Turkey day's a lot easier on you without, well, turkey. Mmmm.... lasagna.

"The Mystery of Courage" is an excellent book. Very well written, and the author treats the subject with respect. I especially like the idea that the threat of physical violence against insolence is important in maintaining civility.

¶ 4 Posted at 10.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books | me )

It's almost sad how clearly I reflect the books I am reading. Take, for instance, "No Logo," by Naomi Klein, which I just finished. It's about branding, consumerism, etc. Look at recent posts. They're about branding, consumerism, etc. So are these books actually teaching me and informing me, or do they merely stimulate evanescent thoughts that vanish once I have found something else to distract me?

Consumerism, I've decided, is like heroin. The first few times it's great. But then after that, it becomes impossible to extract any joy from anything else. They just grow to possess you. So while buying things makes you happy, it accentuates the emptiness that lies between materialistic orgies. Or something like that. Here, look at this.

¶ 19 Posted at 12.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

So, some woman called me this morning. She wasn't looking for me. She was looking for Tony. I suppose checking the number was too much for her to do this early. It wasn't too much to do for her to wake me. Nothing (on the scale of annoyances) angers me more than having my sleep frivolously disturbed. Nothing nothing nothing. Angry angry angry. So when she asked if I was Tony I just said No and hung up. Usually I try to be helpful, asking them who they intended to call, etc. Of course, that's when people just hang up on you. You say, "I'm sorry, but you have the wrong number," and they don't even bother to thank you or apologize to you for the disturbance. They just hang up. Reminds me of the line from Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor that I just read last night. It went something like: "People use telephones because they can't stand to be near each other but can't stand to be alone."

Speaking of Chuck Palahniuk, I had a dream that he was in my apartment telling me that Fight Club (the movie) made $40 million, and had only cost $4 million. I don't know where these numbers come from; I just think it's strange that my dream was so specific. Of course, it was also very specific about the lighting in my living room. It was very accurate; dreams usually are. I was telling him that most people I knew really liked the movie, but there were some who didn't. I think (this was outside the dream) the difference was, people who think there is something significantly wrong with society today liked it. Peoeple who are relatively satisfied with the status quo or can't be bothered to think about it (effectively the same group) didn't like it. What does that say about us? I know what it says. It says we don't care about other people's problems. It says that, as long as things are good for us, we don't want them to change.

Another dream I had, though I think it was tangentially connected to the Palahniuk one, had something to do with me being a substitute justice on the Supreme Court. For some reason a justice (don't remember who; none of them were recognizable in the dream world) had recused himself (from this Gore recount case), I think to go and work on some alien archaeology (his murdered body was found in a storage room for artifacts, like these weird alien skulls). The atmosphere in the Supreme Court was very casual, very collegial. I remember thinking it was going to be weird explaining to everybody how I ended up being a justice at one of the most important cases of the century. Then at some point I was on a spaceship that we were hijacking to take us away from Earth. The impressions of this dream universe were somewhat like that of the Alien movies, but also somewhat like that series by Piers Anthony on Jupiter that I read so long ago. Somehow, though, I was there and also reading about it in a book. It also triggered thoughts about what the ideal size of human space. I was thinking 30 years of travel. Then it would keep humanity separate enough that real changes would develop rather than the mass-media monoculture towards which we are moving slowly. That sort of difficulty in seeing the human universe would (hopefully) bring back a certain sense of mystery that has been lost. We know entirely too much about the world; there isn't much adventure left.

And all of this because some annoying woman called me too early in the morning. Without her, I wouldn't have remembered any of this. So blame her; it's her fault.

¶ 20 Posted at 09.37 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | books )

I was inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor to resolve against referential humor. But then I started wondering what that meant. I mean, saying "Doh!" is not really referential anymore. It's become another word. And besides, if I make a joke (yes, it's possible) about "suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," is that really something that bothers me? I think not. It's the modern mass media being used as a substitute for conversation that bothers me. Probably too much, but it's really annoying when I say something and get the response, "What's that from?" Is it so hard to think that something funny or insightful could come from a normal person, rather than a professional wit who gets paid to be so. Not only can we no longer make things ourselves for ourselves, now we can no longer come up with things to say by ourselves.

¶ 23 Posted at 02.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I just finished Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card. If you haven't read Ender's Game, you should. It's about, in simplest terms, a brilliant child who is used by the world government to defeat an alien race. Sounds silly, but it was actually pretty good, as such books go. Ender's Shadow is a retelling of the story of one of the side characters of the first book, an orphan named Bean. Many of the same events occur, but we follow Bean's story and perspective through them. It was an interesting idea, and worth trying. Card didn't fail, but that's because his sights weren't set high enough. There was a certain something about the first book that put it a cut above this one. Or maybe it is because the idea is no longer new, and I was younger and less discriminating when I first read Ender's Game. If I read one more time how smart Bean is... Let's face it. Writers like Orson Scott Card just aren't that great. They're entertaining, somewhat interesting, and every now and then will make you think, but not too hard. It's not his fault; he's probably a pretty smart and interesting guy. It's just that his prose doesn't evoke much. It's a story, albeit an interesting one, but that's about it.

¶ 27 Posted at 11.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I just finished reading a book called "The Last Samurai," by Helen DeWitt. Loosely, it is about a very educated, intelligent single mother with an obsession for "The Seven Samurai," and her even more intelligent son. That's the story in a nutshell. A poorly-fitting, cracking-at-the-seams nutshell. The book is a work of genius. It is brilliant. I can't articulate exactly why it is so brilliant, but rest assured that it is. It's also rather confusing. But still, brilliant. Read it. Just be aware that it'll be slow going. It's some 540 pages of less than crystal clear prose. But it's worth it. Read it.

¶ 40 Posted at 01.46 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

So, it's 1:30am on Tuesday, and I can't sleep. Rather than sit in my bed waiting for sleep to come, I decided to read. The book I was reading was Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. It's supposed to be a thought-provoking, eye-opening, affecting story of growing up "different" in the middle part of the 20th century. It is none of those things.

Perhaps when it was first published in 1973, it got attention for being new and shocking, and so its flaws were overlooked. But after 28 years, it is clear that those "virtues" were only such because of the times. The heroine, one Molly Holt, is flawless. Pretty, intelligent, determined, she escapes her poor white trash beginnings to become a strong independent woman blah blah blah. I hate flawless protagonists. That isn't the only way this book departs from reality. In Rita Mae Brown's worldview, all women are lesbians, it's just that most don't know it or want to believe it. The only people who will treat lesbians well are those who are unaware. Otherwise there is a uniform disgust/resentment. In men, this is the result of their resentment towards strong women for emasculating them, and towards other men for oppressing their universal homosexual tendencies. In women, it is a result of their unwillingness to embrace their lesbianism and their oppression by the patriarchy.

She idealizes men and women, gay and straight, into cliched archetypes. Each actor is a plot element, even our beloved Molly. Of complex character portrayals there are none. The prose is pedestrian and uninspired. It is quite clear that Ms. Brown was trying to be trenchant and witty in her unoriginal perspective, but she falls short. Her depictions of the trials and travails endured by our fearless heroine are also laughable; in most situations, you could swap lesbian for black or Jewish and leave the story basically unaltered. Then there is the complete lack of subtlety in Ms. Brown's condemnation of prejudice. Conversations between characters quickly become polemics against the intolerance of society. Various characters exist solely to spout an offensive and intolerant view of lesbians/blacks/Jews/Puerto Ricans/etc. in a heavy-handed attempt to illustrate the ridiculousness of these perspectives. It's like reading a lesbian Ayn Rand, except (thankfully), a much more brief one.

Don't get me wrong; this is not a worthless book. Your life will not be worse for having read it. But there are so many better ways to spend your time. This book will bring you nothing that could not be conveyed better and more effectively by other means (literary, film, musical, or other). This book is like the literary Elizabeth Taylor; she is now famous for having once been. It is a cultural relic, significant only because it of what it once was, not what it is today.

Blech. Written at 3am, but posted at 8am because my DNS servers broke.

¶ 53 Posted at 07.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Salon reviewed The Constant Gardener by John le Carré . That is the latest in my Avoid Infinite Jest Because It's Hard task list. Be careful of that review; there are spoilers. The book is about the murder of a minor British diplomat's do-gooder wife in Kenya and how that is related to the unethical practices of a large pharmaceutical corporation. It's pretty scary. The portrayal of UN humanitarian initiatives is particularly bothersome. In this view, the international aid system is basically a front for Western governments (who are themselves a front for large corporations) to dictate the policies of the Third World under cover of an idealistic program. The real problem is that what le Carré writes jibes with what I've read and heard elsewhere. The world out there sucks. We could probably do something about it, but we don't care enough. And too many powerful people profit from the powerlessness of others. It's depressing. The book itself is worth a read. It's no Galatea 2.2 or The Hours, but 'twill serve.

¶ 64 Posted at 03.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I just finished reading Chuck Palahniuk's (of Fight Club fame) third book, Invisible Monsters. I was disappointed. The guy needs to get a new trick. A quote:

But what I hate most is how she's just like me. What I really hate is me so I hate pretty much everybody.

The same language, the same sentiments, and the same story structure (flashbacks) as the other two books (Fight Club and Survivor) . Granted, they aren't the same books in the same way that Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels are the same movie, but it's close. His constant cynicism is tired, though there's a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel of this one. His ranting against the meaninglessness of modern life, against corporatism and consumerism, his fascination for abnormal characters experiencing violent life changes, and his penchant for open-ended surprise endings are done. Very done. Do something else, man. Show me you're not a one-trick pony. Do something completely different. Otherwise it's just pointless.

I'd talk about White Teeth, a book I just recently finished, but that one was pretty good. That will take more time. I want to think about that one. It took me weeks to read, so I think I should give it some more effort. Invisible Monsters took a day. Read into that what you would.

¶ 103 Posted at 10.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( movies | books )

Oh my god:

In the brutal Nov. 12 battle to keep the Germans from breaking through to the Volga, "only one man survived from the marine infantry guarding the regimental command post. His right hand was smashed and he could no longer fire. He went down into the bunker, and on hearing that there were no reserves left, filled his cap with grenades. 'I can throw these with my left hand,' he explained. Close by, a platoon from another regiment fought until only four were left alive and their ammunition ran out. A wounded man was sent back with the message: 'Begin shelling our position. In front of us is a large group of fascists. Farewell comrades, we did not retreat.'"

Another futile salvo in the attempt to teach the West that Russia won the worst war ever.

¶ 114 Posted at 01.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | whoa )

I'm about halfway through Nick Hornby's new book How To Be Good. So far it's the best one of his that I have read (High Fidelity and About A Boy being the others, as well one of his short stories in the anthology Speaking With The Angel). He has a disarmingly simple and clear way of expressing himself; his sentences are clever and insightful without being self-conscious (Dave Eggers) or pregnant with weight (Jonathan Franzen). I don't know anything about marriage, but what he writes about being in a slowly deteriorating marriage just feels very geniuine. The flipping between anger and love and back again in seconds, the deep and hidden bitterness only possible with someone you love deeply, and the desperate desire to make it work are all there. Hornby's prose is expressive and evocative, but calls so little attention to itself that you have to pay close attention to realize what he's doing. It's fantastic.

¶ 419 Posted at 03.10 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I am about 100 pages into Neal Stephenson's newest book, "Quicksilver." Two words: colossal disappointment. Stephenson has constructed a veritable armada of annoyances with which to assault me. The constant use of anachronistic language, even in narration: "phant'sy" instead of "fancy," for example. The incessant name-dropping of era "natural philosphers." The endless and condescending explications of the difference between natural philosophy and modern science, with the heavy-handed illustration of ideas that are forerunners of modern practice. And then there's the parade of familiar names from "Cryptonomicon," with Stephenson so intent on connecting the two and thus creating the "Aha!" in the reader that he brings in a character whose only previous reference was as a maker of fine furniture. And through it all, we have the redoubtable Enoch Root passing through it all like an Enlightenment-era Forest Gump. I don't blame Stephenson so much as the spineless editor who indulged him. Rather than the taut and effective prose of "Cryptonomicon," where digressions and meanderings were purposeful and whose language was well-refined to tell the story it told, we instead have a clumsy and graceless tale that collapses under the weight of its own self-importance. At least, that is the case for the first 100 pages.

