Bragan's 2011 reading

Hello, Club Read 2011! I'm looking forward to another great year of reading here!

Good to have you back. I always enjoy reading your nonfiction reviews because while I find them interesting, I rarely get around to reading them.

Thanks! I hope to have lots more interesting non-fiction reading this year.

And here we go! The first book of the year! Which, sadly, is not quite as auspicious a start as I might like, but it is one more very old book off my TBR Pile, which is a good thing.

1. Cities in Flight, Vol. 2 by James Blish



The second half of Blish's late 50s/early 60s saga of peripatetic space cities that, having uprooted themselves from the Earth with handy anti-gravity technology, cruise the stars in search of work. This one includes one novel-length story and one that's probably just short enough to qualify as a novella.

The first, "Earthman, Come Home" features the episodic interstellar exploits of New York, NY. By all rights, I really should like this one a lot better than the stories in the first volume. It's got a lot of great-sounding stuff: Space battles! Star Trek-style interplanetary adventures! Plots and machinations! Moving planets for fun and profit! Unfortunately, though, the style is still very dry and talky, with much of the most interesting action conveyed in something more akin to after-the-fact summary than anything makes the reader feel involved. Sometimes, in fact, the action is so compressed that I found it rather difficult to follow. And then there's the attitude towards women, which occasionally made me want to hurt something. Also the fact that, at least for most of the story, the protagonists behave in a massively amoral manner that might make them interesting anti-heroes if they were more fleshed out, but as is, is mostly just kind of unpleasant. Oh, and the fact that while Blish does a reasonable job conveying an impressive sense of scale when it comes to space, I never for a second found the vast spans of time this story was meant to cover the slightest bit convincing. All that having been said, I can certainly see how this might have been exciting when it first came out, but it really hasn't aged well. Which is disappointing, given how much potential it has. I can't help thinking that it would be fascinating to see a more modern take on it. If someone decided to do a movie version, with a large budget, an intelligent scriptwriter, and some judicious choices about what elements to keep, which to ditch, and what to to add, well, I'd line up for my ticket right now.

In the second story, "The Triumph of Time," New York City has been grounded for good, but its inhabitants find themselves unexpectedly facing the end of the universe. Or at least the end of time, which I guess is pretty much the same thing. This one generally did a much better job of holding my attention than the other installments. Admittedly, it has a lot of the same structural flaws as the previous story, as well as a lot of tedious and often impenetrable cosmology lectures. (Or possibly psuedo-cosmology lectures. The science seems to me to consist of an odd mix of the dated, the weirdly prescient, and the just plain nonsensical.) But it also has a bit more emotional and philosophical depth, even if the former occasionally borders on the melodramatic. And it does a rather better job, on the whole, with both large time scales and women. There's also a fair bit of that good old cosmic sense of wonder, shining through all the things that don't actually make all that much sense.

Rating: 3/5

I liked these stories when I read them as a kid; I expect they'd seem just as disappointing to me if I went back to them now.

Blish's reputation may be due for a revision.

As I've also said elsewhere, I remember checking a massive omnibus volume of them out of the library in my teens sometime and then just never getting around to tackling it. I'm really sorry about that now, as I think I would have liked the stories a lot better back then. But they've become steadily more dated since, I think, and I've become pickier, and I suppose we kind of missed our chance for happiness together. So to speak.

Well, Blish, at least, will always hold a place in my heart for his old Star Trek novelizations, which brought me downright embarrassing amounts of pleasure when I was a kid.

2. The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist



This Swedish novel is set in a near-future society where people who are deemed not to be "needed" by others -- that is, those without spouses or children or jobs important to those with spouses and children -- are, at the age of fifty or sixty, sent to "the unit," a seemingly plush and comfortable one-building retirement community, where they are used in medical experiments to benefit the wider population and eventually killed so that their organs may be used to save the less "dispensable."

It is, in many ways, a somewhat flawed novel. To begin with, it's impossible not to compare to to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and it inevitably suffers for the comparison, as it's just not quite as subtle, moving, or deftly written as Ishuguro's remarkable book. Also, the society depicted here never quite feels entirely coherent or plausible, in either an emotional or a logical way. And there are a few odd little notes, such as the main character's slightly uncomfortable (and surprisingly literal) fetishization of traditional gender roles. I honestly cannot tell exactly what the author is intending to get at with that detail, and there are a few other aspects about which I could say much the same thing.

All that having been said, though, it still worked for me, and overall it worked quite well. I think the main reason for this is that in a great many respects it feels almost as if someone had sat down and invented a dystopia aimed at me personally. As it happens, I am also a spouseless, childless loner, and quite happy to be so, thank you very much. And while it's not exactly something I spend huge amounts of time dwelling on, I have indeed noticed society's almost unconscious tendency to prioritize those with families over those without, and the constant, subtle message that romantic love and the nurturing of the next generation are the only things that make life worthwhile. (Which sounds sweet and harmless, doesn't it, until you actually think about the fact that, logically, it implies the rest of us are worthless.) So, yes, it hit some buttons for me, and hit them very effectively.

Rating: A very subjective 4/5.

Ooh, it would me too. Scary! I think I'll avoid that one--my self-esteem isn't that good as it is! ;-)

Well, fortunately Holmqvist doesn't seem to agree with that policy. :) But it does serve as a bit of a harsh reminder...

>7 bragan:, Thanks for sharing your thoughts on The Unit. I read it in 2009 and felt much like you did: that it was impossible not to compare it unfavorably to Never Let Me Go, but I think you enjoyed it a bit more than I did in the end. There was just something about it that felt off.

I actually do agree that something about it felt a little off, but it's still hard to put my finger on exactly what. I think maybe a large part of it is that the whole thing is an obvious setup for some serious social commentary, but it's really hard to tell exactly what the intended target is. (Which is sort of what I meant by that comment about it being hard sometimes to know what the author's getting at.) That was distracting, and it was also part of what made the whole thing not quite feel like it hung together convincingly, too. It was hard to tell how some of the details were supposed to relate, either logically or thematically. And yet, overall it worked for me, anyway. And I'm always glad when a book manages to somehow transcend its flaws, even if only partially, and leaves me glad I read it. So I almost feel bad for dwelling on the negative so much.

3. The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies



Physicist/cosmologist/astrobiologist Paul Davies takes a thought-provoking look at various questions surrounding the idea of life elsewhere in the universe and our attempts to find it. What are the odds that life, and intelligent life, exist elsewhere? How can we even go about making educated guesses on that? What kind of evidence might change our estimation of the odds? If such life does exist, what might it be like? And what, if anything, does it mean that in fifty years of looking, we haven't found any intelligent signals, or at least none we could be remotely sure about? Is the conventional, radio-based attempt to detect alien communications really the best way to go about it? What other kinds of evidence might aliens leave of their existence, and how might we look for those? And what happens if we do find something? (Davies is particularly well-placed to address that last question, as he is the chairman of the group that makes protocol recommendations for the possible event.)

Some of Davies' speculations are out there enough that they almost border on the wacky, but even those exist to make a reasonable point: that our traditional methods of looking tend to assume that aliens are too much like us, when, technologically speaking, what we're like is already changing on a scale of decades.

Overall, it's a provocative, engaging, interesting read, albeit very far from the last word on the subject.

Rating: 4/5

>12 bragan:, glad you liked it, it's on my tbr list!

Yes, I say it's definitely well worth reading! I'll look forward to hearing what you think about it, too.

4. Darwin's Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow edited by Zsuzsi Gartner



Describing this anthology in the introduction, the editor writes, "I asked Canadian short-fiction writers not normally known for an exploration of future times for their social satire, fabulist tales, and irreverent dystopian visions of the day after tomorrow." Which sounds wonderful, and which isn't in fact a bad description of the contents. And yet somehow I found the whole thing vaguely disappointing. The stories are all well written, and some of them I liked well enough, but the anthology as a whole just didn't really work for me the way I was hoping for. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but, taken in aggregate, the whole thing feels almost like it's trying a little too hard to be hip and sardonic and irreverent, and a lot of the social commentary seems to consist of the obvious wrapped up in the obscure, if that makes any sense. It's not a bad collection, by any means; I just think this is a case of a significant mismatch between the anthologist's and reader's tastes.

Rating: 3.5/5

Bragan and Fanny--I'm one who liked The Unit more than Never Let Me Go, although neither is on my memorable list.

And Bragan, I don't think you'd fit the "dispensables" class--you're a scientist as I recall??

I noticed that most of the dispensables were artists of one type or another, or otherwise creative souls. I could be misremembering, though, since I read it as an ER book a few years ago.

Not a scientist, more scientific support staff. I seriously doubt I'd get a pass. And then what would happen to my cats? At least the protagonist was able to find a nice home for her dog, but you try re-homing three neurotic tabbies and a possibly-sick kitten. It's an upsetting thought. Yeah, the premise of that one really does hit me where I live in all kinds of ways.

And there were a large proportion of artistic types, but that wasn't the criterion by which they were selected or anything.

>17 bragan:, I cried my eyes out once during The Unit - that was the part where she separated from her dog.

Bragan@15,

Hmm, I always have an impulse to read anthologies like this, since I'm interested in how the greater world has assimilated SF's ideas, themes and methods, but now I will probably wait for the paperback, if any.

7 - The Unit sounds interesting. I'd seen a few reviews that piqued my interest so I'm putting on the wishlist.

I though the protagonist's parting with her dog and the ending (which I won't discuss) were analogous in some ways. A neat way of beginning and wrapping up the story line. I loved both The Unit and Never Let Me Go. The one unrealistic part of The Unit was the age at which this people became donors. Younger, healthier people would have been much better candidates.

>19 dukedom_enough:: It is a really interesting question, and, maddeningly, having read the anthology, I'm still not remotely sure how to answer it. I guess in general, my impression seems to be that these authors have actually assimilated them pretty well, and yet... well, I still can't quite put my finger on what it is that bugs me about it. So I have no idea whether you or anyone else is likely to have the same reaction.

>20 janemarieprice:: It is an interesting book, whatever varied responses people might have to it. If you do get to it, I hope you enjoy! If "enjoy" is quite the right word.

>21 urania1:: I must say, I found the ending surprisingly poignant. Which, along with the way it managed to push my own individual buttons so well, is why I gave it four stars despite its flaws. I actually do think it was unrealistic on a number of points, but in the end I can just sort of shrug and figure that realism wasn't the main point.

5. The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities by Stephen Jay Gould.



There's a sentence about two-thirds of the way through this book that I think sums up its structure pretty well: "In keeping with my practice throughout this book," Gould writes, "I will forgo any further abstract or theoretical discussion in favor of particular examples, not widely known, that strike me as especially apropos or poignant in illustrating the general thesis under discussion." Unfortunately, this turns out not to be a particularly good approach. However poignant Gould may personally find his "examples," I mainly found them interesting only as tidbits of historical trivia, and throughout most of the book, the "general thesis" he's getting at is vague and murky at best. Mostly, it seems to be, "Hey, science and the humanities should totally be friends!" Which is a pleasant enough sentiment, but not really a statement that requires an entire book-length work to make. He does sometimes get around to discussing ideas and making actual points, particularly in the final sections. Specifically, he goes on at some length about his belief that fields such as the social sciences are never going to be explicable in purely reductionist terms from a knowledge of basic physics. Which is something he might or might not be right about -- my own feeling is that at our current level of knowledge it's impossible to say for sure -- but I don't find his analysis terribly compelling.

Also, while most of Gould's writing is very clear and eloquent, I found his prose here both somewhat overwritten and fairly dry, sometimes even bordering on the pretentious. I don't know how much of this is due to a conscious but misguided attempt to write in a style more common in the humanities than the sciences, and how much of it is due to the unfortunate fact that he died before getting the opportunity to edit and revise the text. But I do know that it contributed to the sense of disappointment I felt about the whole thing.

Ultimately, while some of it is interesting, I have to say that if you're going to skip reading just one of Stephen Jay Gould's books, this should be it.

Rating: 2.5/5

:-)

Crisp evaluation.

