bragan's eclectic mishmash 2012

Hello! Just following the crowd over here and getting settled in. I will be back at the start of the new year. I've decided to call this thread "bragan's eclectic mishmash," because that really is the best way to describe my reading. I'm eager to see what the next year's eclectic mishmash will end up looking like!

So am I...

Stay tuned!

My first book of the year is going a little slower than expected, but hopefully it won't take me too much longer. I am rather eager to get to the whole year's worth of reading. :)

A very well titled thread

If my reading is anything like last year's, it will be! And if anything, I suspect this year will be even more so.

In Bulgarian mishmash is the name of a food -- one that I like quite a lot (and like experimenting with -- it is kinda open to experimentation). Although it is used in the same way as in English as well as a secondary meaning. :)

Cool, I have learned something new! Also, I am now hungry for mishmash, and I don't even know what it is. Well, probably I'm just hungry, period.

(Oh, OK, I just looked it up. That does sound pretty good to me right now!)

And I've now finished my first book for the year! Kind of an odd one to start out with, really.

1. Engleby by Sebastian Faulks



This is the story of Mike Engleby, who, when we first encounter him, is a student at "an ancient university" (obviously Cambridge, although it's never named), where his main activities seem to be drinking, popping pills, keeping to himself, thinking detached thoughts about the lives around him, and behaving in a rather stalker-ish fashion toward a girl he's interested in... and about whose later disappearance he may or may not know more than he's telling anyone.

I have such mixed feelings about this one. For most of the first hundred pages or so, I felt highly disappointed. It was well-written, but everything about it, including the description on the front cover, had led me to expect a fascinatingly twisty main character, and I just wasn't finding him interesting at all. Some of his observations were somewhat insightful, some of his backstory depressing, and some of his behavior vaguely creepy, but none of it was particularly affecting or engaging. Mostly, he struck me as pretentious and prematurely world-weary in that way that's so common among students, and which can be so annoying to those of us who have been there and grown out of it. As I read on, though, both the character and the novel itself grew on me. I won't say too much about its central premise, in the interest of keeping things spoiler-free, but my feelings about that are very mixed, too. I think ultimately it works better than it seems like it ought to, but I do have several issues with it all. And then in the end, the book suddenly starts gazing into its own navel in a rather irritating way. Still, it left me with the feeling that I'd at least just read something interesting, which is a lot more than I expected fifty pages in.

Rating: This one's problematic. Call it 3.5/5.

Hi bragan – interesting selection for your first book of 2012. Sounds like something I'll pass on for now although the setting has definite appeal.

Yeah, not sure why I picked that one just now, except that it had been sitting there giving me "are you going to read me soon?" looks for a while. Maybe because it was coming up on its first anniversary on the TBR pile and it seemed like time to get it off. In any case, I honestly can't say whether I'd recommend it to anyone or not. Maybe very provisionally.

2. Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA by Nada Prouty



Nada Prouty was born in Lebanon and grew up in a war zone with abusive parents who treated their daughters as little more than annoying failed attempts at creating a son. She immigrated to the US looking for an education and a better life, and eventually joined first the FBI, where her native knowledge of Arabic and Arab culture made her a useful agent on an anti-terrorism squad, and later the CIA, where she performed several dangerous undercover missions in Iraq. Her career was highly successful... until she was accused, on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, of being a spy for Hezbollah. She was threatened into pleading guilty to charges that led to the loss of her career and the revocation of her US citizenship and was branded a traitor to her county in the media, before being fully exonerated by later investigations.

Prouty's writing is okay, but not particularly polished, and at first I wasn't feeling terribly impressed, but by the time I was a chapter or two in I found myself utterly absorbed in her story. Her recollections of what it was like to grow up in Lebanon and her early experiences of the US were fascinating, and she tells some interestingly hair-raising (although carefully vague-on-the-details) stories about her CIA missions. Her description of her career in the FBI did a remarkable job of cutting through my TV-induced conceptions of that agency and giving me a very real feel for what it's like to get up every morning and conduct anti-terrorism investigations as your workaday job -- a job that, like any other, includes satisfying successes, annoying snafus, and the occasional jerky co-worker. And her discussion of her judicial railroading and the impact that it had on her life is maddening and depressing, but sadly all too believable, and, in the end, it says something about what the US has become in this last War on Terror decade that I think we all need to hear.

I do have to wonder, perhaps unfairly, if Prouty is exaggerating one or two things just a little. Her family, the way she describes them, is almost too cartoonishly horrible to be believed, a sort of real-life version of Harry Potter's Dursleys. And she depicts herself -- although, pleasantly, without coming across as arrogant -- as a super-patriotic, catch-all-the-bad-guys workaholic in both her FBI and CIA careers, something which may reflect a bit of understandable defensiveness on her part. But even allowing for that possibility, her story is gripping, moving, and very important. I may actually have gotten a little teary-eyed at the end.

Rating: 4.5/5

(Note: This was my Early Reviewers book from the December batch. I almost didn't request it, as it happens, but I'm very glad I did!)

Hi bragan - I saw your intro in that thread in this group and thought I'd stop by here. I don't know if you've read The Collector*, but that is what Engelby reminded me of - unreliable narrator, though not really in a surprising or 'ooh, I didn't see that coming' way. (*I took a quick look and saw we've got a fair amount of overlap in our libraries but got lazy and didn't delve into specifics.)

-yes, realise it is Engleby, but the touchstone is only working when I type Engelby. Sigh.

I haven't read The Collector yet, but it is on my wishlist. (Along with 500+ other books. Sigh.) I thought Engleby was an interesting example of an unreliable narrator, although I still can't quite decide how well it worked for me. None of the revelations in it surprised me, but then, I wasn't sure they were meant to. Certainly, it seemed to be going for something other than shock value, which is not a bad thing. Whatever my feelings about the book, though, I do think the unreliable narrator can be a terrific device when it's handled well, which is mostly why I picked up Engleby in the first place.

(And, huh, the touchstones are working with the correct spelling for me, now. Or at least they seem to be. I wonder what happened for you? Touchstones, too, can be very unreliable.)

3. Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr.



Roy Blount , Jr. goes through the alphabet letter by letter, talking about whatever words and phrases happen to catch his attention. He delves into etymologies, comments on usage, shares snippets of writing (his own and others') that he particularly likes or dislikes, makes jokes, and talks a great deal about the sounds of words and his appreciation for the ones that sound somehow appropriate for their meanings or connotations.

I was tremendously enthusiastic about this book at first. I mean, look at the subtitle: "The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory." How can a language lover resist a description like that? "Wow," I was saying to myself by the time I got through the introduction, "here is someone who indeed knows how to squeeze the juice from language! I can practically taste all those wonderful words on my tongue!" But I quickly started to feel rather disappointed. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's all just a little too random. Or it's due to the fact that Blount's approach feels a bit too fanciful to me at some times and a bit too pedantic at others. Or that he often seems to me to be trying a little too hard to be clever and witty. Maybe it's just that his sense of humor and mine don't entirely line up.

It's not that I didn't find any of it enjoyable. It's sometimes quite funny and sometimes genuinely informative, but it just didn't quite deliver on the concentrated linguistic delight it seemed to promise.

Rating: 3.5/5

That is a bit disappointing to hear, Roy Blount Jr. is one of favorite Wait, Wait! contestants, never read any of his books though and I'll steer clear of this one.

You might like it better than I did. I wasn't at all familiar with Blount before reading this book, and I do suspect there's just something about his sense of humor I don't get on with as well as I'd like to. Or at least, something about it that I get tired of a little too quickly.

Appreciating your informative and useful reviews, Bragan.

Thank you! I always enjoy writing them.

I agree with stretch - Blount is an NPR fave of mine. I can see that with a title that ambitious it was, in a way, perhaps destined to disappoint. Still and all, it sounds like a book I'll try to pick up used if I come across it.

I really need to listen to more NPR. My experience with it is mostly limited to the podcast of This American Life. But I definitely bought the book for the title and the subject matter, not for the author. And, despite my vague disappointment, I wouldn't dis-recommend it (is that a word?) for people who think they might enjoy it, especially if you already know you like the author.

4. Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel



Jeffrey Peckerman is an uncouth, obnoxious ass. Philp Horkman is an annoyingly whitebread goody two-shoes. Their first encounter involves an altercation over a referee's call in a girls' soccer game, which leads to an incident involving the accidental theft of a lemur, which leads, somehow, to the two of them being mistaken for international terrorists, and from there on, it's just one set of ridiculously implausible wacky hijinks after another, on a global scale.

I never found this anywhere near as fall-on-the-floor funny as Dave Barry at his best, but it's entertaining enough in its own deeply silly way. It kept me smiling most of the time, anyway, and occasionally laughing out loud. What more can you ask for from this sort of book?

Rating: 4/5

(Note: This was an ER book from the November bonus batch.)

5. Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife by Lisa Miller



The scope of this book is somewhat narrower than you might expect, given the subtitle. It's not a general overview of belief in an afterlife, but is specifically about the idea of heaven in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. It includes a look at how the idea of heaven and peoples' relationship to that idea have changed over time, interspersed with snippets of conversations that the author has had with people from varying religious backgrounds. It's not quite as in-depth as I was hoping, perhaps, especially in its exploration of modern ideas about heaven, but it's readable, interesting, and occasionally thought-provoking. And yet, I can't say I found it entirely satisfying. I'm not sure why. I think part of it is that heaven is such a weird concept for me. On the surface, its appeal is obvious and strong, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. I can certainly understand why people believe in it, I just don't understand how. If that makes any sense. Maybe I was hoping that this book would offer me an enlightening new perspective on that, but I don't think it quite managed to do so. Which probably isn't the author's fault. She is clearly struggling with the concept, too. But while she, like me, is not exactly a believer, she seems to eventually find some comfort and pleasure in the visions of heaven held by the people she talks to, and to integrate some aspects of them into her own worldview. Whereas I... Well, I have to be honest, I found the whole thing deeply depressing. For an unbeliever like me, all these fiddly debates about the exact nature of heaven seem pointless and precious-time-wasting, and the many descriptions of people who deprive themselves of the joys of this life -- or even of life entirely -- in the expectation of rewards in the afterlife feel absolutely tragic. In the end, I do think it was worth reading, but mostly it's just left me feeling down.

Rating: 3.5/5

6. Pilgrim of the Sky by Natania Barron



Maddie's boyfriend Alvin is missing, presumed dead, and she's trying to move on with her life. Which proves difficult when she starts getting hints that he might still be alive, only... elsewhere. Then she falls through some kind of magic mirror and ends up in a vaguely steampunk-y alternate universe, sharing a body with another version of herself. And Alvin? Well, he's probably around somewhere, if she cares to go looking for him.

The first half of this book, I have to say, feels kind of... self-indulgent. Plot development and the answering of the questions that the main character should be asking get largely shunted aside in favor of various erotic encounters and enthusiastic descriptions of what everyone's wearing. Then, midway through, there's a big revelation and it suddenly turns into a very different kind of book, one that's trying to be all twisty and epic. But... Well, it's not exactly bad. But it just never really did much of anything for me.