¶ 614 Posted at 01.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I currently about halfway through Perfectly Legal, by NY Times tax reporter David Cay Johnston. The subtitle is "The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else." It's a pretty interesting read. It has a lot of good data. Johnston demonstrates how changes in the structure of Social Security have turned it from a pension plan into basically an income tax by another name, one unbalanced against the poor and middle class. He provides data indicating that the poor are many times more likely to face an IRS audit than the wealthy, and even when the wealthy are audited, the IRS is far less likely to pursue them and actually get paid. Johnston discusses how deferred executive pay allows CEOs and other corporate officers accumulate many millions through interest and capital gains on pay, while deferring taxes for decades. He goes over the corporate jet boondoggle, which allows corporate officers to get nearly free rides on the shareholders' dimes. He talks about how the Alternative Minimum Tax will effectively replace the standard income tax over the next decade for a substantial number of Americans in the middle and upper class (but not the very rich), and thus prevent them from realizing a large part of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts that were promised them. And that's only part of what I've read in the first half of the book. Johnston has assembled an impressive array of evidence in this book. Unfortunately, it's fundamentally flawed.

The flaw isn't in the content or the analysis, but instead the tone that the author chose. He has a tendency to stray from objective language. While he criticizes the (rather successful) language campaign to change the neutral "estate tax" to the politically charged "death tax," he makes a similar mistake by often using phrases like "tax burden." While you may agree that taxes are a burden, it is not objective language. He also will praise certain figures, while making a few (rather mild) ad hominem jabs. "Tax burden" is a phrase often used by Republicans, but Johnston's language is biased from the other side of the aisle; that's just the only example I could remember just now.

Johnston's editor could have helped him a little with structuring his arguments as well. He will go from talking about one set of numbers that apply to those earning $50K - $500K, and in the next paragraph start talking about those making $75K - $500K. That type of slipperiness sets off flags in my mind, because it makes me think I'm being tricked. So I reread it, only to discover there is no sleight of hand at work. But the feeling of discomfort doesn't completely disappear.

Also a problem is Johnston's tendency to state that some people are paying "too much" in taxes while other people are not paying "enough." The obvious problem with that is people have widely divergent opinions on what is "too much" and what is "not enough." Johnston's baseline for "just right" appears to be the tax structure that existed until the early 1970s. But really, statements of "too much" and "not enough" should have no place in this book. It makes the book sound like it's about determining what people should pay, rather than revealing what people actually pay.

Now, you may ask why this matters. I mean, fact are facts, right? The problem is that this is a work on public policy, and implicit in that is a call for change. However, for the change to happen, it is necessary to enlist the aid of the upper middle class. The standard Democratic position on the flaws in the tax system is that the poor and the middle class are paying too much while the upper class isn't paying enough. Johnston's thesis, however, is that everyone except the very rich is paying too much. Not just the poor and the middle class, but even most of the upper class. Both parties have structured the system in such a way that the moderately rich are worse off than they realize and potentially worse off than they should be.

However, many of the upper class are Republicans, and have heard the standard Democratic party line so much that they tune it out. And so when the Republican leadership tells them the tax cuts will help them, they'll vote for them, even though they are hurting themselves. To fix the problems with the tax system, it is essential to break through to those moderately rich Republicans and get them to understand that they are subsidizing the very rich, that things don't actually work the way they have been told. The flaw in the book is that, while it is a well-researched, analytical text, it looks and sounds like a screed. By his use of language, Johnston makes it seem like it is a screed against the upper class. Johnston gives those people far too many reasons to stop reading, because he unnecessarily attacks many things they identify with. And that's a bad thing, because for any meaningful change to happen, they need to be on board.

Johnston has written a revealing book. It contains a lot of data supporting how the tax system has shifted over the years. This is not a book about rich vs. poor. It is not a book about the flaws or merits of capitalism. IT is not a book about spending priorities of the federal government. It is about taxes. It is about how some people make a lot of money and pay little in taxes, while others make little, and pay a lot. You may agree with his conclusions. You may disagree with them. The tone of the book may make you want to put it down immediately, and I understand. But the book is worth reading, to get a clearer picture of the reality behind the rhetoric. The system is broken. Not just for the bottom 50%, or the bottom 75%, but for the bottom 99%. Johnston is angry. Rightfully so, I think. But nothing will get accomplished as long as most Republicans think he is attacking them.

¶ 671 Posted at 12.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | books )

There's a new book out called "The Paradox of Choice," written by social scientist Barry Schwartz out of Swarthmore College. The thesis of the book seems to be that a profusion of choices, rather than empowering us, in fact confuse and depress us. Just going by the New Yorker review, it sounds really interesting. There is no clear connection, but for some reason it feels akin to The Tipping Point. It's going on my wishlist for sure.

¶ 701 Posted at 09.18 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: The Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel
Verdict: Read it

I need to keep better track of the books I read. Recently I did a little SF jag, with "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge, "The Stone Canal" by Ken MacLeod, and "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross. Having a large public library system where you can request books online is really handy. I don't have to buy books anymore. I never had to before, but it's so much less work now.

¶ 737 Posted at 09.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: The Black Echo
Author: Michael Connelly
Genre: Mystery Verdict: Eh. It was ok. The main flaw was the amateurish writing, which I found rather strange because the author's day job is as a reporter and he claimed to have been nominated for a Pulitzer. The story was fine and the characters were ok, but the prose was clunky and awkward. I expected better since the New York Times wrote a fawining article about him last week, which is why I picked the book up in the first place. Oh well. It was his first novel, I believe, so maybe he managed to pick up the quality with more practice. I'll give another one a shot; I need something to read when allergies wake me up at 5am.

¶ 738 Posted at 11.22 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: High St@kes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
Author: Charles Ferguson
Verdict: Yuck. Well, ok, I didn't get very far. My time is precious and so I don't waste it on books I can't stand. I got maybe 40 pages in. The short summary of the book is that it is a story of Ferguson starting and then selling his software company to Microsoft, giving them the product that became FrontPage. Seems at least a little interesting, but I just could not get past his writing style. He was insufferably smug while trying to seem humble. He dropped names at every opportunity. He made bold but vague pronouncements in the manner of a not-quite-smart-enough 12-year old. His sentences weren't so much written as they were assembled. The non-narrative sections where he waxed prophetic about the future of the Internet were alternately annoying and laughable, clear (and weak) attempts to be a visionary. That the book was published in 1999 may give you some idea of how accurate they were. And then there was the horrid l33tification of the title; I cannot imagine the meeting that came up with th@t. I can't deliver a verdict because I didn't read it. I couldn't stand it. Take that for what it's worth. I'm moving on to greener pastures (well, actually, I'm about 60 pages from the end of a greener pasture).

¶ 748 Posted at 11.22 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: The Con-fusion, aka Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, aka The Empire Strikes Back (ok, I made that up)
Author: Neal Stephenson
Verdict: The sort of thing for those who like that sort of thing. If you liked "Cryptonomicon" and "Quicksilver," you'll want to read it.

If you liked "Quicksilver," you'll like "The Con-fusion" more. If you were ambivalent about "Quicksilver," as I was, you may still like "The Con-fusion." Indeed, "The Con-fusion" made me like Q more, oddly enough. To recap, the Baroque Cycle is Neal Stephenson's latest monster, weighing in at about 1700 pages so far, with probably another 700-900 to go. It's part steam-punk, part "Gulliver's Travels," part romantic novel (in the classical sense), and part Forest Gump. We return to the same main cast of characters as in Q, Eliza, Jack and Bob Shaftoe, and Daniel Waterhouse. We also revisit and add to the rather large supporting cast of characters from Q. The geographic scope of the book is also greatly expanded; in Q, the focus stayed mainly in northern and central Europe, with a brief spell in Massachusetts. TC, on the other hand, visits Spain, the Ottoman Empire, India, Japan, Mexico, and a half dozen other places. Q covered a roughly 6 year period in the 1680s; TC picks up roughly where Q left off and brings us to the beginning of the 18th century.

Plot-wise, there isn't much obviously connecting the two books. The closing of Q sets up much of the story of TC, but there is no clear plot in either book. That isn't to say they are plotless, just that the plot seems to meander on a random walk. I expect that the third book will wrap it up into a neat package. Actually, "random walk" is also unfair, as the progression from point to point is, if not logical, certainly consequential. Stephenson weaves disparate threads into a mostly-cohesive story. The book is actually presented as two parallel, separate "books," "Juncto" and "Bonanza," with sections from the two interwoven chronologically. Again, the fictional characters mix with real characters and move through a slightly fictionalized 17th century. I am curious to research how accurate Stephenson's portrayal of history is, but I cannot investigate until after reading the third book lest I stumble upon "spoilers." Anyway, the point is that Stephenson has written an interesting, absorbing story that combines many historical elements with some fantastical ones. He even sets you up for some pretty solid punches to the gut; the 800-odd pages are filled with complicated twists and turns, but not so complicated as to be unbelievable or to confuse.

One of the key connectors with previous works by Stephenson is his focus on the science. This being the 17th century, that means a rather different thing than in "The Diamond Age" or in "Snow Crash." It isn't just a question of technological development, but also of social, political, and economic change. Stephenson is clearly fascinated with this time period, and it's easy to understand why. It was the Age of Enlightenment, when the superstitions of the medieval age were giving way to the coming industrial age. Natural philosophy and alchemy were developing into something we could legitimately call "science." At the same time, the political structures were becoming more complex than the feudal monarchies of the past, and global trading networks were being constructed as colonialism took hold. The world was becoming smaller and larger at the same time. The combined impact of these technological, political, and economic forces was unpredictable, but it was clear it would be world-changing. Seen through Stephenson's eyes, I can understand his fascination with the period; while all periods of history have their change and upheaval, in few periods were as many different, diverse, and significant trends at work, combining and recombining in complex ways.

Believability may be one of the larger hurdles a reader would have to leap. Stephenson's characters are, as I previously stated, sort of like Enlightenment-era Forest Gumps; they are involved at least peripherally in nearly every historically significant event of that period. He never makes it hard to suspend your disbelief, but if you step back from the story, it's a little shaky. This is mostly alleviated by the writing style that he uses; in many ways, his prose in these books is the most mature I have seen him write. Certain affectations caused me some annoyance in Q, but I have apparently callused my brain in just the right places. Those affectations were the most clumsy of his efforts, but they are part of a broader, more subtle effort to foster a certain point of view and attitude. Shocking, brutal things happen through the course of the book, but he keeps them at a distance through the perspective his writing creates. Think of the style of magical realism, or the language of "Gulliver's Travels," "Candide," and Gabriela Garcia Marquez, and you'll understand a little of what I mean. Stephenson is even more windily discursive in TC and Q than he was in previous works like "Cryptonomicon," but for me, at least, it works. I fully recognize that it won't work for everyone, but it's the sort of thing for those who like that sort of thing.

Hrmph. Writing a book review is hard. Oh well. Practice makes, well, practice can't make you worse, right?

¶ 752 Posted at 11.46 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

In the last couple of months, I have also read "Permutation City" by Greg Egan and "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Neither of those was noteworthy enough to say more about them, either positively or negatively. I'm sure I'm forgetting some also. I wish I could look at my book-borrowing history from the Austin Public Library, but they erase patron borrowing records once the books are returned so that they cannot be subpoenaed under the PATRIOT Act. I prefer it that way.

¶ 756 Posted at 11.58 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Distraction
Author: Bruce Sterling
Verdict: OK. It had some interesting ideas and was well-constructed, but it didn't grab me.

¶ 761 Posted at 10.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Neverwhere
Author: Neil Gaiman
Verdict: Decent. It's a slim little book, weighing at only 248 pages. If you liked "American Gods," you may find this to your liking as well. It's got some of the same themes; a protagonist who is disconnected from the world, a mystical realm below and around the prosaic world we see, ambiguous alliances, etc. If you haven't read Neil Gaiman, this is a good place to start; it's not nearly as long as "American Gods" but gives enough flavor for you to know if you want more.

¶ 762 Posted at 09.13 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Perdido Street Station
Author: China Miéville
Verdict: Read it if you like weird science fiction-y stories. It's a crazy book. The guy has some kind of imagination. Take a Dickensian Industrial-era, a fantastic (in the traditional sense) and brutal world, a pinch of horror, put them all together, and this is what you get. Definitely not for everyone, but if that little description sounds like your thing, you'll enjoy it.

¶ 772 Posted at 11.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Manifold: Time
Author: Stephen Baxter
Verdict: And it's good. If you're a fan of "hard" science fiction, you should read this book. Its scope is big, as in "heat death of the universe" big. Sure, the characters are a little thin and the writing could be better, but the plot, well, that's something. At times it's dizzying, vertigo-inducing in its scale. I've already acquired and started the sequel.

¶ 779 Posted at 04.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Manifold: Space
Author: Stephen Baxter
Verdict: If you read "Manifold: Time," you have to read "Manifold: Space," the sequel. If it didn't sound like your thing, this isn't either.