6. Room by Emma Donoghue



Five-year-old Jack knows nothing but the single room where he was born and lives with his mother. To her it's captivity, but to him, it's simply his world and his home, and what the reader is aware of as a situation of deep and lurking horror is happy and normal and safe to Jack, while the world we think of as happy and normal and safe is frightening and strange. Donohue does an amazingly good job of showing us the world through his eyes, and the result is compelling. I genuinely could not put it down.

Rating: 4.5/5

>25 urania1:, That's too bad about the SJG. I did love Dinosaur in a Haystack, but I've never made good on my vow to read more of his books.

24 - That's a shame...premise sounds like it had potential. Cross-disciplinary study I think can help you formulate ideas that maybe you wouldn't have come up with otherwise (at least it always did for me).

>27 fannyprice:: Any of his essay collections are great.

>28 janemarieprice:: It really is a potentially interesting and worthwhile topic, yeah, which is another part of the reason why it was so disappointing. In the end, I don't think he really said much that was particularly useful or insightful at all.

Catching up... I think I liked The Unit more than you did - in fact, since I first read it about 18 months ago I have re-read it twice. (Mind you, have done the same with Never Let Me Go, which is certainly the better novel.)

Not sure about aliens. I encounter too many of them on this planet to seek out tales about those who may exist on other planets.

Memo to self: read some Stephen Jay Gould.

Yeah, I was surprised that The Unit worked as well for me as it did, but I'm not feeling any great desire to re-read it.

And I'm always hopeful that learning about aliens elsewhere might help me understand the ones here!

Gould is well worth reading, as long as you just avoid that one.

7. Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race by Jon Stewart, et al.



A visual guide to humanity, presented for the benefit of any alien visitors who happen to swing by Earth after we're gone. It's not howlingly funny, perhaps, but it is consistently entertaining, and I'm impressed by how smart much of the humor is. The science-y parts, for instance, were clearly written by someone with an actual understanding of the subject. And unsurprisingly, given that this is Jon Stewart and the Daily Show writers we're talking about, bits of it contain some real satiric bite.

Rating: 4/5

Jon Stewart is incredibly smart -- and smart and witty is a killer combo, all too rare. May have to read this one...

I have found it duller than I expected when I bought it. I've had it nearby for months now and turn to it only when there just isn't anything else to be done at the moment.

Robert

>34 Chatterbox:: I love Jon Stewart. Not only is he smart and witty, he comes across sometimes as a great lone voice of reason in the political landscape.

>35 Mr.Durick:: I suppose how much you enjoy it is likely to depend on exactly what you were expecting. Personally, I found it lots of fun -- more so than his previous book, I think -- but best read a few pages at a time.

I was given a copy for Christmas and spent the afternoon happily reading. My brother saw me finish it and was outraged at what he saw as a squandering of a precious resource.

And I agree that having Jon Stewart around now is very reassuring, especially if you live in a crimson state with a tendency toward hyperbole.

Scary to ponder the fact that we turn to a comedy show for news, isn't it??

Well, since the news shows are just jokes, it seems right somehow....

Which is pretty scary.

>24 bragan:. Sorry I'm a bit late to the party, but I just wanted to say I almost picked this up at a second bookstore the other day. Happily I didn't waste my money, after reading your review. From what I was able to gather from a quick skim, it did seem to ramble. It is disappointing that Gould didn't get the chance to edit into a more concise book like his others.

I really hope that someone takes up this topic and is to make a better effort of it. It really is something worth exploring I think.

Oh and anything by John Stewart is pretty much gold in my book. Or Colbert for that matter.

Glad to know you managed to avoid that one! Gould really has written so many other books that are much more worth spending your money on.

As far as other books on the topic go, a large-ish section of Gould's book is spent refuting (in a rambling fashion) Edward O. Wilson's Consilience, the main effect of which was to make me wish I were reading that instead. Especially as I do actually have a copy. I should try to get around to it sooner rather than later.

And, yes, Colbert is also wonderful. I wonder if he's going to do another book sometime?

8. Blackout by Connie Willis



This story follows a number of researchers who have traveled back in time from 2060 to observe various places in England during the Blitz. Only due to scheduling problems, they arrive less prepared than they should be, and due to the unpredictable nature of time travel, they don't necessary show up quite when and where they expected. And then there's the question of whether they can get back, and whether it's really true that you can't alter the future...

This is only the first part of the story, which is actually one novel in two volumes, to be continued in All Clear. Fortunately, I knew that in advance, and made sure to have a copy of part two on hand before starting part one. I was still a little uncertain about this two-volume thing, though, as I think Connie Willis' writing is often better at shorter lengths -- in my opinion, the last novel of her that I read, Passage, suffered badly from being at least twice as long as it ought to have been -- and in total this story clocks in at something like 1,100 pages. But while it might have been a little slow to get going, this first installment, at least, held my attention quite nicely all the way through. The characters' individual situations are reasonably suspenseful, but it's the ground-level look at the lives of ordinary people in this extraordinary time and place that really captured my interest. It's made me wish I knew a lot more about the Blitz than I do.

Rating: 4/5

I think your take on this is very close to mine -- the suspense is diminished by the long-drawn out narrative. But the detail is great! And you'll find the pace picks up in the final 1/2 to 1/3 of the sequel...

>8 bonniebooks: Bragan, I've been wanting to get to this one. I liked The Doomsday Book and Passage, though I agree with you about the length.

>44 Chatterbox:: I'm now 65 pages into All Clear and already find myself thinking that the pace is starting to drag. Glad to know it picks up!

>45 theaelizabet:: I like Willis' writing a lot, but she does have some pacing problems with her longer stuff. Her short stories are generally terrific, though.

The time travel problems in Passage got a little "old" for me and the story went on too long for me as well, but I wonder how it would feel to someone for whom that was their first Willis?

I have no idea. I think the first Willis I read was her short story "At the Rialto" back in 1989 or so, and I fell in love with her writing immediately. And the first of her novels I read was Doomsday Book, and while I do recall thinking it was very slow, any complaints I might have had about it were completely wiped out by the emotional impact of the ending.

One thing I have noticed is that there are certain motifs Willis really likes -- particularly miscommunications and missed connections --- and while those can provide a lot of humor and drive a lot of plot, in her longer stuff it does sometimes get repetitive enough to become a little frustrating.

In Blackout and All Clear the missed connections are kind of the point, aren't they? As the students wonder whether they really are circumstantial or something permanent.

They are, which I think is what made Blackout work well for me despite the rather slow pace. By the beginning of All Clear, it might be reaching the point where it feels a bit repetitive, though. We'll see how I feel about the next 500 pages.

9. All Clear by Connie Willis



The second half of Willis' two-volume novel about time traveling historians stranded in London during the Blitz. I do kind of wish she'd managed to edit the story down to one volume, as the beginning of this installment drags a bit. The last 200 pages or so are very engrossing, though, and even if I could pick a small nit or two, the story as a whole is satisfying and even rather moving. Definitely worth sticking with through the slower parts.

Rating: 4/5

10. The Greatest Adventure: Apollo 13 & Other Space Adventures by Those Who Flew Them! edited by Edward Gibson



This was published in 1994. It may have been sitting on the bottom of my To-Read Pile nearly that long. I really need to get that thing under control.

Anyway, it features lots of space-related photos, including many gorgeous shots of various places on Earth as seen from orbit, as well as very short essays by astronauts and cosmonauts offering snippets of their thoughts and experiences. Some of their descriptions of the views out their windows are downright inspirational, but if you're interested in learning about manned spaceflight or in a vivid descriptions of what it's like to travel into space, there are much better books for that. It does, however, make for a nice, attractive volume to keep on your coffee table and dip in and out of.

Rating: 3.5/5

11. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin



Sherlock Holmes is called upon to investigate the killings of Jack the Ripper. This book is really hard to discuss without spoilers -- although I really, really wish certain people both here and on Amazon had tried just a little bit harder -- but I will say that there's a disturbingly audacious idea at the center of it that I found intriguing, but I don't think Dibdin's writing is quite strong enough to bring it off as effectively and convincingly as I might like.

Rating: 3.5/5

Ok, I'm going to have to read the Dibdin book because I loved his Aurelio Zen books.

I enjoyed spending time with the Willis books, but I think you are right--they might have been stronger pared down to one. I still vote for just one really long book, a la Anathem. The ending was strong.

It's hard to know whether to recommend the Dibdin book or not. I thought it was at least interesting, but I do understand why a lot of Holmes fans seem to have hated it. I haven't read anything else he's written, though.

And I think Blackout/All Clear might have worked best if it were more like 800 pages or so -- which would have been doable in one volume -- instead of 1,100+. The fact that it still worked well despite being overlong, though, says something about Willis' writing. A strong enough ending can make a lot of what comes before it worthwhile.

12. The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina



Marine biologist and conservationist Carl Safina shares a year of observing migrating birds and fish from his beach cottage home on Long Island, as well as several expeditions he's made to regions polar and tropical to investigate their animals and ecology. Along the way, he offers detailed descriptions of wildlife, personal stories about fishing and walking along the beach with his dog, philosophical musings about the interconnectedness of life, impassioned political opinions, and sobering examples of environmental change. This somewhat rambling approach works far better than I would have expected it to. It's thought-provoking, eye-opening, and often surprisingly moving, and it's left me with a slightly uncomfortable but welcome urge to rethink my own relation to the natural world in a way that I suspect is going to linger for a while. I can imagine that some might consider it preachy, and in a sense it may be, but it's an inspirational sermon rather than a condescending lecture. Recommended for those who are interested in the environment, and for those who should be.

Rating: 4.5/5

(Note: this was my ER book from December)

13. Elsewhere by Will Shetterly



A fantasy novel set in the 1990s shared world of the Borderlands, a rough urban setting on the border between the human world and the realm of faerie. The tag line for the series is "where magic meets rock & roll," which probably tells you most of what you need to know about it. I'd read a couple of books in this series before: Emma Bull's Finder, which I read many years ago and vaguely remember liking well enough, and the anthology Borderland, which I read last year and was kind of underwhelmed by. This one, I think, lies somewhere in between. It's decently written, and Shetterly makes the setting feel real enough. But the story -- which follows a teenage runaway who comes to Bordertown looking for his brother and falls in with a group of bohemian misfits -- really wasn't more than mildly interesting to me. I could say pretty much the same thing about the characters, too. It's a quick read, and not an unpleasant one, but also not very memorable. And now that I'm finished with what was already sitting on my To-Read Pile, I think I'm ready to call myself done with this series.

Rating: 3.5/5

14. Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern



Justin Halpern maintains a Twitter feed, "shit my dad says," on which he posts various quotes from his blunt, earthy, highly opinionated father. It's entertaining enough that I don't even have Twitter, and I still follow it. The book version intersperses the quotes with longer dad-related anecdotes from Halpern's childhood and adulthood. The anecdotes range from amusing to moderately hilarious, and often manage to be surprisingly touching in a strange, slightly twisted way, while the quotes are just laugh-out-loud funny. Having read through it all, I've decided that I like Halpern's dad. I think I like him a lot.

Rating: 4/5

15. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese



The story of Dr. Marion Praise Stone, born in Ethiopia, along with his twin brother, to an Indian nun and, apparently, a strange but brilliant English surgeon. It's a very leisurely novel; it takes the narrator a full hundred pages just to finish telling the (admittedly very complicated and dramatic) story of his birth. But despite that, it never felt slow or dull. The characters are all complex and believable, and it's full of vivid, interesting details about the practice of medicine and the realities of life in Ethiopia. (It may be hard to say which of the two, ultimately, is bloodier.)

Rating: 4/5

16. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking



I was kind of unimpressed by Hawking's latest book, The Grand Design (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow), which I read a few months ago. But it did remind me that I still had this book sitting on my To-Read Pile, getting more and more out of date by the minute, so I figured I'd better pick it up and give it a shot.

