Reading, Running, and Rithmetick (swynn)

This is my fourth year with the 75ers.

This year I've titled my thread "Reading, Running, and Rithmetick," since those R's will be what I'm rambling about. More on that in post #2.

Here are my reads for 2013:

1) The windup girl / Paolo Bacigalupi
2) Joey Pigza swallowed the key / Jack Gantos
3) The proper edge of the sky / Edward A. Geary
4) Aloha from Hell / Richard Kadrey
5) The Emperor of All Maladies / Siddharta Mukherjee
6) Burn / Nevada Barr
7) Joey Pigza loses control / Jack Gantos
8) Pebble in the sky / Isaac Asimov
9) Trophy hunt / C. J. Box
10) Fun and games / Duane Swierczynski
11) The light that never was / Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
12) The last dog on earth / Daniel Ehrenhaft
13) Trust your eyes / Linwood Barclay
14) Love song / Ethan Mordden
15) Technos / E. C. Tubb
16) Rope / Nevada Barr
17) King's ransom / Ed McBain
18) The housekeeper and the professor / Yoko Ogawa
19) Revenge / Yoko Ogawa
20) The most they ever had / Rick Bragg
21) The 1973 annual world's best science fiction
22) The survivor / Gregg Hurwitz
23) Finding the arctic / Matthew Sturm
24) What would Joey do? / Jack Gantos
25) Six-gun tarot / R. S. Belcher
26) Weisenheimer / Mark Oppenheimer
27) Veruchia / E. C. Tubb
28) Shadow on the snow / Bill Wallace
29) Out of range / C. J. Box
30) Shotgun sorceress / Lucy Snyder
31) The beekeeper's apprentice / Laurie R. King
32) They disappeared / Rick Mofina
33) Sideways stories from Wayside School / Louis Sachar
34) Mayenne / E. C. Tubb
35) In plain sight / C. J. Box
36) The book of Gordon Dickson / Gordon R. Dickson
37) Coyote autumn / Bill Wallace
38) The whale and the supercomputer / Charles Wohlforth
39) Friends come in boxes / Michael G. Coney
40) Some remarks / Neal Stephenson
41) Pride of Chanur / C. J. Cherryh
42) Eating aliens / Jackson Landers
43) Blood in their eyes / Grif Stockley
44) I am not Joey Pigza / Jack Gantos
45) Ocean on top / Hal Clement
46) Believing bullshit / Stephen Law
47) The toughest Indian in the world / Sherman Alexie
48) Prophet of bones / Ted Kosmatka
49) The life and times of Guglielmo Libri / P. Alessandra Maccioni Ruju & Marco Mostert
50) Maigret at the crossroads / Georges Simenon
51) The disappearing spoon / Sam Kean
52) Beauty / Bill Wallace
53) Chanur's venture / C. J. Cherryh
54) Wayside School is falling down / Louis Sachar
55) NOS4A2 / Joe Hill
56) The getaway / Jim Thompson

Reading

Expect science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, mysteries, history (mostly U.S.), mathematics (more below), running (more below), and a scattering of whatever catches my fleeting attention.

I'm not doing a category challenge because I don't need the disappointment. But here are some things I hope to focus on this year.
1. Recommended reads fished out of the Someday Swamp.
2. Books published by the science fiction imprint DAW. I'm reading these in publication order, so expect a lot of science fiction and fantasy from 1973.
3. Classic math. See below.
4. Local and regional histories for the 50 State Challenge.

My thread for the 50 State Challenge is here.

Running

I started running a little over 2 years ago, first for my health and then for fun. I participate in at least one competitive run every month, most of which I won't mention here, but some of which I will, especially the longer ones. The first long one will probably be the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon on April 27.

These posts will be of even more limited interest than my reading accomplishments, so I'll add a warning to the top of these posts.

Rithmetick

For a long time I have thought it might be enlightening to read some of the classics of mathematics: Euclid's Elements, Appolonius' Conics, Cardano's Ars Magna, Fibonacci's Liber Abaci, Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, etc. This year I'd like to give the thought a try.

I've admired how some other 75ers have posted summaries or comments on dense & difficult books as they work their way through them. I'd like to do something like that for the math classics, but we'll see whether I carry through. I'd do it mostly for my own benefit and reference, as these posts will be of even more limited interest than my running accomplishments. I'll add a warning to the top of these posts as well.

Despite your disclaimers, I'm personally looking forward to reading about both the running and the math!

The only one of the classics of 'rithmetick that I have read is Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. I will be interested in seeing what you think of the others, Stephen.

Hi Stephen! It's good to know your actual name.

What an ambitious project you've got going with the math classics! Bless your heart.

I look forward to reading about your running adventures. I do miss running, particularly the low-cost aspect, compared to cycling.

Welcome, Zoe and Stasia and Kerri! I will be reading you threads too... I tell myself I'll be more social this year, but I tell myself that every year, so I will probably lurk mostly.

Welcome back! I'm interested in the old classics as well. I'll be interested to here your thoughts on them.

Hi Steve! I for one will be interested in your running posts. I'm trying (rather unsuccessfully so far) to become a better runner. I did my first half this December and have another at the end of February. I barely made it out alive from the first one... I hit a wall and the last 4 miles killed!

I'll enjoy the sci-fi as well, always fun to add more titles to the wishlist.

After the brain-bending agony of The Monty Hall Problem, which was well worth the effort but was simply put *misery* to read, I will skedaddle sharpish when you post your thoughts on Conics et alii lest I be tempted to make ancient Saturday Night Live Coneheads jokes. You know, to bring it down to my level of innumeracy.

Hello Dr. Wynn, BTW. I didn't know DAW turned 40 this year! (I can do THAT much arithmetic.)

Hi Steve,

I for one will be interested in the numbers geekery, so don't let RD put you off .........

Welcome, Jim, Kathy, Richard, and Alex!

Kathy, I know what you mean about the wall ... in my first marathon I hit it around mile 16 and walked most of the last ten miles. It's surprising how much planning and strategy go into a sport which basically involves placing one foot in front of the other. I'll be interested to hear about your progress as well!

Richard, you are always welcome and are given double-secret dispensation to ignore any mathery.

I'm pleased to see how much interest there is in the math. By way of disclaimer, I'm a math nerd but no mathematician-- my knowledge is about that of an undergraduate upperclassman. With interested eyes watching, perhaps I'll even be able to ask questions.

I'm slipping over to 75ers from the dreaded category challenge. I love it, but I've also set lower goals and have stretched my categories to make them work. ;) I'll be interested in seeing what science fiction you read.

Welcome, Katie! The category challenge is just too tempting ... and I'm likely to fail. 75ers and the 50 state challenge and a thematic focus are just the right amount of structure for me.

Starred! Although I am allergic to numbers, I shall drape myself in a protective barrier (perhaps some Chaucer, or Milton... they should be dense enough to prevent any stray math from latching on and getting up my nose) and continue to peruse your thread nonetheless!

3: Despite your disclaimers, I'm personally looking forward to reading about both the running and the math!
Me too!

2: Of those, the only one I have is Euclid, and I’m not about to commit to the entirety, but if you start a dedicated thread I’ll follow along, and maybe chip in a comment every so often.

Welcome, Faith and Katherine!

I like the idea of a separate thread for Euclid, etc. I'll set one up when I have something to say, probably this weekend.

Hiya! I'm just here for the running, I'll be closing my eyes at any mention of math...

Hmm, I'm sure I'll enjoy reading about all 3 of your R's, but the reading is the only one I'll have any chance of contributing an intelligent comment!

Checking in on you, Steve. Looking forward to all that reading (and maybe the running and rithmetic). ;)

I'm looking forward to your DAWs, although I'll read all else with interest as well.

Welcome willowsmom, rosalita, Micky and Roni!

I'm looking forward to seeing which local and regional histories you pick!

History AND math?! Consider this thread duly starred! Cheers!

Math is very cool.

Welcome Lori, Gerard, and jadebird!

Glad to have a couple more math nerds visiting. I'm wrapping up Book 1 of the Elements, and will report later this weekend.

The next local/regional history is The Proper Edge of the Sky by Edward A. Geary. I picked it out last year for my Utah read ... but it arrived too late and so I read Riders of the Purple Sage instead. The Geary book will probably be #2 on my 2013 list.

Here's my first completed read for 2013:



1) The Windup Girl / Paolo Bacigalupi

Sometime in the near future, fossil fuels are spent, sea levels have risen, and the world is pretty much ruled by giant agricultural corporations who control the only crops that can survive the genetically-engineered diseases that have wiped out most other food crops on the planet.

It's a dystopia unless you work for Monsanto, in which case it's your wet dream.

In this world, Thailand is a powderkeg: the Southeast Asian Kingdom has done what it can to ensure its survival and independence. Dikes keep out the sea while laws and customs keep foreign influence under control. The Ministry of Trade would like to open the country up to more international commerce, but the Ministry of Environment wants to maintain Thai insularity. American agribusiness wants a bigger share of the Thai GDP, and refugees from an Islamic revolution in China just want a place to live.

And now ... crops that everyone thought were extinct are surfacing in Bangkok markets.