¶ 782 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Manifold:Origin
Author: Stephen Baxter
Verdict: If you read the last two... I was disappointed, though. It kind of petered out. Oh well. I think I'm about book-ed out for a while.

¶ 802 Posted at 05.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I read a bunch of books recently. I'm not going to give them a full treatment:

Author: Roger Zelazny
Title: The Amber Chronicles
Verdict: Middle-weight fantasy series. It diverted without demanding much.

Author: Michael Connelly
Title: The Black Ice
Verdict: A decent mystery, the sequel to "The Black Echo."

Author: Anonymous
Title: Imperial Hubris: How the West is Losing the War on Terror
Verdict: A pretty good analysis of the threat from Al Qaeda. The author is an anonymous, senior CIA official. He goes into deep analysis of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, and the describes the context of the Islamic world that they operate in. He also criticizes US tactics in responding to September 11th and explains how to do it better. This is by no means some "liberal attack on our President," but a well-argued, reasoned analysis of the "war on terror" from a knowledgeable and frustrated intelligence veteran.

Author: Michael Connelly
Title: The Concrete Blonde
Verdict: The sequel to "The Black Ice," another decent modern day mystery.

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Revelation Space
Verdict: A really solid, excellent piece of hard science fiction.

¶ 874 Posted at 11.25 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Title: The Years of Rice and Salt

Pretend the Black Death of the 1300s killed 99% of the population of Europe. Now tie that to metaphysical meanderings on reincarnation and the purpose of life and you get "The Years of Rice and Salt." The book is an alternate history, but rather than a series of unrelated vignettes, it is seen through the eyes of a group of reincarnating souls that move through time together. Robinson mixes into this a progressive view of history; his view is that the discovery of agriculture turned a mostly egalitarian hunter/gatherer society into a violently unequal civilization of kings, priests, and peasants, and that progress since then can be defined as the attempt to maintain the organized civilization while erasing the inequality. It's not as dry and preachy as I make it sound, or maybe I just think that because I approximately agree. Regardless, it's an interesting book worth reading, though not necessarily worth a spot near the top of the stack.

¶ 884 Posted at 05.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Pandora's Star
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Verdict: Excellent
I've read a lot of really good science fiction lately, and "Pandora's Star" is no exception. A few hundred years from now, an astronomer on a distant planet witnesses two stars becoming suddenly and completely enveloped by an impenetrable barrier. Events ensue. I am loath to tell much about what happens, not because there are any great surprises, but because I like things to be as fresh and new as possible. Suffice it to say that, while Hamilton gets a little hand-wavey with the physics and has an odd fetish for naming pieces of industrial equipment, this is a very well-written book, with a large and diverse cast, a richly imagined universe, and an engrossing, well-paced plot. If you like modern science fiction, you should definitely pick this one up.

¶ 910 Posted at 10.16 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I blew through a couple more of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mysteries this weekend, "Trunk Music" and "Angels' Flight." At this point, there's not much to say; if you've read the first 4 books in the series, you know what to expect.

¶ 921 Posted at 08.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Last week, I blew through three more Harry Bosch books, "A Darkness More Than Night," "Lost Light," and "City of Bones." That is all.

¶ 927 Posted at 10.19 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I started the final tome in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" this weekend. I came across this particularly delightful 1 part last night:

Then he got a look on his face as if he were thinking. Daniel had learned, in his almost seventy years, no to expect much of people who got such looks, because thinking really was something one ought to do all the time.

I've always thought it strange and disturbing how many smart people seem to apply their intellect only to study and work and turn it off for the remaining parts of their lives, but I never expressed it so well.

¶ 936 Posted at 11.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books | quotes )

In the last month or so, I've read two more Harry Bosch books (City of Bones and Lost Light) second and third books in Ken MacLeod's "Engines of Light trilogy (Dark Light and Engine City) the third book in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (The System of the World) and Iron Sunrise, the sequel to Charles Stross's Singularity Sky. As usual, I'm not going to describe the books much; the Amazon links have better descriptions than any I could come up with. Reviewing is hard work; giving opinions is easy.

The Bosch books are decent mysteries, a step or two above "airplane books." Those have become my light reading, books that I find engaging and diverting enough that I can sprinkle them in my queue to mix things up a bit. I'm on the last one, though, so I'll have to find something else.

"Engines of Light" is a science fiction trilogy that started with Cosmonaut Keep. Those books were only so-so; I felt like there was something missing from the narrative. There was a lack of scope and scale appropriate to the universe described, and the ending was a complete nothing. There's better science fiction out there to read.

"The System of the World" was a fine conclusion to a satisfying trilogy. Neal Stephenson is a very smart, very knowledgeable man, but not in an in-your-face Dave Eggers sort of way. It's impossible to pick a single genre, or even a couple. It's part science fiction (of the steampunk variety), part romance, part political thriller, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise, part historical fiction, part comedy... there's a lot going on, but it all blends together in the end. The books are an acquired taste, though, and they are definitely not for everyone.

Finally, "Iron Sunrise" was an excellent hard science fiction book following up on another excellent hard science fiction book. Charles Stross is clearly a talented writer with a lot of good ideas. Plus the font used on the book's covers is neat. I'm going to have to catch up on his other stuff.

¶ 961 Posted at 11.38 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Jennifer Government
Author: Max Barry
Verdict: Great. It's not science fiction, but it is speculative. There's no fancy futuristic gadgetry, but the world is different. The conservatives have won. The US government is a shadow of its former power and much of the world is run by big corporations. Then stuff happens. It's a cool book. I burned through it in a hurry. It's really sharp and surprisingly funny. It's a top quality read. Go get it.

¶ 984 Posted at 09.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I didn't stop reading over the last month. I made my way through the massive "Otherland" series by Tad Williams. Thems is long books. Took me a while. It was pretty good. Imagine a vast virtual reality network of unsurpassed realism that is somehow connected to mysterious comas striking children around the world. Now write 4 books about it, books that actually have a plausible plot, believable characters, and other hallmarks of quality, and there you go.

¶ 1016 Posted at 10.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

In the not-so-distant past, I have also read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" by Mark Haddon and "Innumeracy" by John Paulos. They were worth reading. I am too tired to say more about them.

¶ 1025 Posted at 10.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

A couple of weeks back, I read through John C. Wright's trilogy of "The Golden Transcendence." As is obvious from the title, this is a series of SF books. They were engrossing in spite of several annoying affectations. They veered into self-parody from time to time, but were overall good. It was definitely a book full of ideas. Um. So there you go.

¶ 1046 Posted at 01.12 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I have recently read China Mieville's "The Scar" and Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found." "The Scar" is a sorta sequel to "Perdido Street Station," and similarly weird and fantastic. "Maximum City" is a book about the seamy underbelly of Bombay. Here's a good review.

¶ 1078 Posted at 02.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I read "Mathematics and Sex" by Clio Cresswell because it sounded interesting. Some of the subjects discussed were why there are two sexes, how many members of a population to "sample" before choosing a mate, and the difficulties of match-making. It's interesting stuff. The problem is it's delivered in a chatty, vapid style that makes it a real pain in the ass to read, full of stupid, unfunny jokes and "witticisms." I know why it's like that, of course. The book checks in at a slim 192 pages. Without all the crappy filler, it would probably be about 60 pages, and you can't get $15.95 (SRP) for that. It's annoying enough that it makes it a waste of time, though, which is unfortunate. It makes me glad I don't pay for books anymore.

¶ 1085 Posted at 01.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I just took another trip into China Miéville's twisted imagination in "Iron Council." Short summary: it's a step below "The Scar," which was itself a half step below "Perdido St. Station," but still a good book. I don't know where I found the time to read it (lots of late night reading). So, um, there you are. Man. I'm a sucky reviewer.

¶ 1110 Posted at 11.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Peter the Great
Author: Robert K. Massie
Verdict: Excellent

This weekend, I finished slogging through Massie's excellent biography of Tsar Peter the Great of Russia. The slog had nothing to do with quality and everything to do with density 1 . In any era, Peter would have been an extraordinary figure, but in the 17th century, and in 17th century Russia, he was a prodigy. He was intensely curious, filled with amazing energy, and a tremendous determination to turn his country from a backward backwater into a modern, European Power. At the same time, he was still a Russian tsar, and could be shockingly brutal. His informal and limited education blunted the force of many of his initiatives, as many of them were poorly thought out, and his fickleness made it difficult for many of his subordinates to act independently. He had a bizarre fascination with the sea, considering he grew up in a land-locked nation, and many distinctly un-Tsarish habits that distinguished him from his predecessors. Nevertheless, this one man single-handedly hauled Russia from the 13th century into the 17th century 2 . Peter the Great is one of the few that can be legitimately be said to have changed history, rather than riding forces bigger than any single person. His reign came during (and arguably contributed to) a dynamic and fascinating period in world history, during the time of such famous figures as Louis XIV, Newton, Leibniz, the Duke of Marlborough, William III of England, King Charles XII of Sweden 3 and many more 4 . With regard to the book itself, Massie's biography is a rich and engaging portrait of this magnetic figure, though at times Massie struggles with the balance between excessive detachment and overflowing man-love for his subject . If you have any interest in history, I highly recommend you read this one.

¶ 1123 Posted at 04.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Over the long weekend, I read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling, "Secrets from an Inventor's Notebook" by Maurice Kanbar, and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," also by J.K. Rowling. Back in July or so, I also read "The Know-It-All" by A.J. Jacobs and reread "The Practice of Programming" by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike. I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to. That's not because I lacked the time, but just because. I'm going to try to fix that, because I like the bookses.

¶ 1184 Posted at 10.07 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

In the last week, I gobbled up "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and ".... and the Goblet of Fire." They're getting better, but J.K. Rowling is hamstrung by clumsy choices she made earlier, and by the need to throw in lots of cutesy silliness for the younger audience. At least, I assume she's hamstrung by it, and that the books would be better if she didn't have those constraints. Regardless, it's decent, easy reading to get me back in the habit again, which is good no matter what the books are like. I think I'm going to stick to pulpier stuff for a little while before trying to tackle some of the more serious books on my 328 book Amazon wishlist (only a few of which I actually want to own). Alas, I cannot read as quickly as I find interesting books to read.

¶ 1189 Posted at 05.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I zipped through "Knife of Dreams," book eleven of "The Wheel of Time." There's not a whole lot good to say beyond that it was more interesting than the previous few. I'm just reading them to get to the end, at this point. The series started well, but around book 7, the train started going off the rails. He pulled in more and more characters, spinning out more and more plot threads. It became a real pain to remember what was going on, especially when years passed between volumes. Time slowed down to almost the pace of a daytime soap opera, with pages and pages and pages of nothing. He's said that the next book will be the last, which says to me that even he has gotten sick of it and is going to wrap it up as quickly as possible. Books 7-10 could have been compressed into 2 books, leaving room for the 3 books from now on that I feel he needs to finish the story well, while still stopping at a dozen.

Now, Robert Jordan has been really good at several critical elements of a fantasy epic. He has a rich backstory and a well-fleshed out pantheon of heroes and villains. He's also introduced several clever innovations. The magic in the Wheel of Time is pretty well-described on a mechanical level, to the point that referring to it as "magic" doesn't feel right. He's also come up with a novel and effective way to justify the improbably convenient (or inconvenient) things that happen to main characters, folding that into an mechanism for prophecies and reincarnation of archetypal heroes. He has an active and creative imagination for nations and peoples and cultures. Regressing to mediocrity even with those advantages makes it especially frustrating that he so thoroughly dropped the ball when it came to good old-fashioned story-telling.

Sometimes it's worse when someone misses by inches instead of miles. Maybe someday, someone can work with the raw materials Jordan conceived and rewrite "The Wheel of Time" "the way it should have been." US Copyright laws won't allow that to happen without his blessing, however, which seems unlikely. It's unfortunate because it started off so well. Oh well. There's lots of good stuff to read. I'd like to see someone break the unwritten rules of epic fantasy. Robert Jordan innovated in several ways, but he still worked within the same constraints. Contrast him with China Miéville. The incomplete list of rules that I have compiled thus far is:

• The setting is Europe-ish, more specifically, like England. That means the action takes place north of the equator in a temperate region. The people are white, and the names generally Anglo-Saxon (-ish). I realize this is at least partly due to trying to appeal to the audience, but it's still lame.
• Also pertaining to setting, the time period is generally medieval. We're talking castles, knights, and longbows. In a lot of ways, that makes sense. The world was still relatively unknown, with natural and artificial barriers to the spread of knowledge permitting a great deal of mystery. Furthermore, one can argue that the medieval era ended with the introduction of three technologies: gunpowder, the printing press, and the steam engine. The first and last make it harder to sustain the romantic, individualist heroism common to epic fantasy, while the printing press works to banish mystery by making knowledge much more freely accessed and disseminated.
• Supernatural abilities are restricted to a small subset of the population.
• Our heroes are pretty darned good at a surprising number of things, though they all have a gentle dusting of warts.
• Good people are always good. Bad people are always bad.
• Good families always spawn good people. Bad families always spawn bad people.
• Gay people don't exist.
• Humanity is the dominant race.

