Peter's Book Report

Under Heaven

2012-01-24T08:57:00.002-06:00

by Guy Gavriel Kay

In 2010 when Under Heaven came out, I heard an NPR reviewer gush about Guy Gavriel Kay as a writer, saying more people should be reading his books. She said the possible reason people hadn't heard of him was because his books don't fit neatly in a fiction category. They are largely historical fiction, often based around real events and people, but his books frequently incorporate fantastical elements that often result in them being classified as fantasy. Which is fine, and I like that genre, but this is not your average wizards and dragons fare. And a lot of people who would probably love Guy Kay's prose have overlooked him because they don't generally read fantasy.

I have since discovered that Guy Kay has several highly acclaimed novels and series, but I chose to read Under Heaven first because it was the first I had heard of him. I immediately fell in love with the book, and could scarcely put it down. I had forgotten how fun it is to discover a new book or author that I love so much. The characters were vivid and interesting, and Kay's prose is simply sublime. The first hundred pages open so many interesting mysteries and questions, I couldn't wait to find out the answers.

Unfortunately, I never got all the answers I wanted. Under Heaven is set in a world based on the Tang Dynasty in China during the time of the An Lushan Rebellion. The book soon scales back to follow a dozen characters through this political and military upheaval, and it loses the tight focus on the characters and the mysteries introduced in the first portion. This isn't to say that the latter part of the book is bad—it's still quite good. I just wasn't in love with it like I was at first.

After finishing it, I would call this book a beautiful disappointment, one that I don't regret reading at all. It wasn't what I expected, but it did introduce me to a great new author, and I can't wait to read more of his stuff.

Just My Type

2011-10-17T15:29:00.001-05:00

by Simon Garfield

As soon as I heard about this book on NPR I knew I had to read it. As if I didn't have enough nerdy interests, I've become interested in fonts and typefaces over the last few years. Fonts first caught my attention when I found some great open-source font projects, and from there I began to notice and appreciate how well-crafted letters helped communicate ideas and promoted clarity. Simon Garfield's book Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, would probably be best enjoyed by a font nerd like me, but it has an interesting combination of history, art, and cultural movements that would appeal to more people than you might initially think. From Gutenberg to the iPad, the book looks at how fonts have evolved and how artistic and cultural trends affected (and were affected by) fonts. For example, I had never thought about any certain font being a "Nazi" font, for example, but the Third Reich had some very distinct (and sometimes conflicting) opinions about the typefaces its citizens used. And if you are familiar with the font Helvetica, its place in the Bauhaus movement seems obvious. There are amusing anecdotes about the "fontroversy" when Swedish furniture maker Ikea switch to the Verdana font, and a review of why Comic Sans is just so terrible. (Or is it?) I really wouldn't call this a well-written book. It relies on strange authorities to support its positions at times, including random tweets and YouTube comments. But it's almost always interesting, and it helped cement in my mind the rock-star status of certain famous typographers such as Matthew Carter (Verdana, Georgia), Claude Garamond (Garamond), Adrian Frutiger (Univers), John Baskerville (Baskerville), and Eric Gill (Gill Sans, and quite a few controversies). If you even bothered to read this whole book review, you'd probably like this book.

Post Script: If you were wondering, this blog currently is displayed in Neuton, a Roman-style open-source font by Brian Zick that is available to use on any website through Google Web Fonts.

Arcadia

2011-07-27T13:40:00.001-05:00

by Tom Stoppard

Arcadia is actually a play rather than a book, but I read it rather than saw it performed. I actually had never heard of the play before a friend proposed it for a book club. I was much more familiar with Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which we also considered reading. The two plays have a lot in common, but I vastly preferred Arcadia, and couldn't believe that I had never heard of it before.

It's hard to state concisely what Arcadia is about. The whole play takes place in the room of an English country house, but the scenes alternate between the early 17th Century and the present day. The period scenes revolve around the family's tutor and his student, the brilliant young daughter of the family. The modern scenes involve researchers and professors trying to determine the identity of the hermit that lived on the residence and the events surrounding a visit to the house by Lord Byron. The dialogue is very clever and often very amusing, but it's also awash in philosophical and scientific concepts. Newtonian physics, chaos theory, determinism, entropy, classicism, romanticism, and scholarship all become topics of conversation at one point or another. But despite the heavy topics, the dialogue is quick and light. As the play draws to a close, the two time periods begin to blend together, with props and sounds from one era appearing the other. By the final scene, characters from both periods appear on stage together, and their dialogue spliced together is both hilarious and poignant.

I absolutely loved Arcadia, and wish I could see it performed. It just finished up a Broadway run in June, but it is often called Stoppard's finest play, so hopefully there will be more productions in the future.

Three Cups of Deceit

2011-04-20T16:11:00.001-05:00

by Jon Krakauer

My reasons for reading Three Cups of Deceit were complicated. First, it was free as a PDF download for the first 72 hours of its release. Second, its release represents a new attempt to market long-form journalism. This "book" (which is almost short enough to be a long article) is the first in a series of nonfiction released by a new publisher called Byliner, which hopes to release non-fiction and journalistic pieces a la carte, similar to Amazon's Kindle Singles. But the third reason started reading Three Cups of Deceit is the reason I finished it: because the allegations it directs at international best-seller and humanitarian, Greg Mortenson, were too severe to ignore, and because for all his ills, Jon Krakauer tells a gripping story.

If you don't know who Greg Mortenson is, you have likely heard of what he does. He founded the Central Asian Institute, which builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson wrote the the popular book Three Cups of Tea, which stayed on the New York Times Bestseller list for three years. He is a frequent speaker at universities and events, and his story is remarkable. According to Mortenson, his mission to build schools came about accidentally, when he took a wrong turn and stumbled into a small Pakistani village on his way back from a failed attempt at climbing K2, the world's second-tallest peak. The village people took him in, nursed him back to health, and in return, he rashly promised to build a school there so the village children could get an education. He did that, and his book details how he kept going, building hundreds of schools in a war-torn region and braving Taliban kidnappings, treacherous journeys, and overcoming bureaucratic obstacles to give kids an education.

It's an inspiring story, but as the book documents in great detail, a lot of it isn't true. Krakauer was one of Mortenson's early supports and financial backers, but he became disillusioned by Mortenson's lax financial practices and refusal to answer to anyone. As Krakauer tells it, Mortenson used the charity for his personal gain, to market his books and pay for plush accommodations, private jets, and a high annual salary. Krakauer's skill at drawing together facts and people, which served him so well it books like Into Thin Air, is in full effect here. Three Cups of Deceit is definitely worth a read, in part because it may represent the future of journalism, but mostly because it's a solid piece of investigative reporting.

Momo

2011-04-12T11:10:00.001-05:00

by Michael Ende

Momo is a young homeless girl who befriends and is befriended by the people of a city. They take her in, and she makes their lives more magical and meaningful. She listens to their problems, diffuses neighbor disputes, and transforms the children's games into magical adventures. When the "timesaving" obsession sweeps through the city, making it so on one has any time to spend with people they care about, only Momo and her friends notice the change and can do something about it.

The whimsical adventure in Momo is a clear allegory about modern society. Everyone is in a hurry, we buy countless gadgets and devices to make our lives easier, and yet we seem to have less free time, not more. The book also touches on issues such as how we care for children and the quality of work. Michael Ende, who also wrote The Neverending Story, wrote Momo in 1973, but if anything, his criticisms are more salient in an era of always-on devices. (I almost felt bad that I was reading Momo on my phone as an ebook.)