We have several viewpoint characters:

Anderson Lake, the agent of an American agribusiness corporation, sent to Bangkok to gain access to the Thai seedbank;

Hock Seng, a Chinese refugee who begins as Lake's secretary and translator, but who is really working for himself;

Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the "Tiger of Bangkok," a fierce defender of Thai borders who runs afoul of the forces demanding change;

and Emiko, a genetically-engineered "New Person," designed to be a domestic slave for upper-class Japanese businessmen, but abandoned and abused in Bangkok. (Emiko is the "windup girl" of the title.)

All characters have to balance ambition with survival in Bacigalupi's dangerous and richly imagined Bangkok. Characters on all sides are convincingly motivated even though few are what I'd call sympathetic. Few are purely evil and nobody is purely good.

Despite the rich textures, I didn't find it as immersive an experience as I would have liked, and I'm not sure why. With nothing else to lay my finger on, I think the multiple viewpoint characters worked against that kind of experience. Lake's and Hock Seng's and Jaidee's and Emiko's stories were each individually interesting, but they never meshed for me into a compelling whole. It felt less like a novel than four novellas chopped up and presented in series one chapter at a time.

I wanted to love it and ended just liking it a lot. But that's just me: it's won a host of awards including the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John Campbell awards. A translated version of it won the German Kurd-Laßwitz Preis. Also Judy (DeltaQueen50) read it last year and found it terrific. So don't give it a pass on my account.

Starting on E.M. Forester's A Passage to India.

Hello Steve! I look forward to reading about your running! I started running last summer and am really getting into it. My goal is run a half-marathon this year. eeeekkkkk!!

Starting on E.M. Forester's A Passage to India. Oh, wait! I'm telling you about this in math challenge. Gosh, I'm off!

One for the wishlist, Steve! Nice review of 'The Windup Girl'. I've seen that title surface on a number of threads over the past year or so, but I never knew what it was really about. It sounds like my kind of book.

No worries, Rochelle. As it happens, A Passage to India is the one Forster novel I've read, mumblety-grumble years ago. I thought it was excellent. I'm also a fan of David Lean's film version. Hope you like it!

Brit: Another runner, yeah! And good luck on the half... I've starred your thread, so I'll keep up on any progress you choose to share there. I've just started building mileage for the April marathon, fighting some hip pain that I think is ITB bursitis, but am hoping that will fade with training.

Rosalita: yes, it's been well-read and it deserves the attention. I think the category group did a group read of it last year, but I am terrible at group reads and didn't join in.

25 > I don't think its his best work - good but not Brilliant .......

25: I wanted more of the megadonts. Also waaay too much graphic violence, and Emiko was too stereotypical for me to care as much as I suspect I was supposed to.

>25 swynn: Great review, Steve, but I'm still on the fence about The Windup Girl - I suppose I'll end up reading it eventually, but I just haven't found the motivation to pick it up.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

I have The Windup Girl and have been eyeing it, very useful review, Stephen.

No running for me these days but lots of snowshoeing and skiing.

I loved The Windup Girl, so I'm glad you liked it, but sorry you didn't love it as well.

What edition of The Elements are you using?

Despite all the awards and hype, I didn't end up loving The Windup Girl. It felt a little cliché to me but...being honest with myself...I can't point to exactly why. Nonetheless, the impression was there. That, couple with the fact that there was no character with whom I felt a strong engagement made it an okay read but not a great one.

>31 roundballnz:: What would you recommend? I understand Pump Six is a collection of stories set in the same world. I thought I'd give that a try.

>32 qebo:: Yes, the megadonts were cool, and I wanted more about the Cheshires too. The animals were easily the most sympathetic characters.

>33 Dejah_Thoris:: I hope you like it when (if?) you get around to it, Dejah.

>34 sibylline:: I hope you like it, Sibyx! Snowshoeing and skiing sounds fun too.

>35 _Zoe_:: Zoe, I started out with the Dover reprint of the 1908 Cambridge University Press edition of Thomas Heath's translation. I have switched to the 2002 Green Lion Press edition, also Heath's translation, which I am loving and enthusiastically recommend for a first or a casual reading. More on that later.

>36 TadAD:: There certainly aren't many (any?) sympathetic characters. I usually don't mind that as long as the unsympathic characters are interesting-- I enjoy crime fiction, after all. But in this case, the characters were interesting and still something was missing for me.

Nice review of the Wind Up Girl.

37 > Pump six - now that I did love - The others ship breaker & drowned cities are also very good ignore the Y.A thing

It's a dystopia unless you work for Monsanto, in which case it's your wet dream. LOL!

I read The Windup Girl last year and loved it. great review!

Welcome, Lori! I fell way behind in threads last year and had no idea how widely read The Windup Girl was. I'm just about the last kid on the block to read it, I guess. I'm definitely putting Pump Six on the list.

I have created a new dedicated thread for my mathematical reads, and have posted some comments on Book 1 of Euclid's Elements. The thread is here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/147867

My son and I completed a book tonight:



2) Joey Pigza swallowed the key / Jack Gantos

Joey Pigza is a middleschooler with ADHD. He has trouble staying on task and controlling outbursts at school. His home life is complicated: he has been raised by his iron-fisted (and half-crazy) grandmother but now his mother has returned to raise him and straighten out her own life simultaneously.

This was a nice mix of Joey's funny antics and a compassionate look at what it must be like for a kid with ADHD. We identified with many of Joey's difficulties, since my son has an attention disorder-- thankfully without the hyperactivity. Both of us liked this one.

This is a Pennsylvania read for my 50 State Challenge.

Oh goody I can come in and not be confronted with stuff that makes me feel like a backward five-year-old who can't blow his own nose. Yay for multi-threading.

I have had The Windup Girl in the BlackHole for ages now, but my local library still does not have the book. One of these days I will get my hands on a copy.

I am adding Joey Pigza swallowed the key to the BlackHole. I am always on the look out for good books, whatever the stripe. Thanks for the recommendation.

I thought The Windup Girl was okay but like Tad and others didn't love it. I have Pump Six on my Kindle and will get around to it someday--I've heard more consistently positive reviews about it.

I love the Joey Pigza books--I think he's up to four of them now--and had them in my sharing library at school.

It's a dystopia unless you work for Monsanto, in which case it's your wet dream. Okay, you've sold me. Monsanto is evil.

& I love Joey Pigza!!! I've got a friend who subs in special ed classes of that age, and she doesn't find it funny at all. She had to send a kid to the ER for swallowing a pin and once there they found about 52 different items inside.

>43 richardderus:: Making the thread safe for the math-averse was one of my goals, so mission accomplished! Fair warning: Math Girls 2 (no touchstone) came out in December, and it will darken this thread as soon as I get it in my grubby little hands.

>44 alcottacre:: I hope you like both of them when you can get them Stasia.

>45 ronincats:: Yeah ... it was good, but I don't quite get how it swept all the awards. Was everything else really so pale in comparison that year?

I think we'll be looking for the next Joey Pigza soon.

>46 cammykitty:: Hope you like it, Katie! And another Joey Pigza fan! And I sympathize with your friend: the trouble Joey Pigza brings on himself would certainly not be funny for Joey or for any of the adults near him. And Gantos does a good job of showing that Joey's hyperactivity comes with serious consequences.

And yet ... climbing to the barn rafters on a sugar high when his class visits the Amish farm? I confess: my reading was interrupted more than once by giggles.

Hi Steve, I'm new round these parts but the SF element piqued my interest. I like the sound of the plot of The Wind Up Girl, as I do like a nice slice of dystopia, but sounds like you and a few others had misgivings, so I'll put that down as a tentative wishlist item.

Welcome, Hannah! I don't want to scare anyone away from The Wind Up Girl-- it's gotten a lot of love, and even my liked-it-didn't-love-it review probably had something to do with inflated expectations. If it sounds appealing, go ahead and give it a try.



3) The Proper Edge of the Sky / Edward A. Geary
Date: 1992

This is a collection of essays written in appreciation of the High Plateau region of southern Utah. It's part travel guide, part personal reminiscence, and part book report on county histories, pioneer journals, and literary love letters to the region. Geary covers the landscape, its traversal by European explorers, its settlement by Mormons, their relations with Native Americans, and the rugged farmers, businesspeople, coal miners, men, women, and immigrants who made it their home.

At best it appealingly evokes a lovely landscape I'd sure love to visit. There are vivid descriptions of some landscapes, and some entertaining stories like the saloon built on rollers so that it could be located in Arizona or Utah as it attracted temperance mobs from Utah or Arizona, respectively.

On the other hand, Geary's coverage is much broader than it is deep. He skips some stories and drops others just as they become interesting.

There is exactly one map, and it lacks about 80% of the towns and geographical features mentioned by Geary. This makes reading difficult at times: for instance, it is impossible to trace the paths of explorers and trailblazers as they cross the region.

I expect the book will appeal most to people already familiar with the region, readers who will recognize the locations Geary mentions and who will be familiar with the stories he glosses over. For this armchair tourist, it had some interesting moments, but I don't think I'll remember much about it this time next year.

Except maybe that it piqued my interest in Wallace Stegner. (Stasia should be pleased.)

