windows). It felt like a library both secret and arcane, the type of place you see in a creepy movie where the books might be filled with strange symbols printed in blood, or where mysterious figures may direct you to a goal, and are later discovered to be twenty years dead. Then I started reading Douglas Adams, and realized that's exactly the kind of space I had discovered. He may well have been my entry into Adult Fiction. I don't remember for sure.

Now I own two separate copies of the entire trilogy. This one is black, with gold lettering on the cover, gilt-edged pages, and a long, narrow ribbon trailing from the spine to mark your place. It looks like the sort of book found in the libraries seen in those movies. Exactly the sort of thing to keep on a bedside table or shelf to add a touch of class to your collection until someone notices the picture of a small sphere (planetoid?) sticking its thumbs where its ears might be and waggling its tongue at you. Kind of what Adams' books did to... well, everything.

For those unfamiliar with the books (if you are among their number, you should read them soon, or we may not be able to be friends anymore), they start with Arthur Dent, mild-mannered Englishman, protesting the pending demolition of his house to make room for a bypass. Then his friend Ford convinces him to leave the planet with/ abducts him because the Vogons are coming, and they want to destroy the planet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Don't try to figure out why it makes sense. You'll never get there.

Arthur and Ford (who had been stuck on our planet for fifteen years, but is actually a Betelgeusian who writes for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) proceed to have a series of wildly improbable and bizarre misadventures traipsing about the galaxy and through time, learn the secret origins of our planet and the questionable origins of our species, witness the end of the Universe, quest for Ultimate Truths, learn to fly, defy physics and escape certain death too many times to count. Oh, and they help to save the universe at least once. And that's just the first three books.

My guess is that Adams felt he was done at this point, but a clamoring public demanded more. Again, this is only a guess. I've done no actual research on that topic. The fourth book is a complete departure. When I first read it, I was annoyed that Adams had suddenly decided to write an entire novel that seemed to be nothing more than a dopey love story, and Ford (my favorite character in the series, possibly in all of literature) spends most of it setting up an elaborate telephone prank to bankrupt a technology company and possibly drive one of its sales representatives completely mad. Now, I can at least appreciate that he may have wanted to try something different, and I have to admit it contains the hottest and most physically improbable love scene ever written. Plus, he tells us God's Last Message to His Creation, which has been thoroughly commercialized, as you might expect.

The last book, though, makes it obvious that Adams was done with HHGTTG books, because SPOILER ALERT he destroys the Earth in every possible universe simultaneously, taking with it three of the major characters.

SPOILER ALERT OVER

There's also a short story, Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, which I've only ever seen in my two collected editions, and takes place long before the trilogy starts, but gets stuck in the book somewhere between the third and fifth volumes (I don't remember whether it's before or after the fourth).

The important thing to remember is that he's not really trying to write a sci-fi epic. He's just using sci-fi to look at everything in our messed-up world and give it a twisted, satirical bent. Hell, he even uses it to make fun of sci-fi. It's rude, unapologetic, completely hysterical, and absolutely brilliant. To those who read this, remember to pack your towel.

Thanks, Mr. Adams. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

A nasty pot habit

2010-01-25T17:29:00.002-05:00

Title: A Thief of Time
Author: Tony Hillerman
Bookmark: Paper found inside the book with information on Hillerman and the Anasazi

Navajo Tribal Police officer Jim Chee is investigating the theft of a trailer and a backhoe. Joe Leaphorn, on terminal leave before retirement, gets involved in the search for a missing anthropologist. They realize their cases are connected when they meet at a tent revival, each following his own leads to the same place. The missing woman takes precedence when they find the trailer and backhoe accompanied by two men, dealing in illegally excavated Anasazi pots, each with fatal small-caliber bullet holes in their bodies.

Hillerman's novels are fascinating not only for the intricately laced mysteries, but for the insights he provides into Native American culture and beliefs. Granted, since I am neither a Native American nor closely acquainted with any, I have no idea how accurate these portrayals are, but since Hillerman received a "Friend of the Dinee" award from the Navajo nation, I think I can safely assume that he's pretty close to the mark.

Chee, the younger of our two detectives, is a traditionalist, trained to sing the Healing Way, while Leaphorn eschews any and all supernatural beliefs. His wife recently died from cancer returned from remission, and he takes an interest in the case of the missing woman mainly because he remembers how Emma would have asked him about the progress, offered her own insights, and been proud of him returning with an alive-and-well anthropologist. He wants to go out with a win. Chee, despite his differences with Leaphorn, has great respect for the older man and his methods, and is maybe looking for some fatherly pride.

The story is told in a laid-back, matter-of-fact way. It's not slow-moving; it's relaxed. Leaphorn often uses a Navajo Silence method for interrogation (if you don't say anything, most people, especially whites, will say something just to fill the silence), and although he and the subjects of his interviews often talk around what they're saying, you still realize what's really going on and left unsaid. Hillerman helps with clues as to the nuances of their voices and mannerisms, and subtle body-language cues that most would overlook. He realizes, as any good communicator does, that a great deal of what we tell people has nothing to do with the words we speak, and does a great job of passing these non-worded communiques to the reader.

Winter Break Wrap-up

2010-01-16T18:12:00.004-05:00

I chewed my way through four books during my holiday travels. Not bad, considering everything else I managed in that time. However, I've returned most to the library or their rightful owners, so I'm working form memory.

Title: Summer Knight
Author: Jim Butcher

This comes much earlier in the series than the only other one I've read. It establishes why Harry has weekly house-cleaning and pantry-stocking service provided by pixies, but that doesn't show up until the last chapter or so. Clearly not the point of the book.

Someone has killed the Summer Knight (protector/enforcer of the Summer Court of the Fae) and stolen the source of his power. The Winter Queen, Mab (of all people/things), hires Harry to find out whodunit. Ok, technically she kind of blackmails him into it. Naturally, nothing can ever be as simple as just a murder investigation. If Harry doesn't solve the murder in time, the balance of power between the two courts of the Fae will shift, leading to (more) rains of frogs and the eventual destruction of life and order as we know it. Plus, his own White Council of Wizards will turn him over to the Red Court vampires--the same as an execution, because they're still mad about Harry attacking them in a previous story--to end the war between Red and White. Believe it or not, the war between wizards and vampires is the background story, hardly mentioned at all.

The story is complex and bizarre (as expected, and lots of fun), and Harry cracks wise in the middle of a reality-threatening battle which takes place in the sky above Chicago, lays out pizza as bait for pixies with strange armor and ridiculous names, and partners with a gang of werewolves, who aren't the bad guys you might expect them to be. It's weird in all the best ways.

Title: Moose Droppings and Other Crimes Against Nature: Funny Stories From Alaska
Author: Tom Brennan
Bookmark: various pieces of airport paperwork

Every year, one of the smaller cities in Alaska (I know, that sounds redundant) holds a Moose Dropping Festival. One year, an environmental group called to complain, wanting to know exactly how high up the moose were lifted before being dropped. Hence the book's title.

Brennan presents us with an insight into Alaskan life and history by inundating the reader with the humor of our largest and newest state. Some of the entries are just jokes from and about Alaska (including an entire Dave Barry column); many are true stories about Alaskan personalities both well-known and obscure, ranging from bush pilots and prostitutes to politicians and executives. Some are laughed with; many are laughed at, but all are hysterically funny. I laughed so hard reading this book on the first half of my flights home for Christmas that I was afraid they'd take the book away from me so I'd stop disturbing the other passengers. The lady in the seat in front of me kept turning away from her counter-cross-stitch to glare at me between the seats.

Highly entertaining; unusually familiar.

Title: Ella Minnow Pea
Author: Mark Dunn

In the fictional island nation of Nollop, 23 miles of the coast of South Carolina, lives a girl named Ella Minnow Pea in a city built around a statue of Nevin Nollop, revered native son and author of the famous pangram "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Nollopians live in a happy sesquipedalian society, with a great love of words and language, until one day one of the tiles, a Z, falls from the cenotaph. The High Island Council decrees it to be a sign from Nollop, and orders that the letter Z be stricken from all language, written and oral. A first offense earns a warning, stocks or public flogging for a second offense, and the third merits banishment--death if banishment is refused. A beekeeper is sent off the island almost immediately.

As more tiles fall, more letters are removed from their language, and more Nollopians leave, some by choice, others by official decree. The council issues an official proclamation that the lost graphemes will become legal again only if an islander can create a new pangram using only 32 letters. At least one woman goes completely insane, covering her body in brightly colored paints (the only way left for her to express herself). Others work night and day on the new pangram. One cult is formed declaring Nollop to be the only Supreme Being, and another is formed primarily to contradict the first.

The best part: the novel is epistolary, consisting only of coorespondence between characters and the official decrees of the High Island Council, meaning that as letters disappear from their island, they also disappear from the book. By the end, it's barely comprehensible gibberish.

And it's wonderful. Easily one of the best books I've read in a long time. The actions of the govenment are outright terrifying. It's not just a story about a love of language, but of freedoms relished and rescinded, the power of beliefs and cults, loves lost and found, rebellion, unlikely heroes, serendipity, and the madness that sometimes overtakes people when they refuse to question their own questionable beliefs. It's fantasstic, and I highly recommend it.

Title: Red Harvest
Author: Dashiel Hammett

The nameless operative of the Continental Detective Agency is one of Hammett's best known characters. I read a short story that featured him in a much larger collection, but this is the first book I've tackled. If you are as bad with names as I am, don't make the mistake I did and slow down while reading it. I didn't read fast enough on my flights, and when I got back to my place I was too busy to read during the day so I only got a bit of reading done each night before falling asleep. I never remembered who anybody was, and ended up very confused until I waited to finish the whole thing the next Saturday.

The ConOp shows up in Personville (usually called Poisonville, but not always by guys with a heavy New Joisey accent) at the request of a man who is murdered within a couple hours of their scheduled meeting. He takes it upon himself to start investigating the murder, but simultaneously blackmails the most powerful man in town (who happens ot have the mayor, governor, chief of police, and a couple crime bosses in his pocket) into hiring him to clean up the corruption in town. What follows is a constant onslaught of double-dealings, murders, drive-bys, and frame jobs. The ConOp doesn't keep his nose completely clean, but stays mainly within the bounds of law, operating mainly by letting other people know what their rivals are planning--or have already accomplished.

It's complicated and messy, but if you enjoy a good pulp thriller, it's good stuff.

Weird by design

2009-12-13T17:18:00.003-05:00

Title: Geek Love
Author: Katherine Dunn
Bookmark: some random receipt

I was really excited when I saw this title on the shelf, thinking that the author, like me, believes nerds to be romantic ideals. The first sentence on the back cover set me straight. This was not the colloquial use of "geek," but the traditional: the guy at carnivals who bites the heads off live chickens.

The Binewskis are a carny family. More than that, they are the carny family. Patriarch Al inherited the Binewski Fabulon from his own father, and married a Boston socialite who--that's right--ran away to join his circus. But times were tough for carnivals and their folk, and when all the freaks in his show drifted off, found new employment, or died, Al was in a fix. Then he hit upon his Plan, to which his loving Lil enthusiastically agreed. They would breed their own freak show.

Al used his love and knowledge of medicine to dose his wife through ovulation and gestation with everything from cocaine and amphetamines to arsenic and radioisotopes. As you might expect, the rate of return was less than stellar. One of the attractions of the family's Fabulon includes a display of the four children who didn't survive. Of those that remain, Arturo "the Aqua Boy" has flippers where his arms and legs should be, and performs daily in a large tank of water, swimming with unmatched skill. The Siamese twins, Electra and Iphigenia, share one pair of legs and the lower half of their trunk, but have four arms and play piano duets together, singiing beautifully and charming crowds. Our narrator, Olympia, is perpetually disappointed that she is "only" an albino hunchbacked dwarf, and not as "gifted" as her older siblings. Finally, there is Chick, who to all appearances is a completely normal child--so much so that they are ready to abandon him to a "norm" family before they discover his gifts.

Referring once more to the back of the book, Chick is described as "the family's most precious--and dangerous--asset." Having read the book, I beg to differ.

Arty is the quintessential power-mad psychopath. He flies into a rage if the twins bring in more tickets than his own show, it is implied that he might have killed one of his four siblings floating in the glass jars (a tailed lizard-looking girl who would have been a greater draw had she lived to show-business age), and he attempts to murder chick when he realizes the young lad's potential to somehow be more important to the family than he is. In time, Arty runs the show, and Al gets pushed into smaller and smaller roles. Arty is the one who makes decisions, hires and fires, and eventually a very literal cult following of over a hundred lunatics following the carnival from town to town, hanging on his every word, and going to great length to become "Artier than thou."

The story is told as a combination of flashbacks, flashbacks of flashbacks, news clippings and notebook jottings, and present-day (for Olympia) narrative. The carnival is long in her past, and she nonw lives in a small apartment building managed by her mother, who no longer recognizes her, and inhabited by a defrocked Benedictine and Oly's own daughter, who was raised as an orphan and has no idea who her real family is--though she does have a small, writhing tail.

There's a lot going on here, and some of the weaving is complex enough that I occasionally had to flip back through the chapters to find an earlier reference to a character who unexpectedly reappears later on just to remind myself of who they were, but it's worth it. Oly plays detective to find out more about the mysterius woman making a bizarre offer to her daughter. Arty comes to power through a long series of twisted machinations. Chick, who has such great power, is mysteriously reduced to an errand-boy, performing acts counter to his own high moral code simply to get love from his family. Al and Lil, once the king and queen of the carnival, each slowly withdraw further and further into their own shells, husks of what they once were, hollowed out by their son's selfish drive for power.