That's my list so far. I'm sure there are more.

¶ 1191 Posted at 02.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I read Chris Moriarty's "Spin State" last month. It's a generic, hard(ish) science fiction book. I found it unremarkable. Don't bother. There are better books out there.

¶ 1197 Posted at 05.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

For the last 6 weeks, I had been battling my through David Gilmour's "Curzon: Imperial Statesman". I've finally finished, and I'm ready to switch to a fluff diet again. George Curzon was the epitome of late Victorian English nobility. He was born to a member of the House of Lords. He believed strongly in the imperial mission of the British Empire. He served for seven years as Viceroy in India. A staunch Conservative, he opposed women's suffrage. He seemed destined to enter the highest ranks of British statesmen as Prime Minister, but due to a temperament that often exasperated his peers, fell just short of his goal. In Winston Churchill's words:

The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze; and the evening lead. But all were polished till it shone after its fashion.

As a biography, Gilmour's book is a compelling portrait both of the man and his times in the late Victorian British Empire and the first quarter of the 20th century. He covers in great detail Curzon's upbringing and career, the latter being inextricable from his social life. In his early adulthood, Curzon was a prolific traveller throughout an Asia in the grip of European colonization. I found the parts about India especially interesting, although there were times when I was SO VERY ANGRY THESE WORDS FILL ME WITH RAGE due to the inherent injustice of British colonization, though Curzon himself was one of the more benign British rulers, trying to curb the abusive and unfair treatment by British occupiers of native Indians and working to restore historical buildings such as the Taj Mahal. The parts of the book covering British government during and after World War I are also informative, painting a picture of a nation beginning to realize that empire might not be all they had thought.

Where the biography falls down is in how the author constantly praises Curzon's administrative and rhetorical abilities. We get a taste of the latter, and we certainly are well-informed where it comes to the numerous gaffes and mistakes caused by his obvliousness or indifference to his colleagues personal feelings, but the author gives us little raw material to judge for ourselves his strengths as a ruler. This is especially important because Curzon's Viceroyalty ended controversially with him falling on his sword (so to speak) over an apparently minor issue of administrative policy. That particular scandal is covered in great detail, but due to the insufficient of policy details meant we knew his was the right position due to hindsight and the author's insistence, not by having developed any confidence in his abilities ourselves. That is a key omission, as Curzon's career was built on the twin foundations of rhetorical and administrative excellence, which were sufficient to overcome those aspects of his personality which were somewhat less excellent.

Overall, however, Gilmour does an excellent job of depicting an important and misunderstood historical figure, one whose all-too-human failings and poor luck have kept him in relative obscurity, with what little is generally thought of him being either wrong or unfair. If you're a fan of historical biography, this book certainly worth a look. I learned a great deal that I hadn't previously known, presented in clear (though dense) prose. It's motivated me to learn more about this interesting era, in spite of the SO FURIOUS I AM parts about imperial Britain.

¶ 1203 Posted at 05.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

This weekend, I caught up to the present by finishing "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth book in the series, after zipping through book five, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" the previous week. There's no a whole lot to say about them at this point. They're Harry Potter books. If you've gotten far enough in the series to contemplate reading those, you'll find them satisfying. These books are way easier to get through than historical biographies, I tell you what.

¶ 1206 Posted at 12.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: George R. R. Martin
Title: A Feast for Crows
Hey, look, another fantasy fiction mega-tome! I'm on it. This one's been a long time coming, there having been a five year gap between this, the fourth book in the series, and the book preceding it. So, hey, go read those and come back, right? What to expect from those is about what you'll expect from this one. That is to say, it's uncommonly good epic fantasy, but not for the faint of heart. Most other such books and series have a bit of a Disneyland feel. They're in semi-medieval ages, but they're not very medieval. People die nobly. There are Good People, and there are Bad People. Oh, sure, there are often people who switch sides because the author thinks [s]he is clever, but it's either completely random or telegraphed hundreds of pages in advance 1 . Martin does away with all that. You don't know what he's going to do. It's not because he's flat-out unpredictable, but because his characters are complex and changing in an uncertain world. With Robert Jordan, you know where he's going; you just want to see how he's going to get there. And then he'll annoy the crap out of you getting there. Not so with Martin. I just finished the fourth book in a projected seven book series, and I still don't know what's going to happen. In some ways, that's a bad thing; I almost feel as though the main action hasn't gotten started yet.

Another good thing about this series compared to some other epics is that Martin is honest. When the story is seen from a character's point of view, you know what's going on. There are none of the irritating hinting at secret plots and actions that the character knows about, but the reader is kept in the dark (and, as I see it, taunted). Martin still has too many characters, but at least he limits the number of PoVs to a more manageable number. I sort of wonder whether Robert Jordan's forking of plot threads, multiplication of characters, and half-assed attempts at intrigue in his last few books are a response to Martin's much defter storytelling. Robert Jordan has some gifts, as I've mentioned before, but Martin is as good in those departments and just plain better as a writer.

This book is a bit of an aberration, as it was originally much longer than its current 784 pages. In order to make it publishable, Martin broke it in half, not by splitting the narrative by time, but by character and plot thread. The next book will cover much of the same time period, but with the missing characters. It's a little bit unsatisfying, but it's better than having an artificial break in the story.

Then there's the medieval part. The world is a brutal place. The medieval era was even more so. Most fantasy fiction is pretty anachronistic 2 about that. Not our guy Martin. It's not graphic, but only because that is unnecessary. To some degree, actually, I think he overdoes it, but then I realize that's my own squeamishness, not any lack of historical 3 accuracy. Still, it's something a prospective reader ought to be warned about.

By this point in the ramble, I hope I've given you some idea as to whether you want to read the book. If not, I'll sum it up: this is for people who like fantasy fiction. It is not for people with sensitive stomachs. It's especially for people who are sick of mediocrity in the genre 4 , who want a more challenging and subtle story that doesn't pander to teenagers.

¶ 1212 Posted at 05.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Book: Accelerando
Author: Charles Stross
I enjoyed Charles Stross's last two books, "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise." They were the right balance of science fiction speculation and story. His latest, "Accelerando," is something less. It charts the path of humanity and a dysfunctional family from the near future, (possibly) through the technological singularity, and beyond. The problem is... well, there are several problems. In spite of being science fiction, "Accelerando" is firmly grounded in the present, the very specific present of the last several years. Writing your science fiction from the cutting edge of science, technology, and society is a sure-fire way to obsolete your story before it hits the bookshelves. Extrapolating from trends born a minute ago makes it impossible to filter out the inevitable noise from a near infinity of dead ends and mistakes as the collective mass of humanity stumbles blindly into the future. References to webloggers and slashdotting may have an immediate appeal and drive sales as members of those communities feel a flush of pride at their inclusion (possibly even praising Stross's daring vision in the process), but all they will do is render the book hopelessly dated in 10 years and incomprehensible in 20.

Stross brings some new ideas, but the story leaves something to be desired. mashups of current trends may be excitingly post-modern, but they are no substitute for actual creativity and a strong narrative. Stross adds incrementally to the growing corpus of concepts in science fiction. To the singularity, post-humanism, cybernetic implants, distributed intelligence, computronium, consciousness uploads, nanotechnology, simulated realities, personality backups, group minds, planetary engineering, whole solar system Matrioshka computers, and numerous other now-standard tropes of modern science fiction, he adds reputation markets, forking and converging consciousness, laws and contracts written in code, and some partially-imagined sketches of exotic economics concepts and the evolution of intelligence. There are a lot of other ideas, too, but many of them are not very good ideas. They're the product of throwing a lot of buzzwords and nascent concepts into a blender, not creativity, vision, and insight.

This is meant as a novel, however, and that's where the ultimate flaws lie. The Cory Doctorow quote on the front cover is especially telling:

Who knew it was possible to cram so many sizzling ideas into this many pages? Stross's brand of gonzo techno-speculation makes hallucinogens obsolete.

Once you clean the vomit from your mouth caused by such over-the-top praise from a personal friend of the author, it's also indicative of what is missing. The ideas are crammed in there. The story isn't important. The characters are only outlines. The main character through the first chunk of the book is the sort of person webloggers and Slashdotters want to be, an imagining of the alpha geek in his prime. He's not so good at relationships, but he has six great ideas before breakfast (an almost exact and cringe-inducing quote from the book), knows a lot about everything, and is wired for sound, sight, network, etc. He's not actually much of a person, though. We don't see much deeper than the surface. Then there's that darn cat, which is the source of some the more annoying parts of the story (including the ones that were left out and should have been kept). It all ends in an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion. There isn't even hope for a sequel because the manner of the ending doesn't leave much room for a graceful continuation into another full-length novel. The end is the end, and it leaves too many loose ends to feel complete. It is full of ideas, but ultimately soulless.

Final verdict: skip it.

Addendum: This book was originally published as a serial in a science fiction magazine, which may explain some of those flaws. Painting characters with a broad brush avoids having to keep track of deep characters for month after month (9 in total). It also will create a bias toward stuffing each part with brief references to novel concepts based on the present, as magazines are more transient. Only pack rats hang on to magazines long after their publication, and few of them go back to reread the published stories (I assume). Stross would have done well to work harder on the transition from magazine to book.

¶ 1214 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Title: Shadowmarch
Author: Tad Williams

I actually read Shadowmarch back in the spring (maybe even March), but I haven't said anything because there is very little to say. It's kind of a by-the-numbers, decent opener to an epic fantasy series. It's not particularly original, though, and it has the semi-Disneyfied feel of a lot of fantasy fiction, sort of like how a goth teenager is quote dark end quote. It'll do, but stacked up against the competition from George R. R. Martin or Steven Erikson (of which more shortly), its lack of ambition and depth is apparent. Those other authors have raised the bar, so to speak, but Tad Williams hasn't raised his game to match. This kind of bland story might have worked in the 1980s or 1990s, but the landscape has changed.

¶ 1326 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: Bruce Sterling
Title: Zeitgest

I picked up Zeitgeist because they didn't have Schismatrix on the shelves at the library. What a waste of time. It was just a limp nothing. Some hustler puts together a fake girl band pre-millennium and goes on an aimless journey where bizarre stuff happens. Woo. Sterling was trying too hard and got too little. Pre-millennial this, post-modern that, narrative structure blah blah blah. The story didn't go anywhere. The characters didn't go anywhere. There were no interesting ideas. It was a quarter-baked book at best on the things that mattered. I only finished it because it was a fluffy, quick read. If it wasn't such a nothing, I would have given up, but then, if it had been a something, it would have been worth reading.

¶ 1334 Posted at 11.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Title: The Namesake

After I read an excellent book, rushing into another one seems like a betrayal. I find myself now at a time I normally read, yet unwilling to pick up even a newspaper, reluctant to diminish the novel I have just finished. The Namesake is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Part of its appeal is personal, as it concerns an Indian immigrant family in the United States, primarily the son, Gogol. Mostly, though, it's just a well-written, nuanced, and affecting story.

The story of Gogol and his family is so achingly familiar at times as to almost seem like reading a biography of myself. For example, as a student, I often had to deal with substitute teachers struggling with my name on the roster, to the point that I could tell by the significant pause and look of consternation when they got to me on the list, announcing my presence prematurely rather than subject them and (more importantly) me to the awkward agony of attempting my name. I'ts not all so specific, of course. Gogol and I have a complex relationship with the land of our parents' birth. We are neither fully American nor fully Indian, so India and all things Indian seem at once familiar and alien.

Such a result is obvious with second-generation Indian-Americans, but a similar phenomenon is found in the first generation as well. They grow accustomed to the more sedate, sane way of American life. For them, India will forever live in the 1960s, as occasional visits cannot disturb the weight of memory. Their friends and family age and die, their old haunts grow unfamiliar and change in strange ways, and they realize that what they thought for so long as their home is no longer. However, their new home can never fully replace it, either, as their formative years were spent in a different place, so its ways will never seem fully natural.