This is my Utah read for the 50 State Challenge.

I've added notes on Book 2 over on the Euclid &c. thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/147867#3820855

4) Aloha From Hell /Richard Kadrey

In the first "Sandman Slim" book, James Stark broke out of Hell to take revenge on the black magicians who put him there. In the second, he got a job as Lucifer's bodyguard and fought off a zombie apocalypse.

In this third entry, Stark is drawn against his better judgment into investigating an exorcism gone wrong... then into sneaking back to Hell to rescue an old friend and foil the plans of an old enemy.

If you've read the first two, then this is more of the trash-talking butt-kicking übernoir riffs on Christian mythology (by way of Hollywood) that made those other books so much fun. If you haven't read the first two then start with Sandman Slim.

I'm counting this for a California read for my 50 state challenge, since this time around even Hell is a version of L.A.

I've got the first of the Sandman Slim books in my tbr pile waiting for me to get there, Steve.

I picked up Devil in the Dollhouse for free from Amazon the other day. It might still be there if you haven't read it and like Sandman Slim.

>53 ronincats:: Hope you like it, Roni!

>54 TadAD:: Thanks for the tip about Devil in the Dollhouse, Tad! Currently it's not free, but 99 cents is pretty close. I'll read it before I read Devil Said Bang, probably later this spring. Then I'll be caught up until volume 5 comes out in June.

5) The Emperor of All Maladies / Siddhartha Mukherjee
Date: 2010

Plenty of other LTers have read and recommended this popular history of cancer.

Me too. In fact, I can't quite figure out how to talk about this book without gushing.

There are so many things Mukherjee does so well. He takes the knotted and tangled threads of cancer research and therapy, and straightens then weaves them into a clear and compulsively readable story. He delivers it in elegant and literate prose, with enlightening and appropriate references to John Donne, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Lewis Carroll. He conveys a fascination and even admiration for this endlessly inventive disease -- without ever losing sight of its horrific effects on victims. He's a doctor who tells stories from the patient's perspective. That alone should win him some kind of prize.

The guy knows his field, his craft, and his Western lit, and does it so well you can't even hate him for it. He's a Stephen Jay Gould of medical history.

I've seen reviewers say that this book reads like a thriller. That observation, though, is overgenerous to the average thriller. Mukherjee has managed to make the story of a dread disease as compulsively readable as ... well, anything I've read in a long time, and more so than any thriller of recent memory.

Complaints were few, and only nitpicks really: he sometimes talks about genetic adaptations as if they were deliberately planned; his prose gets a little purple toward the end; he uses "enormity" to mean "enormousness." These are all justifiable style choices which bother me only because I'm an old crank. If they don't bother you, then that's one less reason not to read this damn good book. Highly recommended.

56: I read that toward the end of 2011, and my post-it flags were so numerous that I never got to reviewing it. Over a year later, it still sits in the to-do stack on my desk. And I keep it there because I really want to go through it again. Yeah, a thriller, with obsessed detectives: what IS this thing and how does it operate?

56: he sometimes talks about genetic adaptations as if they were deliberately planned
Not unusual. A language thing. Have to reconstruct sentences to remove purpose.

How can I resist a review (and a second to it, Katherine) like that, Steve? Onto the wishlist it goes.

58: Darryl, who would be in a position to evaluate, also gave it a rave review a couple years ago.

Onto the wishlist!

57, 59: Katherine, your reviews are always so thoughtful and thorough that a review of EOAM must be a daunting proposition. I look forward to your review when it's ready.

I agree about the language thing. My high school English teacher would remind me that personification is a common literary device. Still I wince, knowing a lot of creationists and how such literary devices are prone to literal interpretation.

I think Darryl's review was the one that convinced me to put it in the Someday Swamp, though it was a long time ago and at that time I wasn't keeping track of recommenders. EOAM also came up in my RL reading group last year when we read Henrietta Lacks. A cancer physician from our local osteopathic school was in attendance and recommended EOAM as a follow-up to that other excellent book.

58, 60: Roni and Rosalita, hope you like it!

I've had The Emperor of All Maladies on my TBR list for a while, but somehow I keep being daunted by its size when I actually see it in the store.

The Emperor of All Maladies was recently a Kindle daily deal that I purchased for my wife. She hasn't read it yet, but your review confirmed that it is right up her alley!

Great review of The Emperor of All Maladies. I usually avoid all books on cancer, but you could actually talk me into reading it.

62: Zoe, the size was daunting to me too but when I finally got around to it the pages flew by.

63: Hope she likes it, Brit!

64: It's a difficult subject, and I think Mukherjee handles both the clinical and the human side remarkably well.

EOAM commanded my attention so completely that Euclid stayed on the shelf for a few days. But he's back now, and I've posted highlights from Book 3 over at the Euclid thread.



6) Burn / Nevada Barr

This is the next-to-latest in the Anna Pigeon series. Anna is on vacation in New Orleans and meets Clare, a fugitive suspected of killing her husband, her two daughters, and her husband's mistress. In fact she did no such thing: she is in New Orleans following the sex traffickers who abducted her daughters.

It was okay, but got pretty hokey toward the end.

Fair warning: the badguys traffick children for sex, and there are some descriptions of sex acts with children-- it's not pornographic in detail but it is disturbing all the same. <SPOILER!> Unfortunately, not all the badguys are caught at the end and one assumes Barr plans to revisit this subject. One hopes she changes her mind. </SPOILER!>

This will count as a Louisiana read for my 50 State Challenge.

Too bad Burn got a bit unbelievable. I haven't read Barr for a long time, but I remembered enjoying her. She usually has very unusual and intriguing settings.

Kitty: I liked the early mysteries a lot better than the more recent ones. I can't even call the recent ones "mysteries," really, because there's no mystery and no motive just violence, psychos and perverts.

Nothing against violence, psychos and perverts, exactly, but Barr doesn't do it as well as other crime writers. I much preferred her environmental mysteries.

#50: (Stasia should be pleased.)

She is, she is!

I've been away from LT for a couple of weeks. Life got a bit busy. I did finish a couple of books, though, and my first run of the year.

***RUNNING POST***

For the last two and a half years I've had a goal of participating in at least one competitive run every month. January is always the biggest challenge. My this year's January run was the Frozen Feet Trail Run in Wildwood, Missouri, just west of St. Louis.

The course is twelve miles of mostly asphalt and crushed gravel, with about a mile and a half of well-groomed single-track dirt trail. Scenery was nice as it's mostly through green space turned brown for winter, and I bet it's just beautiful come March.

For a "trail run" the Frozen Feet is exceedingly gentle: no roots, no rocks, and barely a bump until you come to a long, slow positive grade through the 7th and 8th miles. Then you turn around at the top to get a long, slow downhill through the 9th or 10th miles -- which suited me fine since my knees and I are still friends.

I came nowhere near record pace, but considering my troubles with a pinched nerve, wonky hip and indifferent training last fall I ran faster than expected. I had resolved to be happy with anything under two hours and finished in 1:43:40.

I would do Frozen Feet again for a January run, but next year I'll probably look for something closer to home.

I thought that'd get you, Stasia! Geary refers to Stegner's Mormon Country frequently, but I remember you mentioning that Angle of Repose was a good entry to his work. I thought I'd give the latter a try in the next couple of months.

Finishing up December's reads:



7) Joey Pigza Loses Control / Jack Gantos
Date: 2000

This is the follow-up to Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, and it's as good as the first. In JPSTK, Joey Pigza got the help he needed for his ADHD, including medication to help him maintain focus and control his impulses. But in the sequel Joey goes to spend the summer with his father, who decides that Joey needs to man up and kick the meds. The result is predictably disastrous, frequently funny, and finally touching. I read this with my son and it gets a "recommended" from both of us.



8) Pebble in the Sky / Isaac Asimov
Date: 1950

An unlikely nuclear accident catapaults Joseph Schwartz tens of thousands of years into the future, where Earth is just one planet among millions in the Galactic Empire. It's not even a very special planet: the Empire's center of power is light-years away on Trantor, where Earth is just a "pebble in the sky."

Not only is the future Earth a political backwater, it's also a hostile environment: most of the planet's surface is radioactive and uninhabitable. The remaining land is not sufficient to support a large population, so regular censuses and euthanasia keep the population under control.

When Schwartz shows up, unable to speak the language and obviously ignorant of Earth's customs, he is offered as a test subject for a new experimental device to enhance intelligence. A side effect is usually death, but since Schwartz is an undocumented and babbling idiot nobody much cares.

The device works, of course: Schwartz learns the language in no time flat and his mental powers keep expanding. In the meantime, his handlers make some shocking discoveries: Schwartz has body hair! And a vermiform appendix! Why, he's practically an ape! Inadvertently he and the researchers come to the unwelcome attention of a group of conspirators who plan to overthrow the Empire from this backwater pebble. Unless Schwartz and his new friends can stop them, they just might succeed.

Considering its vintage this book has aged pretty well. It's talky and dry, with some typical fifties baggage: female characters are sidekicks or wives and radioactivity is dangerous in some ominous but unspecified way that does not cause cancer.