The threads are fascinating and terrifying and revolting and most of all brilliantly, beautifully written. Al will yell hysterically profane things like "Ah, the flabby-gashed mother of god!" and will be followed a few pages later with hauntingly written passages: "There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land." I don't even know what that means, but I loved reading it (I actually had a much better example in mind, but I can't find it anymore. It's lost in three hundred pages engaging prose). I still haven't decided whether anything was ever satisfactorily resolved. I mean, I know what happened, and the threads are all tied up, but I still want to know why a lot of it happened. Some of the answers are implied, or hinted at, but there's so much conflict between the characters and even in the minds of the individual characters--to say that they are complex would be short-selling them. They might as well be real people by the time you've finished reading their life stories--that you can reason your way to or from half a dozen different motives. Oly certainly doesn't witness everything herself, though she gets second-hand accounts from various sources and shares those with us, but there is a certain realism--even it is unsatisfying in a narrator--in us not knowing any more than she does. If someone goes quietly (or loudly) insane, she can only tell us what they do or say, and not why they might have done or said it. It's enthralling, sometimes heart-breaking, and ultimately a little revolting, because when you get right down to the roots of the story, it's not about the various members of a freak show; it's about a family, and how they treat each other, and while their appearances may be alien, there is something unnervingly familiar in how they touch (caress, throttle, stab) each other's lives.

butchered

2009-12-05T01:42:00.003-05:00

Ti: Cleaving
Au: Julie Powell
Bookmark - ARC edition, dog-eared it.
HC published: 12/01/09

I was excited to be offered an ARC of Julie Powell's new book. Plenty of people liked 'Julie and Julia,' including me, even if Julia didn't. It might have turned out to be telling that while 'Julie and Julia' was made into a pretty decent movie, I enjoyed the scenes with Julia more than those that focused on Julie.

Unfortunately, the part of this book that interested me most was the butchering, as the author takes on an apprenticeship after searching high and low for a traditional butcher shop that's willing to take a student. Being as this is a memoir, Powell writes quite a bit about what's going on in her life during this time. Maybe I'm judge-y, maybe I'm naive, but the airing of her not-so-secret and intense affair turned me off - especially since her husband didn't really have much of a choice in the decision to have it aired, I would imagine. On the other hand, I have to admire her balls for putting it all out there.

I do like Powell's writing and enjoyed finishing the whole book for that aspect, but also found that the book was oddly paced and ended kinda abruptly. I suppose that since it's a memoir, you sorta have to write your life at the pace and in the order that it happened and the abruptness could be one of the better ways to express what she goes through.

I suppose it might be most accurate to say that I don't like the author, rather than I don't like the book. There's certainly authenticity in her struggles and foibles, and I'm sure that many people can see things they've thought or felt expressed pretty eloquently, but it just doesn't make her a hero. I don't think she's trying to be one though, so in that way, the book probably hit the mark.

Herodotus, "The Father of History"

2009-12-04T23:07:00.013-05:00

Title: The Histories
Author: Herodotus, Tr. by Aubrey de Selincourt

“So much for what Persians and Phoenicians say; and I have no intention of passing judgment on its truth or falsity. I prefer to rely on my own knowledge, and to point out who it was in actual fact that first injured the Greeks; then I will proceed with my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities of men no less than of great. For most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time. Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike.”

A copy of Herodotus’ Histories has sat on my bookshelf for years, unread and pristine. I bought it ages ago as an ambitious college student, intrigued by the role it played in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. But my courage failed in the face of its behemoth size – 603 pages of translated Greek prose – and I never opened it. Two weeks ago, I finally resolved to take the plunge. Now my Histories is dog-eared and tattered, with ink stains on the cover and text messily underlined on nearly every page (reading with a pen helps me focus). And the only thing intimidating me now is this review. How can I possibly describe this sprawling, grandiose work in one neat, tidy essay?

Well, I’ll start with the basics. In the 5th century BC, the Persian army bridged the Hellespont and invaded Greece, where a few stubborn city states – led by Athens and Sparta – refused to submit to the rule of Xerxes. The army was massive and diverse, for by that time Persia had conquered much of the known world. Indian archers, Egyptians infantry, and Ethiopians in leopard-skins … all of these could be found in the Persian army. This was no ordinary war, this was world war – with the Greeks standing alone.

And The Histories, which ostensibly concerns itself with the Greek-Persian conflict, is therefore a world history. Herodotus tells the story of the rise of the Persian empire, and thereby tells the story of all the peoples it conquered. And he doesn’t limit his tale to battles. Myths and legends that he learned during his extensive travels can also be found in these pages, as well as a smattering of natural history. Particularly fascinating is his account of Egypt, its wonders, and the mystery behind the annual flooding of the Nile.

These digressions are more entertaining than you'd imagine – and often blood-curdling. Many people in this book are killed in weird ways. There are numerous stories of murder, revenge, and human sacrifice. When a man died in Thrace, for example, his wives (yes, plural) entered into a keen competition to determine which of them he loved best. The winner was bestowed a lovely prize: her family slaughtered her over her husband’s grave, and she was buried by his side. The other wives lived on, but considered themselves disgraced.

I’m so glad I wasn’t born in Thrace.

There is so much that can be said about The Histories. And as I just finished it yesterday, my mind is still teeming with all the thoughts and stories it crammed into my head. This review will never be able to eloquently describe them all. So I’m going to make my last few points in the from that feels most natural to my legal-trained mind: bullet point!

Even in translation, there is some wise and beautiful language here. One of my favorite passages describes a counselor, Artabanus, who warns Xerxes that he will have the world’s two mightiest powers against him when he invades Greece. Xerxes, confused, asks how the poor Greek army can possibly compare to his own. Artabanus replies that it was not the Athenians and Spartans he had in mind, but the land and the sea -- for there is no harbor anywhere large enough to shelter Xerxes’ fleet in a storm, nor no land rich enough to feed his massive army. I liked that.

Xerxes and the Persian army were nothing like they are depicted as in the recent movie The 300. They were not deformed monsters who fought in loin clothes and body piercings. In fact, as far as empires go, they seem to have been pretty honorable. Xerxes does have a few “crazy tyrant” moments, but he also treats his enemies with respect (usually). In short, Herodotus tells his story in an impartial manner. There are heroes and villains on both the Greek and Persian sides, and the only thing that seems to be perfectly good is the ideal of freedom.

The women in The Histories are mostly chattel, passed around from man to conquering man. There are a few exceptions, however, including a bold queen of Babylon, and a woman named Artemesia, who commanded the troops from Halicarnassus and became one of Xerxes’ most trusted advisors. It was always nice when one of these ladies showed up. I got a little tired of the testosterone after awhile.

Herodotus’ descriptions of geography are fascinating, particularly because there comes a point where he simply has to say he does not know what lies beyond. Can you imagine what it must have been like to live in a world where you really did not know where the continent of Europe ended? As far as you know, it could have gone on forever. How strange that must be, to live in a limitless world.

I think that’s enough writing for now, sorry for the rambling review. But if you have a long vacation coming up, or just want to read something challenging and rewarding, you could do worse than pick up a copy of Herodotus. It's an effort, but not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Just keep a pen handy for underlining.

Mice make me Cross

2009-12-02T21:01:00.003-05:00

Title: Four Blind Mice
Author: James Patterson
Bookmark: business card from the used book store where I got the book

I walked into the book store with the intent to find something to keep me entertained on my grossly overpriced Thanksgiving flights, and in that I guess I succeeded. It gave me something to do, and I finished it a day or so after arriving at Dad's place. I wasn't satisfied or impressed, but I was occupied.

Alex Cross is the protagonist of a lot of Patterson's books (in the latest, he even makes it into the title), and two movies (Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider). I figured it was about time for me to check it out--the movies were decent, as I remember, and I dig a good thriller. The downside of the movies is that it took me a few chapters to not hear the first-person narrative in Morgan Freeman's voice. Later on, I tried to get that back because at least then I'd get to listen to Morgan Freeman. The man could read a tax form and make it sound good.

Cross is aksed by a friend to look into the case of an old army buddy accused of murder. The timing is awful, because he asks him after the trial is over and the man's on death row. They eventually uncover an even larger plot and more veterans who were set up for horrific crimes and sentenced to death, confront the trio of assassins hired to frame the men, and try to find out who the mastermind behind it all really is.

It's entertaining enough to read, but Patterson has a habit of overplaying the "suspense" triggers, trying to build moments bigger than they really are, and makes his villains seem even more despicable than they need to be (I hated them long before they started killing hookers for fun, but that doesn't stop him from setting them loose on various other random victims). It's a little like reading a Dan Brown book, but without all the interesting tidbits on religion, art, and iconology. Then he randomly throws in saccharine family scenes and lovey bits with a character leftove from a previous novel. It's not that I mind the protagonist having a personal life, but the scenes are out of joint with the rest of the book, and--like the rest of the book--overplayed. It feels like he wrote two completely different stories and then alternated chapters to build the final novel. The good news is, I no longer feel compelled to read any more Patterson, so I'll save some money, but the bad news is, I feel like this should have been much better considering how much praise he gets.

Young at Heart

2009-11-22T17:57:00.004-05:00

Tackling the "List" from the top!

The “children” and “young adult” genres are favorites of mine, although I quibble with the idea of labeling books as such. (And yes, I know this post is propagating the very classification I’m griping about). Maybe I should clarify that it’s not the label I object to, but the idea that these books are somehow “simpler” or “not worthy” to be read by adults. They often deal with Big Life Questions in a way that is neither patronizing nor pedestrian. Unlike much modern “adult” literature, they get to the point and stick to it. And they almost always make me think about the sort of person I want to be, because this is often the question their protagonists are facing. I like that, because I consider myself a work in progress.

Children are demanding readers. They won’t simply accept as book as “good” because a critic tells them it is. (Confession: I’ve never read a Booker Prize novel that I haven’t detested – or even finished.) If a book’s crap, they’ll shrug and move on, not afraid to say that it “stinks.” The best YA lasts because it is both enlightening and entertaining.

The following books are some of the best I’ve read, period. Most of them can go toe-to-toe with any “adult” novel. They’re certainly better than anything written by Tom Clancy or Jodi Picoult.

Little Lord Fauntleroy, Francis Hodgson Burnett

Poor boy becomes adopted son of crotchety old man, eventually winning him over with his generous heart and affectionate ways. This disarming book is too sweet for diabetics to safely consume, but it’s charming nonetheless.

The Witches, Roald Dahl

Four words: bald witches with psoriasis! And they want to turn all the children of England into mice with Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! Shivers are running up and down my spine, but I’m still laughing. I must have had this read to me as a child in school, but I didn’t recall much about it. There’s definitely an element of darkness here I didn’t remember. The bittersweet ending is different from the movie, so definitely don’t pass the book by.

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Bored boy Milo goes on a magical adventure, and has fun with words and numbers! Clever, clever, clever. I was distracted by some personal issues when I read it, so I’ve forgotten much of what happened. I think I’ll have to revisit this one soon.

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L’Engle

Vicky has one last summer to spend with her dying grandfather at his house on the shore. She also learns to communicate with dolphins. (Kate, I suspect that you must have read and loved this.) L’Engle really excels at creating a sense of place here, and the scenes I’ll remember most are those where Vicky is simply sitting by the water, thinking the thoughts that adolescents think. Count this a coming-of-age classic.

The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L’Engle

Rather unique in the L’Engle canon, this is more of a political mystery-thriller than a fantasy/sci-fi adventure, although it does feature Murray-O’Keefe characters and Adam Eddington from Endless Light (though Starfish was written first). Adam travels to an island off Portugal to serve as Dr. O’Keefe’s research assistant for the summer. Dr. O’Keefe is working on the regenerative properties of starfish, and some unsavory international characters think they can use Adam to discover his secret findings… Femme Fatale included.

Troubling a Star, Madeleine L’Engle

Vicky from Endless Light gets the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Antarctica (disclaimer: no penguinjas make an appearance in this story). Like Starfish in that it involves international political intrigue. Pleasant enough, and individual scenes stand out, but I don’t really remember the actual plot all that much, except that Vicky ends up stranded alone on a glacier…

Dragon Haven, Robin McKinley

Raising a baby dragon is hard, and McKinley doesn’t spare you any of the grisly details here. (You have to hold them close to your belly to keep them warm, which gives you "psoriasis" -- or at least that's what you tell the doctor. And damn, can they scratch!) Our hero is the son of a dragon researcher, and lives with his dad in the national reserve where America’s last remaining dragons are given freedom to roam as they will. One night, he discovers a dragon dying from wounds inflicted by a poacher. He can’t save her, but her baby’s mewing in the darkness. The only problem? Dragons are protected, but actually saving one is a Federal crime…

The Complete Tales, Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter tales are the perfect “bite-size” bedtime stories. And her drawings are adorable. I didn’t read these as a child, because my American Mom isn’t a reader, and my German Dad only read me what he knew: mythology and Der Struwwelpeter. Maybe I would have been more adjusted if I had? You really can’t compare Peter Rabbit to Little Tom Suck-A-Thumb.