In a way, this one gave me some of what I'd been hoping for from The Grand Design, as it touches on topics such as M-theory, which I am very, very fuzzy on and quite interested in learning more about, instead of concentrating mainly on the basic concepts of modern physics. So I found parts of it interesting and reasonably rewarding. On the other hand, I do think I can make some of the same complaints about it as I did about The Grand Design, namely that it's often rather too abstruse and lacking in explanatory background to make sense to the complete layman, but also frequently lacks the technical detail that might help make it more understandable to, say, someone with a decent but slightly rusty undergraduate-level background in physics and astrophysics like yours truly. Admittedly, this is a problem any popularizer is going to run into when dealing with a field like this in which it's essentially impossible to grasp certain ideas without an understanding of advanced mathematics, but I know I've seen other writers do it somewhat better.

At least the illustrations make the book very attractive, and, unlike those in The Grand Design, they tend to actually be relevant and sometimes even useful, if also a little distracting.

Rating: 3.5/5

17. Apocalypse Nerd by Peter Bagge



A short, black-and-white graphic novel about a computer programmer and his jerky friend who are returning from a cabin in the Cascades when North Korea nukes the city of Seattle, and their camping trip turns into a post-apocalyptic survival scenario. Things get very ugly, very quickly. In his introduction, author Peter Bagge says he wanted to reject the kind of survivalist fantasy you sometimes get in such stories and "write a much more honest and realistic imagining of what things would be like for someone like me placed in such a situation, with little or no survival skills." He definitely avoids romanticizing the scenario, but I'm not entirely sure how "realistic" this alternative is. It's all a bit stilted, with some of the situations and characters a little too contrived or cliche to really capture the "morality goes out the window in a survival crisis" theme he's going for in a truly effective way. It's not bad, but I was hoping for something with a bit more subtlety.

Rating: 3.5/5

18. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America



In the last decade of the 19th century, Chicago put forth a concentrated effort to create an exposition of proportions never seen before, a city-within-a-city that would astonish and amaze the world. Meanwhile, down the street, one H. H. Holmes was doing some construction of his own. His building featured a a creepy basement; a soundproof, airtight vault; and a suspiciously shaped, cleverly odorless "kiln." While architects and city officials set about their plans to impress the populace, Holmes was hiring and/or seducing young and attractive women with a tendency to randomly disappear "back to the farm" with no notice, and persuading friends and acquaintances to take out large life insurance policies in his name.

They're both interesting stories. The creation of the World's Fair features a certain degree of real drama, but more than that, it provides a window into many different aspects of the times. And Holmes' killings hold a gruesome sort of fascination, which Larson presents in an understated sort of way that makes it all the more effectively creepy. If this were a movie, I'd strongly suspect Hollywood of inventing some of the more audacious (but apparently true) details in order to make a better and more shocking story.

Rating: 4/5

Hi! I took a little time to read your thread here, rather than on the '75' group, and it was very worthwhile. You read some interesting stuff.

I had exactly the same reaction the the SJG book as you did - mightily disappointed in a writer I had hitherto found very readable and interesting. Oh well.

And I must put The View from Lazy Point on my list - it sounds yummy.

Eric Larson has found an interesting niche in history. The way he tells two very distinct stories only tied together by place and time is refreshing. However, when reviewing his notes and sources it seems that the history of the Holmes's murders is too incomplete to form such a coherent stroy. Leaveing a lot of room of speculative history even if they are creepily compelling.

62 - I could have sworn I own this, but LT tells me that I don't. Nice review, I'll be on the lookout for this at my local shops.

>63 ffortsa:: I'm not on the 75 group. Maybe you're thinking of Books Off the Shelf? Always glad to add stuff to people's lists, though! I do recommend The View from Lazy Point. I wasn't at all sure about the writing style at first, but, boy, did it grow on me. As for the Gould book, I think I'm going to just try to forget that he wrote it.

>64 stretch:: I admit I didn't peruse the notes too closely, but it seems to me pretty clear that he was relying on incomplete information and putting together a picture that was at least partially speculative. What impressed me is that he made that work for, rather than against him, as the fact that the reader's imagination is left to fill in a lot of the details actually adds to the creepiness factor.

(ETA: I should perhaps also add that the "audacious details" I alluded to above are generally the ones that appear to be confirmed as true, rather than speculation. Like the revelation of what Holmes did with some of the skeletons, and the simple fact that he got away with so much for so long.)

>65 janemarieprice:: It's definitely worth reading if the subject matter sounds appealing to you at all. I expected the serial killer aspect of it to be interesting, but I was a little surprised by how much of the focus of the book was on the fair, and how interesting that was in its own right.

>65 janemarieprice:: Actually, heck, I have an extra copy. (I unwisely bought a copy in December, only to receive another one through SantaThing.) I've been looking for a good home for it. If you want it, PM me with your address and it's yours.

yes, of course, Books off the Shelf. Typical me.

>65 janemarieprice:, 67
what a nice offer and I think you'd love the book Jane. Its exploration of the business, politics and architecture of constructing the Chicago World's Fair was outstanding.

19. Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb



A group of science fiction fans who lived and wrote together for a brief period in the 1950s reunites to dig up a time capsule that's been buried underwater for decades. Since some of them have since become big name writers, the unpublished manuscripts inside the capsule are expected to be worth a lot of money. But then someone unexpected shows up at the reunion, and a murder soon follows.

Years ago I read McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun, a light-hearted murder mystery set at a science fiction convention, and was less than thrilled with it, as I found her treatment of fans a bit mean-spirited. Others seemed to find it funny rather than offensive, though, leading me to think that perhaps I was being a bit oversensitive. So when a free copy of her follow-up novel fell into my lap, I figured I'd give her another chance.

Well, this one did bug me somewhat less on that score. She definitely shows something of a dark side to fandom, but it's not an entirely unbalanced one, and if the characters are all a bit loser-ish, they are at least loser-ish in varied and reasonably realistic ways. And her depiction of 1950s SF fandom seems really pretty clueful. (Or at least, it does to me; admittedly, that was a fair bit before my time.) Unfortunately, though, the story itself was dull. It takes half the book for anything at all to happen, and the murder doesn't even take place until three quarters of the way through. It's not terribly compelling once it does, either, and it's wrapped up ridiculously quickly with some ridiculously implausible revelations. I was at least surprised by who dunnit, but that's about all I can say for the plot.

The title really doesn't do the book any favors, either, as it seems to promise a deliberately cheesy comic romp when, despite a few moments of variably successful humor, it's really not any of those things.

Rating: 2.5/5

20. Marshall Brain's How Stuff Works edited by Marshall Brain



This is pretty much exactly what the title leads you to expect: a book full of short (1-4 page) explanations of how things work. Mostly it concentrates on various kinds of technology, from roller coasters to cell phones, but it also includes some examples from the natural world, including atoms and viruses. The explanations are generally pretty basic, although sometimes they include odd technical details, and are presented in very clear, plain language, accompanied by colorful illustrations. Clear, plain, and basic doesn't necessarily mean "dumbed down," though; the writers are even willing to throw in some simple equations or chemical formulae if the topic seems to call for it.

Some of the entries are definitely more interesting and accessible than others; I'll admit that my eyes glazed over a bit during the discussions of automotive systems, although that's probably more the fault of my own immense mechanical ineptitude than anything else. But the best of them provoke a pleasant "Hey, neat, I never thought about how that works before!" reaction and/or provide a nice little basic science lesson. Overall, it leaves me feeling slightly in awe of just how much technology we take for granted every day, and how much incredible cleverness has gone into it all.

The book was published in 2001, so it is somewhat dated now, especially the computer sections. It's at least a little less so than I'd expected, though, as it does make a point of talking about what were then the current up-and-coming technologies. Still, if it were published today, I kind of doubt they'd bother explaining serial ports and dial-up modems.

Also, while I more or less read the entire thing through, I don't really recommend that approach. It's one of those books that's probably a lot more fun to pick up, browse through, and just read about whatever topic catches your interest.

Rating: 3.5/5

I also suffer from "immense mechanical ineptitude" and so I should probably get this book or something like it. Maybe......

I'm not sure I feel any more mechanically ept for having read it, but it's definitely worth leafing through, anyway.

67 - Fantastic ... will do. Sorry for the delay. I'm a little behind on LT since we had an unexpected house guest.

No problem! I got the message with your address. I'll mail it off sometime in the next few days. And you're very welcome. I'm glad to have found a good home for it. I hope you enjoy!

21. The Prisoner by Thomas M. Disch



A novel based on the classic 1960s British TV series. Although someone once said that the key to understanding The Prisoner is that it's "a surrealist work of art, not a television series," and for a narrow enough definition of the words "television series," I have to agree.

This isn't a novelization, as such. Some of the details are different from those presented on the screen (though I think not irreconcilably different), and it doesn't follow the storyline of the TV series, although it does incorporate parts of it in an odd way. I had the impression, before I started it, that it was an liberal adaptation of the televised story, not a faithful retelling. Not very far into it, though, I realized that it's actually something that, in this context, is both stranger and cleverer: it's a sequel. Although it's possible that may just be my projecting an interpretation, as it's all very ambiguous... which is spot-on appropriate for anything based on The Prisoner.

In fact, I'm really very impressed by how much this novel captures the feel of the show, because that is not an easy task. All the important elements seem to be here, though: surrealism, paranoia, brainwashing, confusion over what is or isn't real, a dry and intelligent sense of humor, symbolism both obvious and obscure, themes of individuality vs. conformity, and the whole brain-breaking, thought-provoking lot. I will say that I'm not at all sure what to make of the ending, but to say that the same is true of the TV series is to perpetrate an unbelievably massive understatement. If anything, my problem with the ending here may be that it's almost disappointingly coherent by contrast.

I honestly thought that this would be worthwhile mainly as a curiosity, or at most as an interesting alternate take on same basic premise. The fact that it actually turned out to be a decent complement to and reflection on the original was both unexpected and rather delightful.

Rating: 4/5

Hmm, but a book cannot have Patrick McGoohan.

This would be its main drawback, yes.

Disch really was a fine writer. I've been thinking I should go backand reread some of his books.

I've read very little of his stuff, but have already started adding more to my wishlist.

Bragan, just realizing I haven't posted here yet. Been lurking quietly, and falling behind, but just now caught up. I'm curious if The View from Lazy Point ever touches on The Everglades. Also, based on your review, I've wishlisted Safina's upcoming book, A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout.

Hello! I don't recall Lazy Point talking about the Everglades... If he does mention them, it would only be just in passing. In terms of specific places, he talks mostly about his Long Island home, as well as tropical oceans and polar regions.

I hadn't heard of The Sea in Flames, but I believe that's going on my wishlist now, as well. I'd be very interested to read Safina's take on it; I'm sure he'll have some informed and insightful things to say.

22. Side Jobs by Jim Butcher



A collection of short stories, most of which were originally published in various themed anthologies, featuring wise-cracking wizard/private investigator Harry Dresden and friends. The earliest few stories here didn't excite me much, being pretty lightweight and not very interesting, but they got decidedly better as they went on. The best of them either pack a surprising amount of plot into a small number of pages or are just plain fun. Or a little of both. Some of them fill in a few little character gaps rather nicely, too. Particularly notable is the final story, which is set immediately after the end of the most recent novel, and which does an excellent job of giving us a first-time look at Murphy's point of view, as well as making me impatient all over again for the next installment.

By the way, just in case it happens to be relevant to anyone... If you haven't read anything in this series before and are thinking that a collection of short stories might provide an easy way to dip into it, my advice is: don't. With the possible exception of the last one, these are designed to be readable on their own, but they don't really provide the best introduction to the series, and they give away a few important plot twists from the novels. I definitely recommend starting with Storm Front instead.

Rating: 4/5

23. I'm Perfect, You're Doomed:Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams.



Kyria Abrahams recounts the story of a childhood and young adulthood spent in a devout community of Jehovah's Witnesses, which lasted until she left in order to get out of an ill-advised marriage. I have really mixed feelings about this one. The glimpse it gives into the world and the belief system of the Jehovah's Witnesses is interesting; I knew very little about the sect, despite all the literature they've left on my doorstep over the years. And the book does have an amusing beginning and a reasonably satisfying ending. The middle, though, is just one long parade of angsty teenage melodrama. Abrahams gives the distinct impression of having a fair amount of disdain for her younger self, who just comes across as incredibly self-centered, pretentious, and obnoxious in every conceivable way. By the time I was a couple of hundred pages in, I had an almost overwhelming urge to slap her. Which then made me feel all kinds of guilty, because the girl clearly had some very real psychological problems, and her circumstances were genuinely depressing. But unfortunately for the reader, they're also depressing to read about, and not generally in a poignant, empathy-inducing or enlightening way, either. Just a depressing way.