Oh, well. At least it was a pretty quick read.

Rating: 2.5/5

(Note: This was my Early Reviewers book from the November batch. And with that, I am finally caught up on all my ER books! Or at least all the ones I actually got.)

Interesting thoughts on Heaven Bragan, like you I think I would be depressed reading that book.

I didn't really expect to have that reaction, since my interest in it was more one of intellectual curiosity than anything. In retrospect, though, maybe I should have anticipated it.

7. Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science by Lawrence M. Krauss



Richard Feynman was a brilliant scientist, a genuine character, and, by all accounts, a truly compelling human being, making him a hero for generations of physics students. So it's not too surprising that there have now been a number of books published about his life and his work. This one focuses very strongly on his professional, rather than his personal life, so it's definitely for people who are interested in the science. Krauss, overall, does a pretty good job of describing Feynman's work without using any actual equations, but there is a lot of mathematical thinking involved, and the subject matter can get pretty complicated and abstruse. Personally, I studied physics as an undergrad a couple of decades ago, so I do have some background in the subject, even if I've forgotten a lot of it (and, if I'm honest, never felt like I had an extremely firm grasp of quantum mechanics to begin with). Coming from that perspective, I found some of Krauss' descriptions of Feynman's work made me think, "Oh, nifty, I never really understood that that way before!", while others had me deciding I was just going to have to take his word that it all made sense. But even if I didn't thoroughly understand all the details, the book does do a pretty good job of conveying both the impact of Feynman's work and a sense of how that unique brain of his approached scientific problems.

My one complaint is that it could have used better editing. There were a few typos here and there, a few malformed or half-revised sentences... and maybe someone should have asked Krauss to be a little more sparing with his use of exclamation points. Fortunately, though, there wasn't enough of that to seriously mar the reading experience.

Rating: a perhaps very slightly generous 4/5

Nice review of the Feynman book. I have one of his books (which I don't have catalogued, it seems) but I haven't read it yet.

Great review. My physics background, or lack Of, will probably need some brushing up before I try to tackle that one.

>27 dmsteyn:: Which one do you have? I read his The Character of Physical Law recently, and considered it one of the best books I read last year. His collections of anecdotes are wonderful, too.

>28 stretch:: Krauss really does try to spell it out for the layman without dumbing it down in the process, but a lot of it is probably just not fully graspable unless you have the background and know the math. I think at some point you just have to sort of accept that. Some basic knowledge of quantum mechanics and particle physics is certainly useful, though. It's not assumed. But it's useful.

I have Don't You Have Time to Think, which I found on a sale. It's a collection of his letters, so I don't know how interesting it might be.

Ah, yeah, I've read that one fairly recently, too! (Under the IMHO somewhat better title Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track.) I found it extremely interesting, although I'm not sure if it would work quite as well for someone not already familiar with Feynman

Regarding Post 14 and Alphabet Soup.

If you enjoy linguistics you might enjoy Language Play by David Crystal. It's very well written look at the games people play with language. I had to read it for one of my folklore classes but i've hung onto it and enjoyed re-reading it since.

I've read a number of books by David Crystal, but I haven't read that one. I sometimes find his style a little dry, but his subject matter is usually interesting, and that does sound like a particularly fun topic. I may have to add it to the wishlist. Thanks!

8. The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson



I love the TV show QI. (Or, rather, I did until the guy hosting it on YouTube got his account suspended for copyright violations, leaving me with no way to view something I would happily pay to watch, if only it were possible. But that's a rant for another time.) The "QI" stands for "Quite Interesting," and it's one of those wonderful British quiz shows where winning doesn't matter anywhere near as much as being interesting and funny. It's hosted by Stephen Fry, who poses a series of questions with weird, obscure answers, with well-known answers that are in fact wrong, or, best of all, with well-known answers that are correct but boring and obscure answers that are also correct but much more intriguing and strange. Each question is put to a panel of four comedians, who seamlessly blend genuine attempts to answer with humorous riffs, tangents, and asides. It's both informative and utterly, utterly hilarious.

This book features a large number of those questions, along with the actual answers and various bits of related trivia. Sample question: "What's the name of the tallest mountain in the world?" No, it's not Everest. That's the highest mountain, and there's a difference. The tallest, measured from base to summit, is Mauna Kea in Hawaii, most of which is underwater.

Browsing through this volume isn't nearly as entertaining as watching the show, but it is both educational and fun. The version I have is the "noticeably stouter" edition, which features lots of extra questions and some funny quotes from the participants, which is nice. I definitely recommend it for people who are interested in, well, knowing stuff.

Rating: 4/5

Nice review! I too love the show. Luckily, we have BBC Entertainment here in South Africa, so we get the show, if not live, than at least eventually.

I envy you!

I suppose I could manage to see it if I wait for the DVDs to come out, then order them from the UK, but the shipping costs make that terribly expensive and the region coding makes it highly inconvenient.

Good review. I originally wasn't a big fan of the show, but find myself watching more and more and really enjoying it - especially when the panel clicks. Plus Stephen Fry is wonderful.

Fry is, indeed, wonderful. I think some of the combinations of panelists definitely work better than others, but a lot of the regulars are just terrific. I'm especially fond of Jo Brand, who always brings the funny. And I might even admit to having a small, embarrassing crush on Alan Davies, ever since I first saw him in Jonathan Creek.

Finally caught up here! I imagine reading Quantum Man as a corrective to or recovery from Lisa Miller's Heaven. Anyway enjoying the eclectic mishmash here.

It was a somewhat refreshing contrast, perhaps.

And thanks!

Some of my friends rave about QI - I'll have to see if they know about this book. Sounds like it would be a good bathroom book.

I think it would make an excellent bathroom book, for those who like bathroom books. I spent quite a while dipping in and out of it, often while playing with a kitten. Which is what I call multitasking! I think there are a few other books the QI folks have produced, too.

Also, I was delighted to discover today that the show is back up on YouTube, after all. We'll see how long it lasts this time.

9. This Is a Book by Demetri Martin



A collection of off-beat humorous pieces by comedian Demetri Martin, including Ebeneezer Scrooge being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future Perfect, a crossword puzzle featuring only one letter, and a dialog between doctors at the hospital where all the action heroes end up, as well as one-liners, cartoon sketches, and other random things.

It didn't exactly make me laugh out loud very much, but it did make me smile, in an odd way that often left me feeling entirely unsure exactly what I was smiling about.

Rating: 3.5/5

10. The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver



A ruthless professional killer is hired to eliminate three witnesses set to testify at an arms dealer's grand jury trial. He's already gotten one of them, and it's up to Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant forensics expert who hasn't let the accident that paralyzed him keep him from his job, to catch him before he kills the other two.

I don't think I can call this a good book. If I'm being extremely charitable, I might describe the writing as "unpretentious," and even then I'd have to admit that it's full of infodump-y and often strangely repetitive exposition, especially in the earlier chapters. There are a few Hollywood-style cliches here, too. And some of the characters strike me as rather gimmicky. I particularly have trouble getting past the gorgeous ex-model-turned-cop. I mean... seriously? Although I'm honestly not sure whether the fact that she's also into sport shooting and drag racing makes it better or worse. I did like the main character, though. He's got a slightly gruff, very focused personality that somehow appeals to me. Or at least potentially does, anyway; he's not really developed all that strongly here. Maybe he gets a better introduction in the first book, which I haven't read.

The plot's not bad, though, being a decently constructed little cat-and-mouse game with an interesting (if slightly odd) twist or two along the way. Ultimately, I found the book much more readable and entertaining than it seemed like it ought to be. If nothing else, it did a pretty good job of keeping me awake through a couple of otherwise boring night shifts. Honestly, reading it was a lot like snacking through a big bag of cheap potato chips. You know there are much better things you could be consuming, but the sheer act of munching through it feels kind of good.

Rating: 3/5

Bragan, a few years ago I saw Demetri Martin at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Gently and absurdly hilarious. Definitely offbeat.

He does seem like someone who would be fun to see live.

it did make me smile, in an odd way that often left me feeling entirely unsure exactly what I was smiling about.

Entertaining reviews.

Thank you. :)

11. Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid by Wendy Williams



I think cephalopods (a category that includes squid and octopuses) are fascinating creatures. They're wonderfully alien and surprisingly intelligent, and I felt like I didn't know anywhere near enough about them. I was hoping this book would rectify that for me, but, while I did learn quite a few things, it's not really an organized exploration of what we know and don't know about squid and their relatives. It's more about the experience of studying these animals, with a focus on how research on them has lead to more general discoveries in science and medicine. Which is fine, but it's not quite what I was hoping for.

Rating: 3.5/5

Might be interested in that one for the squid science/medicine - good review.

Great title though! I too am interested in mighty creatures of the deep, of course including squid and octopi - even more so after reading this amazing article. I'll wait and see if you find a better book about them.

Too bad. Like you I would be more interested in the squid itself than the research connections to other fields.

I think maybe I would have liked it a lot better if I'd gone into it with different expectations, although I still think it could have been a bit better organized.

>51 wandering_star:: Thanks for linking to that article! Williams actually covers a lot of the same subjects in the chapter or two she devotes to the giant pacific octopus: what it's like to meet them, the nature of the puzzles they're given, some speculations on their intelligence... But I think that article actually does a rather better job of it.

I got kind of behind in reading threads — thereby violating one of my New Year's Resolutions, so forgive me for commenting on old news.

Re Book of General Ignorance, why is it that British quiz shows are always more entertaining than American ones? Not that I have seen any recently from either side of the pond, but when I was in England the last time, I was highly amused. We have a cable channel here in the US called BBC America, and if the BBC folks know about it at all they should be roundly embarrassed. Hardly any of the good stuff from BBC is shown.

The book sounds intriguing. I always say, you can never know too much stuff!

All comments are welcome, no matter how belated!

And so many things the British do seem to be more entertaining than their American equivalents. I mean, they're capable of making sitcoms that are actually funny! I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of American sitcoms I've actually enjoyed, at least in my adult life. And let's not even get started on how embarrassing American remakes of British shows generally are...

Yes. All too true. "Deal or No Deal" comes to mind. I absolutely loved the British original. The American remake is a frenetic piece of trash, IMHO.

12. Under the Dome by Stephen King



A small town in (where else?) Maine is suddenly and shockingly cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious and impenetrable force field dome. Unfortunately, some of the most powerful people in town are really not the sort of folks you want to be trapped in a bottle with, and things start to go very bad long before the food or the generator fuel run out...

My thoughts on this book are pretty much all, "On one hand... on the other hand...":

On one hand, it's definitely not the best-written of King's novels, and, like far too many of them, it's way too long, taking nearly 1,100 pages to tell a story that could have been done more effectively in half that.

On the other hand, it's certainly readable enough, and it doesn't drag too badly, considering its length. And the last two hundred pages or so are really quite gripping, which is particularly nice, since King often has problems with endings.

On one hand, King has clearly put a fair bit of thought into some of the details. I was particularly impressed with the way he has the dome affecting weather patterns and trapping in pollution. It adds a nice note of realism, as well as factoring into the plot in important ways, and also makes for a very appropriate atmosphere, as the town begins to get hotter and dirtier both literally and metaphorically.

On the other hand, there's one detail where he really falls down on the job, and that's in understanding the impact that 21st century communications technology ought to have in a situation like this. Very early in the book -- early enough that I don't think it qualifies as any kind of spoiler -- the military insists on cutting off cell phone communications from inside the dome, citing a vague and never fully explained concern about what kind of information might come out of there. They deliberately decide not to cut off the internet, though, with some offhand comment about it being easier to monitor e-mail than phone calls. Well, they might just as well have cut it off, because, even though a lot of people in the dome still have power, nobody ever uses the internet to communicate with the world outside in any fashion, and the world outside almost never uses it to reach in to them. For that matter, for a good chunk of the book, the main characters are sort of fighting an information/propaganda war, and they never take advantage of the internet for that, either. Now, this book was published in 2009, and I don't blame Stephen King for not anticipating the massive role that social media like Twitter would play in global politics in the years between then and now. But he at least should have realized that after something this disastrous and weird, the very first thing that would happen is someone blogging about it. I hate to say it, but I think Mr. King is showing his age here. He gives the impression that he has to remind himself that the internet can be used for more than e-mail, and at one point he has his characters exclaiming over a streaming webcam like it's the most brilliant and unexpected invention they've ever seen. And it's all too bad, because not only does this cause a big suspension-of-disbelief problem for me, but it also robs the story of an interesting dimension that it might otherwise have had.

And, finally, on one hand, it's a really terrific premise, and one which could be used in any number of interesting ways. King opts to use it to explore such topics as small-town corruption, bullying, and the politics of fear-mongering. Which is great, and he does some things with those themes that work really well.

On the other hand, I think the book suffers from clinging a little too closely to the Stephen King formula that says every story needs monsters -- in this case, human monsters. The bad guys in this story are a corrupt official who (with the help of spineless and dim-witted minions) effectively becomes the boss of the town, his thuggish son, and the thuggish son's thuggish friends. The problem is that these characters aren't just corrupt, self-serving, power-abusing, and petty. They are also, in various combinations, murders, rapists, drug dealers on a staggeringly massive scale, religious hypocrites of a particularly exaggerated kind, and, in one case, full-out tumor-in-the-brain crazy. Oh, and the boss man is literally a used car salesman. He's more of a caricature than a person, and it's unfortunate, because I think that having more nuanced and human antagonists might well have led to a more powerful, more believable, and possibly even ultimately more horrifying story.

I did mostly enjoy it -- if "enjoy" is quite the right word for a book this full of awful events -- but I can't help thinking that I would have enjoyed the leaner, subtler, more New Media-savvy book it could have been much more.

Rating: 3.5/5

Bragan, I remember 'enjoying' Under the Dome as well, but your very salient criticisms ring true. I have always enjoyed King's shorter works, but these longer ones tend to be very hit-and-miss.

Entertaining review. I find myself stuck thinking about the other hand, well the critical one. Haven't read King, not planning on it.

I think King, despite his flaws, is actually a much better writer than those who dismiss him as popular schlock think, when he wants to be. But he seems to find rambly plots and over-the-top evil a lot easier (or possibly more fun) to do.

I agree with that wholeheartedly. His Different Seasons contains two of my favourite novellas (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body), one that's decent (Apt Pupil), and one that's a bit naff, but still fun (The Breathing Method). I hope to read Full Dark, No Stars later this year, which I remember you reviewed quite favourably.

Yeah, I think "The Body" is an absolutely amazing piece of writing. You cannot accuse anyone who could produce that story of lacking talent, whatever else he has or hasn't done.

Full Dark, No Stars does actually suffer from a bit of the exaggerated-villain syndrome that frustrated me in Under the Dome, especially in one particular story, but I did think it was good, overall, in a very, very, very dark way.

13. Playboy's Silverstein Around the World by Shel Silverstein



A collection of cartoons first published in Playboy in the 50s and 60s, drawn by Shel Silverstein on his travels to various countries and sojourns among various subcultures. A fair number of these gave me a little chuckle, but I don't think they have nearly the sharp, clever, zany bite that his later kids' stuff does. (Which is maybe a little bit ironic.) Not all of them have aged terribly well, either, and this being Playboy, way too many of them are about hitting on chicks around the world, often in ways that may have been amusing to a male in the 1960s, but aren't nearly as funny to a 21st century female. There's also a weird cruelty-to-animals motif, as Silverstein fights a bull in Spain, attends a cockfight in Mexico, and shoots a water buffalo in Africa.

Overall, I really would not call this essential Silverstein.

Rating: 3/5

I'm wondering what lead to you to this Silverstein.

The fact that I've absolutely loved some of his other stuff (although everything of his I'd read previously was either aimed at kids or for adults but pretending to be aimed at kids), and the fact that Daedalus books had a copy for $3 and no extra shipping charge. :)

Thanks for the answer. I didn't realize how obnoxious my question was when I originally posted it, I feel bad reading it now. Apologies.

I didn't think it was obnoxious! In fact, if anything, I thought my answer sounded a little flippant, but, hey, it's the complete truth. It really doesn't take much to interest me in a book.

Glad you didn't find my question in any wrong way. It seemed innocent when I typed it, but somehow not later. Anyway, I promise not to clutter your thread with anymore idle talk... : )

Oh, feel free to talk away! Idly or otherwise. :)

14. To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer



In a strange landscape of plains and hills, along the banks of a seemingly endless river, every person who has ever lived on Earth has been mysteriously resurrected in a new, young, and healthy body. It's an afterlife of some kind, but not one that any religion ever anticipated.

Out of all the human beings who have ever lived, the novel chooses to focus on Richard Burton, a nineteenth century Englishman known, among other things, for his extensive travels and his language skills. And Burton is determined to find out what the secrets behind this place are if he has to sail all the way to the end of the river to do it.

It's a fantastic, mind-blowing, absolutely compelling premise. So I can sort of understand why this is so highly regarded. But I find what Farmer does with it incredibly frustrating. There's just really not much development of anything. I want a really close-up look at how people react to and adapt to this weird new reality, how their societies and their philosophies and their ways of relating to each other slowly evolve, but that's all dealt with very shallowly, if at all. Mostly we're told things rather than being shown them, and that's true on every scale, from human relationships to the rise and fall of mini-civilizations. We're shown a very little bit of the first few days after the resurrection, then there's a month-long time jump while Burton and his new friends build a boat, then there's a jump of well over a year while they explore the river, an expedition we get to see almost none of. Farmer seems way, way more interested in the details of Burton's life than in this amazing new setting he's created, and, while I'm sure Burton is a very interesting guy, given the choice between debates over whether he was or wasn't an anti-Semite vs. a travelog featuring a trip down a million-mile river with all of human history colliding and mutating along its banks, I know which one I'd rather hear about.

In the end, there aren't any definite answers to the question of what the heck is going on here, just partial explanations and hints, which I'm sure are more fully explored in later volumes. But, while this one certainly piqued my interest, I doubt I'm going to continue on with the series unless someone can convince me that it changes its focus enough to be less frustrating for me.

Rating: 3.5/5 (and, honestly, some significant percentage of those stars are for the premise, rather than the execution)

Man, I just don't know what's up lately. It seems like half the books I've read recently (along with at least one movie) have provoked this same reaction of, "Such a great concept, but why oh why did the writer do this with it when I really, really wanted them to do that?" I'm starting to wonder whether it's some kind of bizarre mood I'm in...

Perhaps a similar frustration to when you think that a book will deal with certain issues and yet when you read it does not do so at all but goes in another direction completely. I think you have to go where the book takes you and if that is a different path to the one you want to go down, so be it.

You could always write your own book.

Your thoughts would make a good question on avaland's thread.

In general, "go where the book takes you, and so be it" is usually my approach, but lately I really just cannot seem to get over this "Aargh, you had such a great idea here, and you're doing completely the wrong things with it!" response. In my defense, I think To Your Scattered Bodies Go, in particular, really does waste a very deep idea on a very shallow story. At least it makes Under the Dome look much better on that score.

And, of course, my reaction now is not that I want to write my own book, it's that I want to re-write those books. Well, no, actually, that's far too ambitious a project, even if it were an acceptable thing to do. I really do want to re-write the screenplay for that movie, though... That would have been completely doable, if only they had come to me before filming the darned thing.

Years ago I read Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton by Edward Rice. It was well done, and Burton really did live a most interesting life. So maybe reading that would've been better than reading the Farmer book?

A good biography certainly would have been a better introduction to Burton. (Well, more or less an introduction, anyway. I have read parts of his translation of The Arabian Nights, but I didn't know very much about him.)

>70 bragan:, 71 I've nabbed the idea and added it to the questions list for posting sometime in the future (with attribution, of course). I am always on the lookout;-)

Glad to be of service!

Sir Richard Burton has been a sort of hero/anti-hero of mine since I was a teenager. So your review of To Your Scattered Bodies Go got my attention. But it sounds like I'll probably skip it for now. And Barry has a great idea: Why don't you indeed write a book? Quite a few authors did just that because no one had written the book they wanted to read.

I don't seem to have the attention span or the plotting abilities required to write anything over about 10,000 words. :) And my problem lately seems to be that people are almost writing the books I want to read, but not quite. Sigh.

15. The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree



This companion to the classic TV series starts out with a couple of introductory chapters. The first one seems to be about Rod Serling's pre-Twilight Zone career, but unfortunately the falling-apart library-sale copy I have is missing most of those pages, so all I can say about it is that at the point where I was able to come in, it was in the middle of a really fascinating discussion of the amount of influence sponsors were able to wield over TV content at the time. (And I thought today's product placement was bad!) The second chapter is about the origins of the show, and then the bulk of the book consists of an episode guide, with occasional short features on various aspects of the production or profiles of people who wrote or directed for the show. For each episode, there's a still photo, a list of credits, a short summary, transcripts of Serling's open and closing narration, a few comments from the book's author on the quality and most interesting points of the story, and usually some quotes from the scriptwriter or other people involved in the production. It's well put together, informative and interesting, making it a fun read for anyone who's a fan of the show. (And, really, who isn't? It's The Twilight Zone!)

The only bad thing about this is that it's instilled in me a burning desire to go back and (re)watch all of it, even the not-very-good episodes. I keep clicking over to Amazon and ogling the "complete definitive collection" boxed set and just barely managing to talk myself out of spending the money for it. But I don't think my willpower is going to hold out very long...

Rating: 4/5

"Such a great concept, but why oh why did the writer do this with it when I really, really wanted them to do that?"

Despite your protests, this surely sounds like a source for creative outlet. : ) It does sound like a great premise, Farmer's book I mean.

@ #79 - I'm wondering how many hours it would take to watch the "complete definitive collection" of the Twilight Zone.

79 - I know it isn't from the classic Twilight Zone era, but the 1985 'A Matter of Minutes' is still a household reference ('I swear, that was not there before - it must be the blue men again'). 'Time Enough At Last' is a must-see for any book lover!