Tom’s Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce

A British children’s classic that’s somewhat fallen into obscurity here in the U.S. But it’s a wonderful story about a boy who wakes one night to hear the clock strike thirteen. He goes downstairs and opens the back door of his aunt and uncle’s urban apartment building, only to discover that the gravel-covered backyard has been transformed into a Victorian garden. He returns every night, becoming friends with Hatty, a girl who lives in the house at the time of the garden. But Tom doesn’t notice how Hatty’s growing older, and will the mystery of the garden ever be solved? I really liked this. Gardens enchant me, and the book excellently evokes a time and place where the most exciting thing a kid could do was “go outside and play.” Modern childhood seems so cold and electronic in comparison…

Unfortunately, sometimes even a children’s book by an otherwise decent author can be a complete dud. The following are two unfortunate examples:

Runaway and Swear to Howdy, Wendelin van Draanen

Wendelin van Draanen has written one of my favorite YA books, Flipped, which tells the story of the developing relationship between middle-school neighbors Bryce and Julie. But van Draanen’s other creations haven’t impressed me. Both Runaway and Swear to Howdy were extremely disjointed. Runaway begins as the gritty and realistic story of an orphan girl trying to survive on the streets, but degenerates into unbelievable schmaltz when she is suddenly adopted by two kindly old ladies. Swear to Howdy moves in the opposite direction. It starts with the breezy shenanigans of two mischievous boys, but plunges abruptly into tragedy and darkness. I wasn’t prepared for it at all. Both these books left me scratching my head, wondering what van Draanen was thinking.

Of course, kids aren’t always the most discerning readers. Like adults, they can fall head-over-heels for simple wish-fulfillment tales. It’s the current craze, and I was curious about it, so I read…

Twilight, Stephanie Meyer

I can see the teenager I was obsessing over this – maybe. Luckily, we do outgrow some things. Bookish wallflower attracts the interest of the hottest, most mysterious boy at school. He just happens to be a vampire. If future scholars ever study Twilight, it will probably be for the rather obvious “chastity is good” message. You see, boys, like vampires, have appetites that can’t always be controlled around girls who smell good. But if you find one that’s a chivalrous gentleman, he’ll protect you, even if it means bullying you for your own good. Despite the supernatural elements, it’s quite a conservative book. The Byronic hero, Edward, listens to classical music while driving his Volvo. And his opinion of rock music is that the 50s were great, the 60s and 70s detestable, and the 80s were … okay. Sorry, tweens, I just can’t dig a vampire who doesn’t appreciate a good Led Zeppelin song!

96 Books to Review on the Shelf...

2009-11-22T17:35:00.006-05:00

Hmm, I’m a wee bit behind on reviews! No excuses … except that I’m on the computer 9 hours a day at work, and sitting in front of the keyboard is the last thing I want to do nowadays when I get home. There are too many other things to do, like cook or hike or read or run or play soccer! I’m finally learning the truth of the common saying that nothing is more valuable than time.

Anyway, here’s the list of books I’ve read but haven’t reviewed. I’m going to try and write about as much of them as possible, even if only a sentence or so. If there’s something here you particularly want my august opinion on (*ahem*), let me know in the comments, and I'll make sure to cook something up. Also, anything marked with an “*****” is excellent and should be read AT ONCE. I’ve selected these books because I think everyone will probably like them. Some books I personally adore aren’t so marked. And anything marked with a “CRAP” should be avoided … forever. Unless you’re curious to know how bad it is. In which case, you were warned.

Children’s and Young Adult

Little Lord Fauntleroy, Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Witches, Roald Dahl*****
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster*****
A Ring of Endless Light, Madeleine L’Engle*****
The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L’Engle
Troubling a Star, Madeleine L’Engle
Dragon Haven, Robin McKinley
Tom’s Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce
The Complete Tales, Beatrix Potter
Runaway and Swear to Howdy, Wendelin van Draanen
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer

By, For, and About Jane Austen

I have a specific section below on books that I’ve re-read, but I put the Austen here because I liked having them all together. In short, anything below by Austen you can assume I’ve read at least three times (Northanger Abbey). The others … well, it’s too many to count. (Also, this category has the distinction of having the first book labeled as CRAP! Without reading any further, you may be able to guess what it is…)

Searching for Jane Austen, Nina Auerbach
Becoming Jane, Jon Spence
Lost in Austen, Emma Campbell Webster
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith - CRAP
Emma, Jane Austen
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

Non-Fiction

They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan, Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsian Deng, and Judy Bernstein
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
The Book of Dead Philosophers, Simon Critchley
I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron
Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman
The Ode Less Traveled, Stephen Fry*****
The Remarkable Case of Dorothy Sayers, Catherine Kenney
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver******
Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, Linda Lear
A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle
Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
When French Women Cook, Madeleine Kamman
Savoie, Madeleine Kamman
Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
My Little Red Book, Ed. Rachel Kouder Nalebuff
Real Food, Nina Planck
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan*****
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
Touching the Void, Joe Simpson
Night, Elie Wiesel

General Fiction

Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
The Solitaire Mystery, Jostein Gaardner
Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin
Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie R. King
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Contact, Carl Sagan*****
The Five Red Herrings, Dorothy Sayers
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers*****

Classics

Flatland, Edward Abbot*****
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tr. by Simon Arbitage
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins*****
Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield
Light in August, William Faulkner
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, Henry Fielding
The African Queen, C.S. Forester
The Complete Short Stories, Graham Greene
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot*****
All Things Bright and Beautiful, James Herriot
All Things Wise and Wonderful, James Herriot
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin
Lolita, Nabokov*****
Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
Night and Day, Virginia Woolf

Target Practice

I don’t know what it is about all the books below that irritated me so excessively. All of them were written fairly recently, and to generally favorable reviews. I wish I had liked them more. But they all struck me as being pretentious and overly-written. And none of them made me happy. If anyone has any deeper insights, let me know.

In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez - CRAP
Genesis, Bernard Beckett - CRAP (But only with a $20.00 sticker price ... it's a perfectly respectable book to get from the library.)
Possession, A.S. Byatt - CRAP
What is the What, Dave Eggers - CRAP
Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer – CRAP CRAP DOUBLE CRAP
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen - CRAP
The Secret History, Donna Tartt - CRAP
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon - CRAP

Re-Reads

All of these are fantastic books that have stayed with me for a long time … and will probably stay with me for life. Many were read when I was an impressionable little munchkin, which might account for the fondness I feel for them. Some of them I’ve already previously reviewed as re-reads … and appear here again because I read them – again.

A Little Princess, Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis*****
Beauty, Robin McKinley*****
The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley*****
Deerskin, Robin McKinley
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Anne of Avonlea, L.M. Montgomery
Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery
Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
Strong Poison, Dorothy Sayers

Books My Dad Got Me To Read

The Crusades, Henry Treece

I miss Castle Rock

2009-11-15T18:05:00.004-05:00

Title: Just After Sunset
Author: Stephen King
Bookmark: different offer, same bank

I read a lot of Stephen King growing up, which probably explains more about me than any other single statement I could make. I remember being fascinated that all the freaky shit in the world happened in or near Castle Rock, Maine (or in Mid-World, but that was eventually connected to Castle Rock, too). It was the same sort of phenomena that guaranteed that someone would die no matter where Jessica Fletcher went on vacation, and it would either be one of her friends, or one of her friends would be the main suspect. Later, I learned that all the freaky shit in Dean Koontz's version of the world happens in California, but he has a whole list of fixations.

Now that the King of Horror is moving towards years silver if not yet golden, it seems that he's doing the same thing as all the other retirees: moving to Florida. One of his latest novels, Dumas Key, is set in Florida, and although he returns to Maine for the latest offering (The Dome, whose cover, though impressively illustrated, contains not a single word to hint at what the hell the story is about. So I left it on the Barnes & Noble shelf, bitter at the insolence.), this latest collection of short stories is replete with Florida, keys, dune grass, and one passing mention of a gator. Even the protagonists are older. No more young, fit guys and their beautiful cohorts--now everyone is dumpy and middle-aged, and while it gives a bit of realism, I don't read Stephen King books for their realism. I read them because they start familiar, and then get exponentially unreal.

They're still good, they're still definitely Stephen King, even if they don't include as many pop-culture references as usual, and they still have his quirky gift for seeing horror in the most natural and familiar of places (in the last story, a man is trapped inside a tipped-over port-a-jon). I even liked the brief mention of my own alma mater, nowhere near Maine, but as unlikely as it is that all the weird stuff int he world happens in Castle Rock, it seems strange to me that his stories would retire to Florida along with their master. Even if he and his wife now have a home there.

lost touch

2009-11-15T17:44:00.003-05:00

Title: Lost Boy Lost Girl
Author: Peter Straub
Bookmark: some card advertising an offer from my bank

The novel is divided into five sections. I almost didn't make it through the first section, but the rest paid off. The first section is choppy and disoriented, and although I usually really like nonlinear storytelling (though I've only seen it once, I still think Go is brilliant), Straub hacked his way through that portion of the book. The rest of it, although still slightly nonlinear, worked much better.

Tim Underhill is a horror novelist (I sometimes feel sorry for writers who, having never experienced anything else, tend to make the main characters very like themselves. Even Stephen King, a long time favorite of mine, tends to write about an awful lot of writers, journalists, and English teachers. And drunks, but I think that's part of his coping mechanism for a past life full of addiction) whose siter-in-law dies. He returns to his hometown and his stuffed-shirt brother (himself an absentee father) for the funeral, but a couple days after he returns to New York, he learns that his nephew has gone missing. He returns to the small Illinois town of his youth to investigate and help his brother deal with his losses.

The rest of the book (the last four sections) details how Tim, with the help of an independently-wealthy friend who solves lots of mysteries by looking at public (and somewhat non-public) records on his computer and making connections nobody else has. He eventually finds that his sister-in-law was related to a notorious area serial killer, that his nephew had a strange fascination with the empty house across the alley, and that several teenage boys have recently disappeared from the area of a local park. Natrually, because it's a mystery story, all three threads eventually weave together. Naturally, because it's a Peter Straub story, there's also some spooky supernatural shit going down.

Overall, it was an entertaining read, but there are some things that I still don't really get.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Why would the ghost of a girl who was repeatedly raped and abused decide to make sweet supernatural love to a fifteen year old boy on the same wooden bed where she was raped? Even using the same leather straps on their wrists??
How would said ghost-girl have sex with a living person anyway? I can't get my head around this.
SPOILERS END SPOILERS END SPOILERS END

There's another really big question I have about the bodies of the victims, but it's not worth getting into. Suffice to say, suspension of disbelief is essential for reading this book, and leave your eye for detail at home.

A Midsummer Night's Sequel?

2009-11-04T22:08:00.003-05:00

Title: Magic Street
Author: Orson Scott Card
Bookmark: tag from a metal water bottle

Another weird one.

Mack Street is found as a baby by a young boy, then raised by the boy's neighbor, a nurse, who only lets Mack call her Miz Smitcher, like all the other neighborhood kids. As he grows up, he learns that when he has his "cold dreams," they come true--but they're other people's wishes. People who live near him and think they know what they want wish for these things, but their wishes get twisted, Monkey's Paw style, and show up in Mack's dreams as they are granted.

As Mack tries to understand the source or reason behind his dreams, he comes to find the very real magic in his own neighborhood, and a thin spot where our world gives way to a Fairy world. He learns the truth of his own origins, and how he is connected to Titania and Oberon, and how badly Mssr. Wm. Shakespeare botched their story. Then, naturally, a climactic final battle spanning two worlds simultaneously. Awesome.

However, despite a worm-dragon, near gang-rape, scary magical panthers, a megalomaniacal and extremely powerful fairy king, and a baby conceived and born in a matter of a couple hours, the scariest, most disturbing part of the book was in the acknowledgements. I was reading an Advance Reader Copy, whose back cover explicitly states that you are not to quote this copy without checking an actual release version, but I think that by stating that here (and the relative obscurity of our blog) covers me to quote that paragraph:

"I must also thank the 59, 729,952 people who voted for the re-election of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, allowing me to sleep at night as I wrote the last five chapters of this novel."

Pulp Affliction

2009-11-04T21:43:00.004-05:00

Title: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
Editor: Otto Penzler
Bookmark: one I've used before.

Te back cover claims that this is "the biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of pulp writing ever assembled!" Let's examine those claims.

Biggest: It's paperback, printed on the thinnest paper available without actually being transparent tissue, and still the size of a major city's telephone book. You could prop a door open with this thing, or hold your car in place while changing the tire. It has over a thousand pages. Yes, it's huge.

Boldest: I'm really not sure how to address this, especially because my only other taste of pulps was a couple books from roughly the same era, and I'm not even sure they count. Perhaps the boldness is more in claiming that some of these stories are worth reading, but each is preceded by a page giving some history of the author, the story, the pulp magazine in which it was published, or the era itself. Many of those forewords note that the following story appeared in one of the publications that paid writers half a cent per word (the best offered ten cents per word) for the stories, and the quality was a reflection of the price, so this book is at least more honest about its contents than the pulp magazines ever were.

Most Comprehensive: No arguing that. It ranges from Hammett, Chandler, and Gardner (including one Hammett story never published before) to several authors on which the editor could find no information whatsoever. They may have been pseudonyms for someone better known , or simply a nobody who happened to get one story published before disappearing again into obscurity. The book makes no claims to include only high-quality stuff, and even pokes a little fun at some of the poorer stories (and the magazines that ran them). Sometimes, the bad stories were just as entertaining because they were so very bad.