On the other hand, Asimov's central themes are colonialism and racism. And while his female characters hold no positions of power, they can be more intelligent and insightful than the men around them. There is one scene where the Procurator's wife explains politics to husband and shows a sharper grasp of Realpolitik than anyone else in the book.

All in all it's not as exciting as today's bestsellers in the genre, nor polished, but it's at least as thoughtful and has longer legs than most of the competition. Recommended for those interested in genre classics.

Stephen - do you mean January reads?

Paul - yes, I mean January reads. Life got crazy the last couple of weeks, but not quite *that* crazy.

I've somehow missed Pebble in the Sky over the years - I'll have to give it a try. Thanks!

Re: Post #69 - Nice job!

Stephen, the trail run sounds amazing. Miserable, but amazing! It must have been cold. Your time sounds great too, for 12 miles! Congrats.

>74 Dejah_Thoris:: Kerri: Hope you like it. It's very Asimov.

>75 FireandIce:-76: Thanks for the congrats! It was fun, and not miserable at all -- though perhaps I have a skewed sense of "miserable." Weather was clear and temperature in the high 20's so very runnable.

I'll post more in the Euclid thread early this week. Book 4 is fun, and Book 5 is intriguing.

In the meantime ... library porn.

Life again, and a week without checking in. I did get some reading done, though:



9) Trophy Hunt / C. J. Box
Date: 2004

Fourth in the series featuring Joe Pickett, Wyoming game warden. Someone (or something, cue the Twilight Zone theme) has been mutilating wildlife in Joe's district, recalling livestock mutilations from 30 years ago. That's creepy enough, but Joe hopes the acts don't escalate to human victims. Of course, they do.

This was okay, but my least favorite in the series so far thanks to <SPOILER!> a resolution with a woo-woo tone that doesn't fit the series, and a villain whose only motive was being crazy (please C.J., don't go all Nevada Barr on me!) </SPOILER!>



10) Fun and Games / Dale Swierczynski
Date: 2011

Ex-federal agent Charlie Hardie has hit bottom after watching his partner die at the hands of drug lords. Now he's a housesitter, spending his days watching DVDs while drunk as possible.

His latest assignment is the Hollywood estate of a jetsetting film composer. But when he arrives at the house somebody is already there: a washed-up actress who claims she is being targeted by a super-secret guild of assassins who specialize in staging murders that look like accidents. Unfortunately for Charlie, she's not just crazy.

This one starts fast and doesn't slow down. Which is just as well, since the far-out plot and over-the-top action can't bear much scrutiny. Fine by me: it's a great ride, and I'll read the next.


11) DAW #52: The Light that Never Was / Lloyd Biggle
Date: 1973

Something about the light on the planet Donov has inspired painters for generations, attracting all manner and quality of artists, would-be artists, critics and tourists to the planet.

With few exceptions, Donov is populated only by humans: human artists, human sightseers. When the human-colonized worlds experience an epidemic of riots against nonhumans, the rulers of Donov wonder whether the madness will reach Donov ... and if it does, how long do they have?

Then a rich patron of the arts and philanthropist transports thousands of nonhuman refugees to Donov. Provocations begin ...

I'm not sure whether this book was a fix-up, but it sure felt like one. Each chapter addresses different aspects of Donovian life from different viewpoint characters. There is no consistent plot, but frequent meditations on the nature of art, what it might mean to be human, and the fragile art of statecraft.

Despite a loose structure and leisurely pace I liked the book for its thoughtful tone, its appealing characters, and its unusual subject matter.

Oh, and about the cover: it's Frank Kelly Freas painting something other than a barely-clad sexpot, and I like it. Freas seems actually to have read the book and modeled his aliens on the author's description. I especially like how he's made the viewers and the art seem to study one another reciprocally. Even the expression on Goliath's severed head is entrancing. When Freas is good he's among the best.


12) The Last Dog on Earth / Daniel Ehrenhaft
Date: 2003

Logan is a bright but troubled teenager, angry at his father who abandoned Logan and his mother years ago ... and especially angry at his stepfather who is an authoritarian piece of work. When stepdad decides Logan should get a dog to learn responsibility, Logan goes to the pound and picks out a bad-tempered half-wild wolf mix for his new pet.

To everyone's surprise (and stepdad's consternation), Logan does well with Jack. But when Logan gets in more trouble ... and a mysterious plague starts killing all dogs in the Pacific northwest ... Logan's relationship with his new friend is put to the test.

I read this with my son, and it gets a thumbs-up from both of us, though I did think the ending was maudlin. (Look: it's a kids' book with a dog as a main character. We're all grown-ups here so it is *not* a spoiler to mention that the dog dies an unnecessarily lengthy and sentimental death. You knew that already.)

I'm counting this for an Oregon read for my 50 State Challenge.


13) Trust Your Eyes / Linwood Barclay
Date: 2012

Ray Kilbride returns home for his his father's funeral, to settle the estate and to decide a future for his schizophrenic brother Thomas.

Thomas spends all his time on Whirl360, a stand-in for Google Street View. Thomas is memorizing the streets of the world's major cities, under a delusional belief that he is working for the CIA. As he studies the streets of Manhattan, Thomas sees something in an apartment window that looks very much like a murder.

It turns out that Thomas is right, and powerful people want to keep the murder a secret.

This book was another of Library Journal's "Best Thrillers of 2012," and it's a much better selection than Elizabeth Haynes's plodding Into the Darkest Corner. It's a nice mix of Rear Window's paranoid voyeurism, Wag the Dog's political intrigue and Rain Man's family drama.

Still I have complaints. A key incident is described out of chronological order for no reason other than misleading the reader. Half of the story is told in first-person while the other is told in third-person omniscient, apparently to exploit the immediacy of first person without having to deal with its disadvantages. And the resolution hinges on a series of unlikely coincidences, one *really* unlikely.

But does unlikely coincidence in a thriller count as a flaw or just a convention? Despite my complaints -- cynical storytelling, inconsistent viewpoint, reliance on deus ex machina -- it's not half bad, and I'll probably read more of Barclay's thrillers.

Swynn, I've read and would mostly recommend Linwood Barclay's 'Fear the Worst'. It had a great premise and it held up most of the way through. I would read more by him, although I haven't yet.

NO MORE DEAD DOGS!

But I did enjoy all the Biggle books back in the 70s.

>78 swynn:: Thanks for the recommendation, Rosalita, Fear the Worst goes on the list.

>79 rosalita:: Roni, my son and I read No More Dead Dogs last year and we both loved it. I think it gets even better in recollection. I'm never going to be able to read a juvenile dog book again without thinking of the line: "That dog's going down." Of course I was thinking of that when I wrote "it is not a spoiler ... "

Biggle grows on me with each of his books I read. The Light that Never Was is my favorite so far, so I'll definitely read more. Looks like he only wrote one more book for DAW, #106 The Metallic Muse. But I also have a copy of Monument, which I'll definitely read ... well, sometime.

My DAWs by him are
The World Menders '71
The Light That Never Was '73
The Metallic Muse '74

I also have
Fury Out of Time '65 Leisure Books
Monument '74 Doubleday
Silence is Deadly '77 Doubleday

I'm surprised I don't have The Small Still Voice of Trumpets, as I remember that title.

Catching up after a few weeks out of commission... You haven't posted in awhile. Everything OK?

Yup, I hated the end of The Last Dog on Earth. I loved the book up until the end, but, yes maudlin. Then I wanted to stomp the book into little bits.

Joey Pigza!!! Love him!

& yes, No More Dead Dogs is great too. Boom!

Just wondering myself as to where you've been and what you've been up to! Hope all is well.

Katherine, Katie, Roni:

Sorry about the absence. Thanks for thinking about me & checking in.

(And good to see you, Katherine! As soon as I finish the update, I'll have to catch up on your thread.)

Miscellaneous distractions in life continue: my wife is recovering from surgery to her shoulder after an on-the-job injury, and my son is preparing for graduation and life after high school. I run when I can.

I did get a professional opinion on my persistent hip pain: the official diagnosis is "trochanteric bursitis." The treatment: ice and anti-inflammatory drugs. "And," he said, "I'd tell you to reduce your mileage if I thought there was any chance you'd do it."

Yeah, he's got my number.

So I have been reading, but with a couple of exceptions it's just been escapist fun. Summaries follow.

Escapist fun is a wonderful thing - especially as it sounds as though your RL has been pretty busy / stressful. I'm looking forward to the summaries!

14) Love song : the lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya / Ethan Mordden

If you know Kurt Weill for anything it's probably for "Moritat," the gangster ballad that opens Der Dreigroschenoper the cabaret opera that Weill wrote with Bertolt Brecht. But you probably know "Moritat" better as "Mack the Knife," which Louis Armstrong turned into a jazz standard and Bobby Darin made a popular hit.

Weill was anything but a one-hit wonder. He was a curious and versatile composer, and a workaholic with a remarkable output, from program music to Broadway jingles. He cut his teeth in the German music scene of the 1920s, writing twelve-tone compositions for the art crowd and cabaret music for Berlin's bohemians. He was also Jewish, a cantor's son, and among the Nazis' least favorite musicians.