Naturally, with parents and children staring at each other from opposite sides of a cultural chasm, the generation gap only magnifies the potential conflict. The parents' natural tendency is to try to raise their kids as they have been raised. There is the obvious cultural clash, but there are deeper, fundamental incompatibilities between how people lead their lives that make the old ways unsuitable. What works living with an extended family, in the same neighborhood as your birth, where nobody drives, and where few people move more than a hundred miles from home is hardly suited to most of the United States. These conflicts are common to many immigrant families, and underlay much of the progression of the story.

Not all the themes are about Indian-ness, however. Some are more universal, or at least more American. There is the slow murder of the soul in the lonely suburbs. There is the emptiness of loss that can never be filled. We see the slow corrosion in a relationship from tiny differences leading to sudden breaks, and the insensibility of attraction. The story is inextricably meshed with the experience of Indian-Americans, but is accessible to all.

I am pleased that I found such an engaging book so soon after resolving to read more literary books. I highly recommend it. I suggest reading it soon, as the Namesake will be in theaters this September, and you don't want to be one of those people who reads a book after a movie about it comes out, right?

¶ 1337 Posted at 01.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | india | me )

Author: Alastair Reynolds
Title: Chasm City

Alastair Reynolds has written another fine work of hard science fiction set in the Revelation Space universe. The narrator travels from one star system to another, chasing a man responsible for the death of his employer and his employer's wife. Upon his arrival, however, he slowly discovers that not everything is as it seems. The world he expected to find has been vastly altered by a mysterious plague, while his target eludes him, and he finds himself the target of more than one hunter. It's a complicated mystery set in an imaginatively bleak setting. It's a smaller story in scale than Revelation Space, with only hints at the epic scale covered in the latter work. Reynolds seems more suited to working on a grander scale, so Chasm City is slightly weaker than the other book, but is nonetheless a fine effort.

¶ 1343 Posted at 12.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Title: Effendi

Effendi is the sequel to Pashazade, continuing the story of "ZeeZee" in an Alexandria of the future of an alternate past. Some of the mystery that brought our fearless hero to Alexandria. This time, though, the stakes have grown higher. Instead of figuring out his own situation, Zee Zee discovers he has the weight of an unexpected friend and Alexandria itself on him.

Effendi carries over many of the virtues of Pashazade. It has the same distinct mood and atmosphere. It's a lesser book, though, partly because it doesn't quite cross the gap in shifting its subject from ZeeZee to Alexandria. The structure is a little annoying, with flashbacks and flashforwards coming with great frequency. Grimwood also leaves a little too unsaid. I might have read the book too fast, or maybe I'm dense, but I felt that the plot could have used a little more exposition to clue me in to what the heck was going on. I had it mostly figured it out by the end, but it would have been nice to feel less clueless in the middle of it. Still, it's a decent sequel, and I look forward to getting my grubby paws on Felaheen, the final book in the trilogy.

¶ 1347 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Author: E.M. Forster
Title: A Passage to India

A Passage to India is considered one of the classic works of literature about India. I say it's overrated. I admit, I found the early 20th century writing style to be a bit tiresome, which is a rather subjective judgment. There was more to my dislike than that. You can tell Forster tried hard not to be the white man looking down, but he could not escape the colonial condescension for "the native." The characters, while not cardboard cutouts, were also not the richly drawn portraits of, say, The Namesake. Without elegant writing, an interesting perspective, and well-written characters, the plot hardly matters. English departments have anointed A Passage to India the canonical novel about India, but there are far better ones out there. I'm sure I can find better studies of British India as well.

¶ 1361 Posted at 08.43 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Nick Hornby's latest novel, A Long Way Down, is a bit of a departure from his previous novels. While one would never say his stories are happy ones, they tend to be more positive than this one. Four people, all intending solitary suicide, meet on New Year's Eve at a popular spot for doing the deed. None of them follow through that night, having had the moment disrupted. In spite of having little in common, and not being particularly likeable people, they nevertheless stick together and stumble through the bizarre and awkward aftermath of almost.

Hornby's lucid and direct writing is again at work, as showcased before. He has a real talent for readable prose that tells a story and gets out of the way, sprinkled with the occasional, bitingly funny observation. The characters' dialogue is also standard Hornby fare, very chatty and colloquial. The story is told alternately from the viewpoints of each of the four main characters. Hornby does a good (but not great job) of shifting voices and perspectives to match.

The overall tone of the book is different, as I mentioned, being somewhat darker. There isn't the uplifting, life-affirming message that will no doubt pollute the inevitable movie version, but something both more and less. As always with Hornby, there's more than a hint of the autobiographical, though this time it takes a bleaker form. As an author, Hornby is certainly not stretching himself here. The Long Way Down is certainly a good book, but he'd do well to push his boundaries a bit further.

¶ 1367 Posted at 03.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I have been reading, still, but I've been blocking on writing for some reason. The first of the recent crop was Vikas Swarup's Q&A. It's a story of a poor Indian waiter who manages to win a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" style game show. Most of the story is an explanation of how he managed to win by explaining where he learned the answers to each of the questions in a series of flashbacks. I can't say it was a bad book, but it was lacking in a certain necessary something that a good reviewer would be able to articulate. It certainly didn't sugarcoat the brutality of poor India, but there was nonetheless an inappropriate dreamy naïeté about it. It was fairy-tale-ish in a vaguely "Forest Gump" sort of way that no doubt charmed some readers, but to me blunted its impact.

Under the name Iain M. Banks, he writes science fiction (including the excellent "Culture" novels). Under plain old Iain Banks, he writes more literary fiction, including the creepy and excellent The Wasp Factory. I read one of his newer books, The Business. Like Q&A, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. It's again a simple story, that of a contemporary career woman at a bit of a crossroads in an ancient, secret merchantile business dating back to the Roman Empire. In that, it has much in common with Charles Stross's The Family Trade. Banks shows off some of his wit, and generally does a good job as a writer. It's as a plotter of stories that he falters. What happens over the course of the book just isn't very interesting.

That is not a comment that one could reasonably make about Felaheen, Jon Courtenay Grimwood's conclusion to his "Arabesk" trilogy, following Pashazade and Effendi. Again, we rejoin ZeeZee/Ashraf in an alternate future North Africa. For the first time, the story leaves Alexandria. Where the other two stories followed Ashraf uncovering the histories of others, in this final volume he discovers where he himself came from, mysteries that were hinted at but not elaborated on in the earlier books. Again, the story is interesting, the world fascinating, and the writing as excellent as before. Now that I've finished the trilogy, I can give it a strong endorsement.

Fans of Neil Gaiman's American Gods will find themselves at home with his more recent Anansi Boys. Fat Charlie's always had things a little rough in his life, with an unpleasant job, a future mother-in-law-from-hell, and a painfully embarassing father. Things get worse when he meets the brother he never knew he had and learns his father was actually an incarnation of the African god Anansi. It's a good enough story, entertaining in many ways. It's not great, though, for reasons that I am again unable to articulate well. It's too breezy, in a lot of ways, which was probably intentional, but in my mind makes it less than the weightier American Gods.

The final book on my recent reading list is Judas Unchained, Peter F. Hamilton's sequel to his Pandora Star. Ignore the goofy titles and the silly cover art: these two books are great science fiction. Sure, Hamilton cheats by adding faster-than-light travel and force fields and other elements "hard SF" writers shun, but it doesn't matter. He manages to stitch together the disparate stories of many players in mankind's discovery of and war against a strange and alien enemy. In lesser hands (*cough* Robert Jordan *cough*), so many viewpoints would be confusing and annoying, but Hamilton is equal to it. His world is imaginative and interesting; he's clearly put a lot of thought into what things would be like in such a setting. That's not to say the books are without flaws, of which I'll mention a few. First, he has a bit of the horny teenaged boy in him. It's not overwhelming, but it's a little much. Another is his use of phrases like "he instructed his e-butler 1 to tell the car's drive array to take him home," instead of simply saying "he told the car to take him home." Once you've established that the character has such a software agent and cars drive themselves, skip the techno-babble. It would be like saying "he used his feet to walk up the stairs," or "he extended his arm, opened his hand, grasped the glass, and retraced his arm to bring the water to his mouth, where he ingested the liquid." Finally, I found the climax to be, well, anti-climactic. The story fizzled out a little towards the end. These flaws are minor, however. The books are excellent, though, and quite a deal, as Hamilton splits 1600+ pages of story over just 2 volumes where he could have easily turned out 5. I highly recommend reading them.

¶ 1374 Posted at 01.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I still read. I just find it hard to write about reading. I read "Midnight Tides," the fifth book in Steven Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series. It shifts time and place, centering on the back story of a minor character introduced in the previous ones. It's as good as the predecessors, so there you go.

I also read Steven Dubner and Stephen Levitt's "Freakonomics." In a word, I was underwhelmed. It contained a bunch of useful information about how Levitt and others have applied analytic techniques from economics to broader social phenomena. It focused too much on telling the stories of the various discoveries, which I felt was unnecessary filler. It also seemed to lack a coherent theme. They readily admit that, but the admission does not excuse it. It was an interesting read, but I think it was unworthy of the hype.

I followed "Freakonomics" up with the novel "The Devil You Know," a thriller set in the wilderness of Minnesota. I haven't read or seen "Deliverance," but I gather there's a degree of similarity. It's a good book, with one awful, horrible, terrible flaw: the author loooooves run-on sentences. Not just any run-on sentences, but sentences that wax philosophical, often starting with a character observing something, then getting reminded of a memory, a time and place from long ago, before everything changed, but now, here, everything is different, and he has to look forward to a time this sentence ends, and it's got this weird rhythm to it that makes the cadence all sing-song-y, and you can tell the author is trying way too hard to seem profound and lyrical, but really, the guy just isn't a good enough writer to get away with it, and it would be bad enough if he just did it a few times, but there's practically one of them on every page, and you know he labored over each one, choosing each word with careful precision, and that a ton of shallow people will eat it up and gush about how deep and wonderful it is, and it's just like, enough already I want a period.

Next up was "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis. This book clearly has a lot of strengths because it managed to make baseball interesting. A book that can do that is surely a rare find. "Moneyball" goes squarely into the Malcolm Gladwell genre of describing the application of rigorous analysis to everyday phenomena and figuring out how to do it better. This time it's the Oakland Athletics figuring out how to compete in Major League Baseball with a fifth of the money of the richest teams. It turns out the conventional wisdom of what makes a good ball player might not be that wise. It was neat. I liked it a lot.

I moved on to David Sedaris's latest short story/essay collection, "Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim." If you've read "Naked," "Barrel Fever," or "Me Talk Pretty One Day," you'll have an idea of what to expect. Your idea will be a little wrong, though. The autobiographical stories Sedaris chose for this one are bleaker and darker than his material from before. There's a lot less of the lightness and humor that was, if not pervasive, at least present, in previous collections. They're still good stories, though.

After that came Audrey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveller's Wife." Henry has a problem: from time to time, he travels through time. He has little direct control of when it happens and when and where he goes. He meets himself at multiple times, as well as his future and past wife, and gets into as much trouble as you might expect would befall a naked man appearing out of thin air. That description doesn't do it justice, though. Beautiful, romantic, and poignant are all better words, and they're words I don't use lightly. This is a book that will grab you. Ignore that it was a Today show choice and a People magazine something or other; this is a great book.

I hopped out of literature and went over to some cheap fantasy with Raymond Feist's "Talon of the Silver Hawk." Wow. There's a lot of mediocre fantasy out there. This almost felt like a young adult book, with its clumsy prose, crudely unrealistic characters, and heavy sprinkling of anachronism. I wonder if the other books I read by him were similarly mediocre, and I simply didn't notice because I was a lot younger. Feist is not without talent, but he has numerous weaknesses as well. They're easy reads, though, so I know I'll finish out the series (of series?), but there are many better fantasy books out there to read. Only read this series if you've run out of the better ones.

Finally, this morning I finished Iain M. Banks science fiction novella "The State of the Art," concerning a visit from his Culture to a late-70s Earth. I thought it was boring. It's not a match to any of the main Culture novels such as "Player of Games" or "Use of Weapons," which probably explains why it's a limited-release novella. If you're a huge Culture fan, you've probably already read it, but if not, you can easily skip it and lose nothing.

¶ 1397 Posted at 12.33 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I guess I ought to make at least one post this month. I read a bunch of books recently. "King of Foxes," "Exile's Return," and "Flight of the Nighthawks" continued Raymond Feist's bland fantasy series. Orson Scott Card wrote one classic 20 years ago with "Ender's Game," and tries to milk that success with "Shadow of the Giant." Sadly, this book, like the others in the so-called Shadow Quartet, isn't very good. The writing is pedestrian and dull, the characters cardboard cutouts, and Card displays the geopolitical acumen of a 9-year old Risk fanatic, or possibly a neoconservative.