Occasionally, I was bored out of my mind. Usually, it was entertaining. Once, I had to take a break of two or three months because I was so saturated with pulp nonsense that I had to take a break and read something lighter. It took me well over a year--probably closer to two--to finish the damn thing, and it's far too big to stash in a coat pocket or purse for airport or beach use, but if you want something to keep by the bed for a while, it's perfect.

The voodoo that you do

2009-11-02T22:06:00.003-05:00

Title: Count Zero
Author: William Gibson
Bookmark: strip of dinosaur stickers

This is another book I rescued from someone's garage. That's good, because I may have to read it once or twice more to figure out what the hell is going on.

I mean, sure, it's fun to read, but I think Gibson goes a little too far with the "tell the reader as little as possible and let them figure it out themselves" approach that other authors handle a bit better by at least telling us enough to know what's happening.

I'll give summarizing a shot.

There are three main storylines. You'd think that eventually these three sets of characters would intersect somehow, since they're all (apparently... i think...) chasing after the same thing.

Turner is a corporate mercenary, hired through his agent (who may be far more shady than you'd think) to help either steal the best young minds from competing companies, or to help those minds defect to another company. Technological secrets and the people who develop them are valued in Gibson's future, to the point that many companies maintain high-tech facilities where their employees live and work, with no direct contact with the outside world. (one of them is in a hollowed-out mesa, which is a pretty cool idea in itself) Turner is blown to smithereens in the first chapter. They collect enough of him to rebuild him in some sort of tank so he can be hired to help a scientist escape from one company to another. Turner must work with several lower-level mercenaries, one of whom tried to kill him in the past, and figure out which one of them is a mole, feeding information to his back-stabbing, double-crossing agent.

Bobby Newmark, operating with the handle Count Zero, is a wannabe hacker who, using a piece of code bestowed upon him by his own agent, finds something so powerful and strange that it blows his connection, knocks him out cold, and results in at least one death squad coming for him. His apartment is blown up by a missile attack while his soap-opera-addicted mother is inside, and in his desperate flight he meets two men who claim that the Network is full of voodoo gods, and that one of them saved Bobby's ass when his hack went haywire.

Marly Krushkova, still recovering from the scandal surrounding an art scam in her gallery that was actually orchestrated by her dirtbag ex-boyfriend (without her knowledge), is hired by Herr Virek to find the maker of a tiny diorama, really just items in a box, but it somehow captures their imagination, and is very like several other boxes, and nobody seems to know the source. Oh, and Virek is sustained by tanks similar to those that saved Turner, but the apparatus that keeps him alive occupies three semi truck trailers.

The thing that really gets me--and this might be due to the fact that I read it months ago, and may have forgotten--is that I'm not sure all three stories intersect. None of those characters actually meet each other, and I think I know the connection between Turner and Bobby, but either I never found a link betwene either of them and Marly, or I've forgotten it. It's a very strange book, but it still held my attention for the duration.

Seriously, though. Voodoo gods. In Cyberspace.

Worth it

2009-11-02T21:30:00.002-05:00

Title: The Worthing Saga
Author: Orson Scott Card
Bookmark: I read this months ago. Who knows? Probably a candy wrapper, or grocery receipt, or a child's stolen dreams, or something.

Orson Scott Card doesn't really write books. He crafts worlds. Granted, I've only read the first two books of the Ender series, and there's a good chance that, like Frank Herbert's Dune books, or the Hitchhiker Trilogy, that one will also eventually show the author's boredom with the idea, or burgeoning insanity. But it's still more than just a sci-fi story; he includes little details of the life in that society that you may not think to ask about, but when presented matter-of-factly, and in a way that isn't overt ("oh, and look at this other cool technology! And see how we do things this way, instead of the way things are done in the reader's world??"), it comes across as though you're just peering into that world, and learning from your own casual observations, rather than being spoon-fed the things the author thinks will impress you most and think he's a good writer. Card doesn't prove he can write by trying to impress you--he proves he can write by writing, and damn well at that.

The Worthing Saga is actually a compilation of three earlier works, all in the same universe (I think in the foreword Card mentions that he didn't even think to connect them all in the same universe until after some of it had already been written, but I read it ages ago, so maybe I made that up. It still works.). The Worthing Saga tells of the arrival of two mysterious strangers on the day that a mountain village experiences pain, death, and loss for the first time. Both of the strangers are telepaths with vibrant blue eyes, and tell their story by feeding dreams to a boy in the village, and he writes the stories as they come to him. The man turns out to be Jason Worthing, a name spoken as a god on their world and, it turns out, many others as well. Through the boy's dreams and his conversations with Jason, he learns why Jason brought them pain (or did something else happen? yeah, probably. It's sci-fi, after all), why they needed pain, and what his own purpose in the world might be. We also learn the history of a trans-planetary society, from its roots of a few dozen people, to the seeding of dozens of planets, and up to the day when they all found Pain. At the center of it all is Jason, guiding his people up from a Tool Age to a spacefaring civilization as he skips through time on waves of Somec.

Tales of Capitol is a collection of short stories that sets the stage for the Worthing Chronicles. Each focuses on a different citizen of the city-planet Capitol, and in one case, a colony planet. Somec is a drug which allows people to sleep through years, or decades, prolonging their life indefinitely, but it is rationed according to status. The Empress is awake for only a day every five years. Others may only sleep for a year in ten, but even that is considered a great accomplishment. These stories show how Somec affects peoples lives and the society as a whole, but they also give glimpses into all layers of Capitol society, from the poorest dregs to the Empress herself. And behind it all is Abner Doon. Doon, whose name is that of the devil in the sleepy mountain village of the Worthing Chronicle. Doon, who sent Jason out as a Somec pilot on a colony ship and thereby saved humanity. Doon, whose machinations brought about the fall of the empire in the first place, not to destroy humankind, but to save it from its Somec-addled stagnation. He's a bastard, but he's a magnificent bastard, and though his methods may be questionable, I can't really argue with his reasons--or his results.

Finally, Tales From the Forest of Waters recounts some of what Jason's dreams told his biographer, but with greater detail and, honestly, quite a few changes. Jason explains the discontinuities by pointing out that the stories written by his biographer are the remembered dreams of transmitted memories of generational retellings, and some details may have been lost or addled along the way.

Card didn't just write a universe, he wrote the entire history of a trans-planetary society's rise, fall, death, rebirth, rise, stumble, and recovery. What's more, he does it in a way that gives the broad scope and personal stories at the same time, and manages to not bore me to tears while doing it. Excellent stuff.

Cooking with Lots of Butter

2009-10-11T10:31:00.004-05:00

Title: Julie & Julia
Author: Julia Powell

After an incredibly long hiatus from blogging about a book I read (during which time, I read tons of books...), this is the first book I really felt inclined to write about.

This is, I believe, my first foray into the genre of cooking literature (if that's what they are calling it). Humorously, I've always rather disliked cooking but love cooking shows, so a book about cooking sounded like it might be good.

And it was. Julie & Julia is the mostly true story of Julie Powell, who randomly decided, in a pushing 30 crisis, that she would cook every recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking within one year. And she would blog about it.

Full of honesty, frustration, gore (preparing a live lobster for cooking can get a bit gross), and snarky comments, Julie & Julia is an entertaining read. I have to respect someone who is able to cook 524 butter laden recipes in 365 days. I think I would've given up around day 3. It's also an interesting quarterlife (or thereabouts) crisis. And as someone who is nearing that rather intimidating fourth decade, I can relate to the desire to do something fulfilling that will somehow give life added meaning.

But for now I'm really looking forward to making a butternut squash soup this afternoon.

Scratch that itch

2009-08-19T22:52:00.004-05:00

Title: Infected
Author: Scott Sigler

It should be noted that this was read as an "uncorrected proof" circulated to get advance reviews. Not to me, we're not that highly-regarded yet. You hear that, major publishers?? We're willing and able to review your stuff!! Just send us some free books and maybe some swag! However, there are some things that should be cleared up even before making it to the "uncorrected proof" stage.

I saw this book in a store a couple months ago, and I was very intrigued. Yes, the cover art is super-creepy, but the premise also sounded good. Reading it was a lesson in how to mistreat a promising premise. Sigler isn't quite as good as he thinks he is, but he's trying really hard.

There are two parallel story lines, and that much works really well: on the one side, you have the medical researchers and a couple government operatives working their asses off to identify and understand a mysterious new contagion that makes people go crazy, kill the people around them, and then themselves. Then they decompose at such a freakishly accelerated rate that they have yet to find a useful body of one of the victims; just puddles of goo with bones piled up in the middle. On the other side, you have "Scary" Perry Dawsey, a former college football star now working in IT who becomes infected, providing you with a first-hand view of what the victims go through. Like I said, the premise is pretty sweet.

The downside is, Sigler's execution is a little... off. I can't quite put my finger on how, but that's probably because I finished over a month ago.

More than a walk in the park

2009-08-19T22:44:00.002-05:00

Title: A Walk in the Woods
Author: Bill Bryson

This is one of those books that nearly everyone who knows me has recommended I read at one point or another. I can see why--it's funny as hell.

It's also packed with information on the Appalachian Trail, the National Parks system, the National Forest Service, the history of the east coast, and... how not to hike the Appalachian Trail. As I was reading it, someone told me that a lot of backpackers don't like it, because most people assume that Bryson through-hiked the AT (that's what backpackers call it when you take a few month's sabbatical and hike the whole damn mess in one shot), and he didn't. But he makes it a point to remind you of that several times in the book. Yes, he says he "hiked the Appalachian Trail," but he makes it clear that he did not hike all of the Appalachian Trail.

Fine. Big deal. He still writes a hugely entertaining and informative book about the AT and the people who love it. Even if you don't agree with him, it's still a fun trip.

Girl meets Psychotic A.I.

2009-07-29T11:33:00.003-05:00

Title: Star Trek Voyage: Cybersong
Author: S.N. Lewitt
Bookmark: movie ticket stub from a bar

At the end of a climbing trip in May, I took a bunch of books from a box labeled "free" in a friend's garage. It was a long flight back. I grabbed this because I liked the TV series, and I'd read some Star Trek books in high school. Now I wonder if they were all this uninteresting, and I didn't notice because I was in high school, or if this one was just especially blah.

I don't even remember most of it now. (Like I said, May) They find some derelict ships floating in space, for some reason they can't escape, and eventually learn that there's a sociopathic AI on one of the ships that hates being lonely, but tends to kill off the crews it collects as playmates. Luckily, Voyager has a stereotypical nerd-girl in Stellar Cartography, so the two socially inept outcasts can talk to each other.

Fat Bastard

2009-07-29T11:32:00.004-05:00

Title: Star Wars: Tales From Jabba's Palace
Edited by: Kevin J. Anderson
Bookmark: boarding pass stub

It's a collection of short stories about what goes on behind the scenes in Jabba's Palace. Most of them overlap with the day Luke kills the Rancor and gets taken to the Sarlacc. Most of them are at least a nice diversion, with one glaring exception (someone tried to go all Lovecraftian with a snot vampire, and it's just painful to read), but the truth is, this is either aimed at a much younger audience, or a much lower reading level. I enjoyed most of it, but at the time, I was spending a lot of time in planes and airports, so I only needed a little diversion to keep me occupied.

PS, it turns out there were at least a dozen plots to kill Jabba at the time.

Yo Quiero Better Writing

2009-06-03T18:26:00.003-05:00

Title: Edge of Battle
Author: Dale "no, not Dan" Brown
Bookmark: the doorknob tag that told me my oven had been fixed. Again.

Have you ever been flipping through channels late at night and found some awful SciFi original movie--not something they adapted from a book, or some half-assed sequel to something with a real production budget, but something truly their own--with a name like Alligator! or Horror Mountain? I've been there. In the first 30 picoseconds, you figure, "hell, it has some horrific beast with lots of teeth and some sort of mutagenic origin, and that shapely paleocryptoxenobiologist isn't bad for ogling when she's not phoning in her stilted lines. I'll give it a shot," and by the time five seconds are past, you've already decided that it has stolen vital moments of your lifetime from you, and not only will you never, ever get those moments back, but you're also sober enough that you're forced to remember it all.

This book is like that. Except it took me longer to realize how awful it was (I'm not a super-fast reader), and yet... I kept reading. However, I only kept reading so I could loudly pan it in this space. I only hope my harsh criticism will do it justice.

The damn thing starts with several pages of ... let's call it glossary. First, a wide cast of characters, which was strange only because it names some characters who exist for only a paragraph or two, and omits a couple that turn out to be comparably important. Plus, any reasonably intelligent person should be able to figure out who's who by reading the damn book. On the other hand, a reasonably intelligent person wouldn't have read the whole book. Next is a list of technologies and weapons, many of them invented by the author, and finally a glossary of various abbreviations. This was somewhat useful, but again everything I didn't already know was defined in the context of the book anyway, so... why?

The second glossary got me interested. It promised lots of high-tech weaponry, and some sort of robotic exosuit used by the good guys. I thought with ten-foot robot warriors going after terrorists, there had to be something awesome. By the end of the book, I hated the damned robots. It takes a lot to make me hate robots, especially ones used by the good guys. I became an engineer largely because of R2-D2.

The plot, mangled convoluted mess that it is, centers on rising hostilities between the US and Mexico over immigration law. Eventually we find out that a lot of it is being orchestrated for... some reason never fully specified, and there's also some Russian terrorist mastermind who seems to be leftover from a previous book. The thought that there is more than one book in this series scares me more than the Russian terrorists. I'm also unsettled that I could never figure out whether the author sides witht he extremist right-wing, or was satirizing them. Was he playing as Rush Limbaugh, or Stephen Colbert on meth?? I couldn't tell!!

Every chapter is riddled with inconsistencies--the robots keep changing size, they fold in ways that would make even Michael Bay call "bullshit", people suddenly appear in one place after reporting in from another, weapons disappear right out of their hands, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the Spanish was improperly translated--and the dialog made me want to burn things. Usually after finishing a book I don't need to keep (or return to the library), I'd stick it in a box and ship it to Cleveland or DC, but I think I'd rather tear this one in half and stuff it in the recycling. It's not just terrible writing, it's politically offensive terrible writing.

Voulez-vous la guerre avec moi? Non.

2009-06-02T16:39:00.004-05:00

Title: Jackdaws
Author: Ken Follett

Here's the deal: in order to break German lines of communication in World War Two, the British Special Operations Executive send their best undercover operative (who has spent two years coordinating the French Resistance) to Reims, France to blow up a major telephone exchange, thereby facilitating the Normandy invasion.

Here's the catch: her (yes, her) team is composed entirely of women. And since most able-bodied women are already assigned elsewhere to help the war effort, she's not getting the pick of the litter. Her team includes a felonious Gypsy, a pathological liar, a sexagenarian safe-cracker, two noblewomen (one a remorseless blabbermouth, the other with zero regard for rank or military protocol), and a transvestite. OK, so they're not ALL women.

Pitted against them is a ruthless German interrogator and his woman-on-the-side, a French hottie whose Jewish grandmother is a secret from the rest of the SS.

Here's the problem: Much as I like spy thrillers and strong female leads and interesting twists on how to handle clandestine operations, this was neither thrilling nor interesting, and the chicks weren't quite strong enough. It had just enough to keep me reading until I was done, but only barely. There was only one surprise (more on that later); the people you expect to hook up all hook up, the people you expect to hate, you hate, and the people you expect to like, you like. All the things you think will happen? They do. The heroine even marries the charming American with 1.5 ears in the epilogue, just as you know she will when they first meet and begrudgingly check each other out. The only surprise was one of the romantic pairings, and even that surprise was relatively minor.

It's a decent read, if there's not much else around (there wasn't), but it never grabbed me, and I actually started rooting for major characters to get killed off just to shake things up. Naturally, they ended up killing one of the characters I liked, right after allowing some character development, and allowed all the stagnant characters to march through to the epilogue. Wheee.

On the one hand, I found it lying on a bench in the airport, so I'm only out some time, but on the other hand, reading vivid descriptions of brutal interrogation practices was deeply unsettling. I think the best part of the entire book was the theory that in Britain, an American--even one missing most of an ear--qualifies as a sexy foreigner.

I don't melt in the rain, bitches

2009-05-21T13:01:00.007-05:00

Ti: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

(HC release 06/09/09)

Au: Katherine Howe

Bookmark: the giant wrap-around back cover thingee on the ARC ed.

A very early reviewer (also being a staffer at my illustrious workplace) compared this book to Monster's of Templeton, and for this review was granted space on the splash page of the ARC. I have to agree with his assessment. Both stories boast a fairly similar heroine and both manage to bring elements of the fantastic into the "real" world where the books are set in a very casual way - as if giant lake monsters and actual witches in colonial Salem are everyday stuff. I think 'Monsters' accomplishes this in a more subtle way - as the townspeople don't seem particularly shocked by the monster (although the outside world is), while Connie is continually taken aback by what she finds as she pursues the Physick Book. I suppose this makes 'Physick' more realistic and 'Monsters' more fun.

Connie is a graduate student in colonial american history who gets sucked into trying to pull together her dead grandmother's abondoned, centuries-old house near Salem Mass., while her hippy-dippy mother spends her time reading auras on the west coast. All the while, she's supposed to be figuring out what to do for her dissertation. While picking through the items left in the house (an electricity and phone free house), she comes across the name of a Deliverance Dane. Luckily armed with professional-level histrical research skills and a cute boy who does restorations for a living, Connie tries to track down records of Deliverance, thinking that this little character would be a great start on her original disseration. She finds pretty quickly that efforts have been made to erase Deliverance from certain records completely, which brings her to understand that this character was not only involved in the Salem trials, but was also somehow set apart from the other accused women in the minds of the populace at the time.

Meanwhile, we flash back to the 1690's and watch Deliverance herself moving through life, as well as eventually following some of her descendants. The result is a picture of a long line of no-nonsense ladies. Gotta love the girl power.

I liked each of the story lines in this novel, but in a different way. The modern day action moves more quickly (as you might expect), and draws you in with it's speed, but not necessarily with it's depth. The flashback scenes I found more compelling and think that their slower speed may have even helped add to the sense of stress, burden and foreboading that present themselves at different points in the history.

I'm not sure how to characterize this book. It's not "literature." It might be a historical novel with a thriller twist. I hate to call this chick-lit, because it's better than that, but I'm afraid the abundance of strong ladies in the book might scare off many gentlemen readers, just as if they were stuck in room with all the characters.

What a cast of characters!

2009-05-04T11:33:00.004-05:00

Title: The Somnambulist
Author: Jonathan Barnes

Be warned. This book has no literary value whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you'll believe a word of it (p. 5, opening paragraph)

The narrator of The Somnambulist, an unidentified writer who admits that he has at times both embellished and completely deviated from the truth, tells the tale of Edward Moon, a washed up magician whose show contains elements that may not be simply tricks of the eye. Case in point: the Somnambulist, his mute milk-loving assistant, who endures swords being stuck through his chest during Edward's act.

Edward also sometimes moonlights as a detective for the London police and is called on early in the book to assist with a heinous, mystifying crime. While attempting to solve the case, he encounters such characters as the Archivist, The Human Fly, Samuel Taylor Cooleridge, the albino Mr. Skimpole, and Thomas Cribb, a man who is living life backwards - going from the future to the present to the past. He also uncovers a secret organization known simply as Love, Love, Love, and Love.

With its occasional foray into the world of the supernatural, Jonathan Barnes' dark novel reminded me of something Neil Gaiman would write. Definitely worth checking out. I am looking forward to reading more of his second novel, The Domino Men.

snippet of history

2009-05-03T11:10:00.001-05:00

Ti: An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town
(ARC ed; HC pub Jul 2009)
Au: David Farley

Author Farley, who writes for travel pieces for mags and somehow manages to use that to support living abroad for periods of time (don't we all wish), becomes focused on trying to find out what happened to a vanished Catholic relic - the foreskin of Jesus Christ. Yup. The only piece of Christ's flesh that could have reasonably been left behind on earth when he ascended after the resurrection, and the Church had it (and for a while, had like 10 or more of them in different locations around medieval Europe), but then they lost it, or so the story goes.

Farley settles into a really eclectic Italian village where the recognized true foreskin had been in residence until 1986 when it was supposedly stolen by two mysterious villagers, or reclaimed by the Vatican, or sold by the priest, or hidden away because the Church wanted to downplay such items. The fate of the foreskin depended on which tipsy, hippy-dippy, obsessed or skittish resident Farley asked in this nutty town, known for having a lot of "outsiders" from other parts of Italy and the world living there. It would seem that if you move more than 50 miles in Italy, you are an outsider to the residents of whatever town you land in. The Church, as one might expect, had nothing much to say.

I liked the book. It was light, entertaining, and gave some good history about the Church (while not Catholic myself, I have to concede that until my ancestors protested against it [and in some cases against both the Catholics AND Martin Luther, boy were they lonely] Catholic history covers a huge part of all Christian history), and gave fun descriptions of eccentric people and nifty places I can probably never hope to see. And that's what travel writing should, yeah? Not high lit or anything, but it gets the job done.

(for those of you who may know who this is, I will be forwarding this to soon-to-be-Dr. Ms. C. Kovacs - just seems like it's up her alley :-)

Oddly Bland

2009-05-03T00:27:00.003-05:00

Ti: The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

(ARC Ed, HC pub Jun 09)
Au: Daniel James Brown
Bookmark: Dogeared corners, b/c I'm racist against ARCs

I had never read or heard much about the Donner Party, and only knew the most basic of details about what they resorted too. That was my main reason for picking up the book, and had I already known quite a bit about the history, I might not have finished this account.

The author tries to tell the story, not really from the perspective of one member of the party, Sarah Graves, but does focus on her quite a bit, I suppose as a way to humanize it. Somehow, the author manages to wander around in the zone between a solid history and a telling of one person's experiences without really managing either. Granted, in his intro, he explains nearly all of the issues I had with the book, so I can't blame him for missing the mark - he wrote what he was aiming for: its not meant to be a comprehensive history, Sarah left little of her own writing, and so some things had to be inferred. While I'm sure the author is correct in saying that he can use universal human reactions to certain situations such as extreme cold and hunger to describe what the pioneers went through, he somehow does it in a squishy, timid way that just makes me feel deeply the fact that it's inferred and not altogether a solid fact about what was happening to anyone at the given time described.

All that said, what solid history he does cover is covered in an engaging way, and I wanted to read the whole thing to find out what happened to these people. Even though it was hard to connect what he described to Sarah in my mind, I was pretty fascinated by the physical, emotional and psychological reactions he describes people having in the face of these extreme conditions.
I wanted to really like this book, as it falls into one of my favorite reading categories of "creative non-fiction," but in the end I have to give it a high meh.

Bernie in the rough

2009-04-21T11:03:00.002-05:00

Title: Burglars Can't Be Choosers
Author: Lawrence Block
Bookmark: stub from airport parking lot

I wanted to check out Bernie Rhodenbarr's origins, so I hunted down the first book in the series. Apparently, it took a while for Bernie to fully ripen into my favorite Gentleman Burglar. While the first Bernie book is just as funny and engaging as the rest of the stories of his escapades I've read, he's still a little rough, not yet polished into the suave character I met much later in his life. Plus, he hasn't met Carolyn yet, though he does meet a Trusty Sidekick early in the story.

This time, Bernie has been hired to procure a blue leather-covered box from an old roll top desk. He is not told what is inside the box, nor why it is so important, only that he will be payed handsomely for his efforts. Instead, the cops bust in halfway through the job, a body is found, and Bernie bolts. He knows he didn't kill the guy, but he has to convince the cops of that, and the best way to do it is by figuring out who did, and why. That involves lamming in a poker buddy's apartment, getting friendly with the girl who comes by to water the plants, breaking into a couple other places, tracking down the shady character who hired him, and bribing a cop. All in a day's work, right?

In some of the later Bernie stories, he has this sort of aloof charm with the ladies--he mentions them in passing, but it's never that big a deal. In Bernie's premiere, Block seems more interested in heavily asserting that Bernie is a sexy bastard, while maintaining the pulp mores that keep him from being too explicit. Still, Bernie charms one woman into bed almost immediately, and another seems ready to hump his leg using a variety of costumes and... appliances... as soon as they are properly acquainted. Perhaps this says more about the ladies than it does Bernie, but the scene in which picking a lock serves as foreplay ("I think it would make me hot.") probably says more about Block. Let the burglar burgle, Lawrence. That's sexy enough on its own--there's really no need to keep throwing women at the man to prove it.

Slightly Reformed Burglar vs. Anti-Semitic Kipling

2009-04-03T16:55:00.002-05:00

Title: The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling
Author: Lawrence Block
Bookmark: nametag from a wedding invitation

I've been plowing through a long string of mysteries lately, and they're almost always fun, but few are ever as much fun as a Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery. Bernie is one of Lawrence Block's more likable creations, a burglar who got tired of going to prison and opened a bookshop. Apparently, he's learned a lot from the mistakes he's made in the past, because he burgles at least five places just in this book--one of them twice--and his only interaction with the police is a slightly dirty cop who keeps trying to get him to acquire a fur coat for his wife.

Bernie is brilliant. In the first chapter, he foils a shoplifter in his store, charges the man for the stolen property, and when the man protests that he doesn't want the books (he was only going to resell them to other dealers), Bernie buys them back for 20% of what he charged the man. The shoplifter leaves $40 lighter, and Bernie pockets the forty bucks and reshelves the books.

Soon he's hired to steal a rare, one-of-a-kind printing of a bad book-length Kipling poem, is held at gunpoint for the pilfered pages, gets framed for murder, and goes on the lam in his friend Carolyn's apartment, fighting one of her cats for the big chair by the radio. To stay ahead of everyone, Bernie has to figure out who stole the book from him, who framed him for murder, who has the book now, why it's so damned important, and somehow hand over all guilty parties to the police without getting nabbed himself. No problem. Because Bernie is brilliant, funny as hell, and aided by his loyal sidekick and lesbian dog-groomer soulmate Carolyn.

A case of hives

2009-03-30T22:04:00.003-05:00

Title: The Beekeeper's Apprentice
Author: Laurie R. King
Bookmark: hand-drawn map to the closest Metro station

It's been a very long time since I read any of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and perhaps that's for the best; I don't get too hung up on how Doyle would've written a story like this, and I can instead sit back and enjoy how Laurie R. King did it. (in case you're wondering, "pretty damn well" sums it up)

Oh, right. It's a Sherlock Holmes story. Sort of. Let me back up.

Mary Russell lost her parents and brother in a car accident. She's plagued with nightmares of it and is forced to live with her aunt, who is mainly interested in skimming as much of Mary's inherited fortune as possible. One day, on a walk across the downs of Sussex, she trips over a gangly weirdo painting dots on bees, and within minutes deduces that he is the famous Sherlock Holmes. Within an hour, she has formed a bond with him that will last for years.