Migrating from Germany to Paris, briefly to London, Weill eventually made his way to New York. He fell in love with the United States and adopted it as his new home, becoming "more American than Americans" and even wrote jingoistic tunes for the war effort.

Lotte Lenya was the cabaret singer and actress whom Weill married twice. In her own way, Lenya was just as accomplished as Weill: her work on stage was well-respected, though her accent severely restricted the parts she was offered in the U.S. Weill and Lenya had an open relationship, and lived apart for long periods at a stretch; but they remained linked by personal history, temperament, and, one assumes, affection.

The subtitle says "the lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya" but the book is really about Weill. When Lenya is in Weill's vicinity we know what she's up to; otherwise, Mordden dismisses her as being "off with" her latest boyfriend. Just as much as Lenya, the book is also about Bertolt Brecht, another German expatriate hounded by the Nazis. In contrast to Lenya, Brecht is a thoroughly unpleasant human being, a toxic personality who also happens to be a dramatic genius. But as with Lenya, so with Brecht: unless he's collaborating with Weill, he's off somewhere being a sociopath.

Mordden is obviously a fan of Weill, and finds qualities to praise in his entire oeuvre. It's a common criticism that after coming to the U.S. Weill's work went into decline: that it became more commercial and formulaic. Mordden disputes that, saying that throughout his career Weill experimented with various genres of music. If his American period differs from his European period it's because Weill was trying different things -- not worse, just different.

In fact, the love for Weill is just a little too much: it's impossible for Weill to make a misstep. He's patient, he's industrious, he's creative, he's devoted: he isn't a human being, he's a long-suffering romantic lead. If he's occasionally unpleasant, it's only because of the slovenly work habits of his collaborators.

In fact, the whole story has a veneer of musical theater: the characters are a bit too consistent, the storyline a little too clean. But I really didn't mind thanks to Mordden's excellent writing. Mordden knows the history of musical theater -- apparently he's written a six-volume history of Broadway, so you know he's done his homework. It's a savvy and opinionated insider's prose, with plenty of insightful asides and snappy commentary.

It sounds like the Weill book ended up being pretty much what you thought as you were reading it: A little too perfect to be true. It's good you still found some redeeming qualities in it, though.

87: Hi, Dejah! Yes, escapist fun has its place and that place is on my bookshelf. Here's a keeper:



15) Technos / E. C. Tubb
Date: 1972

Seventh in Tubb's "Dumarest of Terra" series. Dumarest goes to the agricultural planet Loame, where he has been told he may find a clue to the location of Earth. When he arrives, though, he finds Loame occupied by forces from nearby Technos, and Loame's fields overrun with an invasive and all-but-unkillable weed.

Worse, Dumarest's contact on Loame has died. But he learns that the contact's daughter may remember something ... only, the daughter has migrated from Loame to Technos. Now Dumarest must find his way to Technos, locate the girl, ... and deal with the local politics, dodge the plots of the groupmind Cyclan, and fight his way through an arena of death. You know, the usual.

And it's fun, as usual.

Nice library porn!

Enjoyed the reviews, especially intrigued by The Light that Never Was.

Killing of animals in stories is a pet peeve of mine. Some stories truly require it, say..... The Call of the Wild - but others, it's pure cowardice and substitution for killing a human. I used to read for a literary magazine and I became, literally, rabid on the subject. I'll just slip away as I feel a rant coming on......

>89 rosalita:: Hi Rosalita! Yes, too perfect to be the whole truth anyway. But still entertaining.

>91 sibylline:: Hi Sybix! Agreed about killing animals. And with The Last Dog on Earth it just wasn't necessary. The rest of the book did its job well enough, and pulling an Old Yeller at the end felt cheap.



16) The Rope / Nevada Barr
Date: 2012

Seventeenth in Barr's Anna Pigeon series, and my least favorite so far.

This one steps back in time to the beginning of Anna's career as a park ranger, stationed at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Hiking into the wilderness on her day off, Anna witnesses a rape in progress then is knocked on the head, stripped and thrown into a solution hole, a bottle-shaped hole in the sandstone.

Anna manages to escape from the solution hole, and spends the rest of the book turning herself into the Anna Pigeon we know and love: tough, survival-minded, refusing to be a victim. Eventually she finds out who really was behind her ordeal, and behind the other killings that inevitably happen.

There are things to like about the book: the strong women characters, for one. Instead of mooning over some FBI agent or sheriff/priest as she does in other installments, Anna establishes a close and chaste friendship with another female ranger, Jenny, who happens to be gay. For another, it's nice to see Anna back in a natural setting after the urban Burn (see post #65 above): Barr makes good use of the landscape, reminding me why I used to love this series.

Unfortunately, some of the less appealing trends continue: the rambling, pontificating narrative style; the cynical misdirection; the villain whose only motive is The Crazy; but none of these things are what makes me dislike the book so much ... for that I have to reveal a spoiler. And it'll be long enough that I don't want to use the strikeout font. If you don't want to know how the book ends, stop reading now.

<SPOILER!>
The most galling thing about the book is a tasteless reversal of tone in the climax.

For a good share of the book, Anna and Jenny are establishing a close friendship based on a mutual understanding of the challenges faced by women in a profession dominated by men. Jenny helps Anna work through her feelings about her ordeal in the solution hole. In particular, Jenny supports Anna when Anna's version of the story is interrogated by male investigators. They question her reliability, and suspect her of being a Hysterical Woman who may have brought the trouble upon herself -- perhaps even staged it in a bid for attention.

Jenny supports Anna as she faces the injustice of this stereotype, and Anna helps Jenny face anger over an incident in her own past. All fine and good: to this guy it's an appealing portrayal of female friendship and solidarity.

So who does the villain turn out to be? A Hysterical Woman who has Gone Off Her Meds.

Really?

Really: the killer turns out to be an undersexed housewife who caught The Crazy when her man's eye started wandering.

Which makes you wonder whether all that girl-power stuff was just a red herring.

And that leaves a really bad aftertaste.

Not recommended; and this will probably be the last in the series for me.


< \ SPOILER!>

I confess that I gave up on this series a few books back. I did it with sorrow, because I am actually very fond of some of them, but enough is enough. Thanks for validating my decision, although I'm sorry spent the time reading it!

17) King's Ransom / Ed McBain
Date: 1959

Tenth in McBain's 87th Precinct series, and one of the best in the series so far.

Doug King is a wheeling & dealing businessman making the most delicate and decisive power play of his career when he gets a telephone call: somebody has kidnapped his son, and demands half a million dollars in ransom.

Except that King's son is safely tucked away in his bedroom upstairs. It turns out the bumbling kidnappers have snatched the wrong boy: they have taken the son of King's chauffeur.

Doesn't matter, say the kidnappers: half a million or the boy dies.

But now King is less cooperative. If it were a choice between his career and his son then no problem: he'd find the money. But a choice between his career and somebody else's son? Well, that's a different story.

Will King pay the ransom? Even if he does, will the kidnappers return the child alive? And will the bulls of the 87th Precinct nab the kidnappers in time?

This is a great little noir story. It's dated but it's also surprisingly solid, with some excellent mood-setting descriptions of city life, plain-spoken ethical arguments, well-crafted parallels among victims and cops and crooks, and strong narrative momentum.

Recommended for those who enjoy vintage noir fiction.

>93 Dejah_Thoris:: Dejah, for the last few installments I've kept hoping she'll turn the series around and go back to its roots. But the ending of this one just left me feeling dirty, and I think I'm done with that.

Congratulations for reading the writing on the wall before I deciphered it.

18) The Housekeeper and the Professor / Yoko Ogawa

This was a reread for a book club discussion that will almost certainly be canceled because of snow.

The first time I read it I thought it was very good. This time it caught my mood just right and was damn near perfect.

I want to read the Ogawa someday, Steve. Thanks for reminding me.

With which book should one quit the Anna Pigeon series?

>97 ronincats:: I hope you like it when you get to it, Roni.

>98 thornton37814:: Oh, I don't know ... stop when you've had enough, I guess. All of my favorites are pre-Liberty Falling, but I did also enjoy the two set on the Natchez Trace and Blood Lure. From Flashback forward, I guess, the series has lost its appeal to me.

I think I've got through Flashback in my stash (or have already read in the case of the two Mississippi ones.

That's some interesting looking Sci-Fi you've got there! How did you come by this collection of Daws, I wonder? I especially like the sound of The Light That Never Was SF and Art - two of my most favourite things in one book!

>100 thornton37814:: I know that many still like the series ... even The Rope has an average rating of 3.81, so my strongly negative response is in the minority I guess. If you continue with the series, I hope your experience with it is better.

>101 HanGerg:: The Daws I've just collected here & there over the years. If you can get your hands on TLTNW I hope you like it as well as I did!

19) Revenge : eleven dark tales / Yoko Ogawa
Date: 2013

This is an interconnected set of 11 stories by the author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. The style is similar: simple, direct engaging and with a poet's eye for mood and detail. But the subject matter is darker, ranging from the disquieting to the grotesque: a physician murdered by his mistress, a museum of instruments of torture, a cabaret singer born with her heart outside her ribcage.