Rating: 3/5

I'm adding The Prisoner to the wishlist. I saw the series when it originally aired on British tv (late 60's?), and am still haunted by it.

It originally aired in '67 and '68. Me, I saw it much, much more recently than that. But I won't be surprised if it's still haunting me decades from now.

24. Blue Light by Walter Mosely.



In 1960s California, a number of people are struck by bolts of sentient, alien blue light. Some of them die instantly. Others find their consciousness somehow integrated with that of the light and develop enhanced perceptions and strange mystical abilities. One of them does both, and becomes a vicious killer.

It's hard to quite know where to start with this one. On the plus side, it's well written, with prose that's thoughtful, readable, and smooth. And some of the individual story elements are pretty good; I thought the undead antagonist was quite nicely done. On the other hand, the mysticism is vague and not very insightful, and some of its manifestations seem faintly silly. The most interesting plot thread gets all but abandoned for most of the second half of the book. And ultimately the whole thing seems, well, pointless. I honestly never felt like I had any reason to care one way or another whether these blue light people succeeded or failed in whatever the hell it was they were trying to do. If I'm feeling charitable and inclined to focus on the positive, I might say that Mosely does far too good a job of trying to portray something distant, incomprehensible and alien to the point where it has little to do with humanity. If not, I might suggest that he's just thrown a bunch of fantastical elements together hoping they'll add up to something profound and failed. In either case, it's kind of frustrating, because there's clearly some writing talent behind it all, and it was impossible to escape the expectation that there just ought to be something more.

Rating: 3/5

"If I'm feeling charitable and inclined to focus on the positive, I might say... " - I read that, regardless of what comes next, as a strong criticism. I'll pass on the book, but thumbed your review.

Thanks. I definitely do feel critical of the book, possibly more so because so much about it seems to suggest that the author was capable of writing a book I'd actually really enjoy and just hadn't done it. I'm thinking perhaps I ought to try picking up one of his mysteries at some point, just to give him another chance.

Blue light seems one to avoid. Looking at the LT page you don't seem to be alone with your comments. I've just noticed I have got A little yellow dog sitting on my book shelves. I think that's more of a mystery thriller.

Yeah, there seems to be a fair amount of general agreement, based on the LT reviews. The ratings for his mysteries do seem to be higher.

25. The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer by David Leavitt



British mathematician Alan Turing laid many of the foundations of computer science. He also played a significant role in winning WWII with his work on breaking German codes, only to eventually be driven to suicide by the society he had helped to save, which proved incapable of tolerating his homosexuality. It's an important, fascinating story of genius, triumph and tragedy.... and this book, alas, does not do it justice. As a biography of Turing, it just feels lacking. In fact, the earliest sections are downright annoying, as Leavitt keeps going off on tangents, generally literary ones, that have very little to do with Turing. For a while, I felt as if I were reading an English term paper by someone making a desperate attempt to impress the teacher with his reading, not to mention his ability to find sexual subtext in everything up to and including abstract mathematics. It does sort of settle down after that, and portions of it were actually pretty interesting, but I still don't feel as if I've come away from it with much more of an understanding of Turing the person than I had when I started. I think that's largely because Leavitt tells us a lot about Turing -- or rather, about his ideas about Turing -- but shows us very little. And so much of what he has to say is speculation that seldom seems to be particularly well grounded. It's rather one-note speculation, too; Leavitt never does stop with that sexual subtext thing. It is at least rather more successful as an explanation of Turing's work, especially if you're interested in the gritty mathematical details. Although, really, I think it goes into quite a bit more gritty mathematical detail than most readers are likely to want or need.

In other words, this is yet another book with lots of interesting potential that turned out to be disappointing. I've been reading too many of those lately. It's made me grumpy, and inclined to rate this one lower than I otherwise might.

Rating: 2.5/5

#92...too bad... Hope you get a good one next.

Next up is The Hunger Games, and if that one doesn't turn out to be entertaining, the entire internet is lying to me.

92 - That's a shame, it does sound interesting.

94 - Hope that picks things up a bit.

Thanks! It's actually kind of amazing to me that it's possible to make a biography of someone that interesting that annoying and dull, but apparently it is.

26. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins



None of the basic story elements here is particularly innovative or original. Hungry peasants ruled over by a decadent elite, young people taken yearly as a tribute, a last-man-standing survival game, reality television as a bloodsport... None of this is exactly unfamiliar, but it's all handled well enough that it's almost easy to forget that. The main character is believable, the world she lives in is grounded in just the right amount of detail, and the action is decently paced and engaging. Even the teen romance element is interestingly complicated and not at all schmaltzy. Whether this deserves its status as the current ultra-hyped Must Read or not I can't really say, but it is a good, solid YA novel, and it's left me looking forward to reading the next volume.

Rating: 4/5

27. You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News by the editors of Cracked.com



I love Cracked.com's lists. They're always funny and sometimes surprisingly enlightening, and they display more of a capacity for critical thinking than you usually find on the web, or anywhere else, for that matter. If you're familiar with the website, you pretty much already know what to expect from the book: lists of things you probably didn't know, things that are much more bizarre and fascinating than you knew, and things that you thought you knew that turn out not to be true, all presented with a sense of humor that's witty, irreverent, occasionally mildly obscene, and slightly dark. Sample topics include: "the five most horrifying bugs in the world", "five wacky misunderstandings that almost caused a nuclear holocaust", "five fight moves that only work in the movies" and "the ten most insane medical practices in history." The short list format means that they really only scratch the surface of any of these topics, of course, but it's interesting and entertaining, and it did a great job of helping me pass a boring night shift.

Rating: 4/5

I love it that dystopian novels like The Hunger Games are popular with YA readers now. Gives one hope for the younger generation.

Heh. It kind of does.

Come to think of it, man, I loved reading them when I was a kid. So many things that just made me unpopularly nerdy when I was young seem to be downright mainstream with kids today.

28. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins



Book two of the Hunger Games trilogy. This one picks up on some of the political and social elements that were brought up in the first book but not fully developed there, as signs of rebellion begin to appear among the population. This is exactly the direction I'd expected and hoped things would go in, and I wasn't disappointed; I'd say the political aspect is actually more stirring than the survival games action here. I particularly like the fact that Collins never steps up onto a soapbox or adopts the kind of satirical voice that would be very easy in a story like this but still manages to produce some good thematic food for thought. The attitudes the decadent populace of the Capitol have toward the Games are particularly well done, I think. There's something uncomfortably familiar about their celebrity worship of the victors, and about their ability to empathize with injustices done to the contestants in a way that often seems more how one might empathize with a favorite soap opera character than with a real human being facing a real death. It's got me asking myself some interesting questions about the way people relate to the media and to other groups of people, and about what exactly "entertainment" is and what kind of lines it can cross, for good or ill. Not bad for a YA series.

The plot has some interesting twists, too, and I'm still finding the character interactions rather nicely done. The main character and her emotions and love life (such as it is) feel believably teenager-y without being at all stereotypical or shallow.

I'm rating this one four and a half stars, not because I think it's significantly better than the first book (which I gave four), but because, cumulatively, I feel the story has reached the point where it deserves that extra half a point. Here's hoping that book three follows through!

Rating: 4.5/5

Enjoying your reviews of the Suzanne Collins books. I have to admit that I am put off by the YA label. Perhaps I shouldn't be after all a good read is a good read.

That's very much my motto! In my experience, if you get too hung up on labels, you're likely to miss out on a lot. And there's actually a lot of pretty good stuff that's marketed as YA, including books that leave me scratching my head and wondering why they're marketed that way. Sometimes the only reason seems to be that the protagonist is young. In the case of the Hunger Games books, I think the YA description does fit, as they seem to me to be particularly great for teens, but, like most really good YA books, I'd say they're very much aimed at "teens and up."

I've been avoiding this series because I'm not sure I can handle the children-killing-children theme, no matter how well done it is...

still, your review tempts me. (I thumbed it)

That I can totally understand. It's meant to be a disturbing idea, of course, and I have to say, the fact there are times when I realize that I'm reading it and genuinely enjoying the action makes it even more disturbing. But in a way that I find worthwhile and thought-provoking.

And thanks for the thumb!

I've been avoiding this series because I'm not sure I can handle the children-killing-children theme, no matter how well done it is...

I know what you mean! I was reading the first book while I was sitting with my sister a few days before her death. Even so, I was enjoying the first book until the very end when that idea just sort of got to me, and when I started thinking about all the children who were reading and supposedly enjoying the book as well.

Personally, I rather like the idea of teenagers -- admittedly, not young children -- reading it, because I do think it's a book that sort of forces you to think a little about the nature of that enjoyment and how something that's entertaining from one point of view can be horrifying from another, and what happens when people's empathy becomes completely disengaged to the point where others' suffering is simply entertainment, and so forth. That's good stuff for young people to ponder, I'd say, and the fact that the protagonists are also young must surely make it easier for them to relate to it all.

Of course, at any age, people's tolerances for reading about upsetting things differ wildly. And the right book at the wrong time can be especially upsetting. I will say that it's certainly not one I would have chosen to read while sitting with a dying person. (I seem to recall craving pure escapism the one time I had to do that. The Three Musketeers was a godsend.)

My condolences on your loss, by the way.

(Edited to add a couple of sentences and fix a typo.)

I decided against Hunger Games and read Battle Royale which is very similar, simply because I can't stand first person narrations. But after reading your reviews I think I'm going to have to re-consider the series just to get another take on the survival game theme.

How is Battle Royale? I seem to keep encountering references to it, but if I've read any details about it, they've managed to slide out of my brain.

Of course, now I'm worried that I'm over-hyping the Hunger Games books, as I always do when I get this kind of a response, but at least in this case, it's not just me. I do think that, as obviously YA-geared series go, it's very good, anyway. At least, it is so far. That's coming from someone who's fine with first-person narration, though. (Also present-tense narration, which I know puts a lot of people off, but which I think was a reasonable storytelling choice in this case.)

I will say that it's certainly not one I would have chosen to read while sitting with a dying person.

I know! Sounds bizarre and terribly unfeeling of me! I was well into the book before going to be with my sister, and I actually found the book a good escape because it was a YA book, more fantasy than real, and set in the future. My sister, herself, was reading murder mysteries for as long as she was able to read.

I thought Battle Roayle was pretty good for the genre; being one of the orignals helps. There are lot of characters interacting with one another and can get confusing, esp. if your not use to Japanese names. I wish it would have gone into the political and social implications/ramifications in the end after the "winners" return to the mainland, which the second in the Hunger games trilogy sounds like it does flesh out that some more. Instead it ends with one of those movie type cliffhangers that just doesn't staisfy my curosity. Otherwise I felt that it was really well done.

>110 bonniebooks:: Oh, I would definitely not say bizarre and unfeeling! And, you know, I can imagine much worse things than to spend the end of one's life reading murder mysteries. I don't think it sounds strange at all.

It can be odd what does or doesn't set you off emotionally in situations like that, though. I remember when I was sitting with my stepfather in his last couple of weeks, one of the books I brought with me was a novel based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I figured was a safe bet for some fluffy escapism. (Not that Buffy the series is a safe bet for that sort of thing, but, really, books based on TV shows? There may be exceptions, but in general they're not exactly high on the emotional impact scale.) Fortunately I didn't get around to it until afterward, though, because it turned out to be about father-child relationships -- possibly the fact that it was called Sins of the Father ought to have been a clue -- and it did upset me a bit. Which is almost embarrassing to admit, really.

>111 stretch:: Maybe I'll check it out at some point. It could be interesting to compare and contrast them, too.

I'd say probably the thing I most like about the Hunger Games series (so far) is that it doesn't just go, "Here are some youngsters fighting for your entertainment!" and leave it at that, but does then follow it up with the idea that a society which allows that sort of thing to happen is deeply rotten and that the story really isn't complete until that's addressed and dealt with. Especially as Collins could very easily have tied things up at the end of the first book and never bothered getting into what happens next at all.

29. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins



The final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, in which deadly games give way to a real war, albeit one waged as much with propaganda as with weapons.

I really shouldn't have let my enthusiasm for Catching Fire raise my expectations so much, because I must say I found this one a little disappointing by comparison. Taken on its own (to the extent that that's even possible), it's still pretty good. There's interesting intrigue, a few twisty surprises, and an ending that works in unexpected ways. But in many respects it just falls short of the first two. It's more uneven, with action that's often less vivid and believable. There are a few plausibility problems that bugged me a bit in ways that nothing from the previous volumes did. There's a little less subtlety and a smidge more melodrama. And the most interesting relationship in the series is largely sidelined for much of the book. All of which is kind of unfortunate, as it's much better, in a series like this, to start slow and finish strong, rather than the other way around.

I do still recommend the trilogy, overall, for teens who can handle the high levels of violence and suffering, and for adults who don't have a problem reading stuff that comes under the heading of YA (and who can handle the high levels of violence and suffering). But I do recommend a certain amount of expectations management to avoid disappointment.

Rating: I'm very conflicted about how to rate this. In the end, I decided to just take away the extra half star I gave to Catching Fire and call it 4/5.

Do try another Mosley someday. He’s known for P.I.s and African-American experiences ... and taking his own time in his narratives.

How have I not known about cracked.com?? great site, surprisingly deep lists, thanks!

I've added The Devil in a Blue Dress to the wishlist. It's the first in his Easy Rawlins series, and that seems to be pretty well regarded.

And glad I could draw your attention to cracked.com! "Surprisingly deep" really is a pretty apt description!

30. The Moral Lives of Animals by Dale Peterson



I think the there are two central ideas in this book. First, that animals are neither furry, non-verbal humans nor unfeeling machines put on Earth solely for us to exploit, but creatures with minds and psychologies of their own. And second, that much of what we think of as belonging to a uniquely human moral sensibility can in fact be seen reflected in the behavior of other mammals: the existence of sexual taboos, for example, or a certain disinclination to kill one's own kind, or perhaps even the concept of not taking something that belongs to someone else (although that last one does strike me as something of a stretch).

Going into this, I expected something along the lines of a systematic exploration of the evolution of morality and of cooperation and altruism in animals. But while it does deal with these topics, it's more of a mixture of scientific findings, anecdotes about animal behavior, philosophy, personal speculation, literary references, and a bit of environmentalism. The result is a little unfocused, and I'm not at all sure how convincing it's likely to be to someone with a very different take on animals or morality than the author. (For what it's worth, my own feelings are complex and probably self-contradictory, but are broadly aligned with Peterson's.) I also can't help the vague but persistent feeling that he's skirted around some fundamental question about the nature of morality that I myself cannot quite put my finger on.

All that being said, though, I found it very much worth reading. It's a thoughtful and thought-provoking book, and the examples Peterson gives of specific animal behaviors are fascinating in themselves. It's also very well-written. One thing to point out, though: Peterson makes repeated references to Moby-Dick, to some extent even structuring his book around that novel's images and metaphors. He does this in a way that I think works extremely well, but it's entirely possible that those who have not read or did not enjoy Moby-Dick might find this more irritating than enlightening.

Rating: 4/5

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

Excellent Review and it's nice to know I'm not the only one who holds contradictory opinion on this topic. Sometimes I'm convinced that there is something more than just the superficial acts from one animal to another. Of course this backed up with selective science and the always dubious notion of a "gut feeling". Perhaps it says something about human nature that we want to read more into these interactions than is really there.

I think that, on the one hand, we humans have an incredible, hard-to-resist tendency to project ourselves onto the rest of the universe, which makes us want to anthropomorphize animals in ridiculous ways, and on the other we have trouble not thinking of ourselves as super-special, a whole different order of being than other animals, which isn't an attitude that's supported by evolutionary science. I'm with Peterson in believing that we should attempt to avoid both extremes and try to accept animals on their own terms, as creatures that have recognizable emotions but non-human thought patterns and social relationships that bear varying degrees of similarity to ours. But being objective about what's going on in an animal's mind isn't easy when our own minds are optimized for understanding other humans.

The biggest contradiction I see in my own response to animals is that I will go to vast effort to ensure the happiness and well-being of a cat, but will happily chow down on a cow without spending too much mental energy worrying about its feelings on the matter. My mind treats the cat as a being and the cow as an object, and I don't seem to have any logical way of justifying that. It kind of bugs me. Probably the only way for me to be logically and ethically consistent on the matter would be to go vegetarian, but I just do not have the willpower to do it. Mainly because I don't like vegetables.

Terrific review, a nice discussion. I'm all for recognizing the food chain, which saves me from temptations to vegetarianism. It also places humans in the continuum, even if we think we are at the top. As Shakespeare said through Hamlet (paraphrase), we fatten our animals to fatten ourselves, and fatten ourselves for worms. I'm sure he said it better, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

Even roughly paraphrased, it's a great quote.

Of course, if we really believe in taking our proper place on the food chain, we probably should complain less when we're attacked by sharks. :)

LOL! If those sharks only knew how bony most of us are, compared to a nice fat tuna, they wouldn't bother!

Hey Bragan, its a drag being a vegetarian if you don't like vegetables (or you live in France, but that's another story). Great review of The moral lives of animals and my views on the subject are very similar to yours.

>122 ffortsa:: I did read somewhere once that supposedly most shark attacks happen because the shark mistakes the human for a seal.

>123 baswood:: If only vegetables were more appetizing and animals were less incredibly tasty...

Being an active participate in the past of slaughtering livestock (mostly pigs, a couple cows, and lots of fish, but never my own) has given me an appreciation for my food, rather than turn me into veggie. And I have absolutely no conflict over this contradiction. Maybe I should?

My own feelings are so conflicted that I would never dream of telling someone else how they ought to feel about it. Appreciation for one's food is a good thing, though. That much, at least, I'm pretty sure of.

31. Moonstruck by Edward M. Lerner



Aliens visit Earth, claiming to want to consider us for membership in galactic society, but right from the beginning, something about them seems suspicious. The aliens' plan, once it's revealed (surprisingly early in the book and after a minimal amount of suspense) is potentially interesting in a silly, Doctor Who villain kind of way, but without any of the fun you'd get from real Doctor Who villains. The science at least is pretty good and involves a few modestly clever ideas, but it's really the only thing in this book that is plausible. It's also rather badly paced, with a drawn-out ending and entire sections read more like an outline for a novel than a finished story. My verdict: a resounding "meh."

Rating: 2.5/5

I want to read The Moral Lives of Animals (sorry, wrong touchstone). I think it's amazing how much of our behavior can be so connected to our genes--genes that can similarly impact such simple organisms as fruit flies.

I know what you mean about cats versus cows. I remember when my mother served rabbit instead of chicken to us without warning. I put rabbits in the same category as cats, so I remember gagging at seeing the leg of a rabbit on my plate. In contrast, I happily sucked on the bones of pigs and cattle (though it helped that it was called pork and beef) as well as chicken.

I find the question of how much of our behavior comes from our genes and our evolutionary history fascinating, too. There are undoubtedly books that explore that more thoroughly, but The Moral Lives of Animals definitely raises some provocative questions and ideas. (And that touchstone thing is annoying. I keep having to hand-add the work number to it.)

I wouldn't have a problem eating rabbit, I don't think, even though I know people who have pet bunnies. But cats... Man, I like cats better than people.

And besides, I bet they taste awful.

Cats go out of their way to taste bad.

They probably do!

OTOH, if you don't feed them their cat food, they probably think humans taste pretty good.

I'm sure if everyone I knew took a poll, I'd easily be voted Most Likely To Be Eaten By Cats.

Because...you're a cat-lady? I now have a picture of you surrounded by cats, with some of them entwined around your ankles and delicately licking them in anticipation. ;-)

Heh. I have three cats, which puts me well on my way to cat lady status. For a while there it was four, but that proved to be a socially unstable situation, so the latest foundling kitten has just gone off to live with my mother.

I have been bitten by cats, too, and you know how it is once they get a taste of human flesh...

32. Lowboy by John Wray



A schizophrenic sixteen-year-old boy escapes from a mental hospital and takes to the New York subway system in the belief that only he can prevent the imminent end of the world. It's an excellent, believable portrayal of a schizophrenic mind, effectively written and blessedly free of the usual pop culture stereotypes. This boy isn't a soulless psycho, a holy fool, or entertainingly wild 'n' crazy, and he doesn't have colorfully cartoony hallucinations or "Surprise, that wasn't real!" plot-twist delusions. He's just a thoughtful, intelligent teenage kid whose perceptions of reality are strange and broken and sad.

The other characters, unfortunately, are rather less convincing, and there's a vague sense of artificiality to much of it that made the book harder to engage with than I would have liked. At least, that's true up until the last hundred pages or so, when some sort of invisible switch flipped in my mind, and I suddenly found myself utterly gripped by it for reasons I'm still not entirely clear on, but am not complaining about.

Rating: 4/5

#137 - interesting, but think I'll pass. Also, thinking about your review and the follow-up conversation here on The Moral Lives of Animals.

33. The City & the City by China Mieville

(That's a regular link there, not a touchstone. Damned things just cannot handle an ampersand.)



A detective story set in two cities that are intimately intertwined in their geography but divided to an extent that Berlin never dreamed of, where citizens of each walk down the same streets side by side and yet refuse to see each other, steadfastly maintaining the conceit that they inhabit two separate spaces, in two different countries.

I'd previously only read Mieville's Bas-Lag novels (Perdido Street Station, etc.), and this one was rather different from what I expected. The Bas-Lag books are remarkable, first and foremost, for the way that near-infinite varieties of strangeness permeate every paragraph, every tiny detail of the characters' lives. Here, on the other hand, there is only the one, single element of strangeness in a setting that's otherwise firmly based in the real, ordinary world of the 21st century. But what a complicated, bizarre and fascinating element it is! It seems like a ridiculous, practically unworkable premise on the face of it, but Mieville grounds the whole thing in so much believable detail and the concept is so incredibly intriguing that somehow it just bypasses the whole suspension-of-disbelief issue entirely.

The mystery plot, while interesting enough, is not in the end nearly as compelling as the setting, but that almost doesn't matter. The opportunity just to vicariously walk the streets of this improbable double city makes this novel more than worthwhile.

Rating: 4/5

I think City is Mieville's best novel to date, with endless references to the nature of consciousness and to how people are constrained by their social environments. He came through the area for a reading, and, while getting an autograph, I urged him not to go back to Bas-Lag, but to keep trying new things.

I really like the Bas-Lag books, and find them so constantly inventive that it's difficult to imagine them getting old. But I was surprised and rather impressed by his ability to do something so completely different, and in particular to blend what is really a completely straightforward police procedural kind of story with a setting that totally defies any kind of genre category at all. It's made me very much want to see what else he can do.

I also like the fact that the really thought-provoking stuff about The City & the City is actually quite subtle. It's left up to the reader what they want to get out of it, philosophically, but there is potentially a lot there to get.

I have a different take on The City and the City. I enjoyed it but I don't think Mieville made the most of his idea - IMO he is not a particularly accomplished writer and where the concept leant itself to subtlety Mieville's writing doesn't. The novel got bogged down in the crime story rather than exploring any ideas or philosophy about living in this city. Also the ending was disappointingly obvious from page 1. (I also suspect we may find ourselves back in this city in the future).

Perhaps one of the reasons I don't have as high an opinion of it as some is that I didn't see it as an SF novel - I read it more as a fabulist piece and as such didn't have the depth or subtlety of a Borges or Calvino but was significantly longer.

Hmm, it sounds like you went into it expecting a lot more than I did.

I do agree that if we are trying to categorize it, the premise definitely belongs more to the genre of Borges or Calvino than to straight-ahead science fiction. But I don't really think that a philosophical exploration of the setup by itself could have carried a whole novel. There's a reason why Borges wrote short stories, really. Personally, I actually quite liked the idea of wrapping the idea up in a completely different genre of story and letting us catch glimpses of possible meaning out of the corner of the protagonist's eye, so to speak.

That being said, I did find the mystery plot only decent and not great -- there's a reason I gave it four stars and not four and a half or even five -- but I have to admit that I didn't guess the ending.

Nice review of The City and the City; I'll probably read it later this year.

I can see where there's room for a range of opinions about it, but I say it's definitely worth a read. And I really must check out more of Mieville's stuff.

34. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher



Deutscher takes a close look at the evolution of languages, specifically their grammar and structure. He explores the constant processes of building up and wearing down that all languages undergo -- for example, where did all those complicated Latin noun cases come from, and where did they disappear to? -- culminating in a highly speculative but plausible argument about how it's possible get from a very simple prehistoric "Me Tarzan" kind of language to the full complexity of modern languages in a completely natural way.

You definitely have to be a bit of a language geek for this one, I think. Deutscher deals with a lot of fiddly specifics and takes the reader very carefully through some highly detailed linguistic detective work. But he does so in a very clear and readable style, without using much technical jargon beyond what you might encounter in an advanced high school language class. Personally, since I am a bit of a language geek, albeit very much at a layman's level, I found it utterly fascinating. I think at one point, I might have actually raised my hands in the air and shouted, "Oh, nifty!" as some complicated bit of linguistic history suddenly popped into focus.

Raitng: 4.5/5

Good review of The unfolding of language which I have added to my to buy list. It sounds fascinating. If you are going to check out more of Mieville's stuff you can't do better than Perdido street station and my favourite of his The scar

I have read both Perdido Street Station and The Scar, actually. I'm thinking I really need to pick up Kraken next.

You've made The Unfolding of Language sound really interesting--I'm in!

Catching up here.

Interesting thoughts on the Hunger Games trilogy which I will probably get to eventually. (and condolences Bonnie) I was trying to remember what I was reading during my grandfather’s illness, but I think it was mostly GRE study material and things for school.

The Moral Lives of Animals sounds interesting. I have a similarly ambiguous feelings about the subject. I have pet rabbits but have few problems eating almost any animal - what can I say, I'm from Louisiana, we eat weird stuff.

I need to get around to reading some Mieville.

>149 bonniebooks:: It's definitely not for people whose eyes immediately glaze over when, say, presented with a list of Sumerian suffixes, but if you're interested in that kind of analysis, it really is fascinating. And Deutscher's style, while meticulous, is not at all dry.

>150 janemarieprice:: Funnily enough, cats aside, it's "lower" animals I have trouble eating: pretty much anything squishy or exoskeletal. But that's a "yuck!" reaction, not a reasoned moral stance. I am most definitely not from Louisiana,

Bragan@148,

Kraken was a bit of a disappointment for me. It's mainly a showcase for Mieville's amazingly productive imagination - something clever on almost every page. Not that it's not worth reading, but I'd suggest either Iron Council, which is actually my favorite of the three Bas-Lag novels, or, for a real change of pace, Un Lun Dun. That's YA. The cleverness supports the story better than in Kraken; the two girl heroines are appealing. There's a twist that both improves the story and supports one of Mieville's passionate beliefs. The story of the second journey to Un Lun Dun is one of the great passages in children's literature, IMO. Mieville did the illustrations himself, very competently.

Well, I happen to quite like Mieville's amazingly productive imagination, so that sounds fine by me! I think Un Lun Dun is on my wishlist as well, though.

And I also liked Iron Council best of the Bas-Lag novels, I think. I thought I was more or less alone on that one, though.

(OK, why are touchstones suddenly not working for me now?)

>33 bragan: I agree with dukedom, that The City & The City is Mieville's best book thus far (he's reading the newest now); however, I might be inclined to agree with jargoneer on some of his points - the idea may have slightly gotten bogged down in the crime novel format. I'm not bothered about whether it is SF or not; this kind of thing doesn't keep me awake at night:-)

btw, one can manually do a touchstone. If you go to the book's page and copy the number on the end of the url for the page. Paste in your bracketed touchstone with two colons. Thus, for City & the City it would be {7702396::The City & the City} (using the normal square brackets, of course.

I tried that, actually. It didn't work. Although I'm not sure if that was a one-time fluke, or if it just really, really doesn't like ampersands. My money's on the latter, though. Those touchstones are, well, touchy.

And jargoneer probably does have a point. I just don't seem to mind very much, myself.

I think it didn't help me that my expectation was high - the novel having won awards and gathered lots of praise. Something Dukedom said on another thread about the ideal length of a SF story struck me as well - I wonder if I would preferred this to have been a really concentrated story, perhaps a novella rather than a slightly flabby novel. I will read a sequel (The City & The City & The City) if one appears however.

35. The Map of Time by Félix J Palma



It's hard to know quite what to say about this one. To begin with, It's set in Victorian England (albeit not a particularly authentic-feeling version of Victorian England), and involves H.G. Wells, Jack the Ripper, improbable love affairs, and various ideas about time travel. Among other things. It also reads more like three closely linked stories than one coherent novel.

The writing is... kind of odd. It's rambling and bloated, with some weird, pulpy turns of phrase, and it's peppered with authorial intrusions that are distracting and sometimes entirely too cutesy. I think this may be deliberate, an attempt at some sort of parody of Victorian melodrama, and there's a definite tongue-in-cheek quality evident in places. But it's honestly difficult to tell. Maybe it works better in the original Spanish.

The plot, although very little of it holds up to any kind of logical scrutiny, is actually pretty amusing. Not really 600+ pages worth of amusing, though; there were places where I desperately wanted to whip out a red pen and edit out entire sections. For all that, it was a much faster read than I would remotely have expected, and its flaws irritated me less than I feel they should have. In the end, well... I really don't think it qualifies as a good book, by any reasonable criteria. Maybe not even a decent book. But it is kind of an entertaining book.

Not that it's particularly relevant, but I have to add that the cover art on the American edition is gorgeous.

Rating: 3/5

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

>157 bragan: - I think it's time that publishers and writers put any Jack the Ripper stories on hold. There really isn't anything left to say. (The same with the Titanic).

The summary of the novel reminded me of the film Time After Time where H.G. Wells followed Jack the Ripper to the late 20th century. It was a fairly decent film, a bit unjustly forgotten now.

Jack the Ripper isn't a main focus of the book, really, just a plot element that keeps cropping up. But I'm inclined to agree. Especially since reading The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and The Devil in the White City in the last couple of months meant that by the time I picked up this one, I was feeling pretty tired of Victorian serial killers.

And the description made me think of Time After Time, too, which I remember quite enjoying, but the plot was nothing like it. It reminded me of lots and lots of other things, but not so much that one.

36. Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black



Angry comedian Lewis Black shares his experiences with and opinions about religion. Despite the title, Lewis is sort of a believer, in that vague, non-denominational (although in this case Jewish-flavored) way that people usually mean when they say things like, "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious." So he's actually less critical of and cynical about religious faith in general than I'd expected. (In fact, if you ask me he's entirely too uncritical on certain subjects, particularly psychics and astrology.) Still, readers should definitely heed the warning he offers in the preface about not reading on if religious mockery isn't something you have a sense of humor about. "I think it takes itself too seriously," he says of religion, "and anything that takes itself too seriously is open to ridicule." He does get pretty acerbic towards various aspects of organized religion, and he skewers a few particular (and in my opinion deserving) targets pretty good, including a brilliantly scathing and utterly inspired tirade against Pat Robertson and his televangelist ilk.

That one rather awe-inspiring chapter aside, the book as a whole is reasonably amusing -- I chuckled out loud several times -- but I admit that I found it mildly disappointing. It's not exactly full of insights, comedic or otherwise, and it turns out that Black's rants are generally much funnier on video than in print.

Rating: 3.5/5

>160 bragan:. He came to my school once to give a talk about his faith, among other things, and how he uses religion in his stand-up. It certainly has the framing of those jokes/rants a bit, not in a bad way mind you, there just different when without the assumption of a total lack of religion.

I've found comedies writing as a whole is just not as funny in written as it is live. I wonder why that is?

I think good comedians tend to use every resource available to them when they're performing: body language, tone of voice, whatever, and when that's missing, there's something noticeably lacking. That's probably part of the reason, at least.

37. The Shadow over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror by H.P. Lovecraft



A collection of six short stories and one novella, some of which I'd read before and some I hadn't.

My general opinion of H.P. Lovecraft, based on what I'd previously read, is that at his best he had a keen ability to tap into the overwhelmed and overwhelming feelings that humans can sometimes experience when confronted with the incomprehensibly unfamiliar and the inconceivably immense. And his mythology, full of sleeping ancient gods and mad cultists, is a lot of fun to play around with, as a great many talented folks have done. On the other hand, my impression was that his writing could be somewhat tedious and his style overwrought to the point that it not only is it far too easily parodied, but it almost manages to do the job itself. This particular collection did cause me to revise my opinion of his writing abilities upward a bit, though. And I think he only uses the word "cyclopean" twice in the first six stories (before "Innsmouth" comes along and doubles the count).

A breakdown on the stories:

"The Colour Out of Space": This was the first Lovecraft story I ever read, by a couple of decades, and I remembered being pretty disturbed by it back in the day. I'm pleased to be able to report that, unlike a lot of stuff I read when I was a teenager, it holds up extremely well. It's s compelling, seriously creepy story that thoroughly captures the uneasy, uncanny feeling of ordinary, familiar things slowly growing twisted and strange. It also illustrates quite nicely the fact, often forgotten today, that sometimes saying "It was too horrible to describe" really is more effective than actually describing whatever-it-is.

"The Outsider": A strange little piece -- well, strange in slightly different ways than Lovecraft usually is, I guess -- that culminates in a twist that might have been chilling if it weren't obvious a mile away. Mostly it left me wondering what the heck the backstory was, since it's never really explained.

"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs": This one was ghost-written for Harry Houdini, who is also the main character. Which fact is, I think, more interesting than the story itself. There's way too much set-up for too little payoff, and the whole thing relies a bit too much on a sort of "Ooh, isn't Egypt ancient and mysterious and exotic?" vibe that seems a little quaint today.

"The Transition of Juan Romero": Short and very slight story about miners who disturb... something. OK, this one could have done with a little less "I dare not tell you" and a little more description; I actually had to flip back and check to see if I'd missed something.

"In the Walls of Eryx": A science fiction story about a man trapped in an invisible labyrinth in the jungles of Venus. It's better written than most SF of the time, and the scenario struck a particularly nightmarish chord for me, completely lacking in a sense of direction as I am. I'd actually read this one before, too, and the story had stuck with me, but I'd completely forgotten that Lovecraft had written it, so I was pleasantly surprised to encounter it here.

"The Festival": A Christmas story! Sort of. This one didn't make much of an impression, which is too bad, because a Lovecraft Christmas story sounds like it ought to be a particularly demented kind of wonderful. But mostly it's just one of those pieces where he reads like he's swallowed a particularly morbid thesaurus.

"The Shadow over Innsmouth": This tale of a decaying New England town that brings whole new levels of meaning to the word "fishy" is undoubtedly one of Lovecraft's best known works. There's probably good reason for that. It's an interesting story, with a moderately creepy premise and a lot of great attention to detail. Unfortunately, much of the most important exposition is written in a really annoying example of phonetic dialect, and there's a faint whiff of xenophobia to the whole thing that makes me mildly uncomfortable in ways the author never intended.

Rating: 4/5, mostly on the strength of "The Colour Out of Space" and "In the Walls of Eryx."

It's the Lovecraft Christmas Special! I never would have guessed. But I see others certainly have.

LOL! I really should not be surprised!

Some of those Christmas Carols are terrific. You know, I once said that I kind of like parodies of Lovecraft better than I like Lovecraft himself. This stuff is a great example; it's way more entertaining than the actual Christmas-themed story. I had to force myself to close the YouTube tab, or I could have spent all day watching that stuff.

Nice to rediscover Fishmen, though. You watch that thing, and you don't need to read "Innsmouth." It's all there in a minute and thirty-eight seconds. Set to Christmas music. I love that people do stuff like that.

#163 Is this a book for our literary fiction reader? Enjoyed your review. I have not read any of H P Lovecraft's books and so this might be a good place to start.

My guess is probably not. Lovecraft's writing style is... a bit idiosyncratic, very much not to everyone's taste, and probably not quite the sort of thing that readers of literary fiction are used to. Although it really does vary, and I suppose I would be interested to see what said hypothetical literary fiction reader might make of "The Colour Out of Space." If I were going to give them any Lovecraft, that would probably be the one.

Edit to clarify that first sentence: I mean not something I'd put on a list of recommended books for lit readers, not "not a good place to start." It's probably as good a place as any to start reading Lovecraft.

Like all of Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space" is available free online:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecolouroutofspace.htm

38. A Passion for Mars: Intrepid Explorers of the Red Planet by Andrew Chaikin



A look at the ideas, work and interplanetary dreams of real explorers of Mars: the people who design the spacecraft, do the science, and advocate for a human future on the Red Planet. (This includes the author himself, who before becoming a science journalist studied planetary geology and worked as an intern on the 1976 Viking 1 mission.) I was already familiar with a lot of the science presented here, but Chaiken's emphasis on the human perspective makes for a fresh and powerful new take on the subject. He captures the fascination and excitement these folks feel about our neighboring world extremely well, and by the end of the book that feeling becomes utterly infectious. I may actually have gotten a little choked up. But then, I get like that when it comes to this topic. Like many of the people featured here, I've been looking up at the sky and wanting to go there since I was a little kid, too. How wonderful to know that, however slowly, we are doing it.

Rating: 4.5/5

>168 dukedom_enough:: It is! In fact, if you promise not to tell anyone, I'll admit that I read it on my laptop at work, which made me look much busier during some dull downtime than if I'd picked up the book. :)

#168 Thanks for the link
#169 A Passion for Mars looks interesting

Getting lots of reading done this weekend!

39. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti



The story of a 19th century orphan boy with one hand who is "adopted" by a conman/graverobber/thief and finds himself embarking on a new life of crime with various dubious characters. Several of the blurbs on the back cover compare this to the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, and I can see why. In some ways, it does read a lot like Stevenson's boys' adventure novels, despite the fact that the protagonists, such as they are, would probably be the villains in a more traditional adventure story. It is rather darker than, say, Treasure Island, though, and I wouldn't give it to a kid; there's just a little bit too much in the way of violence, "adult themes," and other potentially disturbing stuff. But like Stevenson's tales, I quite enjoyed it. The plot is full of improbabilities, for sure, but it is entertaining and ultimately more satisfying than I'd expected it to be.

Rating: 4/5

I read The Good Thief last year and really liked the darker edge to the story that is lacking in the typical Stevenson's like stories. It has more truthiness to the time period. I've wanted to find Tinti's short story collection for a while now.

Also your review of A Passion for Mars is definitely thumbed and added to the wishlist. Sounds like a great read.

Yes, that dark edge was a bit surprising, but it was interesting. I see a lot of the reviews here on LT complained that none of the characters were likable, but I kind of liked the fact that there weren't any traditional "good guys."

If you do read A Passion for Mars, I hope you like it as much as I did! I think it is like;y to make an excellent introduction to the subject of Mars exploration.

I read The Good Thief a couple of years ago and had a similar reaction--that I wouldn't give or read it to a kids for those same reasons. But I also wouldn't recommend it to an adult, because of those plot "improbabilities" as you described them. I expect more from a novel for adults, so I was just blown away that this book has gotten the positive press that it has.

Ah, see, I have no problem, as an adult, with books that are just entertaining without being entirely believable! Although, really, it's always a question of what particular improbabilities you're willing to accept for the sake of a story, and I've never, ever been able to figure out an explanation for why some things bug me, often enough to completely ruin my enjoyment, and other things don't.

Having read some of the other LT reviews after writing mine, I can see why a lot of people didn't like The Good Thief, so I'd actually be pretty hesitant recommending it to people whose tastes I don't know well. But I'm glad I was able to approach it with whatever mindset it was I needed to enjoy it.

>157 bragan:, The cover art on The Map of Time alone makes me want to read it. Your review though, makes me re-think that.

The cover art is so gorgeous. I almost want to frame it and put it on my wall. It belongs on a much better book.

Happy to read your comments about two in my wishlist -- Lowboy for its perspective of schizophrenia and The Unfolding of Language.

I read Dreaming in Chinese last year, which introduced me to how culture fundamentally orients the structure and word choices in a language. The book was memoir about trying to learn Mandarin while living in China, but it led me to Duetscher's Through the Language Glass which looks substantial. I think I will read Unfolding first.

I already have a copy of Through the Language Glass, and after reading The Unfolding of Language, I am very much looking forward to it. (I hadn't even realized when I bought them that they were both by the same author.)

Dreaming in Chinese sounds like it might be worthwhile as well. I may add that one to my own wishlist.

40. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha



The conventional narrative about the evolution of human sexuality goes something like this: Humans are basically a monogamous species (or, to use the more accurate biological term, we "pair bond"). We normally tend to form nuclear family units, in which the male helps to feed, protect, and care for his mate and children. As a consequence of this, human men generally come hardwired with a sense of sexual jealousy and a desire to control their mates' sexuality (biological term: "mate-guarding"), since a man who invests his resources in another man's children tends to lose out big-time, evolutionarily. Also, women generally come hardwired with a desire to keep their mate emotionally bound to them and a preference for men of high status who will be "good providers." (Of course, none of this keeps men from being interested in any other fertile females who might be available, or women from being attracted to hunky young men who might be more physically fit than their mates, since both of those have value when it comes to passing more of your genes on, as well.) You have to admit, it does explain a lot about modern humans, including how messed-up we can be when it comes to relationships and sex.

The authors of this book dispute that narrative, though. They contend that prehistoric human societies were extremely egalitarian, with communal food-sharing and child-raising as standard practices, and that in that situation there is very little advantage to men being strongly concerned about paternity or women being strongly concerned about pairing up with a "provider." They don't deny that these concerns (and the consequent messed-upedness) exist in modern humans, but believe that their origins are cultural, rather than genetic, that they only really came into play with the advent of agriculture, and that prehistoric humans were generally sexually promiscuous, being more concerned with community values than with "family values." And they believe that the reason for the prevalence of the conventional narrative lies firmly in the cultural biases of researchers.

You can see the potential for this to be a touchy subject. It's hard to get into this stuff without opening big cans of worms involving social issues. And at first, I wasn't terribly impressed with the authors' approach on this score. They're not exactly free of biases themselves, certainly, and in the opening chapters of the book, particularly, they use some very loaded language. (Actual quote describing the conventional point of view: "Darwin says your mother's a whore.") Now, in fairness, I think this was largely an attempt to be lively, amusing, and entertainingly provocative. But really, starting a supposedly scientific argument with appeals to emotion and wishful thinking instead of logic, along with intimations that your opponent's viewpoint ought to be considered personally insulting to your readers? Not good form, and it's even less so in a case where half your argument involves the idea that the other side are the ones blinded by bias.

Fortunately -- very fortunately -- it mostly settles down after the first fifty pages or so, as the authors actually get down to making their case. As is usual in this field, they mostly rely on studies of modern and historical hunter-gatherer societies as well as our primate relatives to draw their conclusions, though they also cite research on current human sexuality. Some of their arguments are stronger than others, and I do think there are a few places where they've significantly oversimplified the viewpoint they're arguing against. There's also a bit of "he said, she said" when it comes to some of the disputed evidence, which leaves me unsure quite who to believe on specific points. All that having been said, though, their argument as a whole is extremely interesting, highly readable, and entirely plausible. Even if it turns out to be incorrect, this kind of informed challenging of conventional wisdom is truly healthy in science, and if they're right, they have some potentially relevant things to say about the implications for modern human lives. So in the end, despite a rocky start, I did find it quite a worthwhile read. I'd be very interested to see these ideas addressed further by archaeologists, anthropologists or evolutionary scientists, whether supporting or disputing them.

Rating: Despite the flaws, I'm calling it 4/5.

When you see the behavior of the Bonobo chimps, our closest relatives, you can imagine his thesis could be viable, but oh the power of culture, huh? It does make you wonder why there are so many cultural rules and laws governing women's sexual behavior. Doesn't seem like it would be necessary, given some of our old views about women's sexual behavior vs. men's.

Yeah, a big part of their argument is that, sexually, humans have a lot in common with bonobos. They figure our the common human/bonobo/chimp ancestor was actually a lot more bonobo-like than chimp-like in that respect, which apparently isn't the usual thinking.

They also make that exactly point about traditional views of women's sexuality, as well as other aspects of human sexual behavior: If something is supposed to be completely natural for us, why would we have to keep enforcing it with rules? Not to mention constantly breaking them?

42. Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks



A sprawling, imaginative science fiction action-adventure story full of fun stuff: bizarre cults, ancient artifacts, explosions, heists, daring escapes, treasure hunts, manhunts, mysteries of the past, surprise revelations, quirky ideas, life, death, and a darkly whimsical sense of humor. I will admit that the narrative's habit of jumping rapidly back and forth in time on a scale of anything from hours to decades and of not always explaining key plot points immediately sometimes had me feeling briefly confused, but I think that's likely to be more my fault than Banks', as I read much of it in a state of serious sleep-deprivation. This is definitely a book you want to be awake for.

Rating: 4/5

One of Banks' best, IMO. I love the British edition covers.

I find the cover of the edition I have kind of interesting. It's rather lovely, but it seems a bit of an odd choice to illustrate this particular story, even if there are boats in it.

bragan, you've posted some really interesting reading and comments since I was here last; I enjoyed it immensely! Against a Dark Background is one of three Banks' books I have read. I do remember as dense with stuff and action.

I'm a bit skeptical around any book along the lines of #181. The potential for bias here seems inescapable. I remember being lectured at by a lawyer friend over the theories in one book that claimed men were meant to sleep around, that it's hardwired in them...yada yada. He was very enthusiastic about it. I forget the book, but it was maybe 8 years ago or so.

I've read a few of Banks' Culture novels. I really do want to get around to more of his books. I think I've still got a couple of others on the TBR Pile.

And, yeah, when it comes to subjects like that, bias is a huge problem, because it's far, far too easy to find yourself trying to justify what you want to be true, whether it's "men are hardwired to sleep around so nobody can blame me" or "humans are programmed for love, not war, and all we have to do to get back to that state is to change our culture." I don't think that makes the subject not worth thinking about -- in fact I think it can potentially be very enlightening -- but you do always want to be careful to examine the assumptions.

You also want to be careful of your conclusions. "Human men come hardwired with a desire to sleep around," which is almost certainly at least to some extent true, is not at all the same thing as "Human men are meant to sleep around" or "It's always okay for men too sleep around regardless of circumstances" or "Sexual double standards are perfectly morally acceotable" or "I am justified in lying to my wife."

If you're interested in evolutionary biology/sexuality in general (all the more theories to apply to humans!), you'll enjoy Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson. Funny and fascinating, I've reviewed it here.

I seem to recall hearing good things about that one in the past, too, although the "advice column" idea seemed like it might be a little cutesy. Based on all those positive reviews, though, it sure sounds like it's a format that works. I think I'll add it to the wishlist!

Oh, it's definitely cutesy, but great fun anyway. I once gave it to my mother, who had just entered a nursing home, thinking that the subject and the title would entertain her. I think one of the nurses liberated it - maybe she thought old ladies didn't need that kind of reading!

I fully intend to be doing that kind of reading when I'm an old lady.

43. The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley



A collection of essays (along with a few poems) by anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley, published in 1978, a year after his death. Some of the essays deal with anthropology or evolutionary science, but most of them are more philosophical or feature personal musings about his encounters with nature. There are also a couple discussing the life and writings of Thoreau.

I have strong memories of reading Eiseley sometime in my teenage years, including a few of the essays in this collection, and being greatly affected by the beauty and depth of his writing, so I was very much looking forward to revisiting his work. Alas, sometimes we really should not reread the things that moved us when we were teens.

Don't get me wrong. Eiseley's writing is still beautiful, heartfelt, and poetic. And there are moments of wonder and insight to be found here, even if they're not quite as I remembered them. But his work is permeated by an ambiguous, vaguely religious sort of mysticism that I don't find particularly congenial these days and often based on premises I don't necessarily buy into, even when I agree with him on specifics. Much of his writing features an uneasy sense of the perceived conflict between reductionist science and what one might call a more spiritual view of nature; whereas I tend to regard that as a false conflict and a false dichotomy. Also, several of the essays do feel a bit dated, sometimes factually -- one piece revolves around the now-disputed cold-bloodedness of dinosaurs -- but more often linguistically. It is unpleasantly disconcerting, in the 21st century, to see an anthropologist casually referring to tribal peoples as "savages."

I have no doubt that many people are likely to find Eiseley's lyrical writing still speaks to them as much as it did to me two decades ago. But I can't help feeling a little disappointed.

Rating: Man, this is a hard one. Putting it in the three-star range seems to devalue the thoughtfulness, sincerity, and lovely prose to be found in this collection, but to give it four stars would misrepresent my personal reaction to it. Well, call it an even more subjective than usual 3.5/5, I guess.

44. Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre



The story of a young healer who wanders through a long-post-apocalyptic world using genetically modified snakes to produce drugs and treat disease. The plot is a bit rambly and isn't in itself terribly exciting, at least not until the last hundred pages or so when things start to come together. But the small, gradual glimpses we get into this world and its people were enough to keep me interested. The whole healing-with-snakes thing is perhaps a bit difficult to swallow, but it works considerably better than I might have expected it to. I'm not sure if this is quite Hugo-caliber -- it won in 1979 -- but it is a nice, readable SF story with a well-rendered, believable female protagonist.

Rating: 4/5

45. Millennial Mythmaking: Essays on the Power of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Films, and Games edited by John Perlich and David Whitt



A collection of analytical essays on various science fiction and fantasy pop culture works. As the title might imply, the editors view science fiction and fantasy as a sort of modern myth, which is something that I more or less agree with. They are also apparently great fans of Joseph Cambell's ideas about the archetypal hero's journey, a fact with made me feel slightly wary going in. I have nothing whatsoever against Campbell, but it does occur to me that there is the possibility of his conception of the heroic narrative becoming the hammer that makes every story look like a nail. Fortunately, I don't think this really becomes a problem here. The three essays that explicitly deal with stories in Campbellian terms, interestingly, all involve female protagonists (two little girls, in fact, in Spirited Away and Pan's Labyrinth and an elderly woman in The Triplets of Belleville), and all three touch on the idea that Cambell's conception of things is a bit limited by its rather male-oriented nature.

Other essays feature topics such as the way the original Planet of the Apes movie works on multiple levels and why the 2001 remake was less successful on that score, and a discussion of the way recognizing actors from other roles influences audiences' reactions and how shows such as Heroes deliberately make use of that. I don't think any of these essays really displays any great depth or stunning insight, but almost all of them had at least some features of interest. The one about the resonance of actors' other roles, for example, described a phenomenon that was already completely familiar to me, but I'd never seen it spelled out explicitly before, and that's probably worth doing.

One piece that I found simultaneously interesting and rather unsatisfying was the one which examined the character of the Wicked Witch of the West as she became more purely evil in the transition from book to movie, only to be reinvented later as a much more morally complex character in Gregory Maguire's Wicked before becoming almost entirely good in the musical version. The authors of that one seem to want to make the point that a more shades-of-gray conceptualization of villains is increasingly useful and desirable in the complicated modern world, and I find that thesis fascinating. But one ambiguous example really doesn't serve to either prove or elucidate that idea, and it's one that really needs to be explored at much greater length. (And hopefully with somewhat less heavy-handed political commentary than appears in that particular essay.)

There was only one offering here that I actively disliked: the first essay in the book, on color symbolism in the Harry Potter novels, which was a classic piece of pointless over-analysis if I've ever seen one. (And I say that as someone who can over-analyze with the best of them.) I also had some issues with the essay on women and gender in Second Life, which ultimately made some fairly important points, but came close to burying them in an avalanche of irritating rhetoric.

The bottom line: I wouldn't call this a must-read by any stretch of the imagination. But if this sort of thing appeals to you -- and we're certainly talking about something aimed at a niche audience here -- it's not bad. It's probably only worthwhile if you're familiar with most or all of the works under discussion, though.

Rating: 3.5/5

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

45. Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio



27 stories by a variety of recognizable names, collected with a cheerful disregard for genre boundaries. I expected any anthology co-edited by Neil Gaiman to be well worthwhile, as he shows a remarkable feel for storytelling in his own work, but I have to say that on the whole this was kind of disappointing. A couple of rather pointless-seeming pieces aside, the stories generally aren't bad, exactly. They're mostly well-written, at least as far as prose style goes, but very few of them did much of anything for me. The main goal here, according to the introduction, is to offer stories that make readers ask, "What happens next?" In that, I suppose it's sort of successful, because many of these stories did elicit that response, but more often than not when I found out what happens next, the answer just wasn't very satisfying. Even Gaiman's own story was very far from his best work.

Rating: 3.5/5

I can't seem to find anything I like of Gaiman's, which is weird because I think he is an excellent writer and I loved Good Omens, but his other books and even the sandman novels have been disappointing. It's sad to hear that this anthology fall a bit flat as well.

Hmm, that I don't know how to help you with! The quality of Gaiman's novels varies, I think, although all of them are at least decent, but I regard Sandman is a work of brilliance and think he is, in general, a damned fine short story writer. I'm just sorry I can't really add editor to the list of things I think he's great at.

46. The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman



A transcription of a series of seven lectures given in 1964 by the legendary physicist Richard Feynman on the subject of the laws of nature and how we go about learning them. Feynman was a notoriously informal lecturer who worked without prepared speeches, and I think his style suffers a bit here from being transferred into print, despite having been cleaned up slightly for publication. There are places where I'm quite sure the lecture would have been more effective live and in person, and even a few spots where I had a little trouble following. Regardless, this is still a marvelous exploration of the subject, as Feynman discusses the fundamental laws of the universe, with all their neat interconnections and their profound mysteries. This book gave me new insights into aspects of physics I thought I already understood, and it contains what is probably the best explanation of the law of energy conservation that I have ever seen. Most importantly, Feynman understood, perhaps better than anyone else ever has, that science is not about facts, it's about figuring things out, and he was very, very good at helping other people to understand that, too.

Rating: Despite its flaws, I'm giving this one 4.5/5. The good parts are just that good.

47. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro



In 1956, a very proper English butler sets out on a road trip to enjoy the English countryside and to see a woman he once worked with in hopes of offering her a job. Along the way, he reflects back, in a not entirely direct and reliable fashion, on his relationships with his previous employer and with the woman he's traveling to meet. It's a very quiet and introspective book -- literally nothing happens in it except for a butler driving around and thinking -- and I have to admit, I may not have been in quite the right mood for that when I started. And yet, by the end I found myself thoroughly drawn in. The writing is very good. It's extremely subtle, and surprisingly layered, as Ishiguro takes the near-comical stereotype of the dignified and unflappable English butler and uncovers an incredibly sad story of repression, emotional and otherwise, beneath it.

Rating: 4/5

bragan@196,

I'm about 1/5 of the way through Stories, reading a story at a time. I haven't been too impressed, either. It's as though these fine writers didn't try their best.

Yeah, I really don't quite understand it. I'm half wondering whether the mandate to write something that would make people say "and then what happened?" didn't make them all self-conscious and put them off their stride.

48. Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi



Aliens have arrived at Earth and want to make friendly contact with us. However, being basically smelly blobs of goo, they anticipate having something of a PR problem. So they hire a Hollywood agent to manage their image.

It's a silly story, really. There's not much pretense at realism, the plot is fairly thin, and I saw the ending coming a light year away. And yet, it's very entertaining, in a fun, breezy, occasionally quite funny sort of way, and it managed to bring a smile to my face during a mildly stressful week. Also, the aliens are actually interesting, and rather less cliche than you'd expect.

According to the introduction, this was Scalzi's first novel, written solely for practice and not something he ever expected to be published. Which makes me think that I really need to read more of his stuff. Lightweight as it is, this is still better writing than some SF writers ever manage, so I'll be interested to see what he can do when he's actually trying.

Rating: I'm going to call it 4/5. Slightly generous, probably, but what the heck. It does what it's trying to do.

>201 dukedom_enough:, 202 Are these all original stories? Maybe they just aren't up for the writing-on-assignment thing.

I"m pretty sure they are, yes. And that may very well be the case.

Fantastic variety of books on your thread as always. I enjoy your flirtations with pulp Sci fi

Thanks! This month seems to be particularly heavy on the light SF adventure stuff. It seems to be what my brain is craving right now. Which is fine, as I've got a lot of it on the Book Pile, including a lot of the really, really old books I've been trying to get through this year.

49. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman



The true story of Lia, a child of the Hmong people. Her family escaped from Laos as refugees and resettled in California, where she was born and where, at the age of three months, she first developed a severe form of epilepsy. Lia was attended by dedicated, caring, intelligent doctors and deeply devoted and loving parents... and it's extremely possible that these two groups of people, working at cross-purposes in an attempt to do their best for her, may together have brought about complete disaster. It's a book that works on a number of levels: It's a fascinating look at the culture and history of a people with whom most Americans are completely unfamiliar. It's a moving personal tragedy. And it's an incredibly important and thought-provoking examination of the importance of cross-cultural communication and what can happen, for good or ill, when Western medicine and traditional belief systems intersect. Fadiman writes with clarity and compassion, and I found it compelling on every level. I rarely give books a full five-star rating very rarely, but this one surely deserves it.

Rating: 5/5

50. Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett



In an alternate world where English history happened differently and magic is an ordinary profession, first a spy and then a master magician are killed, and Lord Darcy -- a character not at all subtly based on Sherlock Holmes -- is called in to investigate.

The book suffers a little bit from infodumping, including the generally annoying "As you know, Bob" kind, but the magic system is interesting and the mystery is rather well done. There were one or two points where I got a little confused, mainly because I was having trouble keeping track of the characters, but that may be more my fault than the book's, as I was reading it under less than ideal circumstances. I kept feeling more and more impressed with it as I read, then having to put it down again only to have trouble getting back into it later, so it's difficult, on balance, to know quite how I feel about it. I will say at least that the solution to the mystery comes together neatly and makes sense, and that the magic is woven into the logic in a way that plays fair with the reader. So if you enjoy fantasy, alternate history, and mystery and like the idea of mixing them together, it's worth a look.

Rating: A possibly stingy 3.5/5

Bragan - I've been quietly following along (again), so delurking for a moment. I really should read Fadiman sometime...I own Ex Libris...

Ex Libris is a charmer, and easy to pick up and put down, since each essay is stand-alone.

I liked Ex Libris a lot, too.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is one of my top 10 or 20 most favorite books, so I'm glad that you also enjoyed it.

I have no idea how many other books it shares the honor with, but that 5-star rating is basically equivalent to a "one of the best books I've ever read" endorsement. And I'm pretty sure I saw it recommended on LT somewhere, so my thanks to whoever mentioned it. For all I know, it might have been you. :)

I totally agree with you about Fadiman's book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. It's the book I think about first when someone asks me to recommend a great non-fiction book. All your reviews have been interesting to read, even when they convince me that I don't want to read the book.

Thanks! And I can definitely see why that would be your go-to book for non-fiction recommendations.

Delurking to say, you can add me to the list of fans of The Spirit Catches You. I remember trying to read it while riding in a juddering trishaw because I was so gripped by it.

Delurking to say, you can add me to the list of fans of The Spirit Catches You. I remember trying to read it while riding in a juddering trishaw because I was so gripped by it.

I can thoroughly understand that! I very literally did not want to put it down, either, although fortunately I didn't have any juddering trishaws to ride in, and I'm very practiced at reading while walking down the street. :)

New thread is here. Come and join me for my second batch of 2011 reading!