Holmes begins teaching Mary his craft, astonished that her mind is an equal to his own, and Mary begins teaching the legendary sleuth that women are far more than he ever realized. Soon they take on the case of a kidnapped American senator's daughter, and Mary gets a chance to truly prove herself to the master, moving from apprentice to partner. Naturally, a simple kidnapping wouldn't be that interesting, especially if it wraps up halfway through the book. To fill out the novel, King sics a mad bomber and criminal mastermind on our crime fighters, and they spend the rest of the pages trying to stay alive and stop the plot to end their careers.

It's a solid book, and a fun read, and no more convoluted than any other Holmes story. Plus, it's handy for a long flight.

I ain't sayin' she's a goldigger...*

2009-02-27T18:03:00.002-05:00

Title: Perry Mason Solves the Case of the Golddigger's Purse
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Bookmark: scrap of paper with information for a flight I never got to take

This was another installment in the series of Random Items Sent to Me, and despite the merciless mocking I received at the hands of Elizabeth because "Perry Mason is for old people," I was still excited to actually read one of his cases after growing up watching the show (and yes, Matlock, Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Father Dowling... I was raised on a steady stream of TV detectives.). Kind of makes me wish the two had something in common, actually.

Raymond Burr played the hell out of that role, but either the casting director took some liberties, or Burr played Mason much later in his career. Same with whoever played Della Street. I cracked up when a hotel manager hustled the two of them and their client out of his fine establishment because he believed the two women were hookers, and Mason was the client. This only made it weirder when Mason and his secretary were a little more intimate in the final scene of the book than they ever were in the show.

Right. The book.

The golddigger is after a businessman's money, but not in the usual way. She's aiming more for a payoff so her boyfriend can get treated for tuberculosis, and is willing to sell bf's special remedy for healing tail rot to get the money. Businessman (who has an unhealthy obsession with goldfish that are not necessarily gold) wants to buy bf's employer's pet store, keep the bf working there at his current slave wages, and own outright any more inventions he might create.

A little bit later, businessman is discovered dead by Mason, golddigger, and Mrs. Businessman. The cops and DA come down on the golddigger pretty fast, but Mason realizes that Mrs. Businessman, businessman's partner, businessman's ex-wife, businessman's ex-wife's business advisor, businessman's partner in a shady deal, and pet store owner all have some degree of motive. But he doesn't have to figure out who did it, or how--he just has to prove Golddigger didn't. He sticks to that part of being a lawyer, even if he's a little hazy on the whole "operating completely within the law" thing, which was also weird, because I remember Burr being a pretty straight arrow.

In the end, it turns out to be so convoluted that, as my friend Dave once said, "you'd have to be James Bond to figure that out without a whiteboard and a slide rule." Well, James Bond or Perry Mason.

*actually, she really was rolling with a broke... um, cracker.

no, not that one

2009-02-05T23:25:00.003-05:00

Title: Proven Guilty

Author: Jim Butcher

Bookmark: flattened candy box from Halloween leftovers

This is a story of a wizard names Harry who spends an inordinate amount of time fighting dark magic while struggling to maintain his life in the real world. Not that Harry. This Harry is named Dresden, and was named by his father after Harry Houdini (one of my childhood heroes). I know, it still sounds like a bit of a rip off, but that doesn't mean it's not really cool.

The Dresden Files, in addition to being a short-lived TV series, is a growing list of books that started as a protest against a writing assignment. This is number eight, because it was the only one on the shelf when I decided I wanted to read them. It's obvious that there are threads running throughout the series (one of the big plotlines in this book isn't even completely resolved), but Butcher does an elegant, subtle job of letting you know what you need to know without being heavy-handed and obvious.

Harry Dresden seems to be the undiscovered love child of Hermione Granger and Philip Marlowe, spouting off defensive spells and one-liners with equal ease. In this episode, he confronts an unspecified threat bringing phobophages (demons that feed on fear, and in this case, take the form of movie monsters) into our world from the Nevernever, deals with an ongoing war between the White Council of Wizards and the Red Court of vampires, starts a civil war in the Nevernever between Summer and Winter faeries, sees his brother (a sort-of vampire) move out of his apartment, struggles to protect the family of his friend (a holy warrior who carries one of three sacred swords, each of which contains a nail of the Cross, and seems to take his orders from God, or someone close), and wrangles politically with the most powerful wizard alive. Oh, and he does it all aided by a dog that may not be mortal while battling internally with a fallen angel who took up residence in his brain when he touched a cursed Roman coin in an earlier book.

There are a couple very minor concerns with continuity, and things get especially weird in the last third of the book, which takes place largely in the Nevernever, but it's still good fun. I might have to hunt down some of the earlier books to figure out what the hell's going on.

the dumbest things you've never heard of

2009-01-24T15:09:00.004-05:00

Title: Stupid History
Author: Leland Gregory
Other stuff on cover: Tales of stupidity, strangeness, and mythconceptions throughout the ages

Remember Weird Al? Remember his song "Everything You Know Is Wrong"?

This is like the book version. Every single page contains one or two snippets of history, culture, and occasional science that made me want to start looking up alternate sources to verify them. It's a little difficult because Gregory includes no bibliography, but for the amount of stuff in this little book, the bibliography would add another forty or fifty pages. Sadly, I already knew a handful of the stories, which was enough to convince me that at least an overwhelming majority of these stories are true.

Most are about events or people you've never heard of before (The War of the Stray Dog, p.255; The War of the Oaken Bucket, p.133), but a few tell the truth (Lizzie Borden, p.5; Emancipation Proclamation, p. 8), or posit suppositions (were Julius Caesar, p. 206, and James Buchanan, p. 244, gay?), about far more well-known historical figures. Most are true stories in history so incredibly stupid that I chafed my forehead rubbing it with disbelief. There were two separate cases of insects being successfully prosecuted (p.19, p. 74). The United States once had two presidents at the same time (p.43), almost thirty years after David Rice Atchison was president for a single day--though he didn't know it until years later(p. 29).

Some stories are about stupid situations or ideas, some about stupid people, and a few are about smart people that history has completely forgotten. They're entertaining on their own, though Gregory likes to tuck his own one-liners in at the end of almost every anecdote. Those jokes range from decent to abysmal, but I still have to have some respect for the guy's research. The book spans centuries, with at least a couple stories taking place in the past decade, and touches on topics as diverse as religion and the price of salt. To give you a taste, here's one of my favorites, from page 260:

After a lengthy court battle, the Missouri Ku Klux Klan was granted permission, in March 2000, to participate in the state's Adopt-a-Highway program. This victory would force the state to use taxpayer money to place Adopt-a-Highway road signs on a one-mile stretch of road advertising the KKK. The Klan's victory was crossed out the following month when their organization was removed from the program. The reason? The state legislature decided to name the Klan's designated portion of road I-55 south of St. Louis) after civil rights activist Rosa Parks--and the Klan never showed up to clean.

Dangerously Dull Dexter

2009-01-20T11:57:00.003-05:00

Title: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay
Bookmark: hold slip from the library

It's nice to think that as writers write more, they get better. They must, because the second Dexter book was a lot better than this one. If I'd read this first, I probably wouldn't have bothered with that one. As it is, I think I'm done with the series anyway.

It's a nice enough gimmick: the serial killer crime solver, the serial killer as a good guy. Lindsay likes playing with the idea of how a serial killer thinks, but he only has one idea for that; every single one of his crazies has the same voice in their head, the same driving impulses, the same triggers setting off their violent urges. They all recognize each other on the street by the look in their eyes, and they all seem to know about the creepy Dark Passenger concept of psychotic killer mindset. Frankly, it gets dull and boring.

The inconsistencies in this book are worse, too. One moment Dex is bragging about needing very little sleep, the next he's bitching about getting only 9 hours of it a night. He flops back and forth between a ruthless calculating mind and screaming-meemies schoolgirl. Finally, it pisses me off that in two books about a forensic scientist axe murderer, he hasn't performed a single scientific act. He gets his insights on the killer in this book, I shit you not, through weird dreams.

I Kant stand it.

2009-01-17T16:05:00.003-05:00

Title: Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...
Subtitle: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
Authors: Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein
Bookmark: the wrapper from a cookie offered to me as Airport Emergency Rations

This was a Christmas gift from someone whose misguided love of philosophy nearly equals my own love of jokes. Upon receiving it, I was told that the goal was to bridge the gap: bringing me into the philosophy-loving fold using humor as the leash and choke chain. I later found out that an ulterior motive was "to annoy (me)." Guess which one won?

There are two links in my life to philosophy. One is a friend from college, who double majored in philosophy and physics. He claimed that this kept him from ever having to answer any questions, as almost any subject falls into (or near) one of those two camps. Asked a physics-related question, he could reply, "I don't know--I'm a philosophy major." Asked philosophy-related question, he could reply, "I don't know--I'm a physics major." I think I liked him because despite his interest in philosophy, he was willing to admit that a major in it was worthless. The other connection is my cousin, an idiot who serves no use whatsoever, except as a possible source of protein should you survive a plane crash with him in the Andes. Even then, I'd rather starve than pollute my constitution with such flabby, slack-jawed fare. He serves only to remind me how pointless a philosophy major is, and his occasional letters (to other members of the family) proudly illustrate how highly he holds himself in his own esteem, despite lacking the ability to provide anyone, anywhere, with any useful skill or service.

Philosophy may be interesting to some, but I don't see the point in churning out people who specialize in it. Everybody is a philosopher in some measure; we all think about life, death, greater meanings, etc. But the one thing that even most philosophers agree upon is that nobody really knows the answer to any of these questions--the only fun is in asking them. Which kind of eliminates the need for books on philosophy. I read to find answers. I already know the questions.

If your question is, "Can anyone explain philosophy to me, perhaps with the use of some light humor and fun new jokes?" the answer is, "probably, but not with this book." Sadly, it's the question I had in mind when I started reading it in the Columbus airport.

Both authors clearly have a deep love for both subjects, and neither author has any grasp of how to convey those subjects to someone else. I suspect that if I already knew a lot of philosophy, this could have been a fun, entertaining read. Knowing basically nothing going in, I had to settle for the jokes.

Lots of philosophical concepts are named or mentioned, but none are properly introduced. An entire sentence explaining some obscure new term is generous here; an entire paragraph rare, and a chapter unheard of. Even worse, the jokes peppered throughout to illustrate these obscure ideas are a little haphazard, and while they are usually introduced with a line like "In the following story, Marvin really comes to appreciate his ding an sich," the reader is given no clues as to what the hell that means, how Marvin comes to appreciate said ding an sich, or or even how the casual observer is supposed to come to such an absurd conclusion. It may help that Marvin is Jewish, because nearly every joke in the book is about Jewish people. Maybe they understand philosophy better.

Mark Twain, or maybe E. B. White (sources disagree), said that "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: you understand it better, but the frog dies in the process." Very true, but this book still needs a lot more explanation. The title itself promises a clearer understanding of one field via another, and despite my lifelong fluency with all manner of jokes, I still don't have any better a grasp on philosophy. Explain something to me, guys. Anything. Pick any damn concept anywhere in this book, and lay it out for me as though I'm not already an adept student of philosophy, because otherwise, those are the only people who will really enjoy your work. For the rest of us, dump the philosophical crap, cut about a third of the pointless, tired, or unfunny jokes (there are a few--most of the jokes are pretty good, but there are a few that don't deserve a place in a book of humor OR philosphy), and print it in a pamphlet, because by then, that's all you'll have left.

Oh, and get a freaking proofreader to fix your punctuation and make sure your sentences don't have leftover words from before you reworded them. Makes me crazy.

Big Bad Cuckoo Daddy

2009-01-13T13:11:00.003-05:00

Title: Dearly Devoted Dexter
Author: Jeff Lindsay
Bookmark: Two-dollar bill; a return on my investment in someone else's stake in a poker game

After chasing away banner ads on IMDB for Showtime's series, I found out that it was based on the first Dexter novel, but that one didn't get to my library (at my request) until this morning. Over the weekend, I placated myself with the second.

It took me a little bit (maybe two or three chapters) to get into it, but I eventually did, as I will with almost any well-written crime story. Besides, it was published by Black Lizard, which has a cool logo and also printed the six-pound behemoth I've been reading for several months now.

Dexter Morgan is a serial killer, but his adoptive cop father Harry saw what Dex would become very early in life and carefully molded him to follow what Dexter comes to call The Harry Code. Kill only serial killers; kill only those who escape justice by standard, legal means. Get proof. Be certain. Harry taught his homicidal honor student to be extremely careful, cautious, and patient. Dexter's "Dark Passenger," a semi-buried alter ego, drives him to kill. His sister is a cop who apparently knows what her adopted brother does in his free time. Oh, and he's a forensic blood-spatter expert for the Miami police.

Dearly Devoted Dexter shows us a monster well aware of his monstrosity, stalked by a cop whose partner was killed (not by Dexter, but he was there observing) at the end of the previous novel. His hounding keeps our mega-anti-hero from a "playdate" with a pedophile's accomplice and forces Dexter to bore the officer (Doakes) into submission by settling into a dull routine of visiting his girlfriend, whom he internally refers to as a disguise. Dexter doesn't experience emotions, so all emotional displays are carefully practiced charades picked up from movies and observing humans. His monotony is interrupted by entry in Miami of a horrifying new criminal.