Some stories may require a strong stomach, but Ogawa narrates nothing for shock alone. Her territory is the desparate things we do for love, for recognition, and (as the title suggests) in retaliation for loss. Uncomfortable country, but craftfully explored and highly recommended.

20) The Most they Ever Had / Rick Bragg
Date: 2009

This is a collection of biographical sketches from the community of textile mill workers in Jacksonville, Alabama. The picture is of a community of poor souls possessing little more than the pride of working at a textile mill that underpays them, mutilates their bodies, and sends them to an early death with lung disease.

I'm a bit torn about this one. The prose is good, and Bragg ably depicts his subjects as finding dignity even in abject poverty. Still, he seems to be selling nostalgia even more than dignity, and I have a hard time swallowing nostalgia for a way of life that was sordid, brutal and short.

This is my Alabama read for the 50 State Challenge.

21) DAW #53: The 1973 Annual World's Best SF / ed. by Donald A. Wollheim
Date: 1973

Solid collection of science fiction stories. Most of these have held up well.

Wollheim's introduction goes on about some recent science fiction anthologies, their literary pretentiousness and their science-fictional awfulness. I wish he'd have mentioned some titles, but perhaps in 1973 no titles were needed. Wollheim's choices are drawn mostly from the magazines: three from Fantasy and Science Fiction, two from Analog, two from Galaxy, and one each from Amazing Science Fiction, New Writing in SF 20, and Infinity Three. Take that, you artsy-fartsy collections of high-end snoozers, he says. Well, not in so many words.

Goat Song by Poul Anderson.
Retelling of the Orpheus myth set in the far future, when all aspects of human society are managed by SUM, a computer-like overmind. A Luddite bard begs SUM to return his lost love, and after careful consideration, SUM offers a deal. Anderson is in full-on mythspinning mode, which sometimes works for me and sometimes seems artificial and loud. I'm afraid it was the latter this time around.

Fortunately, the collection got better:

The Man Who Walked Home by James Tiptree, Jr.
Civilization is brought to a standstill after an accident at a particle acceleration facility in Idaho. Annually, on the anniversary of the accident, a man is seen for a few brief seconds on the site of the facility. This is not among my favorite Tiptree stories, which just goes to show that even when she wasn't great she was still pretty good.

Oh Valinda! by Michael G. Coney.
Nice little parable about colonialism and revenge in a world where human entrepreneurs harvest icebergs for profit.

The Gold at Starbow's End by Frederick Pohl.
The longest story in the book, but easily my favorite. Follows a crew on board a spaceship as they find ways to pass the time en route from Earth to a newly-discovered planet in Alpha Centauri. It also follows the politics and the desperate science that were not entirely honest when sending them on a suicide mission.

To Walk a City's Street by Clifford Simak.
Ernie was homeless when the government discovered his unique ability to heal people near him. So the bureaucrats didn't think he'd mind when they picked him up, put him in a suit, and gave him a job walking down the street in the poorest, most disease-ridden parts of the country.

Rorqual Maru by T. J. Bass.
Rorqual Maru is a genetically modified whale, engineered to harvest krill for human consumption. Long ago it went to sleep when krill -- along with most ocean populations -- were largely depleted. But a recent fall of meteorites has now triggered a bloom of krill. Rorqual Maru wakes and seeks out humans to trod its decks again. It will soon find out that humans now have competition at the top of the food chain.

Changing Woman by Wallace MacFarlane.
Girl Cloud-Walking is an artist who has been offered a job with the Mundy Foundation, which is trying to create an accurate-to-scale photomontage of Planet Earth. But what first seems an interesting art project turns sinister as Cloud-Walking recalls that photographs can be used to steal a subject's soul.

Willie's Blues by Robert J. Tilley.
A time-traveling music critic gets too involved in the life of the musician he studies.

Long Shot by Vernor Vinge
Story of a colony ship's voyage from Earth to Alpha Centauri, told from the perspective of the ship -- and we're not talking one of Anne McCaffrey's personality-ships. It's technical, it's dry ... and it's surprisingly dramatic and humane.

Thus Love Betrays Us by Phyllis Maclennon
Alex Barthold is a researcher on a survey vessel, dropped off on the planet Dierdre while the rest of the crew explores other planets in the system. But when the survey ships meets an accident Barthold is stranded on the planet. He goes a little native, then he goes a little crazy.

Revenge: eleven dark tales looks really good! Adding it to my list for future reading.

Hope you like it when you get to it, Lori!

Hi Steve! Just catching up with you...
The two Ogawa books look very interesting, but how far apart in subject matter! Wishlisted both. :)

Hope you like 'em when you get to them, Kathy!



22) The Survivor / Gregg Hurwitz
Date: 2012

Nate Overbay returned from Iraq with PTSD, which broke up his family and mostly ruined his life. Freshly diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, Nate realizes that he has nothing to expect but a painful, humiliating, and expensive death. Best thing for everybody if he can finish quickly.

Nate's plan is to dive from an 11th-floor ledge into a dumpster, thus saving somebody the trouble of cleaning up after him. But just he's taking that last step, he hears gunshots. His military training kicks in and before he can think better of it, he foils a bank robbery.

Now, just as Nate's life couldn't get worse, he has the attention of the Ukrainian gangster who ordered the bank job. Now he orders Nate to finish the job. If Nate refuses then the gangster will kidnap and torture Nate's estranged daughter.

This is another of Library Journal's best thrillers of 2012, and it's solid. There's not much new here: the tragic ex-military hero with nothing left to lose, the broken soul making amends with the family he abandoned, the brutal Russian/East European mobster, and a few action-packed set pieces that are just a stage direction shy of a Hollywood script.

But Hurwitz hits all the right notes. He keeps the suspense up and the action rolling. Some of his characters, especially the mobsters, feel a little comic-bookish but I'll admit he kept me up a couple of nights. And that's what a thriller's for, right? Recommended for readers who enjoy this sort of thing.

23) Finding the Arctic / Matthew Sturm
Date: 2012

A band of scientists trek 2,500 miles by snowmobile from Fairbanks to Hudson Bay, seeking out historic places and following historic trails on a journey to find the soul of the Arctic.

Sturm shares details about arctic snow, climate, and geology. He also tells stories about arctic legends: the "mad trapper" Albert Johnson, the missionary Jean-Baptiste Rouviere, the explorers John Franklin and Samuel Hearne, and the backwoods character John Hornby. They follow the route of a dogsled race and an "ice road" trucking highway. They visit an outpost on the Arctic Ocean and a diamond mine, and meet helpful and interesting people on the way. Thanks to unpredictable weather and the vagaries of arctic geography, they don't hit every point on their itinerary, but the journey is still an interesting tour of the northern landscape.

Throughout it's illustrated with beautiful color photographs and attractive maps. Sturm's writing may not be deathless prose, but it's conversational, engaging, and well-paced. It's also authoritative in some respects, as Sturm is a snow scientist with years of experience on the tundra. It's a fun and informative virtual vacation, and recommended for other armchair travellers.

My only disappointment was that I'd originally requested this book under the impression that the travel took place in Alaska. The journey does start in Alaska, but crosses into Canada in chapter 3 then stays there. So I'll have to find another Alaska read for the 50 State Challenge, but I'm glad to have gotten this one by mistake.

This last weekend was spent in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. We went for a grandniece's baby shower, but we also met for the first time two other grandnieces as well so much holding and cooing and kissing was accomplished. I know everybody would rather see baby pictures, but Mrs. Ninja says "absolutely not" to putting them online.

So here's what you get instead:


That's me decked out for the "Duct Tape Dash," a 5K to benefit "Odyssey of the Mind," the creative problem-solving team of Owasso Public Schools. The theme was duct-tape fashion, and that fetching topper is 100% duct tape.

The race was a lot of fun, but I'll tell you ... duct tape sure doesn't breathe very well.

I also visited Gardner's Books -- which you *must* visit when in Tulsa -- and got a few old DAWs:
160: The Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley
181: Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson
235: Diadem from the Stars by Jo Clayton
260: Dream Chariots by Manning Norvil
275: Lamarchos by Jo Clayton

I also picked up the next books in a couple of series I've started:
Behind Time by Lynn Abbey
Necromancer Nine by Sheri S. Tepper

Also a novel set in the same world as T.J. Bass's short story "Rorqual Maru" (see post 105 above):
Half Past Human by T.J. Bass

But the jackpot find was a novel by the German fantasist Andreas Eschbach. I've not read any Eschbach, but have been curious about his work. So I was delighted to find the Eschbach book I'd been most interested in reading, and in the original German!
Das Jesus Video by Andreas Eschbach

Excellent haul.

Sounds like a full weekend. And a very dashing hat. :)

>110 swynn: Yup, we've got a lot of Arctic in Canuckland. ;)

Thanks, Micky!

No kidding about the Canadian surplus of arcticality. And despite Sturm's infectious enthusiasm for it, I'll let you keep it. Missouri has just the right amount of Arctic for my comfort.

Excellent hat, although I can understand the breath-ability issues. At least you didn't have to wear a duct tape prom dress.

Excellent DAW haul - I've only read one, though, the MZB.

I'll be giving The Housekeeper and the Professor a try, but I think I'll pass on Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales - sounds a little grim for me....

>113 swynn: Ha! Are you sure? We could always share a little bit more with you. ;)

I've had all the DAWs except Dream Chariots--never heard of it. Also have all 9 Teppers in that series. You're looking great in duct tape!

>114 Dejah_Thoris:: I heard about the duct tape prom dress. No thanks. Hm ... on the other hand, the nerd cred would be substantial and would long outlive the chafing. So maybe next prom.

>115 MickyFine:: No thanks. I know you have frigid climate to spare, but keep it. Really. Actually, I hope you still have some left in a few decades.

>116 ronincats:: Dream Chariots is the first in a trilogy by Kenneth Bulmer, written under one of his dozens of pen names. Another pen name is "Alan Burt Akers," under which he wrote the Dray Prescot series. This looks like more of the plot-driven, muscle-flexing same. That is, it should be fun.

I remember liking King's Blood Four, the first in the series. But I'm afraid I might have to reread it before continuing!

Life's distractions continue, but I've managed to complete a few more.



24) What Would Joey Do? / Jack Gantos

In this one Joey Pigza deals with his mother's new boyfriend, his father's flaky behavior, a bad-tempered blind girl and her earnestly religious mother, and his chain-smoking grandmother's determination that he find just one friend before she dies.

It's funny, heartfelt, and insightful.

25) Six-Gun Tarot / R. S. Belcher

Golgotha, Nevada is a community in the middle of the Nevada desert where strange things happen. There's a silver mine, a Mormon settlement, a Chinatown, and something sleeping under the hills: something older than the hills, older even than the universe. And lately there's a new preacher in town with plans to wake it up.

It's equal parts Gunsmoke, H.P. Lovecraft, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy? Yeah: it has a Hellmouth, a girl ninja, and a minor character named "Riley Finn." You tell me.)

The good: it's a nice ensemble piece, with several strong characters and intertwined plot threads, and culminates in a stirring zombie apocalypse. The bad: some heavy-handed writing, and staccato pacing complicated by jumping around a dozen viewpoint characters. There's a strong "series pilot" feel: it lacks focus, contains many irrelevant references and Things to Be Explained Later. One of the major plot threads serves only to set up the next book.

The setting was intriguing enough that I'll read that next book, but I do hope Belcher tightens things up and smooths things out a bit.

26) Wisenheimer / Mark Oppenheimer

Memoir of the author's childhood and college days, growing up as a kid who loved to talk and finding an outlet in competitive debate.

Early chapters are best, when he talks about the problems faced by a linguistically gifted kid. But he seems kind of a jerk as an adolescent, and it doesn't seem to have all worn off yet. He spends a lot of time telling you how funny and clever he was, but his stories aren't particularly clever or funny. Not recommended.

>119 swynn:: I read The Six-Gun Tarot a week or so ago and had a similar feeling. Belcher needs to settle down and focus a bit more to even out the stories.

Six-Gun Tarot sounds intriguing in spite of the loose ends.

>121 TadAD:: Tad, I hadn't seen your comments on Six-Gun Tarot until this morning but agree completely with your "fun-but-cluttered" take.

>122 UnrulySun:: Kathy, I hope you enjoy it if you get around to it. I do think it could be a strong series.

I read your review and then noticed that my librarian had added Six-Gun Tarot to my hold list....

Hope you like it when it comes in, Dejah!

Hey, Steve, just cruising the threads after my company left. Looks like some interesting reading here.

Happy to see you Roni. I'll try to have something a little more "must-read" next time.

27) Veruchia / E. C. Tubb
Date: 1973

Eighth in Tubb's "Dumarest of Terra" series, and the last published by Ace. Dumarest has been traveling from one planet to the next looking for clues about his home planet Earth. His favorite pastimes include falling in love, accidentally getting involved in local politics, and fighting hopeless battles in arenas of death.

In this one he lands penniless on the planet Dradea, where he fights in the arena of death in hopes of winning enough coin to continue his quest. There he's seen by Veruchia, very possibly the heiress of Dradea. Veruchia invites Dumarest into her life and then into her bed.

When the planet's king dies (or was he killed?), Dradea seeks his legal successor. This should be Veruchia, but she is unable to prove her claim. She must quickly find documentation, which may exist on the lost and perhaps legendary ship that carried Dradea's original colonists.

Dumarest doesn't want to get involved, but Veruchia argues that the old ship may also hold ancient navigational charts with clues about the location of Earth.

Yes, it's formulaic, but it's fun enough, and I enjoyed it.

28) Shadow on the Snow / Bill Wallace

When Tom and his family moved from the city to live with his grandfather in backwoods Oklahoma, Tom is bored to tears. With nothing to do but torment his sister, Tom is about to go crazy. Then Tom's grandfather turns him on to exploring the hills and valleys near his farm. Out in the backwoods, Tom meets a new friend and they spend the summer fighting, swimming, and exploring.

The next winter is an especially hard one, and drives a panther out of the hills to hunt the cattle and pets of the farms. Then one especially cold night in the middle of a blizzard, Tom's grandfather is injured. Tom will have to use his wits and his knowledge of the land to face the cold, the snow, and the cat.

I read this with my son. He liked it; I thought it was okay but thought the pace was uneven.

This was my Oklahoma read for the 50 State Challenge.

29) Out of Range / C. J. Box
Date: 2005

Fifth in Box's series about Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. In this one, Pickett is offered an interim position in Jackson Hole, replacing Will Jensen, a game warden who committed suicide. Joe knew Will, and when he accepts it's not only to advance his career and hope for a better salary -- it's also to investigate the death of his friend.

Jackson is a busier environment than Joe is used to, and a political minefield. In no time flat he deals with eco-activists, land developers, new-age ranchers, and a bear who's getting a little too comfortable near humans. Meanwhile, Joe's relationship with his family back in Saddlestring is strained by his absence and irregular communication.

And speaking of strained family relationships, Joe discovers that Will Jensen faced similar difficulties before his death. Shortly before he killed himself, Will and his wife separated, then Will took up with a rancher's wife, went a little crazy, then ate a bullet. When Joe considers his family tensions, his trouble sleeping, and the attentions of the same rancher's wife, and he wonders whether he and Will might share a fate.

I'm enjoying this series more than I would have expected and this is a solid entry, suspenseful and pensive, thankfully lacking the woo-woo and crazy of Trophy Hunt.

30) Shotgun Sorceress / Lucy Snyder
Date: 2010

Follow-up to Snyder's Spellbent, which I read a couple of years ago (Jeez, has it been that long?) and found a lot of fun. This one was a bit of a letdown.

In the first, Jessie rescued her boyfriend Cooper and a couple of his brothers from a Hell dimension, angering some of the wrong people (and other things). The first third of this book is taken up with the aftermath of that, cleaning things up and talking about the new normal.

Then Jessie & company get trapped in a little Texas town where they must do battle with Miko, a Japanese demon with the power to drive her victims mad with lust. Snyder seems to be having fun with this character, but it didn't work for me. Jessie's rhapsodies about her desperate need to rut with anything nearby didn't strike me as suspenseful or frightening or even titillating ... just tedious. By that measure, there's a lot of tedium.

Oh yeah, and zombies. The zombies are much less tedious, so you do get some relief from the horniness.

Judging from other reviews, I'm probably just getting too old. This obviously has an audience, but it ain't me. Which is too bad, because I really liked the first. There is only one more book in the series, so I'm tempted to finish. On the other hand, the big bad in book 3 is Miko again so ... it'll probably be another couple years before I get to it. If ever.

31) The Beekeeper's Apprentice / Laurie R. King

Mary Russell is a precocious young woman in early-20th century England who meets Sherlock Holmes and becomes his protege. This series has many fans among the 75ers, and now has one more. This is splendidly put together, spot-on in tone and in characterization, and the story is engaging. I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

32) They Disappeared / Rick Mofina
Date: 2012

Jeff Collins and his wife and son are on vacation in Manhattan. Jeff steps into a shop to buy new batteries for the camera, and when he steps back out his wife and son are gone. A bystander tells Jeff that he saw a couple of masked men grab them and push them into a white SUV. Jeff goes to the police, but their mixture of suspicion and slow procedures prompt him to find his family on his own.

This was picked by Library Journal as one of 2012's best thrillers, and I don't get it. The characters are bland and the plot without surprises. The prose is annoying: short, direct sentences work well for thrillers, but Mofina's sound like Dick and Jane meet terrorists. Run, Dick, run.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe Mofina's prose suffers from being read after Laurie King's careful, craftful sentences. The book isn't bad exactly-- it moves right along and makes good use of its setting -- but it's nothing special either, and isn't recommended.

33) Sideways Stories from Wayside School / Louis Sachar

The architect who built Wayside School made a mistake. He was supposed to build thirty rooms on one story, but instead he stacked thirty rooms on thirty stories. Except for the 19th story, which he forgot. He said he was sorry.

This book contains thirty stories about the class on the thirtieth story, all of them a bit odd. There's Rondi, who is repeatedly complimented on her cute front teeth; she has no front teeth. There's Todd, who is repeatedly sent home on the kindergarten bus for misbehaving, when in fact he's the best-behaved child in the class. There's the teacher Mrs. Jewls, who is convinced that her students are monkeys.

I think this is supposed to be funny, and sometimes it is. But I found it more unsettling than humorous, like Kafka for middle-schoolers.

I read this with my son, who kept falling asleep. So that's one thumb up and one down for a book that certainly isn't for everyone.

Gosh, I remember loving Wayside as a kid! But funnily enough I don't remember a single story, even after your prompts. :D

>135 UnrulySun:: I never read the Wayside books when I was the age of the target audience. If I had, I think I would have devoured them and found them very silly. As an adult, I still think they're well-done, but they have an edge that I would have missed as a middle-schooler.

>134 swynn: If Wayside is the book I think it is, I really enjoyed it as a kid. Does it involve a scene with the kids getting actual engraved invitations?

>137 MickyFine:: I don't think so. But there are a couple of other books in the series, so you may be remembering a story from another collection. "Engraved" invitations sure sounds like a Wayside premise.

34) DAW #54: Mayenne / E.C. Tubb
Date: 1973

Ninth volume in Tubb's "Dumarest of Terra" series, and the first published by DAW. Wollheim bought the series at its inception back in 1967 when he was an editor at Ace; when he started his own imprint he brought Tubb quickly on board. The Dumarest series stayed at DAW for 12 years and 23 volumes.

In this one, Dumarest finds himself stranded in space aboard a damaged spacecraft. Aboard the ship is a talented singer, Mayenne, who deals with the despair and loneliness by singing to a radio that broadcasts her voice to the void.

Something hears her. When things look most grim, the ship is snatched away and made to land on a strange planet. But the planet turns out not to be a planet at all: it is a world-sized intelligent being that calls itself Tormyle. Tormyle commands a lot of power: it can read the minds of crew and passengers, create livable conditions on its surface, and repair the spaceship.

But Tormyle won't let them leave. It is curious and lonely and short on social experience. It dissects some of the survivors, experiments with the others, and finally tells them that they may leave only when they can teach it about love.

Dumarest's search for Earth is not advanced much in this volume, but he does end the adventure with the Cyclan comfortably off his tail.

This is one of the weaker entries in the series: it lacks the political intrigue that makes some of the other volumes so interesting, its philosophizing about love is heavy-handed, and it's a little overboard about Dumarest's manly manliness. I mean, I get that human women can't get enough of him: it's sort of a genre trope, and I appreciate that Tubb takes the trouble to make so many of the women interesting. But when a sentient planet falls in love, guess who is the object of its affection?

Aw, who am I kidding? If you have to guess then you haven't been paying attention.

The psychedelic cover is by Kelly Freas. I dig it.

>137 MickyFine: Could you be thinking of The Westing Game?

>140 Dejah_Thoris: Nope, that's definitely not it. I'm pretty sure it was a Wayside book. But it is my faulty childhood memories at work here. ;)

35) In Plain Sight / C. J. Box

Sixth in C. J. Box's series about Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. In this one he's back home in Saddlestring with his family and tangled up in a war of succession.

Ranch baroness Opal Scarlett has disappeared and is presumed dead, leaving behind three sons to battle over their inheritance. Joe tries to remain neutral, but his wife's growing business makes that very difficult. In the meantime, Joe's supervisor micromanages, apparently eager for an excuse to fire him. Even worse, a thug with a grudge is in town, threatening Joe's family.

This isn't one of my favorites: there's a lot going on and it doesn't always mesh well. Also the villain felt too over-the-top for this series. On the other hand, Box maintains suspense well, and I didn't predict the solution to the missing rancher mystery until just before the big reveal.

36) DAW #55: The Book of Gordon Dickson / Gordon R. Dickson
Date: 1970

This is the paperback edition of a collection originally published by Doubleday in 1970 as Danger -- Human. The stories themselves mostly appeared in genre magazines between 1952 and 1964.

As you'd expect some are better than others, and there are a couple that could have been omitted without regret. But the good ones are quite good (I especially recommend Black Charlie and Lulungomeena) and make the entire collection worthwhile. Themes include survival, community honor, and a Golden Age optimism about human ingenuity.

Danger -- Human
The galactic empire has placed Earth under quarantine with the cryptic legend, "Danger, Human! High Explosive. Do not touch." But the warning is an old one, and the current generation of scholars wonders what could possibly be so dangerous about this rather nondescript species. So a group of researchers abduct regular-guy Eldridge Parker, place him in an escape-proof prison and instruct him to think about what makes humans so dangerous. SPOILER: It turns out that humans don't believe in things like "escape-proof prisons." For starters.

Dolphin's Way
Corwin Brayt works at an ocean research station trying to establish communication with dolphins. Corwin has two unshakable convictions: first, that communication *can* be established; second, that establishing communication with another species is a test for admission into an interstellar community. Unfortunately, the station's funding is in danger and Brayt must learn how to talk to dolphins quickly before he -- and humanity -- lose an opportunity.

And Then There Was Peace
Short-short gimmicky story about disarming after a long and stagnated war. Both sides have amassed huge inventories of high-tech war machines, and now must find a way to dispose of the war machines. There's a machine for that, of course ...

The Man From Earth
The world Duhnbar is a crossroads for intergalactic trade. Its native culture is rather insulated, but the traders pay token respects to it in order to keep the money flowing. But when a human trader neglects to make the proper sacrifices at a purple shrine, Duhnbar's director decides that all this laxity has gone too far and assigns the traditional punishment of death.

Black Charlie
An art dealer visits a backwater planet to view the work of Charlie, an otter-like alien. The pieces are not museum-quality, and the dealer tells the artist so. Much later the dealer hears about Charlie's new work, which is of a markedly different quality. This story was later expanded into the novel Alien Art which I read several years ago and liked, so it was nice to see the original conception.

Zeepsday
This is the trial transcript in the matter of Drang Usussis, a Nesbler from Sloon, versus Garth Poulson, a Human from Earth. Poulson is charged with offending Usussis's sensibilities by calling it a four-tentacled being when in fact it has but three. The insult followed the signing of a contract obligating Poulson to buy Sloonian devices for accessing Zeepsday, the day between Tuesday and Wednesday. It's all very light, but includes some effective satire on legal proceedings.

Lulungomeena
A young braggart and gambler in a team of mercenaries decides to go after the savings of an old veteran who has given up gambling. Set in the Dorsai universe.

An Honorable Death
Human colonists gather for a garden party to compliment themselves on how terribly sophisticated they are and how terribly well they've treated the native inhabitants of the planet. As a symbol of their magnanimity, they allow a native chieftain to perform a dance at their party. The native's dance tells a story about a hunter who returned from the hunt to find his wife and children dead and his home stolen, and how he found a way to take revenge. Things go downhill from there.

Flat Tiger
First-contact story about an alien who lands on Earth to ask for help in repairing his ship. Seems he's competing in a cross-galaxy race. His ship is controlled by a team of tigers, and one of them needs some attention.

James
Garden snails discuss how to keep humans from attracting the attention of malevolent aliens. SPOILER: Turns out they can't.

The Quarry
A physicist discovers how to propel himself forward in time, and lands in a world where science has progressed so far that humans must be genetically altered to understand. In this highly advanced world he's little more than an action figure for young boys to play with.

Call Him Lord
The galactic emperor's son is scheduled to visit Earth and Kyle Arnam is chosen to be his bodyguard. The prince proves to be a spoiled and arrogant young man, intent on spreading wild oats. Arnam's reactions quickly call into question his real job: is he supposed to be guarding the prince, or the populace of Earth, or something even larger?

Steel Brother
Thomas Jordan occupies a defense station on the frontier of the human-habited worlds. He controls a fleet of drones to attack any hostile ships approaching the frontier. He is also wired into a memory bank containing the experiences of the former stationmasters, but he fears that accessing the memory bank causes him to lose his own identity.

>143 swynn:: Somehow I missed that one. I was on quite a Dickson kick many decades ago but I don't remember reading those stories. I'll have to dig up a copy.

>144 TadAD:: If you can track it down, I hope you like it-- if you've enjoyed some of his other work I think you'll like this collection too.

Like much of the rest of the country, I've been glued to the television this evening.

Like many runners I dream of qualifying for Boston, and fantasize about running it. So today's reports have been gut-wrenching on a personal level as well as horrifying on a human one.

My heart goes out to the victims.

My gratitude goes out to Bostonians for a rapid and generous response.

And to whoever did this ... well I'm not feeling very eloquent, and the things I'm thinking are better not made public. So in the words of someone who never failed at eloquence: "Thou art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch."

You are one of many dedicated runners I thought of. I was surprised by my reaction - part of it was thinking of all of the people who run who work for months or years to go and do it. Supremely nasty choice.

Enjoyed the DAW reviews and covers. They are so great!

Steve, there is a movement called Run for Boston happening tomorrow morning. Wear blue or yellow and go out running or walking. It's not much more than symbolic of solidarity and support for the victims and for runners and running in general, but it is a way for runners worldwide to feel... involved somehow.

I thought of you yesterday also.

What an apt quote, Steve!

Lucy, Kathy, Roni,

Thanks for thinking