The story of Momo is marvelous, and kids will enjoy it. But for an adult, it also does a good job at making you reexamine your time and pace of life.

Intelligence: A Novel of the CIA

2010-07-27T08:57:00.001-05:00

by Susan Hasler

I heard about this book on NPR, and it sounded interesting. Susan Hasler worked as a counter-terrorism analyst at the CIA for over two decades, and the NPR interview discussed some interesting topics like intelligence failures. So I requested the book from my local library and started it with some modestly high expectations. And while certain aspects of the book were illuminating and occasionally entertaining, Intelligence was a disappointment for me.

The basic story of Intelligence follows an analyst named Maddie James who suspects there is an impending terrorist attack on U.S. soil. She and her small team race against the clock and fight against incompetent superiors as they try to identify and prevent the attack. Intelligence is most successful at conveying the sheer volume of data and the near impossibility of accurately identifying threats to national security or American interests abroad. The frustration of the characters as they sift through endless intelligence reports and intercepts clearly comes from Hasler's own personal experience.

But the rest of novel is fairly sub-par. The writing is sophomoric, but at least it isn't too distracting. Hasler develops her own intra-organizational series of terms and metaphors, with analysts referring to the organization as the "mines." Everything has a mining or metallurgic slang term, like alchemists, mine shafts, veins, canaries, drilling down, etc. Regardless of whether this jargon is genuine (I suspect is not), it was used inconsistently and got on my nerves. Also annoying were the various sexual encounters of the characters during the crisis. Do intelligence analysts really jump into each other's beds in the midst of terrorist threats? For our country's sake, I hope not.

Unfortunately, the major flaws of Intelligence weren't limited to the common foibles of a writer's freshman offering of fiction. The terrorist attack involves model airplanes at a major league baseball park, and the plan is so elaborate that it strained even my willing suspension of disbelief. But this isn't a book about analysts versus terrorists. The terrorists are basically gone halfway through the book. The real bad guys are the incompetent and overly-ambitious administrators in the intelligence community and the corrupt and deceitful presidential administration that tries to parlay the threat into an excuse to invade Iran. Perhaps in the hands of a more skillful author these themes wouldn't be as forced and clumsy, but in Intelligence they come across as heavy-handed echoes of Bush-hatred that was so common during the time Hasler was writing the novel. By the end of the book, the character of Maddie James is so embittered and cynical that she almost loses her credibility to explain to the public what actually happened. In my estimation, the novel as a whole essentially shares that same fate.

The Kite Runner

2010-03-04T10:07:00.002-06:00

by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner is a rarity on my reading list in that it is a popular best-seller. I read a lot of genres, but NY Times best-selling fiction isn't my usual fare. But I got this book for Christmas a few years back, and I've been meaning to read it for a long time. The narrator had a privileged childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan, but fled the country during the Soviet invasion. Twenty years later he receives a call from an old friend that summons up memories of his childhood and calls him back to an Afghanistan he no longer recognizes. This is a harsh book of betrayal, guilt, transition, and redemption.

One of The Kite Runner's strongest points is its vivid description of pre-Soviet Kabul. The book is a window in to Afghan society and culture, including the the kite flying that gives the book its title. That rich heritage is juxtaposed with the brutal regime of the Taliban that the narrator witnesses upon his return. The Kite Runner is mostly very depressing, but I still enjoyed it because it gave character and flavor to a place that I normally only hear about in headlines.

The Road

2010-02-08T12:39:00.002-06:00

by Cormac McCarthy
If I had to describe The Road in one word, it would be "bleak." This relatively short novel follows a man in his young son as they try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear holocaust. Human civilization has disintegrated, the landscape is covered with ash, and no plants can grow. The few survivors of the fall-out either scavenge for food or join together in violent, cannibalistic gangs.

This would be an excruciating book to read if it weren't so sublimely written. Cormac McCarthy's prose is as gray and spare as the landscape he describes. The story is so grim that I wanted to detach myself emotionally from the characters, but I was still wracked as the father internally debated whether it would be better to keep going or to accept death on their own terms.

The Road is undoubtedly the best book I read in 2009. I cannot recommend it highly enough. But I'm not interested in seeing the recent film adaptation, even though it stars the excellent Viggo Mortensen. I felt on edge the whole time I was reading the book, and some of the imagery was disturbing. To see it all on film would be too horrific.

Jump the Shark: When Good Things Go Bad

2010-01-14T10:22:00.000-06:00

by Jon Hein

Jump the Shark is a pop culture reference to an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie jumped over a shark tank on water skis. The stunt was so absurdly over the top, that moment came to symbolize the inevitable decline of the show. Thanks to Jon Hein and a clever website, the term "jump the shark" has been applied to almost any cultural figure or icon, and this book chronicles some of the famous shark moments.

My favorite jump the shark moments are often the ones with single-word answers. When did The Beatles jump the shark? Yoko. When did The Cosby Show jump? Olivia. Scooby Doo Scrappy. Harrison Ford? Sabrina. Napoleon Bonaparte? Waterloo. Bill Clinton? Monica.

But sometimes the past-their-prime moments aren't as obvious, which is where the fun comes in. The original Jump the Shark website (now run by TV Guide) had millions of people arguing back and forth about when their favorite shows or celebrities jumped. I don't agree with all of the assessments in this book. For example, Hein is convinced that The Simpsons never jumped the shark, whereas I say it jumped in the late 1990's when Barney went sober. But the disagreement and debate is part of the charm of shark-jumping analysis.

The book was released in 2002 so it's a little dated. For example, the entries on Joe Biden, Al Gore, and other public figures are off. But most of it is right on. The book essentially serves as a review of American pop culture, told in small packages of rise-and-fall stories. One thing I noticed about reading this book was that I really haven't watched much TV. I only watched a few of the shows mentioned with any regularity, and I wasn't very familiar with even some of the classic sitcoms. I guess it's a product of my deprived cable-less childhood.

Jump the Shark isn't anything brilliant, but if you like pop culture, it's a fun read.

Enna Burning

2009-11-30T14:11:00.001-06:00

by Shannon Hale

Enna Burning is the sequel to Goose Girl, but it departs from the fairy tale retelling of the first book. Rather than following the story of Isi, the princess-turned-goose-girl-turned-princess, the second book follows the story of Enna, the forest girl who became friends with Isi in the first book. The country of Bayern finds itself at war with its southern neighbor and Enna comes across a text that teaches fire magic. But Enna soon finds the same thing Isi has discovered with wind magic, that before too long she can't turn it off.

I enjoyed Goose Girl immensely, but this book lost a lot of the charm that the first one had. I even disliked it in the middle, although by the time it finished it was good enough. I never got attached or invested in the character of Enna, and the plot was a bit trite at times. Enna Burning is worth a read if you really liked Goose Girl, but if you're a newcomer to the series I would stick with the first book, which stands on its own quite well.

The Hunger Games

2009-11-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

by Suzanne Collins
Not since Ender's Game have I been so utterly incapable of putting a book down. I read The Hunger Games in the space of an afternoon, and I would have gone without meals if possible. Suzanne Collins creates a partially dystopian vision of the future in which a central power dominates other city states across North America. Each year a young boy and girl are selected from each outlying district to participate in the Hunger Games, a survival competition in which the young people fight to the death on live television.