With "The Mission Song," John LeCarré continues the examination of Africa he began in "The Constant Gardener." It's a fine effort; think of it as "Zaire-iana." James Clemens hits a lot of the fantasy epic clichés in "Shadowfall," but writes well and introduces some neat variations.

Cintra Wilson's "A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations" is quite possibly the angriest torrent of vitriol I have ever read. The title explains it all. It's good, but not great. Then I read M. John Harrison's "Light," a kind of bizarre science fiction story that I'm pretty sure I didn't entirely get, but was pretty good in spite of that. Finally, there was "Let's Put the Future Behind Us," Jack Womack's dark comedy about the crazy criminality of Yeltsin's post-Soviet Russia. I liked it, though I thought the ending was a little improbable.

¶ 1398 Posted at 11.50 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I've been reading steadily lately. It's nice. Maureen McHugh's "Nekropolis" is sort of a science fiction book, but there are really only a couple of science fiction-y elements (though they are key). A young woman bound into the service of a family in Islamist Morocco falls in love with a pseudo-human slave and attempts to escape their captivity. It's not really a book where a whole lot happens; it's much more about presenting personal perspectives in a particular setting. It's good at that, but I prefer books where more happens; maybe that's an immature preference, but I'm ok with it.

Kazuo Ishiguro gives us "Never Let Me Go," which is another book in which little happens. Three children grow up in a boarding school in the English countryside, their only purpose in life being to supply organs to non-cloned humans. Ishiguro is a fine writer, and really conveys mood and character, but the story is weak, the behavior of the characters is inexplicable and frustrating, and he leaves our far too much back story. I don't know if it makes it better or worse that those flaws are certainly intended, and not considered flaws at all by the author, who seems more invested in the medium than the message. He's quite good at that, but it doesn't make for satisfying reading.

I reread "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt, which I first read 6 years ago. I don't know if I was so impressed with it the second time around. I dunno.

After enjoying the "V For Vendetta" movie (which rehabilitated my opinion of the Wachowski brothers after the disastrous "Matrix" sequels), I grabbed the graphic novel on which it was based, which tells the story of an anarchist's rebellion against a totalitarian Britain of the future. Perhaps I am not in tune with graphic novels, or having seen the movie ruined any impression I could have of it, but I was underwhelmed. There were a number of characters who seemed extraneous. Some things, like the computer that ran everything, were too briefly covered. Other things were painfully over-the-top (which maybe goes with the medium). Overall, it was all right, and it certainly didn't demand a lot of time.

Last up is Neal Asher's "Cowl," a bizarre and richly imagined story of time travel and a war between two factions in the 43rd century with consequences that could affect the beginnings of life on Earth. My description makes it sound a little silly, but it's not. It's very well-paced. The two protagonists are well chosen and their paths through the story give Asher substantial opportunities for expounding on his vision. There is one poorly-done arc where one of the characters goes through a personal transformation, which mars but does not destroy an otherwise fine book.

¶ 1401 Posted at 12.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I keep reading. One of the books I read was Charles Stross's "The Atrocity Archives," a surprising mix of Lovecraftian horror with a spy thriller via "Office Space." Strange though it may sound, it really works. The book is actually a combination of two stories with the same characters and setting. You can read an excerpt from the first story, The Atrocity Archive, the whole second story, The Concrete Jungle, and A Colder War, a similar story with different characters and a somewhat different backdrop.

I read another 2 story collection, this time by Alastair Reynolds, author of Revelation Space and Chasm City. "Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days" is the two-part title, each being the title of one of the stories. "Diamond Dogs" is the story of a mission of discovery concerning a bizarre and deadly artifact on a distant planet. "Turquoise Days" concerns a human colony on an isolated world shared with a semi-sentient alien life that receives some unexpected visitors. Of the two, "Diamond Dogs" is definitely the better one, as good as Reynolds's full-length novels.

Somewhere in there I fit Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell," a novel of two men seeking to return magic to an alternate England in time of the Napoleonic Wars. This book won a lot of awards, but I'm not sure why. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. It took a long time to get going. Clarke certainly was effective in establishing the setting, with an extensive fictional backdrop, skillful use of contemporary language, and excellent descriptions. Overall, I just didn't find the whole all that compelling.

I also read Neal Asher's "Skinner," another science fiction one. Based on this and his later book, Cowl, I think he needs to work on his characters. There's no connection there, no depth, they're just pawns to move through the story. That said, the story itself is interesting. Three travellers land on an Earth-like planet teeming with dangerous life forms, getting caught up in the final resolution of a conflict hundreds of years before.

Finally, I read a book that was neither science fiction nor fantasy, Tom Perrotta's "Little Children" (basis for the recent movie starring Kate Winslet), about the affair between a stay-at-home mother and a stay-at-home father. This was also a good but not great book. Some of Perrotta's writing is pitch perfect, including the bizarre and often frustrating behavior of young children, the silly pettiness of small lives, and the angst of suburbia. His writing is funny and insightful, with well-developed, flawed characters depicted honestly but without judgment. As an overall story, I think he erred in broadening his scope to include additional characters from the neighborhood, losing the focus on what I saw as the core of the story, the affair. Nevertheless, writing skill and a keen awareness of modern life make this a book worth recommending.

¶ 1424 Posted at 05.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I finished Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series last weekend. The series is named after the two main characters, Jack Aubrey, an officer in the Royal Navy, and his friend Stephen Maturin, a physician and naturalist. The 20 books that make up the series take place during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century. The movie "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" that came out a few years ago was mostly based on a few of the books (at least 3 by my count). I liked the movie well enough, and it was certainly realistic, but it was a three star movie and these are four star books.

O'Brian writes in a style that fits the era, and he has a talent for exquisite description. He knows his characters very well, and writes them as real people, not pawns for advancing the story. Much of the plot arc depends on the technical details of sailing, which might be off-putting to some, but it also emphasizes the degree to which sailors were at the mercy of the weather. It's simply amazing what sophisticated things they were able to accomplish in this pre-Industrial time, when missions ran for years thousands of miles from any friendly port, and out of communication for months at a time. Then there's the unsettlingly primitive nature of other things, which is amply illustrated by one of the characters being a physician; what passed for medicine in 1810 is scary. It's not just about sailing; a few of the books take place with practically no ships, and much of the plot often concerns the personal or political. Using the Royal Navy as a centerpiece also affords an author ample opportunity for teaching us about the world of that time, when colonialism was still strong, but the earthquakes of the American and French Revolutions were shifting the world's foundations, and there was still much to be explored and discovered. Then there are the insights into the bizarre politics of the day, that odd mixture of democracy and monarchy and corruption that created the British Empire.

To be sure, it can be a little confusing at times, as a lot of the language is nautical (Wikipedia can tell you a lot, though), and even when it isn't, it's 19th century British English. However, all of that is necessary for O'Brian to pull you into the time and place, which he does really, really well. I do wish each book devoted a dozen pages to maps and diagrams, however, and another dozen to a glossary.

There were actually more than 20 books. O'Brian died at the ripe old age of 80 when he was 3 chapters into the 21st book. A word of advice: don't start a long series of novels when you're 56 years old, because you're going to piss off a lot of people if you die before you finish (not that he expected to write 20 when he started). I get annoyed when the estates of famous writers like Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert flog their works and turn out sequels to series that were done and done when their creators were still alive. This is different. O'Brian ended in the middle of a book, and clearly the story had legs. I don't know which author could write the way O'Brian did and do justice to his vision, but I sure want more.

¶ 1430 Posted at 01.41 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I don't think I quite noticed in previous readings how much fun Neal Stephenson had writing "Snow Crash.

¶ 1456 Posted at 10.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice the growing similarity between Google Earth and the program of the same name in "Snow Crash." It's no coincidence; it's a inevitable application and a logical interface. It's still funny, though.

¶ 1458 Posted at 09.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software | books )

• "Echo Park" and "The Closers" by Michael Connelly: More Harry Bosch detective stories.
• "Glasshouse" by Charles Stross: Stross uses an artificial world to poke fun at the present day, but he needs to work on his first person perspective; it's too clunky.
• "The Colour of Magic" by Terry Pratchett: I like fantasy fiction, but the authors take themselves so seriously. Not Pratchett. Imagine "The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy," but applied to fantasy fiction.
• "Syrup" by Max(x?) Barry: A funny parody of the soft drink industry. It's more like his latest, "Company," than it is like his second book, "Jennifer Government." Maybe a little too much. If you just read this one, it's good, but if you read them all, you'll hope that he tries something a little different with his next one.
• "Stamping Butterflies" by Jon Courtenay Grimwood: It's all right, but I'm getting kind of tired of obscurely related plot parallel plotlines shift in different times and cryptic slow reveals.
• "The Jennifer Morgue" by Charles Stross: the sequel to "The Atrocity Archives," and I think Stross's sweet spot (along with "Singularity Sky"). He's clever and comic, but not over-the-top (though he gets a little too close). It probably helps that the main character is almost his alter ego (I assume).
• "Debugging" by David Agans: a 10-page pamphlet expanded to book length without adding anything of note. The inclusion of numerous mostly boring "war stories" and lots of short intended-to-be-funny-but-not-quite asides tells me Agans's publisher kept telling him to write more words.

¶ 1464 Posted at 12.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

James Hornfischer's "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" is something I would have eaten whole as a 13-year old, when I went through a phase where I read all the WWII books in our community library. It's a detailed recounting of part of the last great naval battle in the greatest naval war in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The book focuses on one of its smaller consitutuent actions, the Battle of Samar, where a Japanese force nearly destroyed the defenders of the beachhead occupied by Douglas MacArthur's invasion force.

The Imperial Japanese Navy bet everything on stopping the US invasion of the Philippines in late 1944, as its success would enable the US to cut off Japanese access to conquests in Southeast Asia, including the essential petroleum resources of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The title derives from the fact that this was the last battle in which "ships of the line" were significant1, ushering in the age of the aircraft carrier, as well as the importance of destroyers, a.k.a., "tin cans," in halting the Japanese offensive.

Admiral William Halsey allowed himself and the Third Fleet to be decoyed by the few remaining Japanese aircraft carriers, enabling another force of battleships and cruisers to slip past and attack the elements of the Seventh Fleet covering the landing. This force included the largest battleships ever built, the Musashi and Yamato. Task Force Taffy 3, the primary target, was composed of destroyers and "escort carriers," small aircraft carriers converted from merchant ships. In spite of being outgunned, in a battle that saw an aircraft carrier being sunk by gunfire and the first Kamikaze attack, the American forces managed to defeat the Japanese and force them to retreat, at great cost to themselves. Halsey's diversion was successful in destroying the remaining Japanese aircraft carriers, in spite of the great risk to the landing. The Japanese Navy was not destroyed, but it never was a threat again, and thus the book was closed on the once mighty Japanese Imperial Navy, less than three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hornfischer's history is a highly readable narration of the battles. His style is easy and light, with effective description of the broader situation as well as the finer details that convey the horror of the war. His research included many interviews with American survivors, and his thoroughness is apparent. He tends a little to the melodramatic and poetic, but I expect some readers would view that as a virtue rather than an annoyance. His only real flaw is a tendency to include names and backgrounds of individuals who end up playing no great part of the action; there are hundreds of names to keep track of, and it would have been easier to remember the key players if so many bit players hadn't been cluttering up the narrative. I would have liked to have read some accounts from the Japanese perspective, but Hornifischer primarily uses Japanese sources to corroborate or fill in gaps in American sources. His aim is not to provide the authoritative history, but instead to tell a particular story. At this, he is successful.

¶ 1479 Posted at 12.55 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I recently read "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger," by Marc Levinson. Sounds kind of boring, huh? You might be surprised. While it certainly drags in places, it's a pretty interesting story. This is a book intended for a popular audience, and it generally hits the mark. There could have been less information about various political and regulatory developments, but much of that was essential for demonstrating both the resistance and then the transformation wrought by the shipping container.

50 years ago, if you wanted to send 50 bags of coffee across the ocean, someone would walk each back one by one onto a freighter and find somewhere to stick it. The process was unbelievably inefficient. Goods would take more time to be loaded and unloaded than they actually spent on the ocean in transit. Then there were the union rules and interstate and international commerce rules, which might be enough to turn anyone into a laissez-faire capitalist. For instance, if the longshoremen received a palletized shipment for transport, they would unpack the pallet on the dock, repack the same shipment onto the same pallet, and only then load it, billing the shipper for the extra time. The Interstate Commerce Commission in the United States had books of rules about how much truckers, railroads, and cargo ships could charge for each commodity, and which routes they could take; a trucker couldn't take an alternate, shorter route from Nashville to Atlanta unless his company had the rights to that route, and he had to drive the truck back empty if they only had cargo rights in one direction. Needless to say, all of this had a crippling impact on efficiency, and thus a huge increase in costs.