A man is found, grossly dismembered, but still alive. A mirror suspended above him guarantees that he can see what he ahas become, and that any trace of sanity he might have once had is lost and gone forever, my darling Clementine. Dexter must team up with his sister and Doakes to find the fiend when his sister's new boyfriend is taken by the madman.

It's entertaining to read Dexter's completely detached observations and completely inappropriate remarks, but the symptoms of his madness--even the ones he himself constantly reminds us he has--are a little inconsistent, and for someone as smart as he's supposed to be, he does a few really stupid things. I didn't really buy the whole show, but I needed some dark candy, and this fit the bill. Plus, there's a constant theme of alliteration in Dexter's nicknames for himself and his observations that I enjoyed, and above all, it's still entertaining. And I asked the library to go find the first book, so now I have to read it.

The Magical Radioactive Smurf

2009-01-05T13:27:00.003-05:00

Title: The Watchmen
Author: Alan Moore
Bookmark: the official 50% recycled bookmark of the Union Pacific railroad

Masked vigilantes (not "superheroes") have been outlawed by the federal government. Most of them are along the lines of Batman; highly trained physically, often with shiny gadgets, but no actual powers. Except for Doctor Manhattan. He was a normal particle physicist and watch fancier until the typical comic book Radioactive Incident made him into a glowing blue god-like being who can duplicate himself, change his size, teleport, alter matter at a subatomic level, and tends to walk around naked an awful lot.

The plot revolves around an impending nuclear war with Russia, and a huge convoluted plot to... well, that's actually part of the plot. Moore doles out tiny clues, red herrings, and details along the way, and although it's possible to guess who's responsible, there's no way in hell you'd ever be able to guess what the whole plan is because it's too damn far out there.

There's a really big deal over Watchmen right now because of the movie, and all the comic geeks are slavering over it, there's a lot of hype about people who don't like comics love it, and it even made Time Magazine's list of the 100 best novels...

and I'm just not sure why. The story telling has lots of little tricks, with extended flashbacks, side stories and archival documents to fill out the world Moore creates, but I never really cared for the story itself, or any of the characters. I mean, every character, even comic book heroes, should have some flaws or shortcomings to make them vulnerable and interesting, but every character in the entire massive work is a dickhead of some kind. Most are mainly concerned with themselves, or with nothing at all, and apparently got into vigilantism for the glory or potential lucrative modeling deals. The one character who fights crime solely for the purpose of fighting crime is a violent psychotic who raises himself above the criminals he hunts only by limiting his violence to criminals. The god-like Manhattan, who exists in all times and turn a bullet to vapor after it's fired, could care less about the welfare of people, including his girlfriend, and spends most of his time trying to discover subatomic particles (that bothered me mainly because someone with his level of power should have no trouble at all with such an endeavor). One of the violent psychopathic vigilantes is even a rapist. How am I supposed to care about the welfare of characters that I don't like at all in a plot line that is convoluted and bizarre even for a comic book?

Moore makes most of the world very believable: his masked vigilantes have no superpowers, and their escapades are made illegal to protect the populace. Then he launches far past believability with the Big Underlying Plot. It's all or nothing with the guy. It almost seems like he's trying to make a very human drama of people who in his world are seen as above humanity, while simultaneously threatening all of human existence, and I just don't buy any of it. I'm not even sure I want to see the movie anymore, and the only reason I read the book was to find out more about the movie and whether I wanted to see it. I guess that backfired a little.

Next time, keep the kid

2008-12-31T18:01:00.005-05:00

Title: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Author: Kim Edwards

In The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Norah Henry goes into labor three weeks early and during a snowstorm. As a result, they are unable to make it to the hospital, and David Henry, an orthopedic surgeon, is left to do the delivery with the help of his nurse, Caroline.

At first surprised and then dismayed by the delivery of a second child, a girl with Down syndrome, David makes a rash decision he will regret the rest of his life. He hands the child off to the nurse with instructions to take her to a home, not an uncommon thing to have done in the 60s. Caroline, secretly in love with David, attempts to do so. However, she finds the home to be a horrible place and opts to raise the child herself. She quickly leaves town and creates a new life in Pittsburgh.

Instead of the truth, David tells Norah that she had a second, stillborn child. This lie wreaks havoc on their lives - creating a wall between them and complicating the relationship with their healthy firstborn son. Caroline sends pictures and letters to David as his daughter, Phoebe, grows but David cannot bring himself to tell his wife the truth and reunite their family.

A well-written novel, but one that I wouldn't necessarily recommend. I read to escape, and when a novel feels very real and the characters have dreary miserable lives - well, there just has to be something better out there to read.

Heh? What just happened?

2008-12-17T19:19:00.005-05:00

Title: The Fire
Author: Katherine Neville

This book got a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and sounded interesting, so I thought I'd check it out. Little did I know I was in for a laborious undertaking that would leave me beyond confused. The Washington Post's review is far more accurate.

At first, I thought I was a bit of an idiot who just couldn't understand the complex plot(s) of the novel. However, I prefer to think that the Washington Post reviewer was right when he wrote: "But the clues and connections in The Fire offer more convolution than complexity." There is just something irritating about too much convolution, clues that I can't seem to draw any sense from, and the overuse of cliches with the pathetic excuse that the good friend of the main character has a penchant for cliches. If that's the case, only said friend should be allowed to use them, not the main character with the constantly repeated preface of "As Key would say...." Here's a thought, how about coming up with an original way of saying something?

Hmm, I suppose I should address the plot. Well, there are two of them. And just when I was getting hooked on one, and I thought I finally had some semblance of an idea as to what the heck was going on, we switched to the other plot. Insanely frustrating.

So, Xie, short for Alexandra, is the daughter of Alexander and Cat Solarin, two people previously involved in the Game (which apparently you can read about in Neville's book The Eight published in 1988. Perhaps I should have started there). The Game is some sort of complicated fight for all the pieces of a very old chess set said to have some sort of knowledge hidden within it. There's a lot of references to the number eight, which is the number of squares in a row on a chessboard. And lots of random numbers adding up to eight. And just lots of fantastical eightliness. But I digress.

The Game, thought to have stopped with the end of the previous book, has apparently started up again. Eight people are involved, and Xie is always switching back and forth about which side she thinks they are on.

You know what? I give up. I really cannot make sense of this thing in a short review. That's only the main plot one-eighth explained (if that). I haven't even gotten to the subplot!

Bottom Line: Don't read it unless you want a headache. I think I'm getting one just from trying to write the review.

Good lord, no!! It's... adorable?

2008-12-17T13:09:00.002-05:00

Title: Other Stories and... The Attack of the Giant Baby
Author: Kit Reed
Bookmark: Old train ticket that I found in my coat pocket

This is another treasure that ket dug up at her bookstore. Before anything about what goes on inside the cover, take a look at the cover itself:

Ket has told me that she often picks books based on amusing titles or cover art, and let's face it: by those criteria, this is a sure-fire winner. The title is fantastic, I love that the subtitle precedes the main title, and although the title story includes a "life-sized Steiff rhinoceros" from F.A.O. Schwartz, there's nothing about baby Leonard destroying the Empire State Building, which is grossly out of scale anyway. My cousin has three classic B-movie posters professionally mounted and hung on his wall; I want this book cover as a poster. The only thing it's missing is a busty, leggy blonde in torn clothing screaming at the camera, and it could beat every poster my cousin has--even Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

I laughed myself into a stupor when I saw this book, and woke up three days later eager to see what it offered. Reed filled it with short, strange stories that range from detailed but uninspired ("War Songs," in which the women form a militia to fight the men, who don't really take it seriously. Some of the women are disappointed to learn that their roles in the new regime are the same as the roles they left behind--cooking, cleaning--while others are hell bent on destroying men entirely, reminding me of nothing so much as an underground comic series.) to inventively bizarre (a more literal take on "Empty Nest" syndrome). It reminded me of that phase in high school when I found out that Ray Bradbury, in addition to Fahrenheit 451, had also written tons of short stories. I happily plowed through two or three collections of his stuff, and while it was always entertaining, it often left me with the feeling that I had taken drugs cooked up in someone's bathroom. Bradbury likes to take really strange ideas (What if a baby had an adult's intelligence and really hated his parents? What if you could buy a robot grandma?) and toy with them, and I think that for many writers, that's the whole point of a short story; getting to play with an idea that intrigues you, but isn't enough to carry a book on its own.

Kit Reed does the same thing. There's a lot of funny little ideas (What if you could order a genius baby? What if you hired a horrific monster to eat your in-laws?), and Reed toys with them, but it feels more like a sketchbook than a gallery opening. I finished a lot of stories wondering what the hell the point was. Granted, I tend to prefer a little closure, a little explanation; I like to get a good, solid look into the world of the story instead of just a brief glimpse. Some of the stories gave me what I wanted--I really liked Empty Nest, even though there's no good explanation of what's going on, because the part that Reed gave us was done so well. Then there are stories like Pilots of the Purple Twilight, which feels more like the prattlings of a senile grandparent: you pay attention because you're supposed to, but you get nothing out of it, and end up wondering whether there's anything good on tv. Still worth a read, and a great airplane book. You can't read my copy, though--I'm having it framed.

Starving authors' sale

2008-12-08T13:39:00.003-05:00

Title: The Great Brain Robbery
Author: James P. Fisher
Bookmark: months-old train ticket

I'm going to let you folks in on a little secret. Sometimes ket goes to the used bookstore, slaps down a fiver, and walks out with three hundred high-quality paperbacks, and a biography of a NASCAR driver, which she sends to me with no return address. These selections are usually based on entertaining titles, or bizarre cover illustrations (my next post is a shining example of both qualities), and in many cases, her process turns up true gems.

Then there are cases that make it obvious how she can walk out with such a high stack of books for less than the cost of a Whopper. The best part of this book was the clever title. Wait. Scratch that. The title shares "Best Quality" honors with the malicious glee I felt while reading it, knowing that someday soon I'd get to review it. Books like this remind me of why we gave our little project such a vicious name, and why many of us read crap for the joy of tearing it apart later.

Spoilers be damned--I'm laying everything out for you.

Dennis is a college junior with a recurring nightmare he can't understand which is always accompanied by a sense of guilt over "the unpardonable sin" (turns out, it's not failure to rewind VHS rentals). He's growing bored with everything, despite his roommate's efforts to get him laid at a beach party. When a visiting professor runs a brain wave test on him in psych class, he sees the nightmare vision again, but it turns out the prof was a fake. After calling every shrink in the book trying to get an appointment, a college shrink asks him if he likes his penis, and Dennis goes home to discover the fake prof in his apartment with a teleportation device in a suitcase.

He takes Dennis to a room carved out of Antarctic ice and asks him to save his alien world with his unique brain waves by basically standing around.

Believe it or not, his claims are not legit. The alien (whose name, Cynnax, has an X in it so we know he's an alien) has collected 24 Earthlings in the hopes that two of them will hold the key to saving his world from a basement dimension, but plans to torture the necessary "force" from their brains to do so.

Then there's a two-page, full-color ad for cigarettes that probably cost as much to print on its glossy paper as the rest of the book. Go, 70's.

Dennis discovers there's a second world ALSO marooned in this micro-dimension, filled with people who look like dogs, and they're good guys, and although they have some trans-dimensional telportation capability, they have no devices for sealing plot holes. Dennis goes on commando raid with invisibility serum, gets captured, discovers that although the bad guys can teleport themselves across thousands of light years and dimensional barriers, their holding cells dissolve when exposed to tears. Really. Salt water apparently burns right through their space-age poly-crete.

Blah blah poor transitions, blah blah whiny protagonist, blah blah weak love subplot, blah blah painfully bad science (their polar base is subjected to temperatures "near absolute zero"), blah blah more plot holes, blah blah happy ending.

If I'd only been born here...

2008-12-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

A Change of Heart: How the People of Framingham, Massachusetts, Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease
by Daniel Levy, M.D., and Susan Brink

Framingham is legendary in medical and anthropological circles. They started tracking the medial stories of 5000 locals in 1948, taking physicals every 2 years. This has allowed them to monitor the progression of all sorts of diseases including hypertension, atherosclerosis, cancer, strokes, etc., and to see the relationship between physical conditions and the resulting afflictions.

About 60 years ago, the worlds views on medicine were drastically different than they are today. Blood pressure was thought to be healthy when naturally rising with age. Diets were thought to be healthy when including MEAT MEAT FAT MEAT. Smoking was HEALTHY.

When FDR died, his blood pressure was something like 300/180. In today's world, that's absurd. It means his arteries were all so hardened that his heart was working ridiculously hard to create any sort of circulation. It killed him. A normal, healthy pressure is about 120/60.

Through Framingham, they recognized the relationship between high blood pressure and heart attacks, strokes, etc. They recognized the general existence of risk factors (and coined the phrase). They fought to educate physicians around the world to treat their patients, helped spur the development of statins, and changed overall perspectives on medicine.

As the original Framingham 5000 aged, a second group was added to the study - their descendents. They're now on to the third generation. People have moved away, but come back every two years for their 2 days of extensive tests, because they have recognized their responsibility to the study and all the good it's done.

The funding for the original study ran out in 1978, and it was almost ended. Thankfully, through university partnerships and a LOT of fighting for funding, it still survives. They publish probably hundreds of studies each year, generally either groundbreaking or confirming unproven theories, simply because they have access to so much data. The study started in the era of room-sized computers requiring punch cards. Even then the doctors and scientists managed to capture massive amounts of data from each patient that allowed trending. Now, they can capture even more, and the data crunching takes significantly less time.

The book is written by one of the directors of the study, providing an interesting insider's view. Having read tons of journal articles originating from them, it was great to see all the stories and people behind it.

Or just plain careless.

2008-12-06T12:33:00.002-05:00

Careless in Red
by Elizabeth George

This is one of the Inspector Lynley series novels. I've never read any of them, but have come across the related TV series on PBS, so I figured it was worth a try.

Sadly, though it was somewhat interesting, I guessed all the major plot twists way before they happened. And it's set in somewhere on the coast of GB where all the people have funny names (Santo, Jago, Benesek, Cadan, Dellen, etc.). There's a lot of supporting characters, and with the funny name thing it was hard to keep track of what was going on for the first half or so (which made the obvious twists all that more disappointing).

If the series is worthy of PBS/BBC, I'll give it another try - maybe earlier in the series before the author ran out of ideas.

Wow.

2008-12-06T12:26:00.002-05:00

Carrot Cake Murder
by Joanne Fluke

What can I say, I was running low on reading material and there's no way I'm spending 5 days with the family without some escape.

There's a random murder in the book. They solve it. Doesn't matter. I spent the whole time being amazed at the stupidity of the main characters. And don't worry, if the author is anything like them, she'll never find this review and yell at me.

Hannah is supposedly a 30-something woman who owns a successful business. However, she doesn't know how to use her effing cell phone - there's repeated descriptions of how someone programs in a different ring tone (!!!), she's all shocked when someone knows she's the caller when they answer their cell phone, etc. She can barely use the internet (see, we're safe!), and just barely manages to log on, being partially motivated by her mother also managing to use the interwebs. The various supporting characters don't know what a knockoff purse is. And there was something else infuriatingly stupid that I've forgotten but refuse to browse through to find it. Most importantly, though the characters react to technology like it's 1992, the book was published in 2008. Oy.

Dial M for "meh"

2008-12-06T12:22:00.002-05:00

Dial M for Mischief
by Kasey Michaels

Jolie's father, a PI, is dead - an apparent suicide. She comes home from Hollywood to be with her sisters at the funeral, and they decide to investigate the cases he'd been looking at to see why someone killed him, because obviously he didn't do it himself.

Also back in the hometown is her former fiance Sam, whom she left to go break into the movies, because if she'd staying with him she'd never have been happy. He's rich, and still in love with her, so he forces his way into the investigation so he can keep an eye on her.

They stir up some trouble, rule out one of the former cases (though finally solving the case of the disappearance of a runaway bride), and fall in love again (awww.). However, we still don't know who offed Daddy because there's two more books - one for each sister - that we'll still need to get through.

Score!

2008-12-06T12:11:00.002-05:00

Illegal Action
by Stella Rimington

I was so excited to see this just sitting on the shelf when I went to the library in desperate search of books so that I could survive the long Thanksgiving weekend with my family. And it didn't disappoint.

We rejoin Liz shortly after the events of the previous story have taken place. There are definitely some personnel shifts and repercussions, though Liz is not supposed to think of her transfer from counter-terrorism to counter-intelligence as a demotion or punishment. However, the lifestyle there is vastly different - much more relaxed, with normal hours, since the imminent threat of the Soviets having a spy in Britain isn't that big a deal now. Or so they think...

A few government members get complementary tips regarding a Russian oil oligarch being targeted, so they eventually get over to MI-6 and Liz gets stuck playing an art enthusiast to an oligarch who's in the market for a priceless painting. Plus there's secret motivations and some in-fighting between agencies messing with the whole investigation.

Essentially, those sneaky Russians still know what they're doing. And you never betray Mother Russia. There's a few casualties, but everyone learns a valuable lesson.

I lapsed into a comma.

2008-11-17T13:26:00.004-05:00

Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Author: Lynne Truss
Bookmark: an actual bookmark

There was a time when I was just a pup and getting a handle on the written word when I put commas between every word in a sentence. Some would say that it was because I didn't yet know how to properly use them, but the truth of the matter is that I hadn't yet mastered the difference between letter-spaces and word-spaces, and without some sort of mark denoting the break between words, my writing was a nearly unintelligible block of solid text with occasional periods or question marks.

Then Mom started drilling me with rules like which which, there, and whose was which, how to spell "friends" and "believe", and her personal favorite, "Ain't is NOT a word."

Thus began my descent into grammatical madness. I had to stop reading our local paper because the amount of errors was distracting. I didn't even have to read the page; a glance would immediately detect four punctuation errors, six misspellings, and an unfinished sentence before I saw any actual words. The pattern-recognition part of my brain was so highly tuned to sentence structure that I saw breaks in the pattern before the pattern itself. After reading one of my recent posts about frustration with mankind's general rampant illiteracy, Kate recommended this book and sent me a link to an "unrelated" blog. The author of the book is a proudly fierce stickler for punctuation, and jokingly (I hope) advocates an end to apostrophe abuse:

Here are the weapons required in the apostrophe war (stop when you feel uncomfortable):

correction fluid
big pens
stickers in a variety of sizes, both plain (for sticking over unwanted apostrophes) and coloured (for inserting where apostrophes are needed)
tin of paint with big brush
guerrilla-style clothing
strong medication for personality disorder
loudhailer
gun

I'll grant Truss this much: the lady has done some serious research, and peppers the book with surprisingly interesting historical tidbits about the origin and past use of various punctuation marks, and employs vast, verdant expanses of examples to illustrate her points. The self-referential nature and sly humor behind most of these examples makes a book on rabid, fervent love of punctuation surprisingly readable... for a book on rabid, fervent love of punctuation.

I got through the first half to two-thirds of the book pretty easily, then I had a visitor for a few days, then some great weekend weather, then I got an email from the library kindly reminding me that they'd like their book back, and I had to force my way through the rest of the book. It helped to read that portion first thing in the morning, before I started work, rather than at night, when paragraphs extolling the virtues of the semicolon laid me out on the couch and left me for dead.

It's entertaining if you have no trouble reading slightly dry material about the marks throughout our sentences, but it is also mercifully short. As much as I agree with her on most points, Truss takes a few too many pot shots at American and Internet usage for my liking. This is not to say that I don't agree with her on the Internet side, but many of her criticisms of American punctuation use were contrary to the rules I learned in school so many years ago. Sorry, Ms. Truss, but contrary to what you have heard, the opening of a letter is most often followed with a comma; the colon is reserved for business letters.

I think the real problem with the book is that the people who really need to read it--those blundering oafs who use a comma when they want an apostrophe, a space when they need a hyphen, "whose" when they need "who's", and an apostrophe when they want nothing at all--won't ever go near it. The people who will read it are the ones who already know most or all of the rules in the book, and will gain only some humorous lines about her desire to bear the children of the inventor of the apostrophe and italics, and some interesting parenthetical history (literally). Making this required reading in schools would be a nice touch, but by the time students reach this reading level, it may be too late for them. Perhaps the answer is to make it required reading for the teachers.

Speaking of teachers, here's another related article I found recently.

Crazies, all of them

2008-11-15T12:41:00.004-05:00

Sizzle and Burn
by Jayne Ann Krentz

Raine has blamed the Arcane Society for her father's death for years. She also hears voices and uses them to solve murders. Her crazy aunt dies and she finds a prisoner in the basement of her house (she'd been in an asylum, so it wasn't crazy aunt's doing).

At the same time someone tries to kill her AND the Arcane Society has interest in her father's research, so Zack's sent out to get the info and protect her. They end up in a rather epic battle with members of the rival psychic group who are using some formula to amp up their powers, though the formula makes them insane and then they kill themselves. Apparently Raine's father was aware of an early version of this formula and had been working on an antidote? Whole thing was very weird.

And then we learn that Zach was fooled by one of the bad people and almost married her, so now he doesn't trust his judgement and even though he's a direct descendant in the line that's always head of the good-psychic council he wants to avoid everything. Until Raine teaches him to trust himself and they bring down the bad guys and then he takes charge and all is good with the world until the next book, because one of the baddies faked her death so we'll totally see her again...

where did blue smoke come from?

2008-11-15T12:34:00.002-05:00

Blue Smoke and Murder
by Elizabeth Lowell

Raft guide Jill saves the son of one of the execs at St. Kilda Consulting, who also employed the heroes in a few other books I've read, so he says if she ever needs anything...

Fast forward a bit and Jill's reclusive grandmother is killed on her secluded ranch, she receives threats when she tries to sell some family heirloom paintings, so she calls the dude and he sends Zach to help her.

There's all sorts of stuff involving male chauvinism, discrediting a famous Western artist, and restoring Jill's family's good name, with a showdown in a desert between Zach and one of the bad guys. And then they live happily ever after.

Still Awesome.

2008-11-15T12:28:00.003-05:00

Secret Asset
by Stella Rimington

Sequel to At Risk. Liz is on the trail of a mole in MI-6 this time. Plenty of betrayal, plus a valid (and semi-related) terrorist threat, and despite some false starts she figures out who's behind the whole thing. Really, I'd rather say less about the book and just get you all to read it.

Also, are we starting to sense a theme in the books I'm really enjoying these days? And yet I saw Quantum of Solace last night and was rather disappointed. Maybe they need a girl-power version...

What. The. Eff.

2008-11-15T12:23:00.002-05:00

Mounting Desire
by Nina Killham

This was awful. Male romance novel writer gives up sex searching for romance; his frigid sister has a nympho friend looking for a place to live so she has her move in. Tension ensues. She f*cks anything male that comes within 3 feet except the newly celibate writer. He falls for a control freak virgin who delineates zones on her body where he may or may not touch. Mom's kicked out of her assisted living place for trying to sleep with a former ambassador. Also the constant descriptions of the nympho as being so voluptuous and curvy and having freaking muffin-top and that's supposed to be sexy, but really only reassures the depressed obese women reading this looking for affirmation. Can't believe I actually read the whole thing.

If this exists, my children are so going there

2008-11-15T12:10:00.003-05:00

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
by Ally Carter

We rejoin Cammie and the rest of the Gallagher girls during her sophomore year of high school at the Gallagher Academy, a super-secret private school that teaches the students how to be spies (to the point where there's a designated language/dialect for each meal, and they're regularly kidnapped by teachers for class exercises).

Cammie's still recovering from her freshman year, where she had a forbidden relationship with a boy in town (just hand-holding and a kiss, you perverts) - the locals just think it's a snooty girls school, and for security reasons they prefer to keep things that way, so no outside relationships.

Following an exercise where the girls have to shake a tail and meet at a rendezvous point, they receive news that BOYS are COMING TO GALLAGHER. This is blasphemy. There are some male teachers, but it's been girls-only since its founding 100+ years ago. Plus Cammie's still trying to figure out what really happened when her father was killed during a mission several years ago; her mom, who also happens to be headmaster, and one of her teachers, know more than they're letting on.

So Cammie and her 3 friends (the nerd, the bombshell, and the rebel, of course) set out to find out what the boys are really doing at their school. As you may expect, this involves planting bugs and tracking devices in the boys' dormitory. Come on, they're spies, after all. And during all this the cutest of the boys has definitely taken an interest in Cammie, which she finds suspicious because her greatest talent is being essentially invisible (great for a spy, not so great for finding a boyfriend).

By the end of the book, very few of Cammie's questions have been answered, except that the boys are NOT up to no good. The powers-that-be decided that the girls should learn how to interact with boys/men before they're thrown out into the real spying world, so they imported some from the semi-rival equivalent boys' spy school. But to get to this point, there was another awesome kidnapping and chase sequence where the girls had to trust the boys and accept their help in order to recover potentially sensitive information revealing the names of all former students (aka a list of current spies).

Apparently the first book has been optioned for a movie by Disney. If they screw this up, heads will roll, even if I don't have the training to accomplish that.

I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL HERE.

Ah, the Classics

2008-10-29T17:11:00.003-05:00

Title: Madame Bovary
Author: Gustave Flaubert

Note: SPOILERS BELOW!

Every-so-often I try to read one of the "classics" (to avoid offending Reyn, and the writers of this great blog I just discovered, I would like to say that I used quotation marks because I am still unclear how a piece of literature arrives at the point where it can be deemed one of these so-called classics). I have had Madame Bovary sitting on my bookshelves for who knows how long, so it seemed a good option. Honestly, I'm not sure what the fuss is all about.

First of all, stop spending money you don't have, woman! I cannot even begin to rant about how much I am irritated by books where someone spends more money than they can ever hope to repay (the Shopaholic series for example. Why did anyone ever recommend that to me, and then insist it was so great that I had to keep reading it? It was torture! Endless torture!). If you don't have it, don't spend it.

Secondly, poor Monsieur Bovary! He is nothing but a loving husband, albeit a bit lacking in the passion department. He does not deserve a wife like Emma.

Thirdly, romance novels are not real life, Madame Bovary. If only you had realized this, life would have been much better for you. Even your lovers (of which there was a disappointing grand total of two) cannot meet your insane need to achieve the pinnacle of romantic relationships, whatever that is.

SPOILER ALERT!
Fourthly, the only part that moved me toward pity for Madame Bovary was her method of suicide described in all its glorious detail. Do not ingest arsenic. It is not pleasant. If you must kill yourself, Emma, you would be wise to pick something quicker. Of course, drawing out your death did have the affect of making your husband feel even worse. Lovely.

Perhaps it's just me. Lots of readers on Amazon rave about this book. However, I found Emma to be a character with whom I simply could not sympathize.