>80 dchaikin:: I suppose I could write some Riverworld fanfiction demonstrating how it should have been done, but I am in no way feeling remotely that ambitious. :)

I think the complete Twilight Zone is 156 episodes, of which 18 are an hour and the rest are half an hour. (From back in the era when TV shows actually ran much closer to their ostensible lengths, too!) Plus most of them have commentaries. Some of them have multiple commentaries. And there's a lot of extras. So the answer would seem to be "a very long time." But I always do need stuff to watch while I'm exercising -- well, all right, walking -- on the treadmill...

>81 ljbwell:: It might not be the same as the classic stuff, but I really liked the 80s version, too. I'd almost forgotten the blue men, though! That one was great! Although the one that really stuck in my mind was the one where the college kid discovers her pens and things keep going missing because she's going to be President one day, and time travelers keep stealing them for souvenirs. It's such a perfect explanation! Sadly, my hopes that my tendency to lose things actually means I am destined for greatness have yet to pan out.

And "Time Enough at Last" has a permanent place in my psyche. Unsurprisingly, I identified with Burgess Meredith's character so much. Right down to being completely blind without my glasses. *shudder*

Oh, dear. The price on the Twilight Zone DVDs had dropped by two dollars the last time I went to look at it, and apparently that was enough to put me over the edge. Well, at least it will keep me entertained for a good long time!

As punishment for being so extravagant you should review every episode on your thread................perhaps not

I think that might lose me a few readers. :)

>81 ljbwell: I don't remember much from the 80s Twilight Zone except for "The Uncle Devil Show." The parents are in the kitchen talking about "personal attention and supervision" being the key to parenting success while their own little ignored rugrat is plopped in front of the TV watching a new video Dad just brought home for him. They're in the kitchen talking about parenting strategies, etc. while junior is in the living room learning "magic" tricks from "Uncle Devil." Funny and creepy! Love it!

I don't even remember that one! Maybe I should check out whether that's available on DVD.

>87 bragan: Here's a link to Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIMzH9yuywI

Thanks! I'll definitely watch that when I get a chance!

And I see that the 80s series is indeed on DVD. Maybe I'll add it to my (already very full) Netflix queue. I don't think I can remotely justify buying that one, too.

bragan, "Uncle Devil" is a very short video - about 6 minutes long. I probably should have mentioned that :)

16. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich



This book collects the words of people whose lives were affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster: People who were evacuated. People who weren't evacuated. People who, seeking refuge from war and having nowhere else to go, moved into contaminated areas abandoned by everyone else. Soldiers who were sent in, inadequately protected, to clean up afterward. Family members of people afflicted by radiation poisoning, or birth defects, or cancer. Scientists who tried to warn people, and one who lives with the shame of having trusted the authorities and looked the other way. There are long, rambling stories and short, bitter outbursts. Some are sophisticated and philosophical, others inarticulately emotional. Many of the most personal narratives are heartbreaking and horrifying, but, taken all together, they also paint an enlightening portrait of what it was like to be a citizen of the Soviet Union in 1986, and of the all too fallible ways in which human beings and human institutions can react to disasters that they don't fully understand. It's a painful book to read, but a very worthwhile one, and the way that Alexievich presents these transcripts, without context or comment, somehow just makes them all the more powerful.

Rating: 4.5/5

>90 avidmom:: That was cute (in its own devilish sort of way). Gave me a chuckle that I badly needed after finishing that Chernobyl book.

laughing at #84.

Voices of Chernobyl sounds interesting. Janeajones pointed me to Accident: A Day's News by Christa Wolf, which is also on Chernobyl. It's a slim book. I have opened it, but it's a little challenging to read. I need to wait till I have more focus. Anyway, thought I would mention it.

Voices of Chernobly was already on my wishlist, from fannyprices recommendation back in 2009.

82 & 86: the parenting one rings a bell and the time traveling souvenir seekers looks fantastic - what a great idea. Thanks, avidmom, for the link - I'll have to hunt one down for the other one, too.

>93 dchaikin:: I'd be interested to hear what you think of Accident: A Day's News if/when you read it. The only review on LT seems to be in German, and the reviews on Amazon leave me completely unenlightened as to whether I'd think it was worth reading or not. I think I'm interested in reading more about Chernobyl eventually, whether fiction or non-fiction, but it's going to take me a while to recover from that last book.

I picked up Voices from Chernobyl, by the way, because This American Life did a segment where they had actors reading a couple of chapters, and it actually reduced me to tears.

17. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld



A YA steampunk novel centering on a fugitive prince and a girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to join an airship crew, set in the first days of WWI. Or, rather, in what would be WWI in our world. This is a significantly different universe, however, in which the global powers are divided into the "Clankers," who use armored, steam-powered walking vehicles, and the "Darwinists," whose technology is largely based on genetic engineering.

It's an attractive book, with an eye-catching cover and lots of very nice illustrations. And the fantastic biotechnology of the Darwinists is clever, intriguing, and interestingly described. But while the story is perfectly okay, I just never found it particularly engaging, except perhaps at the very end. And I found the invented (or at least highly idiosyncratic) slang and swearing to be extremely distracting. Sometimes that sort of thing can work well, but here it varies from the mildly silly to the highly unfortunate. (Sorry, Mr. Westerfeld, but the word "squick" does not mean what you think it means.)

I'm not entirely sure whether I feel like this series is worth continuing on with, but there are just enough promising loose ends that I suppose I'll want to check out the next volume eventually.

Rating: 3.5/5

Leviathan has been on my one-of-these-days list for a couple years now - I liked Uglies and thought a YA steampunk in his hands could be really good. Disappointing to hear it isn't as strong as I would have hoped.

It was the first thing of his that I've read. I've heard Uglies and sequels praised very highly, and had seen a lot of very positive buzz around Leviathan as well, so I think maybe I was just going into it with my expectations set too high. It's a perfectly acceptable little YA steampunk adventure, really -- or at least the beginning of one, since it's definitely To Be Continued -- but I think I was expecting something a little... more.

(I'm also starting to think that I've just got some sort of reading itch lately that all this high-concept SF I've been reading just isn't scratching. Time for a complete change of pace, I think.)

18. My Ántonia by Willa Cather



A 1918 novel in which a man -- now a successful New York lawyer -- looks back at his rural Nebraska childhood, and particularly at his childhood friend Ántonia, an immigrant from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). There's a touching sense of nostalgia to the narrative, and Ántonia, while we only ever see her from the outside, comes across as a very sympathetic character, an interesting mixture of frontier toughness and unpretentious emotion. But the setting is the real star of this story. Willa Cather's deceptively simple prose brings the Nebraska prairie vividly to life from the very first page, and it made me feel as if I were part of that landscape, sharing in a life very different from my own late-20th-century suburban upbringing and yet somehow instantly familiar. I can't imagine ever wanting to live the way these people did, with their constant struggle to earn a living from the land, and yet I also can't quite escape the feeling that maybe they had something important that most of us these days are missing.

Rating: 4.5/5

My Antonia had been sitting on my shelves for years, seeming quite unpromising, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

It doesn't so much sound like my sort of book, and I probably would have absolutely hated it if forced to read it in high school, but I took to it immediately. I think it was exactly the change of pace I needed.

>100 bragan: I had to read My Antonia in 7th grade. I don't remember if I liked it, but I reread it a few years ago and enjoyed it.

There are quite a few classic books that I've been devoutly glad I wasn't assigned in high school, because the experience of having them forced on me, or of coming to them long before my tastes had matured enough to appreciate them, would no doubt have ruined them for me forever. My Antonia is as good an example of that as I've ever seen, as I'm sure my teenage self would complain loudly that nothing happens in it and resent every reading moment spent on the boring Nebraska prairie instead of having adventures in a spaceship somewhere. I'd probably never want to pick up a Willa Cather novel again.

Mind you, there were books I actually liked in spite of having them taught at me, and I made a point of re-reading all of those later on to remove the lingering bad taste of the classroom. But I can't imagine this being one of them. I simply wouldn't have seen the point of it. For today, though, it was just about perfect.

Glad you enjoyed My Antonia - I absolutely loved it when I read it last year. Cather's O Pioneers! is good too.

I may have to read O Pioneers! at some point. Cather's writing really did impress me.

>104 bragan: - I know what you mean about high school reading. I was very glad I never read any Dickens in high school - I quite like him now, but my friends who read Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities won't touch him now, even though they'll happily read other 19th c. classics.

I was planning to read The Song of the Lark before My Antonia - have it as an ebook.

The only Dickens I read in high school was, for some reason, Hard Times. Fortunately, it didn't stop me from trying some more Dickens later, only made me slightly hesitant about it. I think it helped that I read some bits of Dickens on my own before that -- I vaguely remember managing to get through The Pickwick Papers in elementary school and reading about a quarter of a Readers Digest condensed version of David Copperfield at age ten before getting bored -- so maybe I was inoculated with it. On the other hand, I have never, ever been able to face Jane Austen again after my 12th grade experiences with Emma. No matter what anyone says or how much shock and horror they express at my antipathy.

bragan - I imagine you would like Austen today. My Antonia has been sitting on my tbr shelf for about 2.5 years now... : (

>109 dchaikin:: Everybody tells me that. No one understands the true depth of my trauma. :)

And for me, a book that's been on the TBR shelves for two and a half years is a relative newcomer. Sigh.

So glad you liked My Antonia. I read it a couple years ago, and it's one of my favorites. I would like to try to get to O Pioneers! and Death Comes for the Archbishop this year.

If you do, I'll be interested to hear what you think of them. Both of those are on my wishlist now.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is my favourite Cather so far. I also liked O Pioneers!, but was not as keen on The Song of the Lark because I did not find the main character sympathetic. Reading My Antonia started me on a Cather binge.

I can totally see how My Antonia could lead to that sort of binge. It was a great introduction.

19. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet



Jeff Sharlet investigates a religious organization called the Family, a fundamentalist Christian group which puts much of its emphasis on "leadership" (or, to use a less charitable word, "power"), and which possesses a surprising amount of clout in American politics. He opens by talking a little about the organization, its people, and its principles, including recounting his own experiences with the group, then spends the bulk of the book exploring the history of the Family and its precursors, highlighting the often rather startling influence that this very narrow breed of evangelical Christianity has had on politics both foreign and domestic. He then devotes a couple of chapters to the social attitudes of its adherents and their place in the so-called "culture wars."

It's an interesting and important subject, one that (distressingly, for those of us who believe strongly in the separation of Church and State) is extremely relevant to the current political landscape in America. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I got quite as much out of this book as I wanted to. It's a complicated topic that requires clear and careful journalism, and while Sharlet has obviously done vast amounts of research, he comes across as less "clear and careful journalist" and more "frustrated literary novelist," writing in a style that includes lush and often slightly fanciful descriptions of people's physical appearances and personalities and interactions, lots of rhetorical rambling, and turns of phrase or even whole paragraphs that leave me imagining the author sitting back and smiling in satisfaction at his own linguistic cleverness. None of which is necessarily a bad thing, and it works pretty well in the chapters where he's giving us glimpses of ordinary individuals and using that to convey some of the flavor of this particular theology and culture. But when it comes to his presentation of the historical facts, I think it muddles things a bit and dilutes some of the rather important points he's trying to make.

Which isn't to say that the book didn't have any impact. Mostly, it's left me feeling depressed. I like to believe that compromise and mutual understanding are always possible, but occasionally I have to acknowledge the fact that some worldviews are just intrinsically irreconcilable, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that we have some of those battling it out in America today.

Rating: 3.5/5

115 - Nice review, though I think I'll skip this one. Sounds like it would give me nightmares. :)

It was rather disturbing. Probably would have been even more so if the writing had been a little plainer and clearer, but maybe I should be grateful.

I seem to remember there is an uppity social group in San Francisco called The Family, but I would have never associated them with the goings on of the group Jeff Sharlet exposes here. Must be something completely different.

I wouldn't be surprised if the name were used by a number of unrelated groups. I don't think it's even an official name for the group Sharlet's writing about, just what they generally like to call themselves.

20. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling



Here I am, still slowly re-reading my way through this series...

I remember finding this one pretty suspenseful on first reading, what with Harry catching glimpses of a beast that may or may not be an omen of his death, learning that he may be the target of a maniacal killer, and slowly collecting tidbits of information about his parents and hints about the circumstances behind their deaths. All of that is rather less exciting when you already know how it plays out, though, and I did find myself a bit impatient with much of the story this time through. But as it builds up to the climax, with all its confrontations and reveals, I found myself getting quite caught up in it again. I think in the later chapters a re-reader's perspective is actually helpful rather than hurtful, as certain things gain a little additional depth when you know stuff that's revealed in later books. I'm sure it also helps that, at this point, I'm really much more interested in the adults at Hogwarts and the history of things that happened before Harry was born than I am about his and his friends' antics, and the ending of this one plays heavily on that history.

The book does have some flaws. Rowling's writing style isn't terribly impressive, something that maybe seems a little more in evidence in this volume, which perhaps wants to be taken just a little more seriously than the previous rather fluffy outings. There are a few too many clunkily expository conversations, a little too much of people shouting in ALL CAPS, that sort of thing. I also continue to have a few issues with various aspects of the world-building, my main question here being, "Why the hell is the wizarding world's criminal justice system so psychotic, and why does nobody have a problem with it?!" Still, for all that, I think this is about the point where I start to understand why this series is popular, if not why it's quite so ludicrously popular.

Rating: I'm still finding these hard to rate in retrospect, but I guess I'll call this one 4/5. Despite its flaws, it ultimately did get me where it wanted me to be.

21. Planetary: The Fourth Man



The second collection of comics featuring Planetary, a team of "mystery archeologists" on a mission to investigate "the secret history of the world." My opinion on the first volume was that I liked the concept, loved the artwork, found the characters potentially interesting, and enjoyed the way it played around with pop culture tropes, but thought the stories were far too slight, making the whole thing a little disappointing. Well, I do not have that problem with this volume. The first two chapters here do have much the same kind of structure as the stories in the first collection, but they seemed more satisfying to me, as they managed to successfully give the impression of offering windows into a much wider world. A weird, wonderful, horrible, and fascinating world. And then things suddenly get very, very dense, to the extent that I don't think I understood half of what was going on. But that's OK; I don't think I'm entirely supposed to yet, and if I'm confused, I'm also intrigued. And if I liked the way the first installment played around with the pop culture tropes... Well, this one delights in taking comics and B-movies and pulp fiction and all kinds of other familiar stories and not just playing around with them but warping and distorting them like taffy into freakish and often darkly humorous shapes.

At this point, I have absolutely no idea what to make of it all, or whether any of it will make sense in the end. But I do know I want to see more of it.

Rating: 4/5

Planetary sounds like an intriguing series and I'll have to look for it the next time in the market for a new graphic novel to devour.

You probably won't find it at your local bookstore or comic shop, since it dates from 2000 or thereabouts. But it's easy enough to find online. Mind you, I can't vouch for how good the series as a whole is yet, since I'm only halfway through it. But I'll let you know!

I missed the last few books in the Harry Potter series and rather than go back and start from the beginning, I'm hoping I'll have some grandchildren to read them with.

Death Comes to the Archbishop was such a good bookgroup discussion book. Felt too annoyed with some of the characters and the ways of the Catholic church to say I loved the book, but it was an interesting read.

The Harry Potter books get better as they go along, I think. Also considerably darker and aimed at progressively older readers, so you might have to wait a while for the hypothetical grandchildren to be ready for all of 'em.

Boonie - ha, the true value of grandchildren, an excuse to read children's books. :)

bragan, you "reviewed" Scott Huler's No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey through the Odyssey over in Questions for the Avid Reader. I just read a longer review elsewhere, and see that it was originally sort of obliquely inspired by Joyce. But when I saw the title, the first thing that came to mind was Richard Halliburton's The Glorious Adventure in which he retraced the travels of Homer's Odysseus. Are you old enough that the name of Halliburton is familiar? He was already long dead when I discovered The Royal Road to Romance as a child, but he remains a sort of heroic figure to me. Hardly anyone remembers him now, so I am seriously dating myself!

I must confess, Halliburton isn't familiar to me. I did get curious, though, as to whether Huler refers to him at all, but I checked the (fairly extensive) bibliography, and his book isn't mentioned.

22. No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey Through the Odyssey by Scott Huler



Scott Huler recounts the story of his trip around the Mediterranean, following the route of Odysseus. Well, more or less the route of Odysseus, anyway, since nobody can agree on exactly where to locate most of his adventures on a map, or even to what extent it's reasonable to try. But that's all right; geographical accuracy isn't really the point, anyway.

It's a very low-key sort of book. Huler's wanderings are much less full of shipwrecks and man-eating giants than Odysseus', and he doesn't try to exaggerate his experiences to make for a more lively story, but instead realistically portrays the mundanities of 21st century travel, with all its annoyances and disappointments and unexpected little moments of complete happiness. Through it all he is quietly, unpretentiously thoughtful as he contemplates travel, life experiences, and the lessons and insights of the Odyssey. I started off hoping, perhaps, for a somewhat more exciting travel memoir, but in the end was quite satisfied by the journey I was taken on instead.

Rating: 4/5

Making a note of No-Man's Lands. Would be interesting to compare with other attempts to retrace the Odyssey. I wonder how many times that has been done.

I don't know how many people have attempted to travel the route, but according to Huler, an awful lot of people have attempted to map it.

23. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby



A 1995 novel about a guy who owns a record shop in London and who, when we first meet him, has just been through a rather painful breakup. Throughout most of the novel, he divides his time between wallowing in self-pity, talking pretentiously but with genuine enthusiasm about music, making pop cultural top five lists, and wallowing in more self-pity.

I find it difficult to decide exactly what I think about this book. To begin with, I really disliked the main character. In addition to the whiny self-pity, he's also capable of being a grade-A dick, and every time I started developing some real sympathy for him, he'd turn around and do something unbelievably dickish again. His approach to women and relationships is incredibly self-absorbed and adolescent (although to his credit, he at least kind of realizes this), and while he's showing glimmers of approaching maturity by the very end, I can't quite manage to feel terribly optimistic about his chances for improvement. I also occasionally found myself wondering why he seemed to expect me, or anybody, to actually care about his crappy love life. And yet, there's something about Hornby's writing -- I'm not quite sure what -- that just pulled me along effortlessly and kept me interested, sometimes almost despite myself. There are also, perhaps, some decent insights here about relationships, and there's an impressive feeling of realism to the whole thing. Painful realism, even, especially for a woman who'd like to think that sex and relationships don't ever really look like this from a male POV, but knows in her heart that, at lest to some extent, they can and do.

So, while I was reading this, I'd say half of me felt entertained and thoughtful, while the other half was just going "Grrrr" and wanting to smack people. (Not the author, it should be said. He gives the strong impression of having a sense of perspective that his main character lacks. But the protagonist himself, definitely. And very possibly a couple of men I have known personally, as well.) Did I like it? I honestly don't know. But I do know that somehow I feel glad for having read it.

Rating: This one's extremely hard to rate, but let's call it 3.5/5

Bragan, I thought High Fidelity was very, very funny. You didn't find that?

I was actually a little surprised, because I'd recently seen someone name it as one of their top five funniest books ever, but while there was sometimes a bit of wry wit to it, and while Hornby's writing style is pleasantly droll, in a low-key way, "funny" is not remotely the first word that leaps to my mind for this book. I think the main character is just too pathetic and annoying for his actions and attitudes to be genuinely funny for me, although there were certainly times I found myself shaking my head and letting out a little laugh while muttering something along the lines of, "Christ, what an asshole."

High Fidelity was already on my wishlist, but I really enjoyed your review.

Thanks. I probably wouldn't have thought to pick it up on my own, but I happened to get it through SantaThing last year. My Santa made some really interesting choices!

(I do almost feel a little bad because the two books they picked that I've read so far -- I have yet to read The Elegance of the Hedgehog and determine whether I'm in the love it or hate it camp -- I've had mixed feelings about, rather than completely loving them. But they've been really interesting mixed feelings on books that I likely never would have read otherwise, which makes me happy. This kind of unexpectedness is one of the things I love about the whole idea of the exchange and is part of the reason why I always tell people that I'd rather they pick something they think is good, instead of trying too hard to figure out what might best match my library.)

SantaThing! I hit the mother lode last Christmas, with the person who chose my books managing to find three books exactly up my alley and I hadn't even heard of two of the titles. Whereas my family tends to get me books about cats. I have two of them, but I also have two children, two rabbits, two dogs and four houseplants, but never get books about them.

I feel like I have been so lucky with SantaThing! Even when I haven't been completely thrilled with the books themselves, there's always been some reason why getting them and reading them has pleased me. Heck, the very first year, I got a book that was already on my wishlist -- despite the fact that my wishlist wasn't on LT at the time and my Santa couldn't have known -- and a second one that I wouldn't have ever bought myself, because it was in a particular subgenre that I'm not normally fond of, but which I turned out to love. I think I've been on a roll ever since. Even the one time that I got a book I'd just gone out and bought myself, it was clearly a great choice, and I was able to find a home for it.

And I, too, have been the recipient of a number of books about cats. Cats for Dummies was all right as it at least had some useful information on health issues, but my dad's tendency to buy me "inspirational" books has led to me receiving at least one silly-and-saccharine cat-themed volume. (At least he mostly seems to have stopped doing that these days. I think he's given up on my ever feeling his particular brand of "inspiration.")

High Fidelity, Nick Hornby I have not read the but but quite enjoyed the film. Anybody that spends serious time re-arranging record/book collections or making lists thereof, is OK by me.

I haven't seen the film, but from what I've heard, I think they make the guy into a slightly more likable character. His habit of re-arranging his music collection is definitely straight out of the book, though. (Me, I think I prefer people who know what order they want their book/record collections in, and are scrupulous about keeping them that way, but that probably says more about my own habits than anything. :))

chiming in late...I've become so picky with what I read that I stopped doing the SantaThing or Early Reviewers. With SantaThing I have one book I don't really want to read and another I thought I wanted to read until I started it. Still haven't finished. With Early Reviewers, I got some interesting books and at least one surprise gem, but so many painful misses...

Fortunately, I am very much not picky. I figure if I don't like something, what the heck. I'll be done with it in a few days, anyway, and then there will be something else. Although, I will admit, there have been a few Early Reviewers books I've regretted requesting...

24. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch



One night, rookie cop Peter Grant finds himself taking witness testimony from a ghost. He is somewhat surprised by this. But it turns out that the ability to see ghosts is a pretty good indicator of magical talent, and the next thing you know, he's being apprenticed to a wizard detective, investigating a series of bizarre murders, and attempting to broker a peace between feuding river spirits.

I found this book rather frustrating, because it should have been so much better than it was. First, the plusses: The main character is likeable enough -- not the world's most memorable character, maybe, but I appreciate his analytical approach to things. And the setting and worldbuilding are interesting. London is a great setting for urban fantasy, and the novel is strongly grounded in a sense of place. The magic system is fairly lightly sketched, but what we see of it makes sense, and there was one point where I found myself exclaiming, "Oh, of course that's how spells work! Nifty! I want to learn that!" In a lifetime of reading fantasy, I think that's the first time I've ever had quite that reaction.

But unfortunately, while the basic plot concept is good, the book suffers from major, major pacing problems. Aaronovitch chooses to make Peter's study of magic realistically slow, which is fine, but the result is that it seems like the characters are spending half the book sitting around twiddling their thumbs, feeling no particular sense of urgency about the supposedly urgent problems they have to deal with, and just occasionally idly picking up a plot thread if they happen to feel like it. It doesn't help, either, that there's an absolutely key connection that the characters don't make until halfway through the story which was immediately obvious to me, despite my being at something of a cultural disadvantage. Once we pass the halfway point, though, things do pick up, and towards the end, stuff starts to get reasonably exciting... And then it loses the momentum again and just sort of splutters on to an ending that's cool in theory, but highly anticlimactic in practice. And the whole subplot with the rivers never seems remotely developed enough, instead giving the impression that it exists mainly as a way to introduce a convenient (and sexy) supporting character.

I'm wondering now if I should bother going on to the sequel. There's so much great potential here that if Aaronovitch can get a handle on his plots it could develop into a really fun series. And maybe this one understandably suffers a bit from having to set everything up. Still, I'm not exactly feeling eager for more.

Rating: 3/5

I'm not tempted, but love the idea of characters idly picking up a plot thread if they happen to feel like it.

I feel like I should probably add that most of the people reviewing the book on LT don't seem to have had this problem with it at all. But, man, that's sure what it seemed like they were doing to me!

25. The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space by Eugene Cernan and Don Davis



Eugene Cernan was indeed the last man to walk on the moon, and in this memoir he talks about his life, his career, and his experiences in the Gemini and Apollo space programs. He (and his co-author) convey the grandeur and excitement of his journeys to the moon quite well, and that's something I never, ever get tired of reading, but his reminiscences also have a frank, earthy quality to them that's really rather refreshing.

This is very much a personal memoir, focused primarily on Cernan's own experiences and perspectives, so if you're more interested in a general overview of the space race, there are much better books for that. (I recommend Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon.) But if you want, for example, to read an almost painfully vivid first-hand account of what it's like to get stuck inside a spaceship hatch after making the "spacewalk from hell," this is definitely the place.

Rating: 4/5

We have the 40th anniversary of that walk coming up in December.

tempting...and I really should check out A Man of the Moon, even in only of the author's surname.

>147 dukedom_enough:: Yes, we do. And I am reminded again that the last time humans walked on the moon, I was only five months old. Which depresses me kind of a lot.

>148 dchaikin:: I wonder if he's any relation? It's a great book, in any case. I heartily recommend it.

No known relation. Chaikin/Chaiken is derived from the Russian word for seagull and was a fairly common Russian-Jewish name.

26. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman



Forty tiny glimpses of different afterlives, different gods, different ways for the mysteries of the universe to be arranged: An afterlife that's a dull suburb, or a battleground, or where you can meet your possible alternate selves or a you for every age you've ever been. A god who is an amateur tinkerer, or a married couple, or a being too vast to be aware of our microscopic existences or too microscopic to be aware of our vastness. A world that's a giant computer, or the place where godlike beings come on vacation, or nothing but one subatomic particle telling stories to itself.

Some of these are more original than others, more clever or thought-provoking or effective than others. Most of them don't hold up terribly well if you try to take them too literally. But all in all, it's a nifty collection of imaginative exercises, with a few brilliant little gems scattered through it.

Rating: 4/5

27. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling



Here I am, finally past the halfway point in my re-read of the Harry Potter series, in terms of volumes, if not necessarily in terms of page count.

This one was definitely not my favorite of the series on first read, and, while it did have some enjoyable aspects, I have to say that my opinion on that score hasn't really changed.

First, the good: At this point, the series has fully transitioned from little-kid fare firmly into YA territory, and for an adult reader, at least, that's a welcome thing. The humor seems much less silly, overall, and many of the small world-building details feel more clever and reasonable and less random and goofy. And, come the end, the overall story arc is really starting to heat up and promise some complicated and potentially exciting stuff to come.

However, the bad: Firstly, at well over seven hundred pages, this thing is way longer than it needs to be, and the pacing suffers for it. I was already bored with the World Quidditch Cup before they actually got around to playing it, and the Triwizard tournament essentially consists of three days worth of plot pointlessly stretched out to cover most of the school year. Speaking of which, that tournament is almost certainly my least favorite Potter storyline. The whole thing just feels incredibly artificial and contrived, from the idea that even the not-remotely-safety-conscious wizard population could possibly consider this ridiculously dangerous contest as a wholesome activity for high school students to the needlessly convoluted bad guy plan surrounding it all.

And, as usual, it also needs more Snape.

Ratin: 3.5/5

Sum is on my wishlist thanks to detailmuse who recommended it as one of those "quirky dreamy novellas" I've been indulging in recently. Thanks for fleshing it out a bit. I suspect I would enjoy it.

I'm not sure it's quite as consistently good as some other things I've read that maybe also fit that description, but I do recommend it.

28. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson



After being called upon to investigate a bizarre mystery that eventually leads to a man he can only describe as "a crackpot," journalist Jon Ronson finds himself becoming fascinated by the topic of mental illness in general, and, almost by accident, psychopathy in particular. He sets out to explore the topic, taking the reader along on his journey as he interviews the man who invented the checklist used to diagnose psychopaths, a business leader who fits the profile, a man who faked mental illness to get himself committed to treatment instead of jail and then turned out to maybe be in the right place anyway, and many other interesting folks. Along the way, he shares his own thoughts and perceptions as his ideas about psychopaths and mental illness develop and change and become increasingly ambiguous. In the end, he presents the reader with some thoughts on the way both the psychiatric profession and the media treat those who are considered mad, and on the disturbingly fuzzy borderline between insanity and normality. It's an interesting and nuanced personal exploration of the topic, one that raises important questions while avoiding easy answers. It's also very readable. Ronson's writing is breezy and entertaining, without trivializing the often disturbing things he talks about, including some pretty horrific crimes committed by psychopathic serial killers.

Rating: 4/5

Sounds like an interesting topic, bragan. I'd rather hear more about it than read the book, however, if you understand. ;-)

There are some interesting interviews with the author floating around, if that suits you better. :) I think I first heard about the book when he talked about it on The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast.

29. The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Hans Beimler



Some friends of mine recently insisted on showing me The Middleman, a TV series about a couple of people who work for a mysterious organization saving the world from various crazy threats. They were certain it was the sort of thing I'd like, and, boy, were they right. It's brilliantly goofy, consistently funny, and packed to the gills with geeky references and in-jokes. Not to mention being filled with likeable, entertaining characters. So, of course, it lasted all of twelve episodes. Sigh. Fortunately, these days TV shows cancelled before their time often manage to come back in comic book form, and since the series was based on a comic book to begin with, it probably wasn't even that difficult a transition. So there's this volume, which serves in place of the never-produced episode 13, and at least gives us some closure on various character arcs and pays off a few things set up in previous episodes. And a good send-off it is, because it's every bit as hilarious and fun as any of the televised episodes. I do miss the actors, since the effortless aplomb with which they manage to deliver the most ridiculous lines is part of the appeal of the show, but that's perhaps offset a bit by a couple of cool scenes they probably wouldn't have had the special effects budget to actually do on the screen. The end makes me kind of sad, though. I don't want it to be over! I want more!

Rating: 4.5/5, although the extra half star might say more about my feelings for the series in general than this installment specifically

30. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead



It's the late 1970's, and Miranda is twelve years old. She lives in New York, her favorite book is Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (which was also my favorite at that age), and her best friend has inexplicably stopped talking to her. That last thing is pretty sad, but overall, it's a fairly ordinary life... except for the cryptic notes she keeps finding, notes that seem to have been written by someone who knows things that haven't happened yet.

Ultimately, the basic storyline here is one that seems as if it ought to feel like old hat, but it's so well-constructed that it works beautifully, anyway. The writing and characterization are good, and the author gives you just exactly enough of the right kind of hints about what's going on to keep you feeling engaged and intrigued, and by the time you arrive at the ending, it might not feel entirely surprising, but it does feel right. Or such was my experience, anyway.

Definitely a book that can be enjoyed by both adults and kids.

Rating: 4/5

The Psychopath Test sounds interesting, and my library even has a copy. When I studied microbiology, all the students and most of the demonstrators experienced symptoms of each week's disease, so I hope this isn't the same.

Ronson talks a bit about that sort of thing, in fact. Flipping through the DSMV, he managed to diagnose himself with twelve different mental disorders. And then he started seeing possible psychopaths everywhere.

31. The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg



A thoroughly researched and highly informative look at the subjects of contraception, abortion, and women's reproductive rights on the global stage, and most particularly in the developing world. These issues, it turns out, are much more complex than the basic fundamentalists vs. liberals narrative that those of us here in the US tend to buy into, involving all kinds of tangled religious, cultural and political factors. Michelle Goldberg navigates us through all of them, and while her own emphatically pro-choice stance on the matter is clear, she never descends to the level of a political shouting match, instead keeping her prose calm and measured even when discussing things that I personally would have trouble not getting ranty about. In the end, she makes a very cogent and persuasive argument that, despite all obstacles, increasing freedoms for women is very much a win-win approach, rather than a choice between individual rights and the greater social good.

Rating: 4.5/5

32. The Branch by Mike Resnick



In a future so full of boredom that people seek out increasingly decadent and sadistic pleasures, a crime lord finds himself troubled by a small-time con man who seems intent on messing with him, possibly in an attempt to impress him into a job offer. The crime lord instead decides to have him eliminated, only to discover that the guy possesses a near-miraculous ability to escape unscathed. No, wait, scratch that. Make it an actually miraculous ability.

It's an odd little novel, combining science fiction, religion, gangsterism, and a very dark, very deadpan sense of humor. I find it really, really hard to know quite what to make of it, except to say that, well, it's certainly interesting. But Resnick has done much better stuff.

Rating: 3.5/5

33. The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? by Padgett Powell



Well, I can answer the question in the subtitle: No. This is not a novel. I'm not sure what the hell this is, other than that it's an endless series of questions. Mundane questions. Bizarre questions. Philosophical questions. Personal questions. Random questions. Repetitive questions. Thought-provoking questions. Nonsense questions. Trivia questions. Questions that give odd, incomplete little glances into the asker's mind. Question after question, on and on and on, with no obvious rhyme or reason to any of it.

It's a stupid idea for a book. It should be almost unreadable. And yet, it's weirdly compelling. I mean, really, really compelling. Something about it just captured my attention and dragged me along with half-formed answers tumbling over themselves in my mind in a breathless internal dialog: "Yes. No. Yes, but it was years ago. Somewhere in-between. Does that even mean anything? I dunno, I'm more of a cat person than a dog person. Why are you so interested in furniture polish? Eww, no! Hey, that's a really good question; I think you're on to something worth pondering here. You already asked me that before. Maybe. Wait-- what?"

This goes on for 164 pages. Admittedly, they're small pages. But by the end of it I felt tired, and rather like my brain had just been mugged. I'm still not sure quite what happened, but it was certainly one of the most interesting reading experiences I've ever had.

Rating: 4/5, if only for sheer chutzpah.

>162 bragan: ...instead keeping her prose calm and measured even when discussing things that I personally would have trouble not getting ranty about.

you and me both!

>164 bragan: I'm intrigued but only because my mind sort of works that way, with way more questions than answers. I fear a book like this would just send me over the edge:-)

It might be the kind of book that could send you over the edge! At times, I felt it was a little like being questioned by an insistent four-year old with a short attention span. :)

164 - I'm somehow fascinated by this. I think my brain may work this way as well. My entire school portfolio is constructed on a call and response style question and reply (sometimes answer, sometimes something else).

I also find myself drawn to obsessively repetitive collective type works. (I'm going to have some more thoughts on this later this week as I just read something that sort of coalesced what I think it is about these types of things I find striking.)

If you end up having any insights into why this sort of thing is so weirdly compelling, I'll be glad to hear them! I'm sort of baffled, really, and yet fascinated.

>164 bragan: That's been languishing in my TBRs, I'm frankly a little worried that it'll be annoying. Glad to see your 4 stars! Did you parse the reading or go all at once?

I can't guarantee that you won't find it annoying, but I can say, somewhat to my own surprise, that I didn't.

I actually read it not quite in one sitting, but pretty close.

34. The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll



I don't think it's really accurate to call this a dictionary. "Encyclopedia" might be a little closer, but it often lacks the fully objective tone that we expect an encyclopedia to have, as the author sometimes interjects his own thoughts, perspectives, and even his personal experiences. Really, I think the best way to describe it is as a series of very short articles, from a few sentences to a few pages, exploring various ideas and claims from a skeptical, critical-thinking perspective. How much these topics are explored varies a lot. Some broad subjects are glossed over with quick summaries, while some more obscure ones are examined in considerable detail. Every entry, however, does list resources for further reading, which is nice. The tone can occasionally get a little snarky, which sometimes comes across as a pointed and amusing salvo against a deserving target, but sometimes feels like the author is substituting a dismissive tone for actual analysis, which is not exactly useful in this context. Still, I approve of the basic idea.

Carroll says flat-out in his introduction that this book is not aimed at an audience of true believers, and that is unquestionably accurate. If you have any kind of personal investment in ideas such as the power of crystals, the authenticity of psychics, the existence of UFOs, or or the effectiveness of homeopathy, this book isn't going to change your mind, it's only going to piss you off. But for those who are interested in getting a critical perspective on subjects that mostly just bring up page after page of breathless testimonials from people trying to sell you stuff when you google them, this can be a good starting point. And, for the skeptically inclined, it can be kind of fun to browse through and see all the various nutty things people have believed at one point or another.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Skeptic's Dictionary sounds interesting. Had not heard of this one before. I suspect Carroll would be preaching to the choir in this group.

He also has an online version at skepdic.com, which looks like it's got some of the same content from the book and some that's different.

>160 pamelad:, 161 - I read a review of a book about psychopaths (it might have been this one) and the author of the review said something to the effect that if you're worried that you might be a psychopath then you probably aren't one.

The Means of Reproduction sounds interesting - it would fit with some other books about sexuality that I have on the list.

It very possibly was the same book, because Ronson does say something along those lines, too. If you're worried about it, if the thought causes you anxiety, then you're not.

Which reminds me about this talk by a guy who analyzes the brains of psychopathic killers.

Both #164 & 171 sound interesting in a quirky, must be in the right mood kind of way.

I'd say The Interrogative Mood is definitely something you need to be in the right mood for. It'd probably just be annoying if you weren't. (Fortunately, I was.) The Skeptic's Dictionary I'd say is best read in little chunks, or kept around for browsing. I think I spent well over a month dipping in and out of it.

35. The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley



Despite the subtitle, author Mark Abley is never foolish enough to even attempt to predict what the future of the English language is going to look like. Instead, he considers what's happening to English across the world right now -- or, rather, what was happening to it in 2008 when this book was published, which is not quite the same thing, judging by the fact that a few of his examples of edgy new slang already seem a little passé. And what is happening to it? Well, it's constantly colliding with and influencing other languages, and being influenced by them in turn, on a larger scale than ever before. (And with English, which was always been something of a pack rat tongue, that's really saying something.) It 's showing the effects of the jargon and dialects of minority groups and subcultures becoming mainstream, as with the spread of urban African-American speech patterns via the medium of hip-hop. And, then, of course there's the internet, which is constantly doing strange new things to the way we communicate. Abely looks at various examples of all these changes, and at the idea of language change generally (which is something people have been describing and decrying at least since the invention of the printing press). He also includes a chapter on how science fiction writers have dealt with, or failed to deal with, the idea of language change. I found that one particularly intriguing, but also frustrating, because his discussion of it is very lightly sketched, and it left me with the realization that I really, really wanted to read a whole book on that subject.

It's pretty engaging stuff, if you're at all interested in the topic of language and its evolution. Abley's writing is highly readable, and I very much appreciated the way he simultaneously clearly understands the desire to preserve language and the cultural traditions it can represent, and also fully and non-judgmentally embraces the joyful innovation that takes place on the edge of linguistic change.

Rating: 4/5

how science fiction writers have dealt with, or failed to deal with, the idea of language change

I suppose Orwell's Newspeak is an early case of this, although I can think of plenty of examples, from Iain M Banks' Feersum Endjinn to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (in the future world where people call coffee 'starbuck'). I think it's a tricky thing to do - thinking about it, I enjoy it more when it's a dystopian/declined future (eg Riddley Walker) than a super-shiny high-tech future. Don't know why that should be. Yes, you're right, a fascinating subject....

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 1984, Cloud Atlas and Riddley Walker are three of the big examples he considers. Also a lot of cyberpunk.

(And I am reminded now of the sad fact that I still have Cloud Atlas languishing away on my TBR pile. Also, Feersum Endjinn, come to that.)

Interesting topic. I've long thought that applying linguistics expertise to creating languages for sci fi movies or TV (à la Klingon) would be a fantastic job.

The other book that comes to mind on the subject is A Clockwork Orange .

A Clockwork Orange was, indeed, another one that was mentioned in the book.

And I think the idea of inventing science fictional languages is a fascinating one, too. I love it when real effort and expertise is put into it, instead of just throwing a bunch of random letters and some inappropriate apostrophes together. I, uh, actually own an autographed copy of The Klingon Dictionary. Just in case people didn't think I was geeky enough.

I was amazed to read about the amount of effort that had going into creating the language of the aliens in Avatar - I think it was a linguistics professor that was involved in that.

I hadn't realized that about Avatar. That's pretty cool.

This article mentions some of the people involved in the language of Avatar and Star Trek, as well as Game of Thrones. They also agree that people want more realistic languages for sci fi/fantasy shows and movies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/arts/television/in-game-of-thrones-a-language-...

Thanks for that link! I, too, very much approve of this trend. And I hadn't realized that A Game of Thrones had that much linguistic inventiveness in it. One more reason why I really do need to start watching that sometime, although I keep wondering whether I ought to read the books first.

36. The Ship Who Won by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynne Nye



This is the fifth book in McCaffrey's "The Ship Who..." series, which features humans with severe birth deformities being encased inside starships and thus effectively given shiny new space-going bodies. In this one, a ship and her more traditionally-mobile partner discover a race of technologically primitive humanoids on an alien planet, then quickly learn that they're ruled over by humans with indistinguishable-from-magic abilities and a long history of power struggles. But, hey, our heroes are big fans of the future equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons, so maybe they're just the people you'd want dealing with alien wizards.

When I was young, I loved Anne McCaffrey's novels. Indeed, she was probably one of my very favorite writers. Unfortunately, in later years her writing tended to decline in quality until it mostly became... Well, I don't really want to use the word "hackwork," but I can't help thinking it, anyway. Mind you, I'm sure the fact that I'm no longer 14 and not nearly as impressed by a lot of the stuff I liked at 14 doesn't help, either. Eventually, I got so disillusioned with her work that I ended up getting rid of a small stack of her books, all given to me years ago by a well-intentioned soul, without even opening them. I realized that I just could not face the idea of reading them. This book was the only exception, as I did actually like all the previous books in this series. (Although how much credit for that goes to McCaffrey, and how much to her various co-authors, I won't venture to guess.) Even so, it took me a while to work up enough gumption to read it. Fortunately, it didn't entirely suck, and I think my low expectations helped me enjoy it more than I otherwise would have. It's certainly not without its flaws, including a rather tacked-on romance and a too-pat ending full of unconvincing details, but it is a moderately entertaining old-fashioned-style SF novel with pleasant enough main characters. Which makes it a breath of fresh air after the last few McCaffrey books I'd read.

Rating: 3.5/5

I loved The Ship Who Sang as a teenager, but never realized it was part of a series.

The sequels weren't written until decades later.

37. Why Rattlesnakes Rattle ...and 250 Other Things You Should Know by Valeri R. Helterbran



Usually, I rather enjoy books like this, these little collections of random interesting facts, but I have to say, this one kind of left me cold. I think it's mostly that it's too heavy on the "random" part and too light on the "interesting" part. There are certainly a few examples of the sort of thing I expect from such a book: little bits of information that make me go, "Huh, I didn't know that!" and feel ever-so-slightly richer for having corrected that lack. But a lot of it is stuff that really is just common knowledge (e.g."What is a lobbyist?", "What is a blog?"), or else so obscure and odd that I find it difficult to imagine hardly anyone actually asking the questions it somehow feels the need to answer (e.g. "Why do we swear by Alexander's beard?"). Some of the questions seem like surely they must have interesting stories behind them, to merit inclusion, but quickly disappoint. Like, why does Pittsburgh have an "h" on the end of it? Eh, well, it just does. For a while, the post office tried to change as part of an attempt to make place name spellings more regular, but people who lived there didn't like it, so they changed it back. Gosh, riveting stuff! Thanks for telling me that! And probably at least half of the entries just define or give the etymological histories of various words and phrases, some of which do have fairly colorful histories behind them and some of which, um, don't. Even the more interesting subjects are presented in a writing style that's not making any particular attempt to be engaging, though. And I'm afraid the pictures don't help, either. They're all small, muddy black-and-white photos, few of which illustrate anything useful. Many of them relate only very tangentially to things mentioned in passing, enough so that I suspect some of them are an attempt to inject a sense of playfulness that's missing in the text, but mostly they just make the whole thing look amateurish.

All of which probably sounds more relentlessly negative than I really want to be. Because, honestly, it's not bad. I did learn a few things from it, and it's probably a perfectly fine book to keep in the bathroom and browse through while you're taking care of business, if that's something you like to do. It's just that, if you want a collection of interesting facts you didn't know and probably should have, there are way better examples out there.

Rating: 3/5

(Note: This was an ER book from the February batch.)

>186 bragan: - Many people have raved about A Game of Thrones and I'm thinking maybe I should watch it. I did say that I wouldn't read the books until he finished the series though.

Also had an Anne McCaffrey phase when I was a teenager. I never became strongly disillusioned with her but I didn't like her other series as much as the Pern ones and eventually moved on.

Yeah, I told myself I probably shouldn't watch the TV show until I'd read the books, having previously told myself I wasn't going to start the books until he finished writing them... But people have told me I should just dive in and watch the show anyway. I don't know. I'm torn.

I think a lot of us went through Anne McCaffrey phases as teenagers. It was the Pern books that I liked best as a kid, but I really did feel the quality of that series dropped a lot as time went on. The last thing I read in that series was the novella The Dolphin's Bell, and I barely managed to finish it. And some of her later series, alas, I actively hated. I would have broken with her long before I (mostly) did, I think, if it weren't for the fact that my mother kept picking up her books and passing them along to me.

I watched Game of Thrones without reading the books (also waiting for him to finish) and can highly recommend it. Even my fantasy/scifi-averse husband loved it.

Well, that's multiple endorsements I've heard so far, and absolutely no one telling me not to watch it. Sounds good to me! Although right now my Netflix queue is already so full I can't even add anything to it...

Catching-up. Seems like you're in an elaborate trend of miscellany (The Psychopath Test, The Means of Reproduction, The Skeptic's Dictionary, The Prodigal Tongue, Why Rattlesnakes Rattle...)

Indeed, there's good reason why this thread is called my "eclectic mishmash." :)

Although there's an extra reason why my reading's been especially littered with collections of miscellanea the year. I've been tending to a rescued stray kitten, who was just crawling with infections, poor thing, and has had to be kept quarantined from my other cats. (She only just finally got a clean bill of health from the vet today. Hooray!) So she's been living in my spare bedroom, and I go in there at intervals whenever I'm home to cuddle and play with her. And, of course, I always keep a book in there, something I can dip in and out of easily. So I've gotten through a lot of such things lately, some of which had been sitting on the TBR pile for approximately forever. So far this year, Alphabet Juice, The Book of General Ignorance, This Is a Book, The Twilight Zone Companion, The Skeptic's Dictionary, and Why Rattlesnakes Rattle have all been read on Kitten Time.

The things we do for our pets. Glad she's healthy. Our kitten has re-occurring inflammations in his mouth and we're not sure what to do about it.

The things I do for every sick stray kitten that crosses my path... The last one, I had to hand-raise after his mother gave birth to him in my driveway and took off. That made me glad I never had kids. Just taking care of a newborn kitten is bad enough, in terms of sleep deprivation and stress. :)

Mouth inflammations sound decidedly not-fun, poor thing. Whatever it is, I hope it clears up.

Sounds like the mother cat at least picked the right driveway :)

I swear, there's some kind of sign on my house that only cats can read. :)

Big hug for kitteh. I'm a big sap for animals as well. I tried to adopt our neighbors cat that was climbing around in our stairwell. I'm not sure how I thought this cat had gotten into the building, but I was going to keep it. :)

I'm way too much of a sap for them. I don't even want any more cats, but I keep taking them in, anyway, since I know how bad the odds of an obviously sick kitten surviving in the wild are. I managed to pawn the last one off on my mother, who now dotes on him. (That's not the one born in my driveway, but the one after that, who I apparently forgot to count in my comment above.) I'm hoping to find someone to adopt this little sweetheart, too, but the supply of cats here far exceeds the demand, alas.

Good for you taking them in and nursing them. I've got a sudden pang missing the cat we had growing up. We always said that he adopted us one summer - showed up in our yard with a badly hurt paw. So hurt, in fact, that once we were able to get him to trust us enough to cage him and take him to the vet, he had to lose the leg or we'd lose him. Thus is how we ended up with a 3-legged cat for the better part of 18 or so years.

Aww, that is a very lucky cat to have found you.

I like leaving food out for the kitties. But my current cat was born wild and stays outside mostly. Every month or two for a couple of nights running I hear vicious caterwauling and then nothing. So the other kitties don't come around any more. Once in a while I see one until the caterwauling nights, but none holds its ground.

Robert

The mother of the last two kittens I ended up taking in is very wild and mostly hangs around in my back yard, where I put food out for her. (I also managed, finally, to trap her and spay her to prevent future incidences of kittens.) She hasn't been around the last couple of days, though, and the food I put out hasn't been touched, so I fear the feral life might have caught up with her at last. Or maybe another cat drove her off. There was an unfamiliar but well-fed-looking cat in my front yard this this afternoon.

38. Kraken by China Mieville



Billy Harrow works in a museum in London, until the day their carefully preserved giant squid goes missing, along with its equally giant tank... which is a bit perplexing, considering that you'd need a crane to move the thing. Or, just possibly, magic. From that moment on, Billy finds himself falling deep, deep down a rabbit hole into a London filled with supernatural gang warfare, crazy cults (including, yes, giant-squid-worshipers), and a union of striking familiars, among other forms of weirdness. Not to mention a looming apocalypse or two.

My only criticism of this book is that the story moves a little slowly -- though it has has what feels like it should be a non-stop action plot, often surprisingly little seems to be happening -- and then wraps up a little too quickly. But, really, the appeal of China Mieville's stuff is always more in the setting and the wild inventiveness than in the plot, and this book certainly doesn't fall down in that respect. As usual, it's full of all kinds of weird, wonderful, utterly crazy stuff, and gives the strong impression that we're seeing only one little corner of a world with its own strange history and personalities and rules. I've heard complaints to the effect that it mostly just consists of Mieville throwing a lot of random ideas together and hurling them at the reader, and maybe that's true, but, you know, as far as I'm concerned that's not really a criticism. He can hurl his random ideas at me all day, and I will happily catch them, because they're always interesting and cool, and often a little brain-melting, in the good way.

This book also just has a real sense of fun to it, more so than anything else of his I've read. Yes, it's violent and sometimes pretty dark, but it's also got a sense of humor that really sneaks up on you, along with some amusingly unexpected pop culture references, and you can tell Mieville is greatly enjoying playing around with urban fantasy tropes, especially the near-ubiquitous supernatural investigations branch of the police force.

It's possible to argue over whether or not this one ranks among Mieville's best. But, honestly, that's not a debate I'm interested in having. Suffice to say that I enjoyed it.

Rating: 4/5

bragan, enjoyed your excellent review of Kraken. I like your idea that we only see a corner of a larger world in Meiville's books. It does feel from the way he writes that the larger world is all mapped out in his head (of course it probably isn't but he gives the reader the feeling that it is) I was a little disappointed in The City & The City because the world he created there was a little one dimensional, not like the seething worlds of his best fantasy stuff.

I will add Kraken to my to buy list.

That's one thing I really love in a fantasy or science fiction work, that feeling that there truly is a whole world underlying the story, one that existed long before we ever showed up and is as rich and complex and impossible to grasp completely as our own. Surprisingly few writers even try to do that in a convincing way, but Mieville is a master at it. I do agree with you that The City & the City doesn't have anywhere near as much of that as this other stuff, and I think it is a bit less compelling because of it, although I did find its central conceit fascinating, which was enough to make it worthwhile for me.

Was I saying something about random collections of facts earlier?

39. The Giant Jeopardy! Quiz Book



This is a compilation of Jeopardy! quiz books 3 and 4. It contains multiple complete games of Jeopardy!, one category to a page, with questions on one side and answers on the other. (Or, this being Jeopardy!, vice versa.)

It's not nearly as much fun as watching the show. Might be good practice if you're planning on trying out, although I'd think the lack of competition and time constraints would limit its usefulness. Also, it was published in 2000, so it uses the old scoring system, and most of the pop culture and recent history questions are from the 90s.

Still, there are much worse ways of killing time.

Rating: 3/5

Thank you for maintaining the flow of giant squid-related books. It's obviously not quite as much of a niche interest as I'd thought! I think this one is going on the wishlist.

Yes, that's two so far this year! And I could go for another one, really, if I knew of any. :)

Great review of Kraken! I have this one waiting on the shelf, but don't know when I'll get to it... sooner rather than later, I hope.

It took me longer that I meant to to get to it, but it was worth waiting for.

Did reading Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid add anything to Kraken?

I think it did, a little. Not that it's really necessary to know a lot about squid to enjoy Kraken, but it meant that I went into it with a bit of informed appreciation for the creatures that made some of the squid-enthusiasm in the novel easier to relate to, plus a few of the things the cephalopod-expert main character references were pleasantly familiar.

Thanks for the review of Kraken. I feel like I'm still recovering from the intensity of Perdido Street Station, but the idea of some humor in Kraken is appealing.

I think it's generally a good idea to rest up between Mieville novels, lest you do your brain an injury. You can sprain your imagination reading those things. :)

OK, I'm up over 200 posts here, and since we've just finished the first quarter of the year, this seems like a good time to start a new thread. If the "continue this topic in another topic" thingy works the way it's supposed to, there should be a link below. Come on by and join me there!

Coming in late, a great review of Kraken.

>207 bragan: Nice review of Kraken. My favorite invention of the novel was the tattoo (you know the one I mean). It's not my favorite Miéville, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you which book actually is my favorite at this point. The City and the The City was meant to follow the style and structure of the crime novel (a la Chandler), so I think this is why it was so different. The guy could have kept writing Bas Lag novels and made that his career, but I really have come to appreciate his need to explore other things in his writing. Miéville's inventiveness pleasantly came to mind recently when I read the YA dystopian novel Pure.

The tattoo reminded me of one or two other unusual tattoos I've encountered in speculative fiction, but, as Mieville so often does, he took it several steps further and several steps weirder. Which was great.

And I do like the fact that he's experimenting with different genres, because it's tremendous fun to see what he can do with the various genre conventions. I'm really looking forward to reading Embassytown and seeing his take on science fiction.

Pure is on my wishlist, by the way, I think in large part thanks to your review of it.