Nothing about The Hunger Games is completely original, but the book is so good that I still couldn't get enough. This is a serious contender as the best book I have read this year, and I highly recommend it. Even though it involves fighting and killing, the book isn't particularly graphic, and I would recommend it to young and old alike.

Cyteen

2009-10-07T13:33:00.000-05:00

by C.J. Cherryh

Cyteen follows the history of Ariane Emory, a brilliant scientist, businesswoman, and politician who has herself cloned after she dies. Her clone is then part of a life-long experiment in which her childhood and development is closely controlled to mirror that of her predecessor, in homes of producing another multifaceted genius. This experiment happens with the backdrop of interstellar political intrigue and competing factions within Emory's enormous corporation.

This book was very hard for me to get into. For the first 200 pages the major character, Ari Emory, does some really repulsive and twisted thing. I wanted to stop reading, but I kept on because I had heard that it got better.

I'm so glad I stuck it out, because it did get better. It got so good that I could scarcely put it down. It really made me think at times, about what makes us human and ideas of social engineering and the ethics of forming a person's mind. Cyteen won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and after reading it I can say that it is well deserved.

Guardian of the Spirit

2009-10-01T12:00:00.003-05:00

by Nahoko Uehashi

Guardian of the Spirit is the first book in a popular ten-book Moribito series of novels by Nahoko Uehashi. The fantasy stories are set in far-away lands long ago, with warriors, magicians, and magical creatures. The best reason to read these books, however, is for the main character. Balsa is a female body-guard who was forced to train at an early age after her father was killed. She's smart and clever, and a very strong and entertaining female character. In this book she is forced to protect a young prince from his enemies, both traditional and magical. I saw the anime series before I read the book, and I actually liked it better because it showed more of Balsa's character, but I suspect the series as a whole is the best. It's a fun, quick read. Only the first two books of the Moribito series have been translated into English so far, but I hope the rest are on the way because it's a fun series.

The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

2009-09-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is easy to read and quite entertaining. This collection starts with The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a fairly short novel. It's quite good, although rambling at times. I've only ever read Wilde's plays before, so it was strange to read his signature silly dialogue in a mostly serious novel. It was good, and worth the short read. This collection also included several of Wilde's plays: Landy Windermere's Fan, which was okay; An Ideal Husband, which is decent, and The Importance of Being Ernest, which is deliciously funny. My only problem about that last one is that I have seen the film adaptation, and I cannot imagine the characters of Jack, Agly, and Lady Bracknell as anyone but Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, and Judi Dench (respectively). The collection wraps up with the narrative poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," which he wrote in prison towards the end of his short but flamboyant life. It's a good assortment of his work; I highly recommend this collection to anyone wanting to get to know Oscar Wilde better.

This book also gets bonus points for using the famous photograph of Wilde taken by Napoleon Sarony, which was the subject of a very famous copyright lawsuit that established that photographs could be copyrighted.

The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy

2009-06-15T10:57:00.000-05:00

edited by Christopher Cerf

I have a deep fondness for short stories. I think they are the perfect length to present an idea, develop it, and draw a conclusion. They are also very readable. Even during law school, when I was up to my eyeballs in cases to read, I could always find time to read a good short story or two. So when I saw a dog-eared copy of The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy in a give-away book bin, I snatched it up to see if it was any good. I wasn't disappointed.

This was an amusing collection of short stories by some really great authors. Some of them, like Roald Dahl or Arthur C. Clarke, are very well-known. Other I had never heard of, but they were great nonetheless. Most of these stories were written 40-50 years ago, so they have a fun campy feel when they talk about what the future will be like.

I think science fantasy is an interesting genre. It's not fantasy because of its futuristic or technological elements, nor is it sci-fi because it doesn't really care about technical or scientific details. The fantastical devices are merely vehicles to explore interesting concepts. Science fantasy is arguably just a part of science fiction, but its definitely different from hard sci-fi. It's also very accessible, even to people who wouldn't imagine reading most science fiction.

The Story of World War II

2009-04-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

by Donald L. Miller and Henry Steele Commager

I picked this book out from the library because I liked the cover and I wanted to know more about World War II. For that purpose it was perfect. The Story of World War II was accessible and rarely boring, with plenty of photographs and maps to make the narrative real to the reader. Much of the history is told in the words of soldiers or journalists embedded with the American troops or sailors. This is a revision of an orginal work that was published in parts during and immediately after the war. My only criticism is that the book focuses almost exclusively on the American experience of the war, but if that doesn't bother you it is a great way to skim the survace of an enormouse worldwide event. I recommend it to anyone who would like to know more about World War II without delving into a decade of study.

Danny the Champion of the World

2009-03-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl has earned his place in the Pantheon of beloved authors for children and young adults. His whimsical books offer windows to fantastical worlds that appeal to adults just as much as they appeal to children. Dahl has been wildly popular during most of my lifetime, selling millions of copies and having several major feature films made from his novels, such as The Witches, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love those books, but my favorite Roald Dahl book has always been Danny the Champion of the World. I reread it over the weekend, and it's still great.

The book is told by a small boy who grows up with his father in a small gypsy wagon, working in his father's gas station and mechanic shop. Danny's father is an almost magical character, full of fantastic stories and fun idea, and Danny loves his father more than anything in the world. One night Danny discovers his father's darkest secret, which leads them to a new adventure that makes Danny the Champion of the World. I won't elaborate any more, because the journey is so much fun. Unlike many Dahl books, there isn't any actual magic involved. But the tone of the book is completely fantastical, because the marvelous father-son relationship that Danny has with his father is its own sort of magic.

For some reason Danny isn't as well-known as other Dahl books, but I recommend it to anyone.

Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia

2009-03-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

by Tony Horowitz

This is one of those books that I happily discovered by accident. I was at my favorite used bookstore with my wife's uncle while he was selling some books back, and they wouldn't take this one. He had just been recommending Tony Horowitz to me, so he gave me to book to keep. Baghdad without a Map is Horowitz's autobiographical tale of his time as a free-lance report stationed in Cairo. Horowitz travels to over a dozen Middle Eastern countries, including Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. Each location Horowitz visits has different people, cultures, languages, and customs, but they all have the common unifying faith of Islam, even if it is practiced differently in different countries. Horowitz is an excellent writer, and treats the tragic and the ridiculous alike with sensitivity and honesty. I definitely enjoyed Baghdad without a Map. It made me want to travel -- if not to the wasted refugee camps of Sudan.

Accelerando

2009-02-03T15:48:00.037-06:00

by Charles Stross

I have a hard time describing Accelerando. It is sort of a cyberpunk extension of Web 2.0 principles to a vision of the future, and it is mostly confusing. That isn't to say that the book is bad, but it sprawls across four generations of characters and gets too drawn out for my taste. Charles Stross imagines that humanity is on the verge of "singularity," where computers and technology take on a life of their own and render humanity largely obsolete. Stross isn't the first one to imagine this concept, but he takes it one step further by juxtaposing the singularity concept with the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi famously asked his colleagues that if there were multiple intelligent species in the galaxy, why couldn't we see any sign of them. In Stross's Accelerando world, the vast network of intelligences mostly stay at home because they are all intelligent programs living in vast computers powered by Dyson spheres, communicating through wormhole networks. The story haltingly follows several brilliant people who figure out how to contact alien species and escape irrelevance within our own solar system.

Accelerando is full of tech jargon -- Stross is a computer programmer -- and it is broken up into roughly nine different stories with the background of the technology singularity. It is fascinating at times, but I ultimately didn't enjoy it much. I actually started reading it back in 2005 and when I picked it up again last year I had to slog through the middle sections through sheer force of will.

Lost in a Good Book

2009-01-13T10:04:00.002-06:00

by Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book is the sequel to The Eyre Affair and part of the whimsical Thursday Next series. Jasper Fforde imagines a world time travel and pseudo-science are real, with plenty of fantastical characters and events. But the biggest fantasy of all is that in this world people actually care about literature. In this second book the main character, Thursday Next, is plunged deeper into the surreal world of jumping between books and solving literary crimes. The series definitely takes a sharp turn in this book that I didn't expect when reading The Eyre Affair. And by the end of the book the larger plot is just beginning to unfold. I'm usually reluctant to start a series of books because of the time commitment, but these ones are quick and entertaining reads so I don't mind too much. If you actually remember something from your high school Brit Lit class, you'll enjoy these books.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

2008-12-11T08:12:00.000-06:00

by Cory Doctorow

I had previously read some of Cory Doctorow's short stories and blog posts (he runs BoingBoing.net), but I had never read any of his novels until now. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom first caught my attention when I read in an article that Doctorow released it online under a Creative Commons license. Since it was free to read and came in virtually every format imaginable, I thought I'd give it a read.

This was Doctorow's first novel, and to some extent it shows. It has that eager and imaginative feel I've seen in other out-of-the-gate sci-fi writers. My favorite thing about science fiction writing is the presentation of an Idea. A good sci-fi story or novel usually has one or two ideas or concepts about what the future or another existence could be like, and then it tells a story in that imagined environment. Doctorow's contribution to the sci-fi corpus is The Bitchun Society, his vision of a future in which technological innovations have conquered sickness, death, and information barriers. This would be fairly ho-hum techno-Marxism if it weren't for Doctorow's vision of what he calls "Whuffie," a constantly updated score of popularity/accomplishment/influence/power that each person carries. You gather Whuffie by creating things or working or helping people out, and you deplete your Whuffie when you use things or need people to help you. Also part of this vision of the future is what Doctorow calls the "ad-hocracy," the individual groups of people who informally get together to run a community or a university or a city. With the different ad-hocracies running the show, there isn't a need for a traditional government.

This hypothetical world view sets the stage for the exploits and struggles of the main character, Julius, who lives and works in the ad-hocracy that runs part of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. Julius and his companions fight to preserve the traditional format of the Haunted Mansion as popular new-comers with lots of "Whuffie" try to change it to something like a virtual reality experience. If it sounds odd to create a sweeping vision of the future and then set a novel in Disney World, well, it is odd. The novel is entertaining for the most part, but not particularly strong. Several of the flashbacks seem intended just to develop Doctorow's idea of "The Bitchun Society" rather than to move along the story. By the end of the book, I didn't care much about the main character, which is always a problem. Still, it a was fairly entertaining read, even if the world view was more interesting than the plot.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

2008-11-25T11:44:00.000-06:00

by Baroness Orczy

Several years ago I saw the 1934 movie adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was based on the play that was in turn based on the original novel by Baroness Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi. Let's just call her Baroness Orczy for short. The movie was silly and didn't appeal much to the modern viewer, but the story itself had a lot of promise. It tells the adventurous tale of a secret organization of young English men who smuggled French aristocrats out of Paris during the bloody revolution in order to avoid more senseless killing. Their enigmatic and fearless leader was a man of mystery, known only by his assumed name: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Despite its title, the novel mostly follows the viewpoint of Lady Marguerite Blakeney, a French actress who married an English baronet. Her brother is exposed as one of the band of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and an evil French agent forces her to help him discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel in exchange for her brother's life. The story has plenty of twists and turns, and while most of them are fairly obvious, they are still enjoyable. The reader figures out who the Scarlet Pimpernel is long before Lady Blakeney, and even the surprise ending isn't much of a surprise. This is straight-forward spy stuff. The bad guys are obviously bad and the good guys are obviously good. There is also a fair amount of editorializing by the author, a Hungarian who lived in both France and England. Baroness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel around the turn of the 20th Century, and she lauds the heroic English while condemning the violent French revolutionary government. But none of this overly detracts from the exciting story.

I should also mention that, rather than reading this book, I listened to it as an audiobook. I found a particularly good Librivox recording of the book ready by Karen Savage, who mercifully knew French and did not butcher the French names and dialogue. Kudos to her and to the Librivox project.

Stardust

2008-11-14T21:14:00.001-06:00

by Neil Gaiman

This is one of those books I have been meaning to read at some point, but I only just rememberd to check it out of the local library. Stardust was made into a film last year, which was fairly decent. The book, of course, is better, but I could appreciate some of the quirky elements the screenwriters imported from the book that gave the movie its signature Neil Gaiman feel. Gaiman has a knack for writing fantastical stories that are infused with fairy tales and mythology and yet do not take themselves too seriously. Stardust was amusing and a very fast read. Most of all, it was very enjoyable. (I actually missed my stop when I read it on the bus this week!)

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

2008-05-19T08:36:00.004-05:00

by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I love history books that let the reader get to know some of the most fascinating characters in history. For that reason, I really enjoyed Team of Rivals. Not only does it explore the character and strategies of President Lincoln, it also explores the personalities and traits of some of the other great men of that generation.

When Lincoln was running for the presidency, he was the long-shot, darkhorse candidate. Most people thought William Henry Seward would easily get the nomination of the new Republican Party, and if not him, then Salmon Chase or Edward Bates. But Lincoln cleverly positioned himself, from the frontier of America, to swoop in and clinch the nomination when Seward faltered in the end. But that wouldn't be very remarkable, if he didn't immediately thereafter bring all of his former rivals into his cabinet. Some of them came kicking and screaming; others came out of a sense of duty; still others came because they saw a chance to grab the next presidential nomination. But in the end, they call came to respect and admire the man whom they initially thought was a simple, unrefined country lawyer.

Throughout the course of the book I came to appreciate the roles these men played during the crucial period of the American Civil War. I admired Secretary of State William Seward's selfless willingness to support the man who had the position Seward should have won. I appreciated the dogmatic hard work and gruff exterior of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. I was impressed by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles' transformation of the American Navy from a few dozen dilapidated ships to a modern superpower. I was somewhat disgusted by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase's perpetual back-stabbing and self-righteousness as he tried (unsuccessfully) to outmaneuver Lincoln politically. And I was touched by the sacrifice of Attorney General Edward Bates as he was separated from his family and worked hard until he was over 70.

However, even though there are many great men and women with important roles in this period of American history, the book's view of the other men merely serves to reinforce the monolithic character of Lincoln himself. We usually think of him as Honest Abe, but that doesn't mean he was simple. He managed to cobble together an enormously talented cabinet during a time when traitors and Southern sympathizers literally threatened to tear the government and military apart. He played his rivals off each other and held together the newly formed Republican Party, which threatened to split at any moment. His unshakable faith in the Union and his own abilities was contagious, bolstering his cabinet members and the soldiers he repeatedly visited in the field. And his refusal to hold grudges diffused many situations and allowed him to win over many of his most bitter critics. As his formal rivals, who quickly became his colleagues and supporters, came to know Abraham Lincoln, they reached the same conclusion that I reached: that Lincoln was the best (and perhaps only) man to bring the country safely through that crisis. Doris Kearns Goodwin is a fine historical writer. She is obviously a Lincoln fan, and after reading Team of Rivals, I have to agree.

Howl's Moving Castle

2008-03-02T07:46:00.004-06:00

by Diana Wynne Jones
I didn't even know about this book until Hayao Miyazaki made a movie version. The film was quite good in its own right, but now that I have read the book, I realize that he made quite a few changes that I can't exactly explain. And as is almost always the case in books adapted to movies, the book is better.

Howl's Moving Castle follows the story of Sophie, a young woman who works in a hat shop. Her sisters have left and were leading exciting lives, but as the dutiful oldest daughter, Sophie felt trapped in her tedious world. All that changes when the Witch of the Waste comes to the shop and becomes angry with Sophie. The Witch curses Sophie, turning her into an old woman, and Sophie flees before her family can discover what happened to her. In desperation, she eventually takes up residence in the strange moving castle that roams around the town, said to be owned by the evil Wizard Howl. In the castle, Sophie meets Wizard Howl and many other colorful figures, and has plenty of adventures of her own.

A lot of the characters and subplots in Howl's Moving Castle are fairly confusing, but it all comes together in the end. I thought the book was extremely imaginative, and it has a very humorous tone; the characters are genuinely funny and vivid. I'd recommend this book to anyone, both young and old.

The Big Over Easy

2007-12-06T09:55:00.001-06:00

by Jasper Fforde
Having previously read Jasper Fforde's whimsical novel The Eyre Affair, I knew a little of what to expect when I opened The Big Over Easy. Sure enough, I was once again immersed in an alternate history filled with fantastical characters, murderous plots, and continual literary references. Fforde likes to create a world in which literary knowledge is useful in the professional world, which is surely the most fantastical part of his stories.

The Big Over Easy follows Jack Spratt and Mary Mary from the Nursery Crime Division, who are investigating the suspicious death of Humpty Dumpty, who as you imagine, is actually a big egg. The stuff of nursery rhymes and fables is freely mixed with traditional pulp mystery elements, including corrupt corporate schemes, sordid affairs, and plenty of plot twists. The Big Easy is an entertaining and quick read, with plenty of familiar characters and humorous references, but less of the snootiness of The Eyre Affair.

Midshipman's Hope

2007-10-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

by David Feintuch
Midshipman's Hope is a military/sci-fi novel that does a good job creating a universe in which humans travel to and colonize other planets using spaceships the same way our ancestors used sailing vessels. Those ships carry cargo and passengers through the depths of space for months on end, and are manned by a crew of sailors and officers similar to the naval tradition. Feintuch tells the story of Nicholas Seafort, a young midshipman who becomes the senior officer on the ship after disasters and illness kill the captain and his lieutenants. He is forced to continue the voyage to the planet Hope as his duty as an officer, even though he feels he is unqualified to command.

Midshipman's Hope succeeds mainly through its frank portrayal of the self-doubts of its main character and narrator, as well as the interpersonal dynamics of a small ship alone in space. Even though the setting is in the future, the book gave me a hint as to what sailing the seas would have been like five hundred years ago. Like most science fiction books, the author engages in some amateur sociological predictions when he describes the government and the hierarchy of the military, but it generally contributes to the story rather than distract from it. By the end of the book it is clear that there is more to come (it is the first in a series), but there is still a fairly satisfying ending in which Seafort comes to grips with his own decisions and vanquishes a few personal demons. Midshipman's Hope is a very good science-fiction/military novel in the tradition, and an enjoyable read.

The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun

2007-09-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

This is actually my first experience in Lilian Jackson Braun's popular The Cat Who series. I was familiar the titles, but The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell was the first time I actually read one of the series. Sadly, it may be the last one I read, because I thought it was poorly written and somewhat pointless.

I gather that every Cat Who book follows the character of James Qwilleran, a writer who inherited a fortune and spends most of his time talking with friends, giving away money, and obsessing over his two cats, KoKo and Yum Yum. This could be a nice set-up for an unlikely detective protagonist (a la Miss Marple or Hercules Poirot) but this book utterly fails to deliver. There are quite few mysteries, including three murders, several plots, and not little intrigue. But for some reason Ms. Braun never has her protagonist solve any of those mysteries. Qwilleran is content feeding his cats and eating in fine restaurants while people get knocked off around him. Several of the mysteries in this book are never really explained; the story just goes on and everyone seems to forget about them.

I think, now that I have read this book, that I may be forced to read one of Braun's earlier Cat Who novels to see if this book is truly representative of the series. I hope that the books are usually higher quality, and that the series just jumped the shark rather than being of poor quality to begin with. Ms. Braun is known for her light-hearted writing, and it was nice to read a mystery that wasn't a sordid affair full of misery, sex, and violence. But I was hoping for a little more plot.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

2007-08-06T15:04:00.000-05:00

The seventh and final installment in this worldwide phenomenon of young adult literature brings the Harry Potter series to a satisfying close. Having improved as a writer since Book 1, Rowling capably ties up almost all the loose ends in this magical tale of good versus evil. One thing with which I was impressed was how merciless Rowling was with the characters and conventions she had built up in the previous six books. Many major characters die, and the traditional school year rhythm of the series is immediately dispensed with as Harry, Ron, and Hermione take on the most powerful evil wizard, Lord Voldemort. It is not a perfect book, but fans of the series will generally not be disappointed. In fact, naysayers of the series might reconsider their criticism as the last book breaks even the magical Harry Potter mold. With Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the integrity of the series is safe, virtually guaranteeing its continued popularity for several decades to come.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

2007-07-16T12:18:00.000-05:00

Lord of Light is an epic novel that blends elements of fantasy and science fiction into a sprawling narrative of deities, wars, and religion. Set on a faraway planet after the destruction of Earth, Lord of Light follows the rebellion of the Buddha, Sam, against the gods. In this book, the gods are merely the first colonists on that planet. In order to subdue the native inhabitants of that world (called "demons" in the book), the humans gave themselves vast powers through genetic engineering and technological means. Those first colonists then used those powers, along with "reincarnation machines," to rule over the human inhabitants of the planet. Hinduism is used as both religion and a government, but the main character, Sam, tries to overthrow that system with a new religion -- Buddhism.

Like Roger Zelazny's Amber series, Lord of Light is mostly fantasy with some technological undercurrents. But Lord of Light remains a singular work for how it weaves magic with science and religion with politics. This is one of Zelazny's best-known novels, and while I enjoy reading his Amber series more, I have to admit that Lord of Light is his best work overall.

In Enemy Hands by David Weber

2007-06-13T15:12:00.000-05:00

I have previously only reviewed the first book in the Honor Harrington series, but I have continued to read the sequels to On Basilisk Station. In my opinion, the first few sequels are fairly decent, but number four in the series was absolutely abysmal. However, the following books were okay, so I kept reading. In my view, Weber can only tell one story -- that of the hero that triumphs against all odds, usually with spaceships and explosions. It's a great story, and he tells it well, but it gets a little repetitive.

In Enemy Hands, the seventh book in the series, finally tells a different story. However, it takes several hundred pages to get the plot moving, which weakens what would otherwise be a breath of fresh air in a stale series. During the war with the People's Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington and some of her senior officers are captured and shipped to a secret prison planet. Of course they plan an escape, but this book ends in something of a cliff-hanger, so readers will have to continue on to book eight, Echoes of Honor, to see the conclusion.

I liked that David Weber took his characters in new directions, but there are about 300 pages in In Enemy Hands that I wanted to skip because it was boring or mostly irrelevant. Additionally, this book really should go together with book eight because they have the same story arc. Weber has big ideas, but the story gets too unwieldy at times and he spends too much time developing minor characters. Still, the new story direction is probably enough for me to keep reading

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

2007-05-18T13:45:00.000-05:00

The Eyre Affair, the first book in the Thursday Next series, is an imaginative mystery novel set in an alternate reality. Though many of the every day parts of this imagined world are the same as our, there are constant references to fantastical elements. For example, people still travel by zeppelin, time travel is possible, and people with literature degrees can actually get a job.

In Fforde's creative universe, it is possible to enter literary works and alter the plot. The main character, detective Thursday Next, is part of the literary police charged with protecting English literature. She fights evil-doers with a fast trigger finger, quick wit, and a commanding knowledge of books. Basically, this novel is every librarian's dream. The best scenes in this book are those meshed into scenes from classic literature, such as Jane Eyre. Reading The Eyre Affair almost made me grateful for my high school English class. Almost. It really isn't fine writing, but it's clever and engaging, and smart enough to be worth your while.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

2007-04-01T07:57:00.000-05:00

Despite my affinity for science fiction, I have never read much by one of the genre's more famous writers, Arthur C. Clarke. It may be that watching 2001: A Space Odyssey gave me a skewed view of what his books were like, or it may have been that I never found his books at the library. At any rate, my wife picked this book up at a used book store and recommended it to me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Arthur C. Clarke, along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, formed the "Big Three" of science fiction. Rendezvous with Rama is a classic, straight-forward book about mankind's first encounter with evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, in the form of an enormous spinning cylinder passing through our solar system. As an exploration team investigates the cylinder, Clarke spins a tale of a self-contained world traveling the galaxy for a mysterious purpose. Most notable about this book is the hard science foundation for the story -- there are no transporter beams or warp drives. All the technology Clarke writes about is possible under current scientific theory. The novel won both a Hugo and a Nebula award, and deserves its reputation as a science fiction classic.

Gilgamesh

2007-03-15T21:09:00.000-05:00

I read the new English translation of this Babylonian mythology, which was very accessible and easy to read. Steven Mitchell's translation is very well done. It surprises me how little I know about the traditions of ancient civilizations other than the Greeks, Romans, and the Egyptians. The tale of Gilgamesh, who was two thirds god and one third man, has some very interesting mythological elements. I suspect that its sexual content is the only thing that keeps it out of high school curriculums -- the Babylonians apparently were not a shy bunch. I enjoyed reading Gilgamesh and comparing it to other stories from Norse mythology, the Old Testament, Native American traditions, and Greco-Roman mythology.

2006-09-30T12:59:00.001-05:00

Honor Harrington on Basilisk Station
by David Weber

The good news is that this book is a great balance between light summer reading and thought-provoking literature. The action moves along at a quick pace, and author David Weber throws in plenty of political and strategic intrigue to make it interesting. The bad news is that this book is the first in a series of at least a dozen books. And I liked the book enough that I may find myself forced to follow the whole series. Drat.

2006-08-23T22:31:00.000-05:00

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads
by Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden

This quirky book has serious advice in a bizarre format. It was written like an old-school Boy Scout manual, with sketch drawings and how-to diagrams. Be Prepared offers child-rearing advice like a handyman's catalog. Some of the more entertaining (but still safe) suggestions including using washing machine vibrations to put your kid to sleep, using reggae music to soothe your baby, and keeping a trash can outside the baby's window for immediate removal of hazardous waste.

2006-07-21T22:38:00.000-05:00

The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I first read The Scarlet Letter in the tenth grade. I didn't like it much then, and I forgot most of the plot. My second reading of the book was significantly different. I was gripped by the book's march towards the ruin of the main characters. It was like a car wreck in slow motion -- I was simultaneously repulsed by the impending doom and entranced by Hawthorne's elegant prose. Finishing the book was an exquisite agony, and the tragic ending was somehow both liberating and triumphant. Such books are wasted on the young.

2006-07-02T22:39:00.000-05:00

Joseph Smith
by Robert V. Remini

Robert Remini is a respected authority on the Jacksonian Era, having written a well-known three-volume biography of Andrew Jackson himself. In approaching the life of the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, Remini looks at Smith’s life as a product of the Jacksonian Era, Manifest Destiny, and the Second Great Awakening. This approach is simultaneously Remini’s greatest strength and weaknesses. On the one hand, this approach provides a more impartial view of Joseph Smith than is often exhibited in his biographies. On the other hand, Remini’s focus on the man through his time period often appears forced and disjointed. Remini makes several small but significant factual errors in the book, but these do not distract from the story. Joseph Smith is short (less than 200 pages), which also is a strength and a weakness. The book is very accessible to the casual reader, but it lacks some of the depth of treatment required to fully analyze the short life of a fascinating character in American history.

2006-06-29T22:43:00.000-05:00

Trojan Odyssey
by Clive Cussler

Essentially the swan song of the Dirk Pitt series, Clive Cussler’s Trojan Odyssey deals considerably more with character development (or more appropriately, retirement) than with plot. The soap opera-like appearance of his long lost children in the previous book, Valhalla Rising, introduced new characters to play with, but these characters are mostly tertiary. Cussler is careful to stage a scene with Kurt Austin, another character that would later have his own series. Pitt gets promoted to the head of NUMA and maries Loren Smith, and they live happily ever after. While it’s always fun to see what happens to well-known characters, I thought this was one of the weakest books I’ve every read by Cussler. He is usually rather thorough and careful to make the action believable, but several of the scenes in Trojan Odyssey are patently absurd. Perhaps he felt he could get away with it since readers familiar with the characters will feel some sentimentality, but I think it weakens the book.

2006-06-02T22:45:00.000-05:00

Valhalla Rising
by Clive Cussler

This is a classic Dirk Pitt adventure with a Viking flavor, complete with evil multinational conglomerate and a cameo appearance by Cussler himself, who often appears in his own novels. In the novel, Dirk Pitt prevents a terrorist attack in New York, in which terrorists plan to blow up the World Trade Center. (Someone should perhaps let them know that their intelligence is about five years old.) However, the book departs from classic Dirk Pitt formula at the end when Pitt’s long-lost children appear. It’s all to set up the end of the Dirk Pitt series, but it’s a little out of the blue and doesn’t quite work with the book.

2006-05-26T22:46:00.000-05:00

Persuasion
by Jane Austen

The last of Jane Austen’s novels, I feel that Persuasion is her most mature and most complete work. While it isn’t as celebrated as Austen’s better-known work, Pride and Prejudice, it nonetheless contains a compelling character-driven story. Whereas Pride and Prejudice promises that people can change, Persuasion tells the tale of two people whose love does not change after many years. And even though it isn’t usually known as such, I think the story in Persuasion is even more romantic than that of Pride and Prejudice.

2006-05-07T22:48:00.000-05:00

The Peacegiver
by James L. Farrell

In The Peacegiver, author James Farrell attempted an interesting feat: explain profound doctrinal concepts in an accessible format through character development and dialog. While the story focuses on a broken marriage, Farrell attempts to show through the main character how the gospel of Jesus Christ can help heal all human relationships. It wasn't completely effective in my view, but I appreciated the attempt to explain things in an understandable way. It is very hard to convey deeply personal meaning in writing, but Farrell made a good attempt.

2006-04-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

Eldest
by Christopher Paollini

In the second book in his debut Inheritance trilogy, this young author continues to develop the main characters in their archetypal story arc. I was occasionally reminded while reading Eldest, somewhat to my annoyance, that it was indeed a book for young adults written by a young adult. Some parts are oversimplified, trite, or just plain juvenile. But Paollini is definitely maturing as a writer. This book opens up into three general story lines, and while it mostly stays with the main character, Eragon, it had an additional level of complexity that I appreciated. The trilogy is shaping up to be a solid initial offering to the canon of fantasy novels and Paollini's writing career looks rosier than ever.

2006-03-24T22:50:00.000-06:00

Selected Writings of Soren T. Harward: Vol 3: 100 Hour Board

Though I first read him under the pseudonym “La Almeja” and later “The Keeper,” Soren will always be Misaneroth in my mind. Writing under these pen names for more than half a decade, Soren amassed an amazing array of answers to an extremely wide variety of questions and topics. While he never lost his role on the 100 Hour Board as the nut-and-bolts technical guru, his authority extended to literature, film, languages, politics, pop culture, and beyond. Reading his compiled 100 Hour Board answers was a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me, since my tenure on the Board was within his, and I came away with a newfound realization that Soren is as much a Renaissance Man as I have ever known.

2006-03-07T22:51:00.000-06:00

Eragon
by Christopher Paollini

In his first book, Paollini creates a mythological world full of dragons, wizards, complete with an evil king and magic sword. Sounds like all the ingredients for a fantasy novel to me. In fact, it sounds like almost every other fantasy novel I've read. While I didn't find Eragon particularly remarkable, it is reasonably good as young adult fiction goes. Young adult novels are essentially like normal novels, but the themes are distilled and simplified for the younger readers. This generally makes the plot rather transparent, but I have to remind myself that I'm a wee bit older than the intended audience. Eragon was okay, and with the sequel already in print, its young author has a promising career ahead of him.

2006-03-03T22:52:00.000-06:00

Old Man's War
by John Scalzi

Every good sci-fi novel is based around an idea; in Old Man's War, the idea is that aging citizens of Earth sign up for for military service rather than growing old. They are given rejuvenated bodies and sent to defend the human colonies from the most violent and vicious alien species in the universe. Most of them will die before their time is up, but they just might live long enough to get their own homestead in the colonies and start their lives again. In the book, hundreds of thousands of the elderly choose this option every year rather than face a slow death. But they don't have a clue of what awaits them.

Old Man's War is a clear knock-off of Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel Starship Troopers. To that extent the novel is weak, but it gains its own strength in its discussion of aging, life, death, and what it is to be human. Scalzi has written a second novel, The Ghost Brigades, that also takes place in his created universe, and he plans at least a third novel to fill out the series. I suspect that Old Man's War will be stronger when taken together as part of the saga, but it is still a decent read on its own.

2006-02-15T22:53:00.000-06:00

The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

I resisted reading this book when it was hyped a couple years ago. Now that there is a movie coming out, however, I figured I had to read it. It was a fast-paced read that took me just a couple days to finish, even with my course load. Dan Brown's strength lies in tying a bunch of trivia and tidbits into one coherent yarn, and The Da Vinci Code is his best work in that respect. It has the potential to make a very exciting movie; I might even see it in the theater.

2006-02-10T22:54:00.000-06:00

Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen

I want to see the movie version of this book at some point, so I had to read it before I saw the film. It's Austen's first published novel, and I think it's a little less refined than her later novels. But it contains that same understated sarcasm that made me like Pride and Prejudice, so even though I didn't get too attached to the characters, I enjoyed the book.

2006-01-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

1776
by David McCullough

I received this book for my birthday in October but didn't have time to touch it until Christmas break. I confess I am a history nut, so I loved the subject material more than most. But McCullough has an ability to make the events come to life before the readers eyes, and even people who failed history class would enjoy this account of the improbable beginning of this nation.

2005-12-25T22:56:00.000-06:00

A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens

I decided to read this during the holiday season, and I finished it on Christmas Eve. Although Dickens has become largely unpopular among American readers due to frequent assignments in school, he has remained one of my favorite authors. I have seen several movie versions of this book, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the movie dialog had been lifted almost verbatim from the text of the novel. It's a quick read, and I suggest it any time of the year.

2005-11-02T22:56:00.000-06:00

Starship Troopers
by Robert Heinlein

Don’t judge this book by the movie. The movie was action-rubbish. The book is an exercise in political ideas and the description of a hypothetical interstellar war from the perspective of a foot soldier. It just had the unfortunate luck of being picked up by moviemakers that did a poor job with it. This is one of my favorite Heinlein books, with his classic mix of space, ideology, and human nature. It was very controversial when it was first published, and although teachers no longer ban it from libraries, the ideas about suffrage, rights, and citizenship are still intriguing.

2005-09-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

Thirteen at Dinner
by Agatha Christie

The original gran dame of mystery, Agatha Christie is always a good read. I particularly like her Hercules Poirot novels about the fussy little Belgian detective and his unconventional approach to solving murders. I think series like Monk are all based on Christie’s novels. Thirteen at Dinner involves the blatant murder of Lord Edgware by his wife. Or was it? Before the novel is done, almost everyone is under suspicion. This book is a fun mystery and this author is one of the greats.

2005-09-21T22:58:00.000-05:00

Memoria de mis putas tristes
by Gabriel García Márquez

This bittersweet short novel is a sensitive look at growing old and finding love. Its harsh title (Memory of My Sad Whores) belies its nostalgic feel. Told from the point of view of a 90-year-old man who falls in love for the first time, the novel mixes in beautiful notions of aging, beauty, and love with conflicting themes of death, obsession, and self-destruction. Like García Márquez's most famous novel, Cien años de soledad, Memoria de mis putas tristes is not for most readers. But his imagery is sublime and his account of growing old is unforgettable.

2005-08-28T23:00:00.000-05:00

The Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis

This series of fictional correspondence is one of Lewis' most famous works. It is a splendid study on human nature and offers both insight and humor to all, regardless of their faith. My favorite line comes from Screwtape, when he counsels his tempter nephew about how to deal with his subject's humility: "Have you drawn his attention to the fact?"

2005-08-23T23:01:00.000-05:00

Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception
by Eoin Colfer

The fourth book in this imaginative children’s series by Irish author Eoin Colfer continues the saga of the boy genius and criminal mastermind. Astute readers will correctly surmise from the title that it includes the return of Artemis’ fairy nemesis Opal Koboi. The third book left Artemis without any memory of the fairy people or their advanced technology, and his process of “re-remembering” is one of the best parts of the book. It’s a fun adventure and will no doubt please fans of the series.

2005-08-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

John Adams
by David McCullough

Several people have recommended 1776 to me lately, but I haven’t been able to get that book from the library yet. So I decided to read McCullough’s previous book John Adams first. You would think that a history book with more than 700 pages would put you to sleep, but McCullough’s book is engaging and John Adams was a fascinating man. I was most impressed with Abigail Adams, who was his equal in every respect. Their letters, though not flowery or sappy, convey the greatest sense of mutual respect, love, and admiration. Adams is frequently relegated to a secondary position among the Founding Fathers, behind Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. And yet he was absolutely instrumental in every stage of the game, and the reader comes away with the realization that America would have been a different country without Adams’ tireless efforts and service. The book is great, but the man is greater.

2005-07-30T23:03:00.000-05:00

Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman

This book follows the experience of Richard Mayhew, and unremarkable fellow who is sucked into a dark, shadow version of London that exists beneath the city's streets. Richard soon finds himself in a magical, darker, and more dangerous London than he had previously known. Gaiman plays with the concept of characters ceasing to exist in one world while they appear in others, and idea dealt with by several authors such as Terry Pratchett in Mort. While I didn't find the novel so spectacularly imaginative as some, I enjoyed several parts, particularly the Son of the Morning character.

2005-07-24T23:04:00.000-05:00

Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
by Gabriel García Márquez

I have wanted to read this book, the most famous of all García Márquez’s works, for quite some time. I read his shorter novel El coronel no tiene quien le escriba during my undergrad, and I thought García Márquez was truly a master of the Spanish language. Tackling Cien años de soledad, at more than 500 pages, was a bit more ambitious than I could afford while going to school, so I finally read it this summer. It follows the century-long history of the Buendía family and the Colombian town of Macondo that they help found. It starts out pure and innocent, just as each of the characters do, and I was immensely entertained as corruption such as politics, religion, and science are introduced. However, the element that fascinated me the most was that of “realismo mágico, or magic realism. Throughout the novel fantastic events occur with all the fanfare of everyday matters.

There is an excellent translation of Cien años de soledad by Gregory Rabassa, but I don’t necessarily recommend this book to any reader. Despite my fascination with the magical realism in the book, several of the themes will not appeal to many readers. The incestuous tendencies of the Buendía family and the sexual initiations of the males are not necessarily something I think everyone should read. But García Márquez, a Nobel Prize-winning author, includes these elements because the are as much a part of life in Latin America as the rest of the novel. For readers who enjoy magical and surreal elements and can take some of the rougher themes in the appropriate context, Cien años de soledad is a rich and rewarding book.

2005-07-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by J.K. Rowling

The sixth book in this series of seven brought events to an ominous end, clearly prepping for the final showdown in book seven. I was particularly happy to see Rowling follow the hero archetype as the plot progressed. Breaking away from those universal concepts is a great way to kill a series (hint: George Lucas), so Half-Blood Prince succeeded in that respect. What perhaps surprised me the most was the actual mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince was; Rowling chose to deal with his identity in a very different manner than I expected. As with the previous book, there were some elements I found tedious—in this book it was all the hooking up and going out with each other—but I realize I am not the target audience. The end seemed to imply a very different seventh book, which I am somewhat reluctant to accept because any drastic break from the formats of the first six books would eliminate a lot of the appeal of the books. But I won’t make any predictions yet; Rowling has already shown herself well-capable of surprising us all. My final judgement: Half-Blood Prince was good, and unless she really screws up on book seven, Rowling will deliver a successful complete series.

2005-07-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter books are pretty good. I started reading them before they got big in the U.S., and I liked them. They're not necessarily fine literature, but they're fun books to read with my sibs. The hype surrounding the series and the fans (who border on Star Trek fanaticism) have detracted from a very enjoyable bunch of books. I read this book when it first came out, and to be honest, I didn't like it much. It had too much capitalized print, too much teenage angst, and too many bad choices made by the main characters. The second time around I was able to appreciate what Rowling was trying to do, and I think I didn't like it the first time for the same reasons that I didn't like The Empire Strikes Back the first time I saw it—the bad guys basically win. But that’s the disadvantage of every middle book, and the series is clearly setting up for the final two books. Order of the Phoenix is pretty good, although the more angst-ridden parts still annoyed me. It got me excited to read the new book, and since it’s coming out in about a week, I won’t have to wait too long.

2005-06-18T23:06:00.000-05:00

Life in the Law: Answering God's Interrogatories
edited by Galen L. Fletcher and Jane H. Wise

I started reading this collection of addresses last fall when The Redhead found a volume of it at her work in the American University Law School library. I eventually had to return the volume when we moved back to Provo, Utah, but seeing how much I liked the book, The Redhead got me a copy when I graduated. It includes remarks from many well-known LDS lawyers such as J. Reuben Clark Jr., Rex E. Lee, Dallin H. Oaks, and James E. Faust, and their perspectives of how their faith fits with the law. I would recommend this book to anyone in the legal field, regardless of religious persuasion, who seeks to reconcile their values with their profession.

2005-06-12T23:08:00.000-05:00

The Sovereign Stone Trilogy
By Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

The Redhead suggested these well-known fantasy authors after reading theirDeathgate Cycle books. The Sovereign Stone trilogy consists of Well of Darkness, Guardians of the Lost, and Journey into the Void. I found the entire trilogy to be rather unsatisfying, although the authors did create a complex and fascinating world in the novels. After reading the first book, I didn’t know who was supposed to triumph in the end because all of the characters had profound flaws. I was surprised when no one won and everyone died—perhaps a more realistic ending, but somewhat unexpected. While horridly depressing, the first book did a masterful job at developing the history and motivation behind an extremely bad villain who came back in the last two novels. If George Lucas had done a similarly good job in developing Anakin Skywalker’s demise, all three movies in the new Star Wars trilogy would have won Oscars. Sadly, this achievement was insufficient to save the trilogy, and the Sovereign Stone never attained any level beyond moderately interesting.

2005-06-04T23:09:00.000-05:00

A Series of Unfortunate Events
"The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"
by Lemony Snicket

I read the first three books in the series, which made up the material covered in the recent film. I don't think I'll read the rest of the series—I found it to be repetitive and not nearly as clever as I thought it would be. There are a few little gems here and there from Lemony Snicket, the fictional author, but not enough to make reading worthwhile. The whole series is the anti-happy ending, but the novelty soon wears off and each unfortunate event becomes drearier than the next. I am told that the later books are much better, but it's a shame that it took 13 books to get to that point.

2005-06-01T23:11:00.000-05:00

Angels and Demons
by Dan Brown

A moderately entertaining thriller about an ancient secret society threatening to blow up the Vatican during a papal enclave. The book has lost some of its potency after the election of Pope Benedict XVI because the media was permitted to see more of the process than ever before, but it is still full of entertaining conjectures. Dan Brown does what he does best, which is take many obscure facts and spin an somewhat believable yarn. My previous experience with reading Dan Brown (Digital Fortress) was less-than stellar, so I thought this book was pretty decent, even though the ending was a little weak.

2005-05-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

New Spring
by Robert Jordan

Fans of the Wheel of Time series will recognize this as the prequel to the never-ending fantasy epic. I thought it might answer some questions I had about some of the characters' histories, but just like that last few books Jordan has written, it left me with more questions than answers.

2005-05-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

Inca Gold
by Clive Cussler

Filled with impossible action sequences, witty one-liners, cool gadgets, and classic cars, Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels are straight pulpy enjoyment. It's James Bond without the sex, and a fun summer read.