The container was by no means a non-obvious invention. Various attempts had been made over a period of decades to rationalize freight, but ran into various obstacles due to (lack of) scale, political consideration, union resistance, or technological problems. Only in the late 1950s did the various factors come together with the drive and vision of one Malcom McLean, who wasn't even in the marine shipping business. Over the course of just a couple of decades, the container completely transformed the shipping business, with growth to match that of any high tech startup. The changes rippled throughout the world economy as land-based shipping and manufacturers adapted. That a computer assembly plant in Tennessee can put together Korean RAM, Taiwanese motherboards, German CPUs, and Japanese displays delivered yesterday to fulfill a $300 order today owes everything to the revolution of the shipping container. It ranks with the automobile or the telephone in its transformative effect on society, but unlike those other inventions, its impact was hidden from the public eye. Until now.

¶ 1487 Posted at 12.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I wanted to like Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan," I really did. He just didn't write a good book. The premise is great, that our world increasingly dominated by rare events of great impact, which models based on bell curves just can't cope with. His thesis is that we focus far too much on the frequent, normal case when it's just not that important. As a trader, his strategy was to put most of his portfolio in very safe investments while investing a small part of it in a basket of risky investments highly levered to unpredictable, non-linear phenomena. An interesting insight he makes is that risky investments may be less risky than the so-called safe investments because their risks are out in the open. In other words, all companies have risk, but the risks to the safe ones are just harder to see 1.

The book's core idea is well worth exploring, but Taleb spends far too much time blasting the ignorance and closed-mindedness of the establishment, and far too little time supporting his argument with hard data. To be sure, innate in the ideas of "The Black Swan" is that data can only refute a hypothesis, rather than confirming one, but he can and does use that fact to attack the standard models of randomness. He just doesn't do it with any kind of rigor. Strictly speaking, you only need one data point to disprove a model, but if you want to convince people, you should do so with a heavy dose of evidence. As such, the book gets tedious when you realize there's no there there. It's all assertion. Sometimes that's all you can do, but don't waste your readers' time with your own grudges.

¶ 1492 Posted at 01.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I've read a bunch more books. To my dismay, I think I've forgotten a couple of the books I've read in the last month or so. Bummer. I'll probably end up reading them again, except I've taken them off my "to read" wishlist, and I don't think Amazon provides an "undelete" facility. Boo hoo.

• "Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature," by Jan Lars Jensen: Step 1: write a creative semi-science fiction novel that has a tiny possibility of offending some religious fundamentalists on the other side of the world. Step 2: fall into insane paranoia about bringing about the end of the world upon publication of said novel. Step 3: struggle to regain sanity. Mental illness is not exciting or romantic, it's just very sad and disturbing, and Jensen tells us exactly why that is in this autobiographical account of his life after he finished Vishnu 3000.
• "The Bonehunters" and "Reaper's Gale," books 6 and 7 of the Steven Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen" fantasy series. You don't jump into a series in the middle, so I'll leave it at that.
• I finally managed to read the sequels to Alastair Reynolds's excellent Revelation Space. "Redemption Ark" and "Absolution Gap" continue the story, but don't measure up to the quality of the first book. Too many key characters disappear and are inadequately replaced, the coldly futuristic tone warms up, and the scope narrows.
• "His Dark Materials" is a trilogy by Philip Pullman comprising "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife," and "The Amber Spyglass." The series is sort of aimed at young adults in an attempt (by the publisher, at least) to cash in to the Harry Potter phenomenon, but is interesting and worthwhile for adults as well, even more than Harry Potter. It starts as a young girl's simple quest, and definitely feels like a young adult book at the beginning, but through the course of the three books ends up in a completely unexpected place. Though it is no doubt popular with the younger set, the story and themes are surprisingly mature ones that might only be fully appreciated by adults. Highly recommended.
• Last among the books that Amir sent me is "The Prince of Nothing" trilogy by R. Scott Bakker. This is another series that rises above your standard fantasy genre fiction. It has complex characters, intriguing ideas, and a proper disregard for a number of the clichés of fantasy fiction. However, it has a few significant flaws which, though not fatal, certainly diminished my enjoyment. While the main characters were deep and well-written, there were a number of significant characters who were little more than cardboard cutouts. I say they were significant in that they were essential to advancing the plot, but in no other ways were they important, which was unsatisfying. Bakker could certainly have burned a couple dozen pages on fleshing out these characters. Secondly, while Bakker managed to a'voi'd t'he p'rob'lem o'f' to'o ma'n'y a'po'strop'hes, hë dïd sö wïth thë dübïöüs täctïc öf üsïng töö mänÿ ümläüts. Finally, and most significantly, his world was completely unimaginative. Oh, ok, this is a Crusade story. Those are the French, those are the Germans, those are the Arabs, those are the Byzantines, that's Christianity, this is Islam, there's the Mediterranean, that's Jerusalem, he's the Pope... It was so thinly disguised that it was almost worse than not disguising it and just writing an alternate history novel. It's still pretty good, but that lack of imagination definitely soured it.
• Last among the books I remember reading (especially since I just read it over the weekend) is "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," by J.K. Rowling (duh). There's not much to say. It's what you would expect. It was certainly exciting, but it does highlight to me that the success of Harry Potter was due mostly to chance; there's nothing about Harry Potter that is that special. It's good, certainly, but it's not great. I read it mostly for closure.

¶ 1518 Posted at 11.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

History is economics. More and more that's become my opinion after reading books like "The Box" and now "Cod," by Mark Kurlansky. Cod was easy to preserve and plentiful throughout the North Atlantic. Vikings followed the cod to Labrador, as did Basque fishermen later, "discovering" North America centuries before Columbus. The wealth of Boston was built on cod, fostering the rise of a powerful merchant class opposed to economic domination by the English. This later became the core of the American Revolution. Cod was an important leg in the "triangle trade" that brought slaves to North America and the Caribbean. At the same time, cod's nutritional value and easy preservation helped it power exploratory voyages to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Its value was critical in numerous political conflicts and near-wars over the years. Then centuries of bounty slammed head-on into technological progress as the North Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed in the late 20th century, ending a thousand years of plenty.

"Cod" is one of those books that highlighted my ignorance. In our age of plenty, with miracles such as refrigeration, it's easy to forget how critical commodities like cod were. I wouldn't have minded maintaining my ignorance on how to prepare cod (yuck), but it was easy to skip those pages. It's a slim book, and lucidly written, so it's a quick read and easy to digest. Highly recommended. I look forward to reading Kurlansky's book "Salt."

¶ 1521 Posted at 11.54 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Whenever I recommend something that fits into a genre to someone who isn't a fan of the genre, I always feel obligated to tack on an... acclaimer 1. Placing something in a genre always seems too limiting, and it's something I bump up into because most of what I read, watch, and listen to falls into a genre of some kind 2 . It's not enough to say that Tool is a metal band, or that "His Dark Materials," is a young adult fantasy trilogy, or that "X-Men 2" is a super-hero movie. It's not because any of those things are untrue, but rather they aren't sufficient to convey their qualities. Labelling is restrictive 3 . The label becomes the most prominent aspect of the work, when the message I want to convey is about the work's quality. That's what happens when you're on the outside looking in; you see the superficial similarities between the bad and the good, but can't see the deeper differences that make the good good. 90% of everything is crud 4 , but in unfamiliar genres we only see the 90%, while we're able to see the 10% in familiar ones. That 10% transcends the genre, whereas all the 90% has going for it is the genre.

I'm not sure how to get around this. I can't avoid using those labels, because they're useful. It's a useful starting point for checking stuff out 5. Furthermore, we use different standards for different genres; I know I ask a lot more from comedy movies than I do for action movies 6 . It's not just a lowering; I think I (now) have higher standards for fantasy and science fiction than I do for "general" fiction. The labels provide a handy shortcut, where collaborative filtering (either formally through something like Amazon, or just conversationally) requires much more overhead. Maybe there's nothing to get around, and that's just the way it is.

¶ 1523 Posted at 12.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( music | books | movies )

159780018X 978-1597800181 Liz Williams's "The Snake Agent" is a surprisingly simple detective story in an occult near future Chinese Singapore franchise city where Heaven and Hell wage battles for souls. The lines between the worlds have blurred, and Hell is making a play to win for keeps, assuming the bureaucracy doesn't get in the way. Detective Inspector Chen is our hero on the case, a man troubled by his renouncing of his matron goddess for an undemonic demoness. It's a fine tale, but it's just a little too thin. Some books have too much exposition and too many detours, but this one could have done with more. It's decent. Maybe the sequels will do better.

¶ 1528 Posted at 01.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

0393324826 978-0393324822 A friend lent me Mary Roach's "Stiff." It tells about all the things that happen to a body after someone dies, and the things that we as a society choose to do with them. We visit a body farm at the University of Tennessee, read about how mummies were steeped in honey and the liquid used as medicine in the Middle Ages, and how a Swedish environmentalist is leading a movement to compost bodies after death. Roach ranges far and wide, producing a book chock full of interesting if less than useful information. It's only a little bit gruesome and not at all depressing. Roach attempts to infuse the topic with humor, which apparently works on some readers. I didn't find most of the intentional jokes funny; maybe I'm just... what's the word? Humorless? Rigid? Inflexible? Nevertheless, there were a number of more subtly humorous parts, none of which come to mind right now, sadly. Anyway, it's interesting and thought-provoking and worth a read.

For the record, I've decided what I want to happen when I die 1 . The first priority is taking any and all useful transplantable parts. Liver, lungs, kidneys, heart, eyes, whatever. After that, I'd like my body to be used for scientific research, with the sole exception of weapons research. Crash test passenger? Sure. Lying in the sun in the soon to be operational body farm at Texas State University? Fine. Developing a more deadly bullet? No thanks. If there's anything left of me after that, I'll like my body composted (cremation uses too much energy), with an Indian mango tree and an American Elm (Updated: or a Vermont sugar maple) planted above. Just for the record.

¶ 1531 Posted at 12.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | me )

0061147931 978-0061147937 I am a wimp when it comes to horror movies. This dates back to seeing "A Nightmare on Elm Street" at a sleepover in 3rd grade and was reinforced by "Event Horizon" in college. That movie freaked me out something serious. It was thus with some trepidation that I started Joe Hill's "Heart-Shaped Box." I nearly didn't continue after the first few pages, but I realized I was being silly, so I forged ahead. I'm glad I did.

"Heart-Shaped Box" starts with middle-aged rock star Judas Coyne buying a supposedly haunted suit from an online auction to add to his collection of occult and morbid artifacts. Caveat emptor, but this time it's because the buyer got what he paid for. The ghost is not a kindly one, and the haunting begins the clock ticking on Judas Coyne's life.

This was a very satisfying book. It is thoughtful and complex, with layers slowly revealing themselves. The pace steadily ratchets up as we discover what was originally a simple ghost story is in fact an intricate plot pulling together years of mistakes and worse, both by Coyne and others. He is haunted by both real ghosts and figurative ones, which converge to offer a chance at redemption. The characters are real, flawed people, who gradually reveal more of themselves to us as the plot unfolds. "Heart-Shaped Box" is one of those genre novels that transcends the genre. I'd even argue that it wasn't really horror, since I wasn't afraid (YMMV). Regardless of what you call it, it's a fine book. Highly recommended.

¶ 1533 Posted at 12.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

"There is a way to be good again." That is the fundamental idea behind Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, "The Kite Runner." The story begins with our narrator, Amir, as a young boy in pre-chaotic Afghanistan. His best friend is the Hassan, the servant's son, a slightly younger boy whose devotion is almost too much, a dedicated faith in Amir that he will betray. They live under the care of Amir's larger-than-life father, a successful dynamo of a man to whom Amir is a source of constant disappointment. The boys grow up, and the evils and dangers of the world shatter their stable lives. Afghanistan descends into violent chaos, and they are separated forever. Amir escapes from Afghanistan, but not the shame of failing his friend. He gets a chance at redemption, if only he knows what to do with it. 1594480001 978-1594480003

I didn't particularly like "The Kite Runner." I'd like to expand on that, but it's not really something I can explain. It was certainly a good book, but it just didn't grab me, and I don't know why. Lots of people liked it, though, so maybe you will too.

¶ 1541 Posted at 12.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Until recently, that there were both books on evolutionary biology and the philosophy of evolutionary biology. I wanted the former. With Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," I got the latter. Boy does he go on. And on. And on. He would do well to use simpler prose.

