Ninja Math Librarian (swynn) 2011

Updating this list as I read. Indexes link to the post where I first talk about the book.

71) Winter study / Nevada Barr
70) An illuminated life / Heidi Adizzone
69) The scar / China Miéville
68) Them / Jon Ronson
67) Purgatory Chasm / Steve Ulfelder
66) Ultramarathon man / Dean Karnazes
65) Maigret's war of nerves / Georges Simenon
64) Half a life / Darin Strauss
63) Enchanted pilgrimage / Clifford D. Simak
62) Swallow / Sefi Atta
61) Postmortem / Patricia Cornwell
60) How to live / Sarah Bakewell
59) Abandon galaxy! / Bart Somers
58) The bounty hunters / Elmore Leonard
57) We can build you / Philip K. Dick
56) The devotion of Suspect X / Keigo Higashino
55) The game's afoot! / Andrew Mehlmann
54) Norse code / Greg van Eekhout
53) By nightfall / Michael Cunningham
52) Killer weekend / Ridley Pearson
51) Mixed blood / Roger Smith
50) Allah is not obliged / Ahmadou Kourouma
49) The Holmes-Dracula file / Fred Saberhagen
48) In the land of believers / Gina Welch
47) Spellbent / Lucy A. Snyder
46) In search of Klingsor / Jorge Volpi
45) Killer's payoff / Ed McBain
44) Black hearts / Jim Frederick
43) X-rated bloodsuckers / Mario Acevedo
42) Maigret stonewalled / Georges Simenon
41) Ensel und Krete / Walter Moers
40) Dexter is delicious / Jeff Lindsay
39) Atchafalaya houseboat / Gwen Roland
38) The caves of steel / Isaac Asimov
37) Winterkill / C.J. Box
36) Kalin / E.C. Tubb
35) Morituri / Yasmina Khadra
34) King Rat / China Miéville
33) My abandonment / Peter Rock
32) The weight / Andrew Vachss
31) The 1972 annual world's best SF / Donald A. Wollheim (ed.)
30) Fantasia mathematica / Clifton Fadiman
29) The control of nature / John McPhee
28) Miss Zukas and the library murders / Jo Dereske
27) Reading Lolita in Tehran / Azar Nafisi
26) The nymphos of Rocky Flats / Mario Acevedo
25) Heaven is for real / Todd Burpo
24) Hard truth / Nevada Barr
23) Knife music / David Carnoy
22) The particular sadness of lemon cake / Aimee Bender
21) Kill the dead / Richard Kadrey
20) The dwarf / Cho Se-Hui
19) The outlander / Gil Adamson
18) The keeper of the keys / Janny Wurts
17) The sweetness at the bottom of the pie / Alan Bradley
16) Goblin quest / Jim C. Hines
15) A race like no other / Liz Robbins
14) Sundog / Brian Ball
13) High country / Nevada Barr
12) Beowulf
11) Jed the dead / Alan Dean Foster
10) Calculus of variations / Gilbert Ames Bliss
9) River of doubt / Candice Millard
8) Fateless / Imre Kertesz
7) Black Vulmea's vengeance / Robert E. Howard
6) Mudbound / Hilary Jordan
5) Star Prince Charlie / Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson
4) Dogfight, a love story / Matt Burgess
3) King's blood four / Sheri S. Tepper
2) Toyman / E. C. Tubb
1) What I talk about when I talk about running / Haruki Murakami

Here are this year's rules for the maps: I fill in a country on the world map when I read a book by an author native to that country. I fill in a state on the U.S. map when I read a book set in that state.


I have read books by authors from 13 countries (5.77%) this year.
Create your own visited map of The World


I have visited 12 states (24%)in my reading this year.
Create your own visited map of The United States

Happy 2011 to everyone. I celebrated 1/1/11 with my very first 20-mile run and a delicious book about what & why I did such an insane thing:



1) What I talk about when I talk about running / Haruki Murakami

Murakami is a writer and a runner, and in this book he explores the relationship between his vocation and his avocation. He acknowledges up front that what one does to keep physically fit is never as interesting to others as it is to one's self. I think he is right about this, and that his book inevitably becomes overly self-indulgent. I expect this book will appeal mostly to two types of readers: (1) fans of Murakami's novels, interested in a behind-the-scenes view of how the author views his craft, and (2) runners. The book appealed to me because I am reader type 2.

So in the same self-indulgent spirit: I began running in January 2010, sort of on doctor's orders. I'd gotten very sick in November 2009, then for Christmas had a small but pestillential organ removed. The doctor told me that I'd heal much faster if I walked. I should walk as much as I could.

I walked the track and then the treadmill at the Y. Slowly I walked farther and faster. By March I'd bought my first pair of running shoes (best $125 I have spent in my life). By April I ran my first 5K, a fundraiser for the Epilepsy foundation of St.Louis. Since then I've done at least one competitive run every month, slowly improving my speed, and dropping 75 pounds (so far) in the process. I am now training for my first marathon -- hence the 20-mile run -- which will be in St. Louis in April, almost one year to the week since my first 5K.

Running puzzles me in many ways. If I were doing it just to recover from surgery, then I'd have quit long ago. If I were doing it to lose weight, then I'd have quit long ago. If I were doing it to "maintain fitness," then I'd have quit long ago. So why does this sport appeal to me? Why did it wait til my forties to do so? How can it feel so good and so painful at the same time?

In Murakami's memoir I found many experiences that I recognized, and others that I didn't; and I certainly didn't find any answers to the really puzzling questions. But I did find a kindred spirit, and spent a very happy couple of hours with a thoughtful person's reflections on a sport which, let's face it, is kinda crazy.

Glad to see you back, NML!

#2: That was the first Murakami book I read. I enjoyed it, but it did not inspire me to go running :)

>3 alcottacre: If you're looking for inspiration to go running, you might like Born to Run (and it's just generally interesting anyway).

Happy New Year, Stephen! I've got you starred.

#3: Well, there goes my theory about Murakami fans and runners. What did you like about it, Stasia?

#4: That one is in the Someday Swamp. It may be time to fish it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

#5: Thanks for the new year wishes, Roni!

#6: Stephen, I read the Murakami book back in 2008, so I really do not remember all the particulars. My review of it was succinct: 'part memoir, part philosophy, all good.'

Ninjasteve! Happy to see you here for 2011, and may it be your best reading year yet.

#8: Welcome, Richard! I hope to get to a couple of your recommendations this year, particularly "Lemon Cake" and "Birds of East Africa"

Welcome back!

2: Oh dear, I really don't need more books... But this one has crossed my path several times now, and as a runner* with an interest in Japan, I surely should give it a try.

* Slow! Max so far is a few half marathons, and I don't currently aspire to go further in a single shot. I also began running in my 40s (well, a few years in late teens and early 20s, then about 25 years off). No health crisis, just creeping middle agedness.

#10: Thanks Jim! It's good to be back.

#11: This one is pretty short and goes quickly even for that, so it won't delay your other reads for long. I've done one half marathon, which is what made me think a full one was doable -- testing my limits I guess.

2) Toyman / E. C. Tubb

This was a fun re-read, the third book in Tubb's "Dumarest of Terra" series, about a far-flung future where humanity has colonized the galaxy so extensively that on most planets nobody has ever heard of "Earth," or if they have they regard it as a myth. Our hero Earl Dumarest was born on Earth but left as a boy and now does not know how to return.

The series chronicles Dumarest's efforts to locate Earth. Individual books are generally plot-driven planetary fantasy, not terribly literary but better than average and plenty of fun.

In this one, Dumarest travels to Toy, a planet which houses "the Library," a vast and complex database of information about the galaxy and perhaps about Earth. But before Dumarest can speak to the Librarians, he is Shanghaied into Toy's chief recreational industry: Colisseum-style blood sports.

I have a mathematical gripe. The leader of Toy orders the construction of a new sort of arena he calls "the maze":
An interesting development utilizing the principles of both the Möbius strip and the Klein bottle. Two and three dimensional objects which have only one surface.
I think Tubb means to imply that a Möbius strip is a two-dimensional object and a Klein bottle is a three-dimensional object. He's right in the first case but wrong in the second. Both objects are two-dimensional. In fact, you can make a Klein bottle by just gluing together two Möbius strips edge-to-edge. (Granted, to do that physically you'd actually have to live in four dimensional space. Or perhaps in the editorial department at New York Magazine, where such constructions are considered trivial.)

#13: Or perhaps in the editorial department at New York Magazine, where such constructions are considered trivial.

I love that last comment!

Stasia: I'm still mad about that "fluff course" article. It probably shows. A little.

Happy New Year Stephen!

Thanks Heather, and same to you!

#15: Yeah, only a little (lol!)

Very enjoyable review -- I like the sound of the plot -- sounds as though it doesn't quite live up to the promise?

Hi Swynn, I love the idea of the map!

#19: It won't make anybody's best books list, but I'd say it lives up to the promise of a solid adventure story. I recommend the series -- individual volumes generally stand on their own, but there is an overarching story that develops slowly from book to book, so you should probably start with The Winds of Gath if you can find it.

#20: Thanks! Actually, I don't remember whose thread I originally saw these on -- flissp's maybe? Anyway, last year I used both maps to track where books were set. I liked that pretty well for the U.S. map, but the world map ended up being colored for books by American authors. I thought I'd use it to prompt me to be a little more cosmopolitan this year. We'll see if it works.

3) King's blood four / Sheri S.Tepper

Peter is an adolescent in the world of the True Game. Either he will discover and develop a magical Talent, which will allow him to become a player in the Game -- or he won't, which will make him a pawn to be played in the Game by someone else. The book opens with betrayal as Peter trusts the wrong people, is put into play before he is ready, and very nearly dies. He does escape with his life, but finds himself pursued by powerful Players with designs of their own.

This was an off-the-shelf book, good enough that I regret letting it sit on my shelves for the eight or ten years it's been there. It's a young adult fantasy with an intriguing world, interesting characters, and conflicts that arise from flawed personalities rather than Good and Evil. For my taste the plot was marred by too-convient coincidences, but it kept my attention well enough to interest me in the next book -- which unfortunately is not on my shelf.

#22: but it kept my attention well enough to interest me in the next book -- which unfortunately is not on my shelf.

Why not? You have had eight or ten years to acquire it. lol

I am going to have to check to see if my local library has King's Blood Four and the follow up. It is kind of hit-and-miss with Tepper's books.

Stasia: I've heard others say the same about Tepper. The only other book of hers I've read is "Plague of Angels" -- which I remember enjoying, but when its sequel came out last year I realized I didn't remember it at all.

I've been told that she can get a little heavy-handed with some of her social themes. Even if that's the case it's not a problem with "King's Blood Four."

Thus far, the only book of Tepper's I have read is Grass, but I think Roni has one scheduled for her Feminism in SciFi group read, so I may be reading another soon.

Stasia: IIRC, the Tepper in Roni's list is The Gate to Women's Country, which I've heard good things about and is on my shelf. I don't know whether I'll be reading along, since one thing I learned last year is that I'm not very good at group reads.



4) Dogfight, a love story / Matt Burgess

Alfredo Batista is a bottom-rung dope dealer in Queens with a lot on his mind. First, Alfredo stole some pills from a bottom-rung ecstasy dealer. That's a problem because the little twerp turns out to have powerful and angry connections. Second, his brother Tariq is getting out of prison. That's a problem because Tariq's girlfriend is now Alfredo's, pregnant with Alfredo's child. Third, for a homecoming celebration and to mollify Tariq, Alfredo has organized a dogfight. That's a problem because Alfredo doesn't organize well: with less than 24 hours to go, Alfredo has only one dog.

As crime fiction goes, "Dogfight" is strongly realistic. We're treated to characters and dialog that feel authentic, and to a strong sense of place. The author details the streets, tenements, bodegas, and dead-end alleys with the eye of a nostalgic expatriate, and in fact according to the jacket copy Burgess grew up in Queens. There is violence but it is neither cartoonish nor constant, and it's certainly not glorified. In particular, the dogfight is not romanticised: when it happens it's brutish, ugly, and short.

On the negative side, the book reads a little too much like a creative writing project. There are bits that are very good but also bits that are overwritten and bits that aren't quite as clever as the author thinks. The plot needs focus and the prose needs tightening, but the net effect is positive and the book is cautiously recommended.

#26: Well, it does not look like I will be reading that one along with the group. None of my local libraries has it.

I think I will skip Dogfight. It does not sound like my cuppa.

>26 swynn: Good review! Like Stasia, I will give the book wide berth, but your concise review makes me feel I've gotten the best of it without the effort of slogging through the turgid bits.

Here's a couple more you can skip, because I'm officially giving up.

Last year I started to read the occasional novel in German to exercise my flagging language skills. But my last couple of attempts make me feel like the Windows 7 guy who doesn't get German humor.

Vollidiot by Tommy Jaud.

Tommy Jaud is a fantastically successful author in Germany, so I really wanted to like this. But it's angry, misanthropic and not particularly funny. I had the impression that Jaud was sort of a German Nick Hornsby, but he's just a Mike Judge.

Ich schreibe, aber lesen müssen Sie selbst / Cordula Stratmann.

No touchstone for this "comedy," another German bestseller, and another unfunny book. The idea is that the author decides to write a book, but has no ideas for a book, so she writes a book about writing a book with no ideas for a book. Short review: Seinfeld it ain't. There's an old creative-writing exercise: if you can't think about what to write, write about writing. Ideally, the exercise leads you to discover ideas you didn't know you had, but such insights never strike Stratmann. The book starts off about as funny as it sounds, and if it gets any better it's after the first 50 pages.

From now on when it comes to German I'm sticking to Krimis and Walter Moers.

>28 richardderus:: Thanks, Richard!

#29: Since they are in German, and my German is atrociously rusty, there is absolutely no chance I will be reading those. Sorry you did, Stephen.

Stasia,

"Absolutely no chance" is also the likelihood of Stratmann's book being translated into English. I'm not quite so optimistic about the Jaud. In either case, you're not missing much.

I'm not quite so optimistic about the Jaud.

*snort* Hence the "Ninja" in your nickname. Tres drole.

I now retreat to my secret ninja mountain hideaway to plot against translations of the Jaud.

Or maybe I'll just read a book.



5) Star Prince Charlie / Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

Charles Stuart decides to vacation on the planet New Lemuria. But the natives decide his arrival fulfills an ancient prophecy about a great warrior who will free them from tyranny. Whatcha wanna bet they're right?

As far as the plot goes, there's nothing new here. But still, it's fun. It's by Poul Anderson so you can expect libertarianism, medievalism, plausibly buildable technology, and most likely pastiches of Old English poetry. Score on all counts. But best of all, it's tempered by Dickson's sense of humor. Or so I assume: maybe Poul Anderson was a funnier guy than I've ever imagined him.

According to LT, this is "book 2" in the Hoka series, but this stands on its own. Fair warning: the "Hoka" are a race of sturdy teddy-bear-like aliens with a habit of impersonating figures from Earth's history and literature. In this book, Charlie's tour guide is a Hoka who spends most of the book speaking the thick brogue of a Jacobite rebel.

I expect this could be a polarizing book. If you find the idea of a Jacobite teddy bear too ridiculous to bother it's certainly not for you. I liked it well enough that I didn't even mind the dialect, which is saying something.

All I can picture is talking Ewoks. Probably not the book for me but a great review.

Talking Ewoks ... you've got the idea, only tougher, smarter, and not nearly as sane.

<Clears throat.> Oh, the Hokas out on Toka nearly drove me mad!

Gosh. A Jacobite teddy bear speaking to a vacationer named Charles Stuart. That's not something you see every day. Did the teddy bear suggest winning back his throne?

Suggest? Not at all. Nothing of the sort. I mean, he rather insisted.

Of course, "winning back" doesn't seem quite right here, since the character Charles Stuart has no ancestors who've ever stepped foot on New Lemuria, never mind ruled it. In the parallel between New Lemuria and 18th-century England, the character Stuart resembles George I as much as he resembles Bonnie Prince Charlie. The authors recognize and toy with this fact, and use it to play with discourse about legitimacy.

But that makes it sound more serious than it is.

That is hilarious and enough to make me wishlist this book.

#1 - After reading your review, I just wish-listed it! Congratulations on your first 20 miler. I never ran (unless chased) until I was 25. I'm staring b-day number 31 in the face now and wondering why I didn't pick up running a lot sooner!

#34: Well, since I read and enjoyed Earthman's Burden, I will give Star Prince Charlie a go.

#40: "wondering why I didn't pick up running a lot sooner!"

Me too. When Murakami talked about how his performance started to decline after 40, I despaired. Perhaps I've already passed my peak and now I'll never know what I was capable of. (Oh look! Spilled milk!) Then I remembered that a high school friend who's been running for years just did his first sub-20 minute 5K last summer at 44. (Take that, middle age!) I didn't run sooner, so I'll just have to enjoy it now.

#39 & 41: I hope you like it. Stasia, if you liked Earthman's Burden then Star Prince Charlie is definitely for you.

Oh, and a minor triumph: this week I weighed in under 200 pounds, which I haven't done in 17 years.

Congratulations on the weight, Stephen! Minor triumphs turn into major ones.

40, 41: I began running again (after 25 years off) at age 48, generally 3-4 miles a few times per week with an occasional 6 miles to see if I could do it. Last year at age 51 I decided to motivate myself through the winter by training for a half marathon. Once I'd run one, I decided to try improving my time in another, and another. Alas, my pace remains a blah middle of the pack for my category in local races, but my endurance, both physical and mental, has increased. I don't see great leaps of progress, but it has definitely occurred. Used to be that 6 miles was a novelty, could be done on a pleasant day when I was feeling especially "on". Today I got up at 6 am and ran 6 miles in 20 degrees on icy sidewalks, and I think of it as a token gesture to maintenance.

#43: Thanks, Stasia!

#44: qebo, you're an inspiration. Especially for braving icy sidewalks: this morning I got halfway down the block, slipping twice before I decided I'd rather have my ankles than my run. So it's the treadmill this weekend. Yechh.



6) Mudbound / Hillary Jordan

The McAllans are landowners in mid-20th-century Mississippi; the Jacksons are Black tenant farmers on the McAllans' land. Both families have sons who fought in the war, and the boys have come back changed in ways that make a return home impossible.

This covers familiar territory -- race, land, family, love, longing -- but with unusual skill and the immediacy of a literary thriller. From LT conversations I see that several 75ers discovered this gem a couple of years ago. So I'm late to the party but am sure glad I came. Recommended.

#45: I have not read Mudbound yet, Stephen. I really need to get to it though. Thanks for the reminder!

45: Yech indeed, but much of the motivation is that I run with a group on Saturdays, and we actually have a better turnout on the worse weather days because everyone feels guilty about abandoning the others.

I picked up What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (along with several other books) yesterday, and I'm already 3/4 through, finding it... peculiar.

#47: I can see how a group could help. I've thought about joining the local running group, but their times don't work well for my schedule. Besides, I honestly relish a long solitary run.



7) Black Vulmea's vengeance / Robert E. Howard

Three pirate stories by the guy who gave us Conan the Barbarian. They haven't aged well. Two of the stories -- Swords of the Red Brotherhood and Black Vulmea's Vengeance -- feature the pirate hero Vulmea. You know Vulmea is a good guy because (1) he cannot bear to hurt a woman or a child, nor (2) can he bear to leave White Men, even his enemies, at the mercy of Red Savages or Black Savages.

The third story, Isle of Pirate's Doom, first promises a change of pace because the bloodthirsty pirate is a woman. But never fear: pirate she may be, but she still has a proper feminine fear of snakes and breaks down in heartfelt sobs when a man indelicately questions her chastity. She assures him she's a pirate virgin, which clears the air for incipient romance. Really.

As early-twentieth century adventure stories go, it's standard stuff. There's treachery and forgotten temples and lost treasures introduced by the phrase, "Legend has it that ..."; there's hairy chests and mighty thews and steel that cleaves skulls and brains that spill out. I confess this sort of thing makes me wax nostalgic (I may be too young to remember the pulps but I did read Tarzan and John Carter and Conan and Doc Savage, etc.) but if it doesn't work that way for you it's definitely skippable.

#48: there's hairy chests and mighty thews and steel that cleaves skulls and brains that spill out

OK, I confess that I laughed my way through that sentence. Probably a good indication that the book is not for me.

48: LOL review! Not remotely my sort of thing, even for the sake of amusement. Running group accumulated by word of mouth among acquaintances, and it's a pleasant casual thing on Saturday morning. Otherwise I too prefer to be alone. There's a local running club, and I'm officially a member, but it's rather too intense and sociable for me.

Me thinks the review may be better than the book. Aaarrr, matey!

#49-51: Thanks for the comments on the review. There's probably more to come. Like many other 75ers, I've resolved to read more "off the shelf" this year, and my shelves are full of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, of varying vintage and widely varying quality.

The next one is not off my shelves.



8) Fateless / Imre Kertesz

The story of a young Hungarian Jew during World War II and his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It's books like this that make me hesitate to rate books: I'm not sure what to make of this. Although it's fiction -- according to Wikipedia the author "disavows" that the story is autobiographical -- the narrative and literary style are rather dry and journalistic: "this happened and then this happened and that puzzled me a bit and then something else happened."

It all serves the author's thesis that one can get used to absolutely anything provided one survives. But the narrator is so detached from the things he survives that his story is more an intellectual exercise than an emotional one. You never feel the sort of gut-wrenching horror and pity that you expect from a Holocaust narrative. Instead you're treated to rationalist soliloquies on, say, how it is possible to be bored in Auschwitz, or on the organization and management of efficient death camp operations, or on the relationship between freedom and fate.

I'm really not sure how I feel about the lack of affect. Is the book is missing something? Or is it onto something? Or something else entirely? At any rate, it's certainly eloquent and thought-provoking.

Sounds like an interesting book but not one I'd be likely to pick up. If you haven't read them already I'd recommend Night by Elie Wiesel or Maus by Art Spiegelman as very well-done Holocaust narratives that are eloquent and affective.

#52: I will have to read that one. Thanks for the mention, Stephen!

#53: I have read both of those and agree that they are powerful narratives. With "Fateless" I was expecting something in a similar vein, but it's quite different.

#54: I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did.

I myownself found Fateless more chilling for its flat narrative voice...the horrors are reported, but really now, do we *need* another book to tell us genocide, no matter how efficient, is scary and nasty?...somehow, for me at least, that dry style caused me to remain awake, fearing sleep and dreams, for several nights.

Richard, I am coming to a similar conclusion. I can't say the book caused me sleepless nights but it has haunted my thoughts in a way deeper than just trying to decide whether or not I liked it.

9) River of doubt / Candice Millard

Theodore Roosevelt loses the 1912 presidential election to the ivory-tower stuffed shirt Woodrow Wilson. To nurse his wounds Roosevelt goes on a speaking tour of South America, where he is offered the chance to accompany an expedition down an uncharted river flowing through the Brazilian rainforest. Roosevelt accepts.

This is history as potboiler adventure novel, and it's exciting stuff. There's nothing subtle in Millard's narrative or style, but then there was nothing subtle about Teddy Roosevelt so that seems appropriate.

I read it for a book discussion group, though, and the discussion was pretty dead. The discussion was led by a history professor who couldn't resist an opportunity to lecture about Teddy Roosevelt and his similarities to Thomas Jefferson. Or to Alexander Hamilton, I wasn't entirely clear which.

I'd really rather have talked about the book. Which is recommended.

If you liked The River of Doubt you'll probably like David Grann's The Lost City of Z. it's about Percy Fawcett, Amazon explorer at about the same time. Roosevelt's trip is mentioned in it.

I'm currently reading Fatelessness and am finding it interesting reading. I saw the movie a couple of years ago which was pretty powerful.

I've got a few books by Poul Andersen to read, not sure if I have Star Prince Charlie, which sounds like a fun read. Mudbound is sitting on my tbr pile.

#59: The Lost City of Z is in the Someday Swamp. I may have to fish it out. I'll also re-mention Daniel Everett's Don't Sleep There Are Snakes about a Bible translator's experiences among aborigines of the Amazon River basin, which I read last year and thought was very good.

#60: I did not know there was a film version of this. It seems like it would be difficult to capture the book's tone on film. I hope you like Mudbound.

#58: That one was a favorite of mine several years ago. I am glad to see that you enjoyed it too, Stephen. Too bad about the book discussion group though.

With a little help from a readathon, I've finished three this weekend. The first is mathematical, so I'll share my thoughts on it separately, with numbers 11 and 12 in the next post.

10) Calculus of Variations / Gilbert Ames Bliss

This is the first in a series of the Mathematical Association of America, the "Carus Mathematical Monographs," named for Mary Hegler Carus, who financed the launching of the series. The theme of the series is an emphasis on exposition rather than results. Elegant mathematical exposition appeals to me, and a couple of years ago I read a more recent book in the series, John Conway's The Sensual (Quadratic) Form, which is very very good.

The Carus monographs are not popular mathematics. They're intended for an nonspecialist audience familiar with undergraduate math. This volume assumes familiarity with multivariable calculus (probably three semesters of a standard calculus sequence); courses in differential equations and differential geometry would be helpful but I don't think they're strictly necessary.

Bliss's book doesn't rise to Conway's quality, and I have some minor complaints about his notation, but it is also good. Or so I assume: I've never taken Variational Calculus so I have no frame of reference for comparison, but Bliss gives clear and thorough proofs of a couple of problems typically mentioned in Calculus texts as "beyond the scope of this book."

To begin, though, Bliss proves that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. To do this you obviously don't need any calculus, so Bliss's calculus-heavy proof resembles a Rube Goldberg cartoon. But the example serves its purpose: when we get to the interesting problems we've already seen a couple tools of variational calculus in action.

The first problem of interest is the Brachistochrone Problem, or the problem of finding the "curve of quickest descent." Very roughly: If the top of a slide is at point A, and its bottom at point B, what shape must the slide have to deliver a toddler from A to B in the shortest possible time?

The second problem is the problem of minimizing areas of "surfaces of revolution." A model for this problem is two soap-bubble wands joined to each other by soap film. The problem is to describe mathematically the shape of the soap film.

Bliss solves these problems slowly and in detail, and includes some variants on the problems. The solutions are well-motivated, and in fact each begins with a sketch of the route the proof will take, followed only then by details. Bliss wraps up with a generalization of the problems & methods, which I confess to have only skimmed, and a historical sketch of the field, which was much appreciated.

The book was published in 1925, and I'm told that variational calculus has changed a lot since then, so it's not a good summary of the current state of the field. In fact I'm not even sure this is even a very useful introduction anymore. But as mathematical exposition it's not bad. It's not John Conway or Paul Halmos, but it's not bad.

11) Jed the Dead / Alan Dean Foster

Texan good ol' boy Ross Ed decides he'd like to see the ocean before he dies, so he takes off one day on a cross-country trip. Then at a rest stop he happens to find a dead alien. Madcap merriment ensues as Ross Ed dodges UFO cultists, bounty hunters, music promoters and the United States Army in an effort to see the ocean with his new dead friend.

There are a couple of genuinely funny moments in the book. Unfortunately, the middle 200 pages or so goes like this:
A. Ross Ed gets in trouble
B. Supernatural event occurs, allowing Ross Ed to escape
C. Go to A.
Road stories are supposed to be episodic, but these episodes are pretty much wash, rinse repeat. The final 60 pages or so bring a satisfying resolution, but I'm not sure I'd recommend the rest to get there.



12) Beowulf

This is a re-read, and a long overdue one. I read Seamus Heaney's translation, which I read several years ago and thought was masterful. I'm less impressed this time around, though I still think it's very good. There were several lines where I found myself rearranging words to achieve a smoother meter, or imagining substitutions that would improve the alliteration.

But jeez, it's Beowulf. I'd say "highly recommended," except that if you speak English you already know this.

#63: Skipping that one. I have never had calculus and I think it is beyond me at this point in my life.

#64: Skipping Jed the Dead. Too bad about that one though - it sounds like it might have been fun had the execution been better.

Already read (and enjoyed) the Beowulf.

No bullets for you, Stasia! To be fair, "Jed" was fun at times, just a bit repetitive through the middle.

No BBs this time around, but I am sure you will get me again in future.

Hi There

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

Linda:

As requested, I've shared my birthday. I'll mention here that I'm proud to share one with James Fenimore Cooper. In years past we often shared a birthday cake; Mr. Cooper usually let me eat his piece as he was always too busy telling stories.



13) High Country / Nevada Barr

Four workers have disappeared from Yosemite National Park. Anna Pigeon is called in to investigate undercover. (I guess when your every arrival at a national park is shortly followed by a mysterious death and then by your heroic unriddlement of same ... word gets around.)

This is a nice return to form for the Anna Pigeon series after the awful "Flashback." Recommended.

I am really behind on the Nevada Barr series. I've read quite a few of them. I started somewhere in the middle, went back to the beginning to pick up, and then didn't get back to them. I really enjoy the National Parks settings so I need to get back to them.

#70: I agree that it's an enjoyable series. Even in Barr's duds -- of which there have been a couple so far -- I love vicariously visiting the national parks.



14) Sundog / Brian N. Ball

This takes place in a future where humanity's attempts to explore space beyond the solar system have consistently met with disaster: some extraterrestrial force keeps humans confined to the sun and its nine planets (yes I know it's only eight now, but this story is vintage 1965 so there). The discovery of this Alien force caused social unrest which finally resulted in the control of an Orwellian oligarchy run by the Dog Corporation.

Dod is a space pilot for the Corporation, running a routine shipment from Pluto to Moonbase, when he catches his reflection in a screen and sees that he has acquired a halo. First he thinks he has gone crazy, but when he gets to Moonbase he learns others can see it too. This is scant comfort, since he may be sane but now he has caught the attention of powerful people who care a lot about the halo and very little about Dod. Their best guess is that the halo was given to Dod by the Aliens-- but why? And what does it mean for the Corporation's control of the solar system? And who, really, is Dod?

This is pretty good sixties science fiction, mixing pop psychology and religion with massive space battles: part Philip K. Dick and part Doc Smith. Recommended for those who like that sort of thing.

I need to get back to the Anna Pigeon series too!

I may give Sundog a try some time. Thanks for the mention, Stephen.

15) A Race Like No Other / Liz Robbins

Mary (FireandIce) recommended this as a great marathon-related read, and she's right: it's great.

It's about the 2007 New York Marathon. The idea is to devote each chapter to a mile marker along the route, telling stories about the elite runners and the amateurs and the spectators and the volunteers and the city itself mile by mile to the finish. The effect is to feel swept along in the race and the stories of those who run and manage and watch and tolerate it. Recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in running or in New York City.

So glad you liked it!

#73: Even though I am by no means a runner, that one looks like it would be interesting. Thanks for the recommendation - from both you and Mary!

16) Goblin Quest / Jim C. Hines

Jig is a a goblin, living in a cave with a lot of other goblins, waiting his turn to be slaughtered by treasure-seeking adventurers. But when adventurers find Jig they don't kill him -- instead they impress him into service as a guide. Guess who turns out to be the brains of the party?

There's not much new here, but it's cute and has a few chuckles. It's not nearly as funny as advertised, but then we can't all be Terry Pratchett, can we? I'll probably continue the series though I'm not in any hurry.

#76: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I will bump it down a bit, I think.

17) The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Count me among the book's fans. Flavia DeLuce can poison my pie any old time.

#78: Book 2 in the series came out in 2010 and book 3 came out a few days ago. Get to reading! :)

#79: Oh I will, I will ... if only there weren't a pile of others ahead of "The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag." Besides, it's always checked out.



18) The Keeper of the Keys / Janny Wurts

Second in the "Cycle of Fire" trilogy, a series that mixes high fantasy and science fiction (well, maybe "planetary fantasy" would be more apt). Mild spoilers may follow.

In the first book Stormwarden, Jaric Ivainson had managed to stop a demon army from kick-starting an apocalypse. But rather than defeating them, it turns out he has just made them really angry. He now carries the "Keys of Elrinfaer," a magical maguffin. The demons desire the keys (apocalypse, blah blah blah) but even more they desire Jaric himself because he has the potential to become a sorceror powerful enough to defeat them (savior of humankind, blah blah blah).

So kick back and relax for some fun and frivolous demon-fighting, right? Not really. See, Jaric doesn't want to be a sorceror. His father was a sorceror and went mad. So we spend most of the book watching Jaric trying to avoid his destiny. Of course we all know where this is going: we finally get there, but with a sense that the book ends roughly where it should have begun. Which is a long way to say: middle book of a trilogy.

Still, it's Janny Wurts: I like her prose, which is rich and vivid, and I'll certainly finish the trilogy. With Jaric's angst out of the way we should be able to settle in for a satisfying final battle in Shadowfane.

I own one of Wurts' books that I will get around to reading . . .eventually :)

19) The Outlander / Gil Adamson

Mary Boulton kills her husband and flees west, two brothers-in-law in vengeful pursuit. She temporarily loses them as she wanders through a mountain pass,then meets a succession of other social misfits and outcasts.

But never mind the fugitive narrative. For most of the book you're caught up in the lives of the quirky characters Mary meets. They're rough around more than just the edges, trying to find homes in a world that has pushed them to its own rough edges.

The writing is lush and sensual but has an apparently effortless grace. Consider the description of the Reverend Bonnycastle's abode:

... vaguely cockeyed, sketched in, made by hand by himself alone, without a level, without proper tools, without one hour's training in the carpenter's art. Every line in it was askew. It stood drunk against the plumb of the surrounding cedars, with hammocked floors and rude walls listing, everything held in place by a mad excess of nails.

This passage prompts in me a strange mixture of desires: I want to file a complaint to have the structure condemned and at the same time I'd really love to stay the night. Adamson's characters are not unlike Bonnycastle's house: improperly designed, in constant danger of collapse, and utterly appealing.

The cover blurbs would have you think that it's a thriller: a "page-turner of the highest order," "suspenseful to a degree that you are often in a state of physical unrest," a book that "opens at full gallop and never slows." Hogwash. If you want suspense, look elsewhere. In fact, I grew impatient with the book at its thriller-ish parts, which included a couple of twists too implausibly convenient for my taste. But for the landscape, the population, and the very lovely prose, the book is highly recommended.

20) The Dwarf / Cho Se-Hŭi

This is a novel in twelve short stories exploring the industrialization of South Korea during the administration of Park Chung-Hee. Stories are variously told from the points of view of sweatshop workers, sweatshop owners, and their respective families. The language is clear and direct and occasionally polemical; the narratives are infuriating, insightful, and thought-provoking. Recommended.

Math Rant

Two of the stories are named for topological structures: "The Möbius Strip" and "The Klein Bottle." The stories contain descriptions of both of these structures, and the descriptions are IMNSHO misleading but not strictly incorrect.

The translator however reveals in an explanatory afterword that he completely missed the point:

Two stories, "The Möbius Strip" (Moebiusŭ ŭi tti; 1976) and "The Klein Bottle" (K'ŭllain sshi ŭi pyŏng; 1978) are built on the concept of spatial form, their titles referring to objects whose inner and outer surfaces are interchangeable.

No. The inner and outer surfaces of these objects are not interchangeable because these objects do not have inner and outer surfaces. This is a misinterpretation on the part of the translator because Cho describes the structures clearly and correctly as having neither inside nor outside.

This is more than pedantic nitpicking, since the translator's misunderstanding leads him to misinterpret the text. He continues:

This notion of interchangeability and the references to the history of science and space exploration suggest to us that the dualities, contradictions, and anomalies of industrialization described in The Dwarf are not unique to Korea but result in large part from global economic forces that have accumulated over the centuries.

Honestly, did this guy actually translate the book I just read? Did he read it first? The point of the topological metaphors is not that "dualities, contradictions, and anomalies" are universal; the whole point is that the dualities, contradictions, and anomalies are illusions. As the narrator of "The Klein Bottle" states,

I wanted to make the higher-ups in the company realize that we were all in the same boat. But they couldn't see it. They stubbornly insisted that they were in a different boat, and they expressed their own one-sided demands.

Management and labor are in the same boat: as management treats labor, so will labor treat management. Ultimately, there is no labor-side or management-side, there is just side, a broken and ugly system which both labor and management are both complicit in maintaining. Everyone is at least partially at fault. Indeed, one story carries the title, "The Fault Lies With God As Well." It's a complex web of responsibility that cannot be easily untangled. And the translator's comment that the conflicts are universal completely misses Cho's essential insight into the problem.

83: I love a math rant! And math metaphor plus Korea... hmm, not a book I would've noticed, now added to the list.

That's really not a rant, Mr. Ninja. It's a very apt criticism of the translator's ability to do a proper job of that book. I wonder now if he's given the book its due? And I have no way to find out because I speak no Korean.

Just noticed your post (#42) about coming in under 200...congratulations!

#84: Hope you like it, qebo!

#85: I wondered this too. I tell myself this: the primary translator, Bruce Fulton, holds a chair in Korean Translation at the University of British Columbia, and the other translator, Ju-Chan Fulton, is a native speaker. So the linguistic bonafides seem authentic. I'll just assume it's topology that may have stumped him.

#86: Thank you very much! I'm down to 190 now -- those long runs are powerful calorie-burners.

21) Kill the Dead / Richard Kadrey

In 2009's "Sandman Slim," James Stark broke out of Hell to take revenge on the evil backstabbing wizard who sent him there. In this sequel, life hasn't gotten any easier for Stark. His post-revenge life lacks focus as he putters around as a monster-killer for hire, working for whoever pays -- sometimes Heaven and sometimes Hell.

Then he stumbles across a vampire nest that shouldn't exist, is invited to investigate a grisly crime scene that is either a spectacular suicide or kinky S&M demon sex gone horribly wrong or maybe both, and is hired as personal bodyguard to Lucifer. And all of that's before the zombie apocalypse.

It's frenetic, funny, and very violent fun with an irreverent voice pulled straight from an R-rated film noir voice-over. We begin: Imagine shoving a cattle prod up a rhino's ass, shouting "April fool!", and hoping the rhino thinks it's funny. That's about how much fun it is hunting a vampire. The rest has a similar tone.

Recommended for those who enjoy this sort of thing. Personally, I eagerly await the third installment.

This series sounds like something I will like. I am adding it to my wishlist. Thanks.

We begin: Imagine shoving a cattle prod up a rhino's ass, shouting "April fool!", and hoping the rhino thinks it's funny. That's about how much fun it is hunting a vampire. The rest has a similar tone.

You make it sound like fun!

#89: I hope you like it! Definitely start with "Sandman Slim," though. The plots are mostly self-contained, but the second book doesn't spend much time introducing characters or backstory.

#90: The book is definitely fun. As for hunting vampires or provoking rhinos .... I intend to arrange my life in such a way that I never find out.

22) The particular sadness of lemon cake / Aimee Bender

At nine years old, Rose Edelstein finds that she can taste in food the emotions of whoever prepared it. The ability strikes suddenly when she takes a bite of lemon cake and is overwhelmed by her mother's feeling of empty sadness. From then on, Rose tastes the melancholy, anger, and bitterness of cooks, farmers, and migrant workers with every bite she takes. (In Aimee Bender's world, very few adults are ever happy, or if they are they don't work with food.)

I've read that this is a love-it-or-hate-it book. Not so: I didn't hate it. In fact, I quite liked it. Best of all is the writing, which is plain and straightforward but also vividly descriptive, scattered with unexpected and surprisingly poignant images.

And yet I didn't love it either. Rose's ability does not lead to any surprising insight about emotions or about our relationship to food ... in fact, before long Rose's culinary descriptions turn into indexes of ingredients, bypassing completely all but the most obvious emotions. I kept comparing the book unfavorably to Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, which embraces abnormality by being defiantly abnormal. Not this book: Bender seems to want to explore freakishness without being freakish, and I wanted to crawl through the pages, take the author by the shoulders and scream: "You've drawn the line, girl, now cross it!" But she never did.

At least I didn't think so.

Now here's the odd thing: Mrs. Ninja and I have very different reading tastes. Either of us can predict how well we will like a book by how much the other dislikes it. And since I had been reading "Lemon Cake" without noticeable discomfort, it was unusual for Mrs. Ninja to take this one from the coffee table and start to read. But she did, and found she couldn't put it down. She read it through the next day, and almost finished before I did.

So Mrs. Ninja and I talked about a book. Neither of us loved it, and neither hated it. But we were both interested enough to offer opinions and suggestions on what had happened and why. This kind of conversation just doesn't take place in my home (hence, LibraryThing). Briefly, here is our verdict:

Mrs. Ninja: Too weird.
Me: Not nearly weird enough.

Either way, for the conversation Ms. Bender has my hearty thanks.

Thanks also to Richard, who recommended the book last year, and who sent me his copy when I kept putting it off. I'll pay his kindness forward by sending the book to anyone else interested in reading it.

In some ways I agree with both of you. There were parts that were too weird - like how the brother ended up. Then there were parts that were too banal. It was a "literary" novel with some magic stuff thrown in - dysfunctional family, angsty teen, etc.

>92 swynn: I'm glad you and La Ninja found so much to think about in this book! I myownself was bored RIGID and even declined to post a review because I'd've had to be merciless. I don't like being merciless about someone's brainchild. I know she'd never see it, but I really resist adding to the fog of negativity that enshrouds our culture when possible.

I liked Like Water for Chocolate a WHOLE lot more. It had similar food-as-emotional-transmitter stuff in it.

Sorry for the delayed response. I've been spring-breaking in northeast Iowa (yes, I know I'm doing it wrong) without Internet access. Worse, I didn't get much reading done. But I had a lovely visit with my parents, which makes up for it all.

#93: The brother's fate was a major obstracle to Mrs. Ninja's enjoyment. She felt it was going to far; I pointed out that the book was about a girl who tasted feelings in food, so laws of physics were out the door in Chapter One. I felt it was a hint of where Bender might have gone if she'd only cut loose.

#94: Richard, if you'd said that then I'd never have put it on the wishlist. No regrets, though: there were some very nice bits. I agree that "Like Water for Chocolate" is a better book.

No pondersome thoughts about the next one.



23) Knife Music / David Carnoy

An okay medical/legal drama about a surgeon who becomes too friendly with an underage patient and is accused of rape after the patient kills herself. The jacket blurbs describe this as a "thriller," but if that's what this is then the standard for thrills is in serious decline.

Not reading-related, but this made me laugh. I thought others might enjoy.

A student organization on campus sponsors an annual Poker Night. The students thought they'd include a fundraiser with this year's event. They announced a raffle: first prize was an afghan, handmade and donated by a retired professor, depicting the university's mascot. Tickets were offered at $2 apiece, or 3 for $5.

What made me laugh was the retraction sent out today, which reads:

"Some concerns have been raised about the possibility that the raffle violates the student conduct code on gambling. To avoid any such infractions, we have to decided to cancel the raffle. Anyone who has already purchased tickets will receive their money back. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience."

You read that right. Due to campus restrictions on gambling there will be no raffle at this year's Poker Night.

Haha! That is quite rich.

It would have been legit if they could have held it off campus.

#98: Actually in this case going off campus would not have helped.

Curious about the rules that encourage poker but condemn raffles, I looked up the "student conduct code on gambling." That document, it turns out, does little more than explain state laws and say that students should obey them. The state of Missouri regards raffles as gambling events, and specifically prohibits raffles except when they're conducted by religious or federally-recognized nonprofit organizations.

Since the student organization is neither religious nor an affiliate of a federally-recognized nonprofit, they really didn't have a choice but to cancel.

"But poker?" you ask (or I did). It seems -- and I'm broadly paraphrasing here -- that the legal definition of gambling involves both a fee and a prize. If your game lacks either one, then your game is not regulated in Missouri.
The Poker Night in question has prizes but no fee: it's free to play and each entrant receives a stack of chips that has all the monetary value of Monopoly cash. Missouri doesn't mind an unauthorized poker game as long as you don't gamble.

24) Hard Truth / Nevada Barr

Three girls go missing in Rocky Mountain National Park. Four weeks later, two of the girls, reappear malnourished, filthy and covered in scratches and bruises. Anna Pigeon investigates.

I was prepared not to like this one: I'd heard that it was dark and sadistic, and I've been a little disappointed in the series's turn from intriguing mysteries toward straightforward thrillers. Maybe it's because my expectations were guarded, but I quite liked this one. True, it's less mystery than thriller; it's also true that sadistic crimes are described in morbid detail.

But the book also contains a return to old themes that have been missing from recent entries: a certain antagonism toward religion, and a naturalist's view of humans as a species inferior ethically to its cousins redder in tooth and claw. These are features that attracted me to the series in the first place, and it's nice to have them back. I think it's my favorite since "Blind Descent."

#99: Somehow, the whole thing seems like a *head meet desk* situation!

#101: Indeed.



25) Heaven Is For Real / Todd Burpo

The author's three-year old son has emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. After his surgery the boy tells about meeting Jesus in Heaven. Most curiously, he seems to know things beyond the ken of the average toddler: details of Heaven that concur with obscure Bible passages, and details about family members who passed away before he was even born.

My interest in the book is personal: the author and his wife were friends of mine in college: she's the one who persuaded me to enroll in library school, and eighteen years ago Monday he officiated at the wedding between Mrs. Ninja and me. (He seems to have done an excellent job.) Since then my religious views have changed, and I expected the book to be an uncomfortable read.

I am happy to say I liked it, and not just as an opportunity to catch up on the lives of old college friends. The prose is folksy and unadorned, and surprisingly effective. The story of Burpo boy's illness -- which takes up the first 50 pages or so -- is nerve-wracking. The next 100 pages are filled with revelations about Heaven. As recounted, the stories are eerie but less compelling: they just can't approach the immediacy of the parents' pain for their sick child.

I can't compare to other entries in the near-death-experience genre, as that's not my usual cup of tea. If it's yours then I recommend it: I think you'll find it a quick and perhaps thought-provoking read.

26) The Nymphos of Rocky Flats / Mario Acevedo

Vampire detective Felix Gomez investigates an outbreak of nymphomania at a nuclear research facility. There are vampires, dryads, assassins, monster hunters, and nymphomaniacs. Unfortunately, the summary is a lot more fun than the contents, which are just okay. It's not particularly inspired, but I have the next couple of books in the series on my shelf already and it isn't quite bad enough not to continue. I won't be in any hurry though.

To be fair, I've been simultaneously reading the very good "Reading Lolita in Tehran," rationing pages in order to prolong the pleasure, and Acevedo's romp may just have suffered in the comparison.

27) Reading Lolita in Tehran / Azar Nafisi

I know I'm way behind the crowd on this one. I didn't read it when it first came out (could it really have been 2003?!) because I thought I ought to read "Lolita" first. And frankly, I wasn't very motivated for that.

My mistake. This isn't about "Lolita." It's about the power of imagination: its friends, its enemies, and its resistance to suppression. Azar Nafisi recounts her career as a literature professor in Iran as revolution's promises turn into threats and oppression. Nafisi watches how Sharia law affects her students and herself, and she turns with a select group of her students to literature for comfort, enlightenment, and empowerment. She draws lessons from Nabokov, from Fitzgerald (Confession: I've never read Gatsby either. I plan to fix that.) from Henry James and Jane Austen and Saul Bellow. Her book is a hymn on the theme of literature, and I'll leave it there before I wax too lushly romantic. It's just that good, and I will return to it.

Just in case anyone else has the same idea I had: reading "Lolita" is not a necessary prerequisite for "Reading Lolita in Tehran." But don't be surprised if you find Nabokov shooting to the top of your TBR list by the time you're done. He did mine.

>27 alcottacre: I do have the book in my TBR pile and have been holding off on reading it, partly for that reason, although mostly just because other things in my HUGE TBR pile look more interesting at the moment. I do plan to read it this year, and now I won't feel compelled to read Lolita first.

That one is on my list of books to read but I'm too OCD to not read Lolita in advance.

#105 & 106: Nafisi does reference Lolita and other books, but always gives enough context to appreciate her point without previous direct knowledge. If you'd like that previous direct knowledge anyway -- for OCD or any other reason -- you'll also want to be familiar with "The Great Gatsby," "Daisy Miller," and "Pride and Prejudice."



28) Miss Zukas and the library murders / Jo Dereske

A body is found in the fiction stacks, apparently stabbed with a card catalog drawer rod. Prim and proper librarian Helma Zukas investigates.

This one didn't work for me, mostly because I found Miss Zukas annoying and smug. I think she is supposed to be endearingly independent and self-assured. But the fact is she's a lousy librarian:

Once a woman had asked coyly if there were boy slugs and girl slugs. Six months later Helma found the answer while she was reading a book of Northwest trivia and phoned the woman, who still didn't know: there weren't.

I think we're supposed to be impressed by Helma's persistence and professional dedication. But it's hard to admire a librarian who takes six months and serendipity to field a question that can be answered in five minutes with a general encyclopedia. (Yeah, I checked: the Encyclopedia Britannica tells me slugs are hermaphrodites.)

A couple of chapters later we find Miss Zukas surreptitiously weeding the collection in defiance of administration's orders. This isn't necessarily a bad thing: administration is a little arbitrary, and I think we're supposed to be impressed by her willingness to bypass arbitrary restrictions. But she pulls books and destroys them (she tosses them in an incinerator) without any effort at recordkeeping or even to remove the appropriate records from the catalog -- not very professional, or even very tidy.

So where Helma is supposed to be independent and self-assured she just comes off as bullheaded and obliviously incompetent. It's difficult to enjoy a cozy murder mystery when you keep hoping the protagonist will be the next victim.

Which is too bad, because the writing is crisp and humorous. And Helma's best friend Ruth is every bit as appealing as Helma isn't. I'd love to read more mysteries featuring Ruth, but I think I'll pass on more Miss Zukas.

29) The control of nature / John McPhee

I picked this one up for Linda's "21st birthday bestseller" TIOLI challenge. It's a trilogy of extended essays about human efforts to make nature do things it's not inclined to do.

Atchafalaya tells how the Army Corps of Engineers has attempted to control the flow of the Mississippi River.

Cooling the Lava describes how inhabitants of the Icelandic island Heimaey saved their harbor from destruction by cooling molten lava with water pumps and massive amounts of seawater.

Los Angeles Against the Mountains details the City of Los Angeles's efforts to control debris flows on the San Gabriel Mountains.

The ingenuity driving these projects is astounding, as is perhaps the hubris required to attempt them. But McPhee's stories are not just about engineering. He is just as interested in exploring how these projects are seen by people affected by them -- engineers, managers, workers and residents.

McPhee shines the most favorable light on those who recognize the limits of human efforts. Others, who overestimate human abilities or ignore natural dangers are lit less favorably. When he talks about Los Angeles homeowners who complain about and even try to sabotage the city's efforts to control debris flows, who then sue the city when their homes disappear in a mudslide, McPhee's disgust is difficult to disguise. Rightly so.

Recommended. The only thing missing is an update to cover the last twenty years.

30) Fantasia mathematica, being a set of stories, together with a group of oddments and diversions, all drawn from the universe of mathematics / Clifton Fadiman.

This is a collection of stories, poems and fragments with mathematical content. They're chosen for a nonmathematical audience, so the exposition is no more challenging than you'd find in,say, mid-twentieth century science fiction stories. In fact, the book contains several mid-twentieth century science fiction stories.

I enjoyed the collection quite a bit, and I don't think there were any bad selections. My favorites include:

Aldous Huxley's "Young Archimedes," a tragic story about a mathematically precocious child.

Richard Llewellyn's "Mother and the decimal point," an excerpt from How Green was my Valley, in which the mother bewails a school system which requires her child to calculate the rate at which a leaky tub will fill:
"If he went to school in trews full of holes, we should hear about it. But an old bath can be so full with holes as a sieve and nobody taking notice."
Mother also suspects the decimal point of being French.

Robert Heinlein's "--And he built a crooked house," which for me never gets old.

Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority," in which war is won by the army with the most primitive weapons.

I also like Edgar Alan Poe's bon mot:

To speak algebraically, Mr. M is execrable, but Mr. C. is (x+1)-ecrable. .

Now to find an opportunity to use that one in conversation ...

This one was for Patrick's (pbadeer) "letter repeated 13 times" TIOLI. (Count the number of a's in the title.) It's recommended for anyone who enjoys playing with their math.

31) The 1972 Annual World's Best SF / Donald A. Wollheim (ed.)

Well, the cover certainly won't show up in this month's "Striking Covers TIOLI" thread. In fact, I can't even look at the cover without wondering whether it inspired the character design of a Spongebob Squarepants villain.

But the contents are pretty good. About half of the stories are just okay, and there's one dud, but that's not bad for an anthology.

The fourth profession by Larry Niven. An alien walks into a bar and offers the bartender pills that confer mastery of extraterrestrial skills.

Gleepsite by Joanna Russ. A dream peddler plies his trade on a future Earth whose atmosphere has turned toxic. This is the only story by a woman (sigh), and it's the shortest in the book (sigh), but it's a good one: surreal and vivid and haunting.

The bear with a knot on his tail by Stephen Tall. A spaceship crew responds to a mysterious message, to find that the sender is a civilization whose sun is about to go nova.

The sharks of Pentreath by Michael G.Coney. In an overcrowded future earth, two-third of the population is kept in stasis, experiencing life only through remote automata, for whom a tourist industry thrives.

A little knowledge by Poul Anderson. A band of human criminals hijack an alien spacecraft, assuming that primitive technology and a deferential culture make the aliens easy marks. This is pretty good, but it's definitely the wrong story to choose for this volume, since Anderson also wrote "The Queen of Air and Darkness" the same year -- for my money one of the best things he ever wrote.

Real-time world by Christopher Priest. A crew of scientists are sequestered in a observation craft to study the ecology of an alien planet. Simultaneously they are subjects of an experiment in controlling the flow of information. I like the psychological tension and (spoiler?) ambiguous ending.

All pieces of a river shore by R. A. Lafferty. A collector finds pieces of a carnival curiosity: "The world's longest picture." But the picture is incredibly detailed … and incredibly old.

With friends like these... by Alan Dean Foster. Threatened by a powerful, militaristic and hostile race, a galactic federation desperately seeks help from another race: Terrans, who once posed such a threat that their home planet has been under quarantine for thousands of years. Standard space-opera stuff.

Aunt Jennie's tonic by Leonard Tushnet. An ambitious pharmacologist studies his aunt's Yiddish home remedies, hoping that one of the recipes will be a cure unknown to science.

Timestorm by Eddie C. Bertin. Harvey Lonestall comes unstuck in time and finds a secret base where human history is controlled.

Transit of Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. An accident on a Mars expedition means that some astronauts must be left behind to die and one astronaut must be left behind to record the transit of Earth across the Sun ... and then die. I can't believe I don't remember reading this one: it's quite poignant.

Gehenna by Barry N. Malzberg. Boy meets girl on subway. Boy and girl marry. Life doesn't work out the way they expect. Three out of every four characters kill themselves. I have no idea what this story is doing in a science fiction anthology. It's the volume's one dud.

One life, furnished in early poverty by Harlan Ellison. A successful author visits his younger self. I do remember this one, and it's a favorite.

Occam's scalpel by Theodore Sturgeon. When a powerful and aging businessman passes away, his ambitious protege is poised to take over. But first the deceased's personal physician has a startling secret to share with the new boss. This is a very good story, with a creepy paranoid streak.

32) The Weight / Andrew Vachss

Tim Caine didn't commit rape, and he has an airtight alibi. Unfortunately his alibi is that he was busy robbing a jewelry store at the time. So when a rape victim fingers him in a police lineup, he's faced with the choice of doing time for the rape, or explain the armed robbery and rat out his accomplices. When Caine gets out, the con who planned the heist persuades him to tie up some loose ends.

This is an okay crime novel, better than most I guess, but from Vachss I expected more. It lacks the the breakneck pace, the ensemble cast and the paranoid aesthetic of his Burke novels. On the good side, it does have a tough-guy tone and themes of criminal honor that made me wistful for Jean-Pierre Melville's films. It's not bad, but it's a long long way from "Blue Belle."

But if anyone's interested, there's going to be a Melville festival at the Ninja house this weekend: Le Doulos, Le Cercle Rouge, and Le Samouraï. I'll supply the popcorn and Melville will supply the cool.

Not going to read all the posts I missed, Stephen, just hoping to follow for the rest of the year :)

Stasia,

I recommend you read exactly those posts you're inclined to read and not one extra, past or future. I'm just glad to see you back.

33) My Abandonment / Peter Rock

Caroline and her father live in a city park in Portland, Oregon until a careless moment on Caroline's part alerts authorities to their presence. The narration is from Caroline's perspective, which I think the author did well enough to the extent that I didn't find it distracting.

In the pros column, the story moves along well and the father-daughter relationship is affectionate and genuine. It'd be great for a book club, raising issues of independence, identity, and trust. In the cons column, I wasn't entirely happy with the last third of the book, which skipped over incidents, relating in flashbacks events that would better have been narrated directly. The resolution also leaves a couple of questions unanswered, maybe by design.

Reservations aside it's a quick and I think rewarding 225 pages, so I'll say it's recommended.

#113: That is pretty much my game plan :)

#114: Already in the BlackHole, but unfortunately my local library still does not have a copy.

34) King Rat

Saul wakes up one morning to the police at his door and his father on the lawn. "On the lawn" as in defenestrated. The police quickly pick Saul as their favorite suspect. Things don't look good for him until he's left alone in a cell, when a strange shadowy powerful man shows up, introduces himself as King Rat, and helps Saul escape.

Once they're in the clear the stranger explains that Saul is also part rat and introduces the unfortunate young man to London's rancid vermin-infested underbelly. And of course stalking the streets there's a dangerous foe whom King Rat cannot defeat without Saul's help.

I didn't find this quite as enthralling as "Perdido Street Station," but that is faint criticism. The vision here is a bit narrower, the cast is considerably smaller, and the language more restrained. But for that we get a much tighter narrative with more consistent momentum. From PSS I frequently needed to take a breather; here I kept reading one more chapter than I'd planned, foregoing sleep and even John Stewart. So it's that good, at least.

Recommended for fans of dark urban fantasy.

#116: I will give that one a pass. I am not a China Mieville fan, although it seems I really should be. *sigh*

116: I have Perdido Street Station, I can actually see it, not yet buried in the piles of books, I have been curious to read it, but oh, the backlog...

"...and even John Stewart." Now that's a page-turner.

#117: I think that's a good choice, Stasia. It's quite different from Perdido Street Station, but it also has a strong horror aesthetic which I know is not your thing.

#118: I hope your experience with PSS is more like mine than Stasia's.

As for John Stewart: I blame Comedy Central, for scheduling his show precisely as I came to the climactic battle. Poor planning on their part, I say.

Definitely Comedy Central's fault from my p-o-v. They should be able to anticipate such inevitabilities, right?

#120: My point exactly.



35) Morituri / Yasmina Khadra

Brahim Llob has been an honest cop long enough to remember when honest cops were respected in Algiers. No longer: the ruling class considers him irrelevant, the fundamentalist rebels consider him a target, and those in the middle consider it dangerous to stand in his vicinity.

But the awkward social situation hasn't changed Llob: he's still honest, and he still pays no special deference to wealth and power. There's a great line near the end, apparently cribbed from the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout: "If you speak, you die. If you are silent, you die. So, speak and die." Llob embodies the quote.

When the daughter of an aging powerbroker disappears, he orders Llob to investigate. The case quickly dives into a dangerous world of prostitution, terrorism, assassinations, drug peddling, and high society.

There's not much hope here: with conspicuous consumption on the one side, random violence on the other, and a cowardly indifference in the middle, Algiers seems to be teetering at the brink of apocalypse (indeed, one villain's name is "Abou Kalybse.") Llob himself is not a pleasant man: honest he may be but he has all the delicacy and decorum of a fighting mad Mike Hammer. Only the city itself is occasionally beautiful:

In Algiers there are days when the sky and the sea conspire to induce a feeling of unbelievable plenitude. It's blue as far as the sea, and even in the very depths of winter, the rebellious and facetious sun manages to restore the summer. Of all the suns on this earth ours is the only one that successfully performs this sleight of hand.

But there's little hope that the city's populace can achieve such harmonious magic:
I gaze at Algiers and Algiers gazes at the sea. This city has no more emotions. There is only disenchantment as far as the eye can see. Its symbols are discarded. Subjected to an obligatory silence, its history bends its spine and its monuments belittle themselves.

I think this is one of those books that will have to settle with me before I decide how much I like it. Nevertheless, I'll recommend it: as an elegiac and violent piece of crime fiction, "Morituri" is not at all bad. It's certainly interesting, and at a terse 130 pages it's worth the time.

>35 MickyFine: *thwack* a hit, a palpable hit, and below the waterline. Damn your Jon Stewart-watchin' eyes!

Richard,

My aim is not as good as yours, but I do hit occasionally. Looking at the next few on my pile, I'd say it's probably safe to stick around.

#121: I think I will stay away from that one. I do not do so well with the violent crime fiction.

>123 swynn: Spoken like a true ninja, putting his target at ease....

#124: I don't think my next will tempt you either.

#125: Why Richard you wound me: attributing my heartfelt hospitality to ninja wiles. See for yourself what's next:



36) Kalin / E.C. Tubb

Fourth in the "Dumarest of Terra" series after "Toyman" -- see (2) above.

Continuing the search for his home planet "Earth," Dumarest rescues a clairvoyant, narrowly escapes death in a spaceship explosion, then must spend his fortune buying his way out of slavery. And that's all before the plot really gets going. With the action sprawled across several planets and with loose ends left dangling it's not as focused as the first three books, but it's still enjoyable escapist space-opera fun for those who like that sort of thing.

See, Richard? No worries. Why don't you sit down a bit ... I have a comfy sofa right over there ... in my parlor ...

#126: Yeah, I think I will resist temptation with that one too, Stephen.

I'm off to St. Louis to run that little footrace. By Sunday afternoon I'll have a better idea of how much I liked Hal Higdon's Marathon.

The forecast has changed from "scattered thunderstorms" to "WINDY." I'm telling myself that's mostly good news.

Good luck, NML! Show them how it is done!

Well, that was a little disappointing. I'd convinced myself I could do a 4:00 marathon, or close to it. And I was right on schedule to do so. Then about mile 16 I started having leg cramps I couldn't resolve ... so I ended up walking most of the last 10 miles.

Good news is that I did finish, but with a time of 4:45, which I suppose will make it easier to beat my personal best on my second marathon.

Overheard on the course:

"I hate 5Ks. I never run 5Ks. Who wants to run that fast?"

(Heard behind me midway up a hill.)
"Rob, don't give up. You can make it."
(Silence)
"Rob, just find someone in front of you and keep up.
(Silence)
"Rob, just look at a pair of shoes in front of you."
(Silence)
"Just look at my ass, Rob."
"Got it, babe."

*snerk* Man's gotta have motivation! :)

First marathon? Congrats! I ran a half marathon on Saturday at about the same pace, sadly over a minute per mile slower than I ran the same course last year, nothing specifically wrong, just couldn't dredge up enough oomph to go faster. My personal worst, on the record for posterity.

Do you have your eye on a particular marathon for the next try?

I love listening to the grumbling commentary of people who paid actual money to do this.

Well, you have my respect since I would never even begin the thing let alone finish it!

Eek. You are all insane, those who wish to run a marathon.

Actually, to tell the truth, the idea of it does appeal, but my knees are so bad after far too much horseriding that they wouldn't stand up to the training, let alone the real thing. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

#131: That was fairly early in the run so I don't know how long the motivation lasted. But for Rob's sake I hope it got him up the hill!

#132: Congrats on the half marathon also! From recent personal experience I know that some days are better than others, and you don't know which are the good ones until your feet hit the road. A few thousand times.

My hometown has a marathon on July 2, and I've been thinking about running that next. But after Sunday's run, when the temperature hit 91, a July marathon seems like a really bad idea. So probably a fall race: Kansas City or Des Moines, maybe. (On the other hand, I am still young enough to talk myself into bad ideas. So I won't rule out July.)

#133: Stasia, I'm pretty sure that position alone makes you smarter than me!

#134: I don't disagree. Actually, I overheard several comments about mental health during the marathon. Here's one: "I get why I do this. I'm crazy. What I don't understand is, why do I try to get other people to do it? I mean friends. I don't even hate them!"

You ran a marathon in 91 degrees? That is crazy!

Yeah, though that wasn't the plan. Up until Friday the forecast was for "isolated thunderstorms." Saturday they were predicting a high of 85 and I thought, oh we'll finish running before it gets too bad.

Nothing doing. It was hot, and the last few miles felt Tarzan hot.

I've never done a long run in weather hotter than 60 degrees. Just my luck, my first marathon falls on the first hot day of the year. I suspect the unaccustomed heat may have helped trigger the muscle cramps. That's the story I'm telling my body, anyway, to convince it that next time will be better.



37) Winterkill / C. J. Box

This is the third in a series of mysteries featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

In this one, Joe finds Lamar Gardiner firing randomly and repeatedly into a herd of elk, so Joe arrests him on charges of wanton destruction. It's what he'd do even if Gardiner weren't a district supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service. But as he takes Gardiner in, the forestry agent manages an escape into the woods. When Joe finally catches up he finds Gardiner fixed to a tree by two arrows, his throat cut.

Things go downhill from there, as the Forest Service sends its least competent agent to investigate. She arrives coincidentally just as a crowd of antigovernment separatists roll into town. Federal agents and separatists alike itch for a fight and the situation escalates.

This is a quick and fun outdoor thriller. It's not much of a mystery: Joe has it solved with 150 pages to go, but the confrontation between the feds and the freemen keeps things tense to the end. A couple of plot points depend on unlikely coincidences, but I'm getting used to that with this series.

My half marathon was a perfect: 40s, cloudy, calm. So I have no good story to tell my body. Yours sounds highly plausible though. Once last summer my running group had to schedule a 10 mile run in the late afternoon instead of the usual early morning. Temperature in the 80s was brutal, and even the youngsters were drooped over double and on the verge of collapse at the end. OTOH, for those with high levels of stamina and insanity, there is an ultramarathon through Death Valley...

>137 swynn: - Gee, could we make the author's name any bigger? Or make the title of the book blend into the background any better?

#137: Agreed, it's not a great cover.

Well, I can avoid adding Winterkill to the BlackHole since I have already read it. I agree about the cover though.

38) The Caves of Steel / Isaac Asimov

The inhabitants of a future overpopulated earth are crowded in massive domed city complexes. They fear leaving the cities and they fear the robots who are gradually taking over humans' jobs.

Connected to New York City is Spacetown, a city whose inhabitants are the descendants of space colonists. The Spacers fear the Earthmen's filth and disease, and they have a close relationship with their robots -- what one character calls a "C/Fe culture."

This is the setting for a locked-room mystery: Roj Nemennuh Sarton, a Spacer and designer of robots, has been killed. Earthman detective Lije Baley is asked to investigate in cooperation with a Spacer detective. But only after Lije agrees does he learn that his Spacer counterpart is a robot.

There is so much here: the worldbuilding is intricate -- if very 1950s. The mystery is clever: I admit I didn't figure it out even though the solution seems obvious in retrospect. (I did go hook, line and sinker for one of the red herrings, though, so that was a nice bit of misdirection, Mr. Asimov.) And it's quite cerebral, with themes on the nature of humanity, how culture shapes perception, and the responsibilities of creators to their creation.

Unfortunately, it hasn't entirely aged well. The prose is wooden. The dialog is tin. The pacing is jittery. Gender relations are awkward. As a piece of 1950s science fiction it's a gem and I'll almost certainly read it again. I just wish I'd read it first when I was 15.

My pile of books from the library is thriller-heavy. There's a new Dexter, a recent Anna Pigeon, a hyperviolent South African something ... and I wasn't feeling it at all this weekend. I needed a break from murder, mayhem, and manufactured thrills, and this is what I found:



39) Atchafalaya Houseboat / Gwen Roland

The covers on this thread have not been very attractive recently, and I'm not just talking about "Winterkill." (Dear Detective Olivaw, I love you to pieces but I really don't want to know whether your designers remembered to install nosehairs). I hope this one helps a bit.

The photo is mesmerizing: the water's fractured texture, the shadows lush violets and lavenders, the beautiful young woman's faraway gaze and pensive expression. The girl stands dangerously and confidently close to the water's very edge, backlit by a stark white bullet hole of a rising sun whose light the morning fog diffuses. I don't know how well the image in your browser captures this but trust me it's all there.

The photo is by wilderness photographer C.C. Lockwood. His subject is the author, Gwen Roland. In 1972 Roland was freshly graduated from college and looking for an "unusual summer job" for a year's hiatus from education before she began a master's program. At a reunion she met her old high school friend Calvin Voisin, and accepted his offer to be a fisherman's assistant in the Atchafalaya River Basin.

The next ten years she spent with Calvin in the swamp.

At some point in that decade C.C. Lockwood visited Roland and Voisin and featured them in a story for National Geographic magazine. Thanks to the story the couple became minor celebrities, and Roland was asked to write some articles for an alternative newspaper.

This volume collects those articles. She fondly describes life on a houseboat in the swamp, fishing or gardening as the season dictates, rising or landing as the water ascends or declines.

There's folklore (like the story of moonshiner who was straddling a still as it exploded and who wore a dress thereafter); there are animal tales (like her rescue of a dog from a whippet farm); there are stories of survival (like her own rescue from a whirlpool). And there's the cherished memory of being young and idealistic and self-sufficient and close to one's roots.

There's only one problem. Most chapters were originally newspaper columns. As columns, they're great: they are eloquent, on point, and brief. Too brief. The subject is so rich and the sample so small it feels like an eight-course meal cut up, summarized, and served on a small appetizer tray. The only problem is some more.

In an epilogue Roland relates how, prior to publication she sent the manuscript to Calvin for his approval. She then visits him in Louisiana and talk about dinner, cooking, the blackberry harvest and gardens ...

We quickly dispense with the book talk. His opinon? "It's pretty good, kind of short though."

A man of excellent taste to match an author of excellent but miserly skill.

I have some old editions of Asimov and some of the covers are very 'special'. My personal favourite is this 1966 edition of The Currents of Space:

*eyes ninja-sofa uneasily* Thanks, I'll stand....

>143 swynn: I loved the film of that book. It was as spare and as supple of image as you report the book to be.

>144 souloftherose: I'm reading an ARC of The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, a novel by Paul Malmont that traces the amazing events of a group of Golden Age writers like Asimov who worked for the Navy. So far, so good.

>144 souloftherose:: Great gaudy garnet gams and guns, that's just ... wow. And it's another Fawcett book too, like my copy of "The Caves of Steel." I'd love to have visited the Fawcett art department back in the day. The designs they rejected must have been incredible.

"Read a book with a strikingly awful cover" could be an interesting follow-up to this month's TIOLI.

>145 richardderus:: Film? My interest is piqued. Hm ... apparently it was a 2008 production of Louisiana Public Broadcasting ... which is not available through my library system. Yet another sign it might be time for a Netflix membership.

Re: Netflix...'tis.

Love the TIOLI idea!

#145 The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown does sound interesting, thanks for the mention. I'll keep my eyes peeled for your review.

#146 Great idea for a TIOLI challenge Stephen.

> 146

"Read a book with a strikingly awful cover" could be an interesting follow-up to this month's TIOLI.

Hey! That's an awesome idea!!

40) Dexter is Delicious / Jeff Lindsay

Dexter investigates a cult of cannibals. Okay, but it seemed a bit labored. I'm not sure whether this was a problem with the book or with the reader, so I won't recommend one way or the other.

41) Ensel und Krete / Walter Moers

Ensel and Krete are two children who wander off the beaten path, get lost in the Great Woods, and encounter various dangerous creatures.

This is the second book Moers set in his fantasy world of Zamonia. It's not quite as rich as the first (Die 13 1/2 Leben des Käpt'n Blaubärs) or as long, but it's still delightful. Whimsical worldbuilding is its main concern. Story and character come somewhere behind but with imagination this active I really didn't mind. And of course it has Moers's signature illustrations.

Plus: fantasy folk math! (The translation is mine, so pardon any errors or inelegance.)

Since most Zamonians have four fingers on each hand, ancient Zamonian mathematics is based on the number four. It has the numbers one, two, three, four, and double-four, which actually means eight. The intermediate numbers five, six, and seven are regarded as "unnumbers' by ancient Zamonian mathematics, which strictly denies the existence of these numbers. Double-four (8) is followed by double-double-four (16), and then double-double-double-four (32) and double-double-double-double-four (64), and so on to infinity. Thus ancient Zamonian mathematics denies altogether quite a few numbers -- actually, most of them. It holds therefore as the most inexact of all calculating systems.

Recommended. Alas and puzzlingly, this volume in the Zamonia series is not yet available in English translation.

Looks like we have a pretty robust list of TIOLI challenges for May. I'll save the "awful cover" challenge for June.



42) Maigret Stonewalled / Georges Simenon

Traveling salesman Émile Gallet is found shot and stabbed in his hotel room in Sancerre. Inspector Maigret is called in to investigate. His investigation quickly turns puzzling when he discovers that Gallet has been unemployed for almost twenty years, is a regular guest at the hotel under a different name, and has been sending his wife postcards from another hotel halfway across France.

>151 swynn: Fantasy math. Oh wow. Now, let's see...why on *Earth* wouldn't American publishers translate a book that has *fantasy*math* in it...hmmm...that's a stumper, that is....

>152 swynn: Maigret is an agreeable sleuth, eh what?

> 152

Looks like we have a pretty robust list of TIOLI challenges for May. I'll save the "awful cover" challenge for June.

That will be such a fun/funny challenge. Can't wait to look for those ugly book covers. :)

>153 richardderus:: Exactly, Richard. On top of all its other fine qualities -- math! It's a mystery through and through.

I'm very fond of Maigret. Fortunately, Simenon was quite prolific so there's plenty more.

>154 SqueakyChu:: I'll try to be a little quicker off the mark next month. Be sure to have your Visine ready!

43) X-Rated Bloodsuckers / Mario Acevedo

Vampire detective Felix Gomez goes to Los Angeles to investigate the murder of a porn starlet turned community activist. He finds a community even filthier than the porn industry: real estate. Oh, and politics.

This is the second book in the Felix Gomez series. I enjoyed it more than "The Nymphos of Rocky Flats," which I had hoped would be a riot but turned out just okay. This one I expected to be just okay and it was a little better than that. Ah, the magic of diminished expectations.

Happy Star Wars Day!

May the 4th be with you.

(If I'm the last person on the planet to hear this one, I apologize....)

(Come to think of it, if you first heard it from me, I apologize ....)

#130 - Sorry I'm late to the party, but congratulations on finishing your first marathon...and welcome to the club!

Thanks, Mary! I'm getting ready for #2, hoping to apply some lessons from #1: train in some heat before competing in heat, and respect the distance by setting out slower. My goal is to run the entire distance, and not worry about time.



44) Black Hearts / Jim Frederick

In March 2006 in a village south of Baghdad, a 14-year old girl was raped and, along with her family, killed. Army investigators initially credited the crime to insurgents, but the truth surfaced later: the killers were four American soldiers.

Deborah (arubabookwoman) recommended this last year, and her review sums up many of my own feelings.

To Deborah's comment that "responsibility for this war crime reaches far above the 4 soldiers who actively commited the deed," I add admiringly that Frederick makes that case with little polemic or melodrama. Obviously, blame for the crime can be shared all the way up the chain of command, and it'd be too easy for a partisan to blame the entire American military enterprise. Frederick avoids easy finger-pointing.

To Frederick, each player -- officer, soldier, insurgent or civilian -- is human, each with more or less integrity, more or less leadership skills, more or less pure dumb luck than the next one. You close the book not only with a sense of why this crime happened, but why war crimes in general happen and even why, where human beings are involved, they're damn near inevitable. Mix human flaws with human psychology and the best of intentions .... and somewhere it's all bound to crack.

I also admired Frederick's tactic of weaving the narrative as much as possible from direct quotes of people involved. Left to himself, Frederick sometimes get a bit too fond of words in a creative-writing-camp kind of way. But the soldiers' words, plain and direct and sometimes impassioned, are effective in a way that no journalist's finely-wrought sentences ever could be.

It makes for an uncomfortable read, but a worthwhile one. Recommended.

#150: Dexter is Delicious was better than the Dexter book previous to it, IMHO, but still not as good as the first couple Dexter books. I am not sure if I am going to continue reading the series or not, although I probably will.

ETA: Thanks for the reminder about Black Hearts. It is finally available at my local library.

>160 alcottacre:: Yeah, I think I'd also rate it third behind the first two. There wasn't anything to complain about, exactly ... Lindsey seemed to play all the right notes in the right order and at the right tempo. I just wasn't feeling it. It could very well be thriller fatigue, so ... shrug.

I'm not in a hurry for a new installment, but when it shows up on the library's New Books rack I'll probably carry it home.

This series on the other hand continues to please:



45) Killer's Payoff / Ed McBain

The bulls of the 87th Precinct investigate an extortionist's murder.

I keep meaning to read McBain. Thanks for reminding me!

>162 jadebird:: I hope you like them. They're very far from Great Literature, and these early ones show their age, but for noir police procedurals, they're hard to beat.

Imagine it all in glorious black & white, with voice-over narration by Robert Mitchum and you're practically there.

46) In Search of Klingsor / Jorge Volpi

In October 1946 a young American physicist comes to Nuremberg as a scientific advisor to U.S. forces. His task is to search the testimonies recorded at the Nuremberg trials for inconsistencies or contradictions relating to scientific research in the Third Reich. The Americans of course want to know just how close Hitler came to having an atomic bomb. Bacon soon becomes absorbed in the search for a name mentioned only once in thousands of pages of testimony: Klingsor, Hitler's scientific advisor who approved or denied the funding of all state research projects.

It's not at all clear whether Klingsor ever really existed; if he did, it's not at all clear whether he was trying to encourage the Nazis' atomic research, or trying to sabotage it, or playing an elaborate game with the Allies. Whether he exists or not, no German scientists want to talk about Klingsor. That, naturally, only makes Bacon all the more determined. In the course of his search he reviews nearly all the history of early twentieth-century mathematics and physics with a new and increasingly jaundiced eye.

Aiding Bacon in the search is the narrator, Gustav Links, a German mathematician who plays Virgil to Bacon's Dante. Links is curious about Klingsor but -- as he states up front -- has his own motives for helping Bacon, and for writing the book.

As for the book, I devoured it. This is the history-as-conspiracy novel that Dan Brown would write if only Dan Brown could write. It reminds me quite a bit of "Foucault's Pendulum," in both good and bad ways. On the good, it's playfully intricate and deliciously paranoid, complicated by an unreliable narrator; on the bad, most of its characters are little more than mouthpieces for exposition, with dashes of this or that sexual proclivity to add flavor. (Volpi's book has much more sex than Eco's -- consider that warning or encouragement as you like.) They also share similar themes of the limitations of science and the subjective nature of truth.

Considering their parallel charms and flaws, I highly recommend "In Search of Klingsor" to those who enjoyed "Foucault's Pendulum"; and cautiously recommend it to others.

Fair warning: This Book Contains Math!

Most of the math appears solid -- that is, it matches my own understanding. There's a fair amount of elementary game theory, and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem pops up a few times. For the kind of math Volpi's tackling it's actually not too bad. For the most part I have only minor complaints, but I did catch one pretty clumsy misstep.

That misstep has to do with Georg Cantor's continuum hypothesis. The CH makes a claim about the different "sizes" (here called "forces") of infinite sets:

It was the continuum hypothesis. In his arithmetics of infinity, Cantor thought that there must exist an infinite set with a "greater" force than that of natural numbers, yet "lesser" than that of real numbers.

That's not the continuum hypothesis. In fact it is exactly the opposite of the continuum hypothesis, and the opposite of Cantor's belief. The CH states that there is no infinite set "larger" than that of the natural numbers and "lesser" than that of real numbers. That is, the CH claims that the set of real numbers has the "next largest" size of infinity after that of the set of naturals. Cantor believed the CH to be true but was never able to prove it.

Inexplicably, Volpi never mentions history's verdict on the continuum hypothesis, so I can share it here spoiler-free: it turns out CH is undecidable. That is CH can be neither proven nor refuted in standard ("Zermelo-Fraenkel") set theory. I'm not sure why Volpi omitted this fact unless it was just to give us math nerds a wink.

I'm winking back at you, Jorge, and I'll read more of your books.

47) Spellbent / Lucy A. Snyder

Jessie and her boyfriend Cooper are working some sex magic to end an Ohio drought when the ground opens up, takes Cooper, and leaves a silvery snake demon that rampages through downtown Columbus. Things go downhill from there.

Snyder may not break new literary ground, but her genial characters, her galloping plot, her sense of humor and her vision of evil all make it intriguing and quite fun. Recommended for readers of urban fantasy.

Favorite blog of the day:

Better Book Titles

Best retitling:
"Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"
becomes:
"Cheer Up, This Is How You'll Feel Every Day As An Adult."

But there are some close contenders.

> 165 Wow. That's an attention-grabbing summary, huh? I might have to pick it up. I like urban fantasy and I live in Ohio - almost an irresistible combination, hm?

#164: Adding that one to the BlackHole. Thanks for the review and recommendation, NML.

165: Recalling my brief residence in Columbus OH, I think its downtown would be quite enhanced by a silvery snake demon.

Can one read the Volpi book and still enjoy it if she glosses over the math parts? I think I would enjoy it if the theory isn't germane to the story. I took lots of advanced math in college but that was decades ago and theory was not part of the program.

>167 Aerrin99:: I hope you like it! It is the first book in a projected trilogy, with the third due out in December, in case you're one who likes to wait until a series is complete.

>168 alcottacre:: I hope you can find it, Stasia! (And that you'll like it if you do.)

>169 qebo:: LOL! Having only driven through through the Buckeye State, I'll diplomatically take your word for it.

>168 alcottacre: & 170: Glossing over the math parts won't hurt. There's even more physics than math, and I was okay with that even though my physics is strictly high-school-and-Star-Trek.

Volpi uses some mathematical and physical ideas as motifs. With respect to the math, Volpi is interested in the limits of knowledge: the Incompleteness Theorem constrains mathematical knowledge, which is the important thing and is clear enough; the details don't really matter. With game theory Volpi explores the temptation to confuse truth with personal advantage -- and questions whether there is always any truth to confuse. The "continuum hypothesis" comes up as part of the mathematician narrator's backstory, and Volpi seems not to understand it himself.

48) In the Land of Believers / Gina Welch

Gina Welch, atheist daughter of a secular Jewish mother and a Communist father, is intrigued by evangelicals. She decides to "go undercover" at Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church to see what makes them tick.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand Welch is a talented writer with a keen eye for detail. On the other hand ... I'm still not entirely clear on why she needed to go undercover. It's not like evangelicals have secrets.

From page one Welch ponders the ethics of lying to people one is trying to befriend. She rationalizes that pretending to be "born again" allowed her to approach church members more closely than she otherwise could have done. Indeed, members were less guarded than they otherwise might have been and invited her into the life of the congregation. She discovered that evangelicals are by and large genuinely nice people with different beliefs.

This rationalization frankly doesn't work for me. As Welch befriends members, fakes her conversion, imitates the movement's buzzwords, and even "leads a child to Christ," her entire enterprise feels kind of creepy. At the end, when she finally and abruptly leaves the church to write her book she agonizes over the feeling that she has betrayed her friends. It's very hard to sympathize: one wonders what she had expected, exactly.

On the third hand ... Welch does seem to have had some genuine experiences she might have missed had she not participated so completely. She experiences the emotional thrill that an evangelical service can provoke in participants. She understands the structure and social support that church membership can provide. She comes to appreciate the wisdom and beauty of some Biblical passages.

All of this matches my own experience, having been raised in an evangelical denomination and deciding in my twenties that it wasn't for me. So Welch's book was a chance to revisit my own feelings about the faith of my youth. It's just that her deception complicates things ...

(Also, I object to the suggestion that Jerry Falwell and his Southern Baptists represent all Evangelicals. Even when I was a Christian I thought he was kind of a pompous blowhard.)

That book sounds really interesting, except for the deception, which I really don't like the sound of either!! But still, I might read it. And the Volpi book sounds good too, but only when I have read the *other* math-y books I own!

#172: I think I will pass on that one. I am not sure I could get over the deception hump in reading it.

I agree with you about Falwell, BTW. And I still am a Christian.

>173 cushlareads:: Cushla, if you decide to read it I'll be very interested in your comments.

>174 alcottacre:: I don't blame you. I found In the Land of Believers recommended on Jason Rosenhouse's blog. (Rosenhouse is the author of The Monty Hall Problem and an upcoming book on creationist culture.) Along with it Rosenhouse also recommended Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple, about "going undercover" at Liberty University. But after Welch's book I'm not sure I'm up to it.

Yeah, I think I will skip the Roose book too.

I was just going to recommend The Unlikely Disciple! I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it (I grew up in a church that may be labeled evangelical by some), but I found it both thoughtful and interesting. And surprisingly well written for his age.

175: I was reading Jason Rosenhouse's blog regularly when he was writing The Monty Hall Problem but it dropped off the radar. He's a math professor but quite engaged in evolution/creationism tensions, which I've become rather tired of. Maybe it's time to revisit.

>177 Aerrin99:: I may give it a try after all. I'll definitely need to let Welch's book settle a little, though.

>178 qebo:: He's been writing more math-related posts recently, but the evolution/creationism thing is still a recurring subject -- no surprise, with a title like "EvolutionBlog," and with his work on the book. Personally, I grew up firmly and vocally in the creationist camp, and eventually converted in the face of (what seems to me) overwhelming evidence. It was part of my struggle of faith, and the subject remains fascinating to me. It's Rosenhouse's chess posts that tend to make me drift away from his blog.

179: Huh. I didn't, so I don't have a visceral understanding of how one goes about making such a profound change in thinking. Although I'm firmly on the side of the biologists etc., I've never had to give up anything to be there. If you're inclined to tell your story, I'd be interested. (I skip the chess posts. Just as I skip the basketball posts of other bloggers.)

>180 qebo:: Oh, there's not a lot to tell. I started early in junior high & high school, reading every creationist book and tract I could lay hands on, pestering uninterested friends with what I'd found, "correcting" my junior-high Biology teacher -- why he never kicked me out of class remains a mystery.

After high school I attended a church-affiliated college. Originally I intended to study for the ministry, but after a year or so I realized that not only did I not feel "the call," I wasn't even sure I agreed with the doctrine and switched my major to English. My sophomore year I was writing a paper on Proto-Indo-European and found an essay by Stephen Jay Gould in the journal Natural History.

I fell in love with Stephen Jay Gould. The essay was clear, well-structured, and contained entertaining literary flourishes. Best of all, it wasn't just an essay: Gould had a regular column in the journal, and this was just one installment! If you've read the column or any of his wonderful books you probably know that Gould was an evolutionary biologist and the columns mostly were enthusiastic dispatches from his area of expertise.

Over the next few months I became a devoted reader of "This View of Life," searching back issues for the column's history and snatching new issues as they appeared on the periodical shelves. If Gould took a month off I was irritated with the journal's editors, and was irritated with Gould when he wasted a column on baseball. (Honestly, I wait a whole month for ... baseball?!?) Ocasionally I'd share a particularly good column with friends (who were mostly indifferent) or with professors (who were mostly concerned about my immortal soul.)

By the time I graduated, Gould and others had convinced me that the biologists had a better case than the apologists. Though I continue to read from both perspectives, I've read nothing since then that has made me reconsider. Quite the opposite.

Oh, your poor biology teacher! Have you talked to him since then?

>182 qebo:: No, I haven't. Oddly, it's never occurred to me to go back and apologize. Nearly thirty years hence, I wonder whether he's still around ...

49) The Holmes-Dracula File / Fred Saberhagen

Sherlock Holmes meets Count Dracula. This will probably meet your expectations, whether your gut reaction is that it could be an entertaining diversion, or that it's just too ridiculous to bother. I liked it.

For me, it's a reread, pulled off the shelf for Laurie's (lahochstetler) "Read a book set in London, England" challenge.

50) Allah is Not Obliged / Ahmadou Kourouma

The title is an abbreviation of what the narrator calls "the full, final and completely complete title":

Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth.

The narrator Birahima is a Malinké boy from Guinea. Birahima is ten or maybe twelve years old, dropped out of school in the third grade because "education's not worth an old grandmother's fart anymore", but he has already been a child-soldier in the tribal wars tearing through Liberia and Sierra Leone.

This is Birahima's story, and occasionally that of his fellow child-soldiers whom Birahima eulogizes as war takes them away. Birahima is born into poverty, then follows an uncle to Liberia where he is taken into the militia of a regional warlord. As war changes fortunes Birahima serves various warlords, acquiring a jaded and ironical perspective on politics and violence.

The conceit that our narrator is a preadolescent grade-school dropout doesn't always ring true: the prose is too artful for one thing, and for another the narrator's knowledge of high-level political intrigue is too detailed. These things break one illusion, but it seems rather petty to complain that the book was too well-written and too informative. It's sparse, it's vulgar, it's occasionally funny, and it's mesmerizing.

Recommended with the caution: it's quite violent, and -- as in the real-life tribal conflicts it depicts -- many children die.

*** Running Post ***

This Saturday I did the Aquarium Run in Jenks, Oklahoma, a half-marathon to benefit the Oklahoma Aquarium. Here I am setting out. I'm in the white T-shirt behind the guy wearing a blue bandana and "soul surfer" ensemble.

The weather was beautiful for running, mid-60's and overcast, and the course was pretty, flat and fast. Much of the course followed Tulsa's River Parks trails, which are flat and green and friendly and one of my favorite places on the planet to run. I talked to one runner afterward who complained about the course's one "hill." Puzzled, I asked where he usually ran. "I'm from Oklahoma City," he responded. Aha, thought I: this guy is used to running on a buttermilk pancake, and here we are on a blueberry pancake.

Of course after the run it was fun to visit the aquarium's residents. I'd love to do this one again.

I am super impressed with the half-marathon, that is something I'd love to achieve one day but I need to learn to love exercise first! Enjoying your reviews as well btw.

186, 187: Ooh, a running post with illustrations! I messed up my foot chasing my 11 year old niece in a 5K a couple weeks ago, am cautiously returning to my usual schedule. Not yet sure whether I want to get serious in July for a fall half marathon. KywiNyx, if you can learn to love having exercised, you can get through the exercise itself.

>187 KiwiNyx:: Thanks for stopping by my thread, Leonie! As for exercise ... good luck with learning to love it. Between you & me & LT, the competitive runs are largely to help me stay motivated. It's easier to convince myself to do training runs if I know that skipping them will lead to Abject Embarrassment somewhere down the road.

>188 qebo:: Sorry to hear about your injury, qebo. I hope you can get back up to speed soon!

51) Mixed Blood / Roger Smith

Last year I read Smith's second thriller Wake Up Dead and didn't have much nice to say. Well, write that off to first impressions. I recently saw Smith's third novel "Dust Devils" announced for a September release. To my surprise I found myself looking forward to it. Whatever I had disliked about "Wake Up Dead" is mostly forgotten and memory recalls it more kindly as a vivid and compelling crime thriller.

So instead of waiting for Smith's third, I got a copy of this his first.

Desperately in debt, security contractor Jack Burn participates in a bank robbery that goes south, leaving a cop -- and Burn's accomplices -- dead. Burn flees to Cape Town, South Africa with his son and his pregnant wife (and his loot) to start a new life under a new name. They aren't settled long when they become victims of a home invasion. A couple of street punks cranked on meth break into the Burns' home, Jack defends his family, and the trouble starts all over again in this new and dangerous locale.

Smith's Cape Town is vulgar, sordid, and violent. If you need sympathetic characters to enjoy a book then go look elsewhere, this isn't for you. The protagonist is a bank robber and cop killer, and few other characters rise to these high moral standards. But if you find appealing the idea of a Sam Peckinpah film set in Cape Town, then this is recommended. And so is "Wake Up Dead," never mind what I said the first time.

52) Killer Weekend / Ridley Pearson

Walt Fleming is a sheriff in the resort community of Sun Valley, Idaho. When an up-and-coming politician decides to make Sun Valley the backdrop for launching her presidential campaign, Fleming is included in security arrangements. Sure enough, someone has taken out a hit on the candidate -- and with all the feds and private security swarming Sun Valley, it comes down to Fleming to stop it.

It's a pretty decent thriller-- the plot stretches credibility, but that comes with the territory.

#191: I am not a Ridley Pearson fan. Not sure why, as I normally enjoy the thriller genre, but his books just do not do it for me.

Stasia,

I know the feeling -- Mrs. Ninja is a devotee of Jonathan Kellerman, who mostly ranks a "meh" from me. I don't think "Killer Weekend" is special enough to change your mind, and I expect you have enough to read without it.

>190 swynn: The protagonist is a bank robber and cop killer, and few other characters rise to these high moral standards.

My kinda book! Can't wait!

Oh, and mark me down as "Ridley Pearson can get kicked through the engine now" on your sheets.

#193: I am with Mrs. Ninja :)

I think I can promise no more Ridley Pearson for a little while. Here's something more interesting:



53) By nightfall / Michael Cunningham

Peter Harris is a New York art dealer, reasonably happy with his life and his respectable career and his comfortable life with his wife Rebecca, editor at a struggling literary journal. Peter is reasonably happy, but not extravagantly so, and he has reached his mid-forties and disappointments are accumulating and he realizes it's increasingly likely that he never will be extravagantly happy.

Then Peter's brother-in-law Mizzy comes to visit. Mizzy is an extravagantly young, extravagantly handsome, extravagantly entitled young man on his way from a Japanese mountain retreat to a vaguely imagined career "in the arts." Aimless slacker Mizzy may be, but Peter begins to see him as the fulfillment of his many midlife longings.

The writing here is very good. Cunningham's sentences are a delight, occasionally elliptical, occasionally blunt, always crafted with a sense of economy and a keener sense of aesthetics. The text is a labyrinth of allusions -- literary, artistic, musical, cinematic -- but they never seem forced. The characters are entirely convincing if a bit neurotic and self-obsessed. All in all, it's a pleasure to read.

Unfortunately, for me the whole was something less than the sum of its parts. It reminds me of an Eric Rohmer film -- obviously staged and scripted with exquisite care, but when it really comes down to it a lot of lovely lines are spent talking about the not much that happens.

It's not exactly a matter of style over substance: Cunningham does have things to say about aging and disappointment and happiness and art and sexual attraction. But the style/substance balance tips pretty heavily to the "style" side.

>196 swynn: Sort of a new generation's Nocturnes for the King of Naples (q.v.), then.

>197 richardderus:: I'm not familiar with that one, Richard, but I'm intrigued.

54) Norse Code / Greg Van Eekhout

Ragnarok is coming. Kathy "Mist" Castillo is a Valkyrie, charged with recruiting soldiers for the army of Valhalla, when she becomes disillusioned with her employer's methods. Mist knows a couple of souls in Helheim who don't deserve to be there, so screw the apocalypse she figures and sets off to rescue them.

The cast is large, the scope mythic, the pace swift, and the touch light. At times there seems to be a bit too much going on, and there are too many viewpoint characters. But it's all good exuberant fun, so I'm willing to excuse a little awkwardness. Recommended for fans of contemporary fantasy.

55) The Game's Afoot! : Game Theory in Myth and Paradox / Alexander Mehlmann

I think Mehlmann's intent was an introduction to game theory with examples drawn from literary sources. But the execution is a bit too breezy and disjointed for my taste -- the mathematics fluctuates from handwavey to opaque, and the stories aren't particularly well told. Part of the problem may be translation, but I don't plan to read it in the original to find out.

>199 swynn: Hmmm. On balance, not.

>200 swynn: *eeek*flees the dreaded MATHMONSTER*

#200: Too bad about that one. I would have given it a shot.

56) The Devotion of Suspect X / Keigo Higashino

I was a little disappointed in this one: from the hype I had expected something a little more literary. What I found instead was a very clever plot but little else: the characters struck me as flat and the prose as dull -- but that last I'll blame on translation. It's entertaining, but mostly forgettable.

The titular "Suspect X" is a mathematician, so math happens. Referenced problems include the Riemann hypothesis, the four-color theorem, and the P vs. NP problem. The problems are described in popular terms, and the descriptions are accurate according to my understanding. You don't have to "get" the math to enjoy the book.

#203: I have seen mixed reviews of that one. I think I will continue to stay away from it for the time being.

57) We Can Build You / Philip K. Dick

Louis Rosen represents a factory that produces spinets and electric organs, the market for which is waning. Louis's business partner Maury has a grand scheme for replacing war with massive reenactments of Civil War battles fought by historically accurate robots or "simulacra." The simulacra are to be manufactured in Louis's factory and designed by Maury's ex-psychotic daughter Pris.

Louis, Maury and Pris build two prototype simulacra, one resembling Edwin Stanton and one Abraham Lincoln.
Then a self-made billionaire -- a preimage of Bill Gates and also probably psychotic -- gets wind of their simulacra, and tries to acquire the company in order to support his plans to sell real estate on the moon.

Yeah, the plot is a little complicated and not always plausible. Ultimately, it wanders off in too many directions and leaves too much unresolved. But a Dickian failure is more interesting than many another author's success, and it's worth the trouble for readers intrigued by science-fictional meditations on identity, technology, sanity, and reality.

(And yes, that cover was apparently used on purpose.)

#205: OK, giving the book and its awful cover a pass!

58) The Bounty Hunters / Elmore Leonard

So a friend told me Elmore Leonard is the premiere practitioner of American crime fiction, and since I've read no Leonard at all -- I haven't even seen Get Shorty -- I figured I'd start at the beginning, even though his first books are westerns, a genre in which I have little interest. This one is okay, a Spaghettish western with tough-talking scoundrels shooting at each other. David Flynn is a scout hired to accompany an Army sergeant on a secret mission to capture an outlaw Apache in Mexico and bring him back to Arizona. The Mexican army complicates things, as does a band of bounty hunters and of course the outlaw himself.

Having little frame of reference I don't know whether to recommend it or not, but it was entertaining enough to try another.

>205 swynn: ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

>207 swynn: Read it in my twenties. Can't remember on single thing about it!

Yeah, in spite of having only read a handful of westerns in my life I didn't think it felt very distinctive. In fact, it felt pretty much like a Sergio Leone film without a Morricone score.

I have never read anything by Elmore Leonard either. I am not sure he is my cup of tea.

Stasia, if you think Elmore Leonard's not your cup of tea, you're really going to hate this:



59) Abandon Galaxy! / Bart Somers

The League Of Outer-space Thieves plans to blow up Pleasure Planet. The ensuing political crisis will make it easier to steal stuff, and that's what L.O.O.T is all about. Unfortunately for them, Commander John Craig is on his way to Pleasure Planet, hoping for a vacation from his usual duties of foiling L.O.O.T.'s plans. Will Commander Craig find and defuse the bomb on time? Maybe-- but he'll need help from Mylitta, the beautiful love slave from Planet Veneria.

It's ridiculous, it's chauvinistic, and it's about as subtle as a neon G-string. It's also oddly entertaining in an abrasive Adult-Swim sort of way. Maybe that's what the author was going for, but somehow I think he was going for macho space fantasy instead. Anyway, if "love slave from Planet Veneria" tickles your funnybone (or your whatever), it's worth a look. All others, avoid.

You are right!

This is better:



60) How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer / Sarah Bakewell

I recognized the name "Montaigne" ... he was some sort of essayist, wasn't he? French, probably, from the spelling of his name. That's the most I could say about him, not even a guess as to his time period or philosophical leanings.

So I hesitated to pick this up. But Bakewell's book was chosen for Library Journal's Top Ten list of 2010 and other 75ers like Suzanne (Chatterbox) and Michael (OldSarge) have given it a thumbs-up so I decided to give it a try.

Oh my goodness ... to think of the wasted years of not having read Montaigne. Whose responsibility was it anyway to introduce me to this insightful and charming raconteur?

If you've read Montaigne, I imagine that Bakewell's book is an informed and entertaining appreciation. If like me you haven't read Montaigne, be prepared to add him to your TBR list. In either case, it's recommended.

#213: I have been making my way through Montaigne's essays (again) and really want to read the Bakewell book too, but my local library does not have it yet. I am glad to see you enjoyed it, NML.

Stasia, I envy you the experience of revisiting Montaigne's essays. Bakewell makes him seem as excellent a lifelong companion as Shakespeare. Do you have a favorite translation?

#215: I have only read one translation, Stephen, so I have nothing to compare it against. My book has not only Montaigne's essays, but his travel journal and letters as well. The translator is Donald M. Frame.

#216: Bakewell mentions Frame's work as an "excellent" modern translation. It's also the version I ordered from Amazon, so I'll be sampling it soon.



61) Postmortem / Patricia Cornwell

I've been planning to get around to Patricia Cornwell's "Kay Scarpetta" for some 15 years now, since I was working as a circulation clerk in the local public library and her books were outcirculated only by Stephen King's and John Grisham's. And now Kerry's (avatiakh's) "Book with a foreign language title" TIOLI challenge seems like the perfect time to pick up the Latinate "Postmortem." I've heard the series has fallen off dramatically in quality, but the first few should still be good, right?

Maybe. I'd say this one is better than average, but I don't quite see the launch of a publishing sensation. Of course, it's more than twenty years old now, and we've seen a dozen or so "CSI"-style television shows and countless more medical high-tech detective series and thrillers roiling rapidly under the bridge. Maybe Cornwell was a pioneer in this sort of thing and it was all fresh and exciting in 1990. For whatever reason, I'm not hooked. Interested enough to read another, but in no hurry to do so.

62) Swallow / Sefi Atta

Tolani and her roommate Rose are young women trying to make ends meet in Lagos, Nigeria, when a series of misfortunes and an encounter with a Very Bad Man make them consider a less legitimate offer of employment.

I'm calling it Nigerian chick-lit. Maybe that sounds dismissive but look at what you get:
- a young, single protagonist starting out in the big city,
- a boyfriend who won't commit,
- an outspoken friend who sleeps around,
- an overbearing and sexist boss,
- shopping for shoes, and
- a climax that briefly turns the narrative darker, resolving into
- a denouement that affirms grrl power.

Throw in a sassy gay friend and you'd have a pilot for "Sex and the City: Nigeria." Come to think of it, Jonathan the flirty shoe salesman with a fabulous fashion sense just might seal the deal.

It's a quick read with many familiar tropes, but there is more here than just genre. Tolani's story alternates with narratives told by her mother, who found ways to express and empower herself in a rural farming village a generation earlier -- a very different place and time. The alternating viewpoints give Atta a chance to explore the effects of technology and modernization, along with the persistence of petty tyrannies sexist and tribal.

It's sometimes a bit too familiar but I'd recommended it to anyone who finds the description "well-written exploration of women's issues in modern Nigeria" intriguing.

>218 swynn: *AHEM* "Swallow"? Really?

>219 richardderus:: I'm not fond of the title.

I get why Atta chose it: it's brief and attention-getting and multivalent. Fellatio is not specifically mentioned in the book, but just what "swallow" means to the plot you don't learn until halfway through.

** POSSIBLE SPOILER **

The Very Bad Man is Rose's latest boyfriend, a drug smuggler. He offers Tulani and Rose a tidy sum for smuggling drugs into England, and only one orifice will do. To work as a drug mule, Tulani must learn to swallow packages of cocaine wrapped in a condom (okay, so the book mentions fellatio implicitly). That turns out to be harder than it first sounds:

My mouth tasted of palm oil. I couldn’t swallow my condom; it was the size of my thumb and as hard as a bone. What used to be my throat was now a pipe, my intestines were a drain and my stomach had become an empty portmanteau. It was as though every possible emotion had charged at me and left me flattened. I didn’t have the will or the ability to care about myself anymore, even to feel sorry for myself, and it was just as well, because the physical challenges I had to face were all that mattered now.

Of course the condom is a symbol of everything Tulani is expected to "swallow": she is expected to accept discrimination and corruption and harassment and indifference. The effect is dehumanizing, and Tulani has to decide whether she will in fact "swallow" everything she's served.

So I understand why Atta chose the title. Still .... yeah: really?

In a word: Ick.

ETA: And to be clear, I'm a *huge* fan of the act in question, admittedly more from the giving than the getting side, but the baldness and unsubtelty of the one-word title reminds me unpleasantly of Chuck Palahniuk's ick-ptui titles. Choke? Really? Bleargh.

No innuendo in the next one. There is one awkward scene of almost-sex, but the participants are reminded that only a virgin can use the powers of a magic unicorn horn. The most obvious retorts are hereby forbidden on this thread.



63) Enchanted pilgrimage / Clifford D. Simak

I picked this one up for Madeleine's "Read a low book" TIOLI. My original plan was to read China Miéville's "The Scar," but that is a dense baroque beautiful book that demands savoring. I will only read it for the first time once and I refuse to speed through.

I'm not going to finish "The Scar" by the end of the month, so I grabbed this one, short and Simak, because I knew it'd only take a couple of days.

Thank goodness it's short. It is one of those meandering fantasy quest novels in which a handful of disparate heroes goes from one unrelated incident to the next until the author meets his word quota and wraps things up. Conflicts are resolved by dei ex machinae and the characters end pretty much the same as they began. Even the virgin.

I'll give Simak a couple of points for occasionally entertaining dialogue, and a couple of suspenseful scenes on whose promise the book reneges. I did like the hellhounds, who were genuinely menacing but dispatched with disappointing ease.

In short: not recommended. If you want to try Simak, read "The City" or "Way Station" instead.

...but...but...target-rich environment! And my gun is muzzled! NO FAIR!

Fire away if you must, Richard. To be honest, I thought the ban would only encourage you.

223,224: FWIW, you have an audience... :-)

>225 qebo:: Hm, not sure if that's more encouragement or the voice of reason saying, "Boys, settle down now." Either way, this next will change direction:



64) Half a life / Darin Strauss

This one was mentioned by a friend last week. It's a quick read, but a thought-provoking one-- you'll probably spend more time thinking about it than reading it. It's a memoir describing the author's interior life following a car accident in which a girl was killed. The author was driving when a girl -- a student at the author's high school -- suddenly swerved her bicycle into his path.

Strauss describes his reactions in the aftermath and the continuing effect of the tragedy through his life. Some responses of his body and brain are unexpected and puzzling; some would undoubtedly have been regarded as shameful had he acknowledged them publicly at the time. And it's these cases of interior reportage that make the book most interesting.

As with all memoirs, it's not entirely clear which memories are genuine and which have been reformed by mastication over the two intervening decades. But it's more analytical than apologetic or self-justifying and it feels honest. Recommended.

(Oh, and what is up with touchstones? They haven't worked for me for two days now.)

65) Maigret's war of nerves / Georges Simenon

The fifth Maigret novel isn't quite as good as previous ones. Joseph Heurtin has been condemned to death for the murder of an American expatriate and her maid. The evidence against Heurtin is solid: his boot prints were found at the scene as were his fingerprints. But during the trial Maigret becomes convinced that Heurtin is innocent. So Maigret arranges for Heurtin to escape, in hopes that he will lead the police to the true murderer.

It's a bit too heavy with improbabilities, but it does contain one well-drawn and intriguing character, who knows all too much about the crime and boldly dares Maigret to implicate him. It's interesting, but not one of the series's best.

Originally titled La tête d'un homme, it's also apparently been translated as "A man's head."

66) Ultramarathon man / Dean Karnazes

I saw this on Mary's (FireandIce's) thread, and it looked like something light & inspirational for reading between chapters of The Scar. They're interesting complements: Miéville writes like a god, Karnazes runs like one.

Karnazes is a long distance runner and by "long" I mean Karnazes runs distances such that he'll tack a marathon onto the end of a race just to say he ran farther than he did the year before. Most of the book consists of mile-by-mile accounts of very long runs, featuring:

The 100-mile Western States Endurance Run.

The 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley (in July!)

A marathon to the South Pole (not just any old Antarctic marathon: these guys picked a spot 26.2 miles from the earth's axis of rotation, then ran south)

the 199-mile Relay from Calistoga, California to Santa Cruz. This is a run usually completed by teams of six; Karnazes runs it solo.

True, the writing won't win any awards, but it moves along briskly with little literary pretense and no false modesty. True, the author is a bit full of himself, but not without reason. True, there's not much depth here. The theme is just the awesomenesss of being Dean Karnazes, but then Dean Karnazes is pretty awesome, and I confess I found it inspirational.

o.O

#226: Angela sent me that one recently to read. I am going to have to bump it up the stack.

67) Purgatory Chasm / Steve Ulfelder

Conway Sax is an ex-NASCAR driver, ex-mechanic, and ex-con. A few years ago Sax hooked up with an AA group that helped him add the "ex-" prefix to "drunk." Grateful for the rescue, Sax cannot refuse another member's request for help, especially since it involves retrieving a classic luxury car from the garage of a deadbeat mechanic.

But things aren't quite what they seem: the deadbeat mechanic is no pushover and Sax's client turns up dead. Further noirish twists ensue.

It's an okay thriller. There's a subplot involving Sax's father that seemed superfluous to me, which dragged the pace through the middle hundred pages and then wrapped up in a way that felt contrived. Also, the characters seem to spend a lot of time driving -- and not just racing, though there's that too. The action takes place in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Vermont and New York and South Carolina. The sprawl doesn't serve much dramatic purpose, but it gives the characters reasons to drive a lot.

So I'm not quite as enthusiastic as the cover blurbs. Still, as brain candy it's not bad. Apparently it's the first in a series, and I'll probably pick up at least one more. Recommended for fans of crime fiction.

#231: I think I will give that one a pass. NASCAR is not my thing at all.

Stasia:

It isn't my thing either. I don't want to give the impression that this is a sort of "Murder on the NASCAR Circuit," because it isn't. Motorsports provide background: the characters talk about it, and there is one down-n-dirty dad-vs-lad race on a rural dirt track, but NASCAR novel it's not.

With my misgivings, I'd recommend you wait and see what some other LTers think: it didn't rev my motor, but it wasn't bad either.

Will do, NML. I will see what the other reviewers think of the book.

Catching up with your interesting reads. I was particularly attracted to Swallow and had to chuckle at your line - a denouement that affirms grrl power.
Was that misspelling intentional? If it was - brilliant!

Mamzel,

The misspelling is intentional. I don't remember where I first saw the expression "grrl power," but I can't claim credit for it.

(For that matter I may be using it out of context: it suggests to me a fierce sort of feminism that bypasses negotiations and dialectic and moves straight to doing stuff anyway.)

68) Them : adventures with extremists / Jon Ronson

"Journalist and documentary filmmaker" Jon Ronson follows people most of us would regard as extreme: Islamic fundamentalists, American separatists and Klan leaders, even an ex-soccer star who thinks the world is controlled by shapeshifting reptiles (he claims George Bush is a reptile, so in some cases he may actually have a point.)

Talking to these extremists, Ronson hears a recurring theme: that the world is controlled by a small group of people who meet in secret. He figures if that is the case then as an investigative journalist, he ought to be able to locate their secret meeting place and investigate.

It's funny and entertaining. I don't know that it's particularly instructive ... Ronson tends to breeze by the meat of the extremists' claims and target their human foibles, their flaws and their insecurities. These he relates with a wry, understated humor, as in this conversation with Thomas Robb, Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan:

"Do you think I'm weird?" said Thom. There was an intimacy, an awkwardness in his voice. "As a person," said Thom. "You know."

I ummed and ahhed. Was Thom weird? He is the leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. But as a person. Thom wanted to know whether I considered him weird as a person. I felt that Thom, as a person, was in a transitional phase between weird and not weird.

Thom said, "The thing is, I spend all my time with, you know, Klansmen. So how do I know if I'm weird? We're all weird."

"There's no benchmark," I agreed, "if one spends all one's time with Klansmen."

"That's the thing," said Thom. "That's exactly the thing. There's no benchmark."

Ronson's approach tends to explode any aura of menace about his subjects, but I wonder also whether it trivializes them as well. I mean, it's sort of emotionally satisfying to see extremists as fumbling buffoons, but some fumbling buffoons are capable of pretty sobering deeds.

So I have misgivings about his approach. On the other hand, it tends to soften the blow for his message: sometimes the extremist is the fellow in the mirror. The same wit that eviscerates the Klan leader is turned on people opposing the extremists, when he notices the protesters are prone to paranoid analysis and conspiracy theories not all that different from those they oppose.

So you get humor and a gentle caution to be a bit more understanding of one another. There's nothing wrong with that, and you might even chuckle at yourself. Recommended.

#237: I went to add that one to the BlackHole only to discover it is already there. *sigh*

237: The title convinced me. Onto the wishlist. I once had a friend who was briefly on the edge of conspiracy theory land, arrived there via a not entirely implausible path that began with her father in the CIA. I threw a few search terms into Google, and spent weeks enthralled by the extent and variety of the human imagination. It's incredibly easy to get sucked into the vortex of links to the like-minded, so many like-minded that they cease to seem strange. Maybe even more fascinating are the vying conspiracy theories.

#238: Considering the size of the Black Hole, I expect that's happened more than once.

#239: Ronson also recognizes the attractiveness of the conspiracies he investigates, especially when the theories are based on a sliver (or more) of truth. He actually is chased by a man in black when he gets too close to a meeting of the Bilderberg Group, for instance. The title comes from a comment made by a friend whom he was telling about what he'd learned: "You sound like one of them."

He never does meet any shapeshifting reptiles, though. Not in their "true form," anyway.

#240: Considering the size of the Black Hole, I expect that's happened more than once.

More times than I care to remember!

69) The Scar / China Miéville

Fleeing the events narrated in Perdido Street Station, Bellis Coldwine sets out for a self-imposed exile in a New Crobuzon colony. En route, her ship is attacked by pirates. She and the other passengers are impressed into service in the pirates' floating city, Armada.

Perdido Street Station was one of my favorite reads last year, and this follow-up is every bit as good. Its scope is huge, its language lush, its vision ambitious. And dear deviant deities, does it ever deliver.

This is what fiction is for.

(Stasia, I will never understand your immunity to Perdido Street Station's manifold witcheries. Alas, I am afraid The Scar is more of the magical same ... and you are given express exemption from my gushing recommendation. You won't like it. Such a shame.)

I know. I tried, honestly I did - 3 times - to like PSS. *sigh*

242: I have Perdido Street Station on a shelf, waiting... Haven't felt quite ready to commit to 600 pages of the unknown...

#243: Nobody could ask more of you, Stasia.

#244: I hope you like it when you get around to it. Here on LT there have been widely differing reactions, from my own fanboyish one to Stasia's "Couldn't get into it" to others' "Pretentious pile of poo."

And actually, I think I understand the less enthusiastic responses. Miéville himself describes the problem in an interview with Joan Gordon, published in Science Fiction Studies in 2003. Here he is talking about literary influences, specifically the charms of "weird fiction" by authors like Arthur Machen, Robert Chambers, and Clark Ashton Smith:

One was the peculiarities of pulp style. If you look at the way critics describe Lovecraft, for example, they often say he's purple, overwritten, overblown, verbose, but it's unputdownable. There's something about that kind of hallucinatorily intense purple prose which completely breaches all rules of "good writing" but is somehow utterly compulsive and affecting. That pulp aesthetic of language is something very tenuous, which all too easily simply becomes shit, but is fascinating where it works. Though I also love much more minimalist writers, it's that lush approach that I'm drawn to in terms of my own writing, for good and bad.

Miéville's take on the "pulp aesthetic of language" works for me, probably because I grew up on a similar literary diet. I can see why it doesn't work for everybody.

245: My guess is that I won't be wild about it but I'll be glad I read it. I tend to go for clarity of ideas, introspective experiences, or a nice simple plot (x is dead, who dunnit?) as mental escape. Style doesn't do so much for me. I'm OK with weirdness if it isn't gratuitous. Attempting to broaden my repertoire, so I'm reading other sorts of books when highly recommended by multiple people.

Well I liked Perdido Street Station and didn't realise The Scar was a followup, I'm on it and thanks !

I heartedly disliked Perdido Street Station. Floridness is not for me. I knew it wasn't when the author took pages to describe a walk down the street. Ugh. I think I scanned 1/3 of the book.

#246: You're probably right ... the plot is not simple, and there is plenty of gratuitous weirdness.

#247: Hope you like it!

#248: Yes, but what a street! PSS often reads like a travelogue of a city that never was: it's not great for moving things along, but for an immersive fantasy experience, I found it mesmerizing.

Of course, it's anything but economical. The scene that sticks out for me -- still -- is the interview with the Ambassador of Hell. So much care and attention put into a scene that did nothing to advance the plot or to develop characters. Its only purpose was to foreground the desperation and helplessness of the city fathers -- a point made abundantly clear in other scenes more important to the plot. A prudent editor would have advised Miéville to cut the whole thing. And yet, the scene was so unnerving that I couldn't help but give Miéville a pass for it. I understand why others wouldn't.

If anything, The Scar is tighter than PSS. But that's not saying much, and if you didn't like that you probably won't like this.

See, scenes like that was what made it possible for me to even finish the book - when it was about the characters interacting.

I completely understand-- rambling and superfluous scenes are things I usually complain about. I just find Miéville's writing so seductive.

Nothing like the next ones, each of which is pretty good on its own more conventional terms:

70) An Illuminated Life / Heidi Adizzone



Belle da Costa Greene was J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, shaping the acquisitions, organization, and management of the Morgan Library.

She was also of African-American descent, a fact of which Mr. Morgan was almost certainly not aware. She was famous for her exotic beauty, but attributed her "olive" skin to her (nonexistent) Portugese background. Living as white, she became Morgan's trusted confidant, and achieved a level of financial and social stability that was rare for a woman professional, and unheard-of for an African-American woman.

She's certainly a fascinating woman. Personally, I'd like to have read more about her in library, particularly the collections she shaped. As it is, the discussions of her professional life focus on personal conflicts and the petty intrigues and personality conflicts among book dealers. The major focus of the book is her stormy relationship with art critic Bernard Berenson. There's good reason for this focus: most of the documentation available to Ms. Adizzone is the correspondence between Greene and Berenson. I do feel that Adizzone sometimes makes too much of it. For instance she seems to take at face value Greene's protestations of undying love vis-a-vis Berenson, when she was also romancing and even becoming engaged to other men. Unfortunately, Greene's correspondence with her other lovers has not been preserved for comparison.

From Adizzone's account it's easy to see why Greene had so many lovers: she comes of as utterly icharming and full of life -- and not a little exasperating. Berenson, not so much. Frankly it's hard to see why Greene should have been attracted to such a sniveling snob. Presumably One Had to Be There.

Altogether, it's an interesting look at early twentieth-century American ideas about race and gender and sexual propriety ... and a little about rare books. I'd prefer a little more books and a little less sex, but then I'm probably just getting too darned old.



71) Winter Study / NevaddaBarr

Anna Pigeon returns to Isle Royale National Park (she first visited this park in A Superior Death, her second outing). The park is closed for the winter, the only human inhabitants being a handful of scientists researching the park's wolf packs. A wolf turns up dead, then a grad student, then Anna if she's not careful.

My feelings are mixed on this one. The setting is particularly well done, there's an appropriate sense of frozen claustrophobia ... but the mystery seemed subpar, with a couple of gaping holes in the plot. Recommended mostly for fans of the series.

New thread here.