One thing he does make clear is that evolutionary biologists have worked too long and hard on evolution for the theory to fall beneath the puny slings and arrows that Creationists often deploy. Disagreement is usually on the precise mechanics; you don't see anyone arguing against gravity because scientists have yet to find a graviton. There are other disagreements, including some disbelief that such a mindless process as natural selection could yield the results we see, but those tend to be as vague and poorly articulated as the Creationists, only with something else pulling the strings.

It's unfair to criticize this book for being a mostly philosophical book rather than scientific. He certainly does go into the science, but primarily from the perspective of game theory, algorithms, and the like, rather than deploying evidence. This isn't the book to read if you want an overview of the current state of the art in evolutionary biology. It's more of a niche book, aimed at those who want to delve deeply into the more speculative and philosophical implications of evolution by natural selection. I personally found it tiring, but I guess it's the thing for those who like that sort of thing. 0684802902 978-0684802909

¶ 1559 Posted at 12.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books | science! )

Mark Liberman1, the linguist who so effectively skewered "The Da Vinci Code" mentioned his difficulty remembering the name of a Swedish mystery novelist. Enjoying the mysteries from time to time, I noted it down. And then I read it. And it was fine. Its biggest advantage is a different setting. Sweden, you might have noticed, is a different country. Crimes are fewer and less severe. That's especially true because this book takes place ina more rural area. Our detective protagonist, one Kurt Wallander, is a detective in the mold of previous fictional detectives before him, a determined, even driven man who can't hold a marriage together. I'm still looking for a truly fine mystery, but until then, Kurt Wallander will do just fine. 1400031575 978-1400031573

¶ 1561 Posted at 08.10 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

In 1990, Henning Mankell saw the historic changes across the Baltic in Eastern Europe, and decided to write a thriller (sort of), while using the same police officer protagonist as his earlier mystery, "Faceless Killers." The result is The Dogs of Riga, which is rather a muddled book. Detective Kurt Wallander isn't a spy, but somehow gets caught up in East Bloc intrigue that ends up amounting to very little, while boring the reader along the way. Maybe the next book sticks to the proper mysteries, something Mankell does better. 1400031524 978-1400031528

¶ 1570 Posted at 02.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

The Pragmatic Programmer is considered one of those books you have to read as a software developer. Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt's compendium of practical advice for writing good software considered a classic in some circles. It's a good book, but it would have been better if I'd read it 5 years ago. Now that I'm a "senior developer,"1 it's a lot of stuff that I already know. It's good review material, though; their recommendations are well thought out and quite practical, drawing on their collective experience in the industry. I'd definitely recommend it for someone who's just getting started, or to someone who's gotten into the business sideways, or who is looking to brush up on their techniques. If, on the other hand, you feel like you have a good grasp of modern methodologies and good practices, you can probably skip it. 020161622X 978-0201616224

¶ 1572 Posted at 01.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( programming | books )

"Fallen Dragon" was very clearly Peter F. Hamilton's dress rehearsal for Pandora Star and Judas Unchained. It's got a lot of similarities. Sadly, many of the differences make it a lesser book than either of the later pair, to the extent that it's cheesy science fiction rather than good science fiction. Too much opera, not enough space. Skip it and read those other ones instead. 0330480065 978-0330480062

¶ 1576 Posted at 08.50 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

The manic part of manic-depressive disorder has always sounded like a fun mental illness. You feel good, you don't need much sleep, you have lots of energy to do things. It was only after reading "An Unquiet Mind" that I understood that it's not just the other pole of bipolar that causes the damage. Mania means extreme impulsiveness and losing touch with reality. It's not a stable condition; either you spiral away into complete psychosis, or you come back to Earth and realize you've spent $20,000 you don't have on Precious Moments figurines because they spoke to something deep within you. And that's assuming you don't somehow kill yourself in a moment of insane recklessness. Moreso than Jan Lars Jensen's "Losing My Mind," Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir of her mental illness gives a devastating picture of what it is like. Perhaps that is because her illness has lasted decades, while his memoir focused on a single (if extended) incident.

As involving as her story is, the memoir she wrote could have done with a better editor. I get the feeling that Jamison would be pretty annoying to know in person. It seems like every man she knows is "good-looking, witty, and quite tall." She overflows with effusiveness, which is all right at first, but gets wearisome. Every page had some form of the word "intense" on it. It was enough to make me wonder if maybe she was in the midst of a manic episode as she was writing the book. Nevertheless, it's a valuable book to read if you want to understand the danger of bipolar insanity, and the lethal danger that lurks in the depths and stalks the heights.

0679763309 978-0679763307

¶ 1595 Posted at 10.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

After Michael Lewis blew me away with "Moneyball" and "The Blind Side", I made sure to grab his first book, "Liar's Poker." Lewis didn't originally start as a writer; he became a bond trader at Salomon Brothers in the mid-1980s after graduate school. That gave him a front row seat on some of the greatest excesses the decade of greed had to offer. Think Gordon Gekko. It was a weird and chaotic period, which makes for interesting reading. I claimed before that Michael Lewis "had a gift;" I still think that's true, but comparing his first book with his later ones demonstrates that he spent a lot of time honing his skills as a writer. It's still a much better book than many others ever write. 0140143459 978-0140143454

¶ 1598 Posted at 01.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I have a big backlog of books that I've read, but I don't have the motivation to give them a more thorough treatment.

• Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch: the sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora lacks something of the charm of the first book, perhaps because of an imbalance in tone. The smaller ensemble of characters may also be to blame; it's easier to keep the action rolling with more primary characters. It's still decent, but I hope the next story of the Gentleman Bastards resembles the first more than the last. 0553804685 978-0553804683
• The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson: monuments usually exist to tell the future about an event in the past. What if it went the other way? Monuments appearing to tell us, in the past, about events in the future? Events involving the gradual conquest of the world by a mysterious figure. How would we react? Is this impending doom, or impending salvation? Is the future fixed? Wilson appears to have penchant for character-based semi-apocalyptic narratives featuring characters close to but not at the center of events. He's a very good writer who deserves to be more famous. 0812545249 978-0812545241
• Exit A by Anthony Swofford: Swofford is better known for "Jarhead," which I have not read. He switches to fiction with "Exit A," an uneven novel about teenage love, rebellion, the weird fusion of cultures around military bases in Japan, mistakes, and forgiveness. It's OK. 074327038X 978-0743270380
• Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker by James McManus: Poet 1 and journalist McManus goes to Las Vegas to cover the World Series of Poker. Plans change. Instead of a simple magazine piece, what comes out is "Positively Fifth Street," a tangled narrative interleaving McManus's unexpected success in the tournament, the simultaeous trial of the murder of Las Vegas scion Ted Binion 2, and biographical vignettes of the author. This story about greed, vice, and gambling makes for entertaining reading, but occasionally difficult reading where McManus's weaving of the disparate story lines gets clumsy. If you like poker, true crime stories, and/or sleaze, though, it's a must-read. 0374236488
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman : Private Mandella gets stuck in an interstellar war, where every battle takes him decades or centuries from the Earth of his youth. Adjusting gets harder every time, and Mandella struggles both with conflicted feelings about the war and a rootlessness in which the world has completely changed in his absence. I'm sure the book was very exciting and ground-breaking in the 1970s, but reading it now, it's just kind of a "meh." 0060510862 978-0060510862
• A&R by Bill Flanagan: after reading Flanagan's entertaining send-up of the TV business in New Bedlam, I picked up his first book. As with many first novels, this one is a little closer to the author's own experience, in music in this case. A&R tracks a tumultuous period in a couple of years at a record label. We see events from the perspective of former indie A&R man Jim Cantone, now a "senior vice president" at a the record label subsidiary of a multinational conglomerate. Flanagan takes some clever shots at the industry's general scumminess, while charting a somewhat unlikely course. The ending is a little too nice for such a cynical book, and Flanagan took a few unnecessary detours along the way (the character of Zoey Pavlov is incomplete, for instance), but neverthless produced a successful and enjoyable satire. 0375758305 978-0375758300
• New Ideas From Dead Economists by Todd Buchholz: a good survey of the history and evolution of economic thought from its nascence in the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century. It makes for an accessible and readable starter for anyone interested in economics or economists. 0452288444 978-0452288447
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor: Stalingrad was the linchpin of the war between the stubborn megalomania of Adolf Hitler and the impulsive paranoia of Josef Stalin. Their clash resulted in unimaginable suffering on both sides in the frozen wasteland of the Don steppe in the winter of 1942-1943 as two armies fought over the rubble of what is now Volgograd. Beevor covers not just the battle for the city itself, but also sets the stage for everything leading up to it, bringing you into the action with individual stories of heroism and villainy. It's an excellent look at what was quite possibly the pivotal battle of the war with Nazi Germany, giving us perspective on how truly close a thing it was. Highly recommended. 0140284583 978-0140284584
• The White Lioness by Henning Mankell: this mystery takes place as the end of South Africa's apartheid system neared. There are those who don't want it to end, and they're willing to kill Nelson Mandela to spark a race war to do it. An unlikely mistake connects this conspiracy to Sweden, where we come back to our hero Kurt Wallander. While the series is focused on Sweden, and much of this particular book takes place in Sweden, the strongest parts are actually those taking place in South Africa or from the perspective of the South African characters. The feelings and politics around apartheid were surprisingly interesting to me. Beyond that it's a serviceable mystery, exceeding the previous novel in the series. 0099464691 978-0099464693
• The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell: dark, grisly tales of human exploitation may be normal for the jaded readers of American mystery novels, but they're a lot more jarring when they happen in small-town Sweden. Once again Kurt Wallander is on the case. Early on, the identity of the villain is clearly telegraphed, which makes the mystery at the core somewhat less thrilling. This is more a story of whydunit and howtoprovehedunit than the standard whodunit. Mankell still manages to produce a serviceable novel, but it's not what I'd hoped for. 1565849930 978-1565849938
• Sidetracked by Henning Mankell: serial killers aren't really a Swedish phenomenon, which makes the crimes in "Sidetracked" all the more bewildering to the small-town Swedish police force. Kurt Wallander takes the lead again, but may have found his match against a murderer whose scalped victims appear to have little in common. The high point is the killer: the identity is an unlikely one on the surface, but Mankell writes it to fit, and the viewpoint is a scarily convincing one. There was one sour note that Mankell can't be blamed for, and that's that I had very recently read Malcolm Gladwell's debunking of criminal profiles; it made it hard to swallow the parts featuring the profiler. Aside from that, however, "Sidetracked" is an excellent mystery which stands enough on its own that you can read it without having read the previous 4 books in the series. 1400031567 978-1400031566
• Hinterland by James Clemens: an underwhelming sequel to his previous "Shadowfall." The creative elements Clemens brought to the epic fantasy genre are no longer novel, and some of the areas where he was uncreative are even more annoying. The story is also less epic; it doesn't feel as grand as the previous book. The settings are limited and the plot of the book too skimpy for the time devoted to it. Not enough happens to move the story forward for 480 pages it uses. Clemens's writing style feels like what I expect he produces for his action-adventure novels (written as "James Rollins"). Not an inspiring effort. 0451461134 978-0451461131

¶ 1612 Posted at 02.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Since August 3, I have read:

• 2 Biography
• 8 Fantasy
• 5 General fiction
• 3 General non-fiction
• 3 History
• 1 Horror
• 2 How to
• 8 Mystery
• 2 Programming
• 3 Science
• 12 Science fiction

That's a total of 19341 pages in 49 books 1 over 151 days, or one book every 3.08 days and 128 pages per day. Combined with the August numbers, it's 46023 pages in 113 books over 365 days, or one book every 3.23 days and 111 pages per day. The genre breakdown for the year looks like this:

• 3 Biography
• 26 Fantasy
• 10 General fiction
• 6 General or miscellaneous non-fiction
• 6 History
• 21 Historical fiction
• 1 Horror
• 2 How to
• 10 Mystery
• 3 Science
• 22 Speculative (science) fiction
• 3 Technical non-fiction

I was pleasantly surprised that nearly 60% of my reading was neither fantasy nor science fiction; I guess I'm broadening my horizons after all. I can't imagine that I'm ever going to read this much in a single year for a long time, if ever again.

¶ 1627 Posted at 05.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was the novel that made John Le Carré famous. In 200 pages of unassuming prose he sketched the bizarre world of the foot soldiers of the Cold War in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, submerging the reader so persuasively in the world that occasionally over the last few nights in a sleepless daze I was convinced Kieran's gas was a plot by the East Germans. This work has become the standard by which all other spy novels are measured, and justifiably so. It is a true and enduring classic. 0802714544 978-0802714541

¶ 1696 Posted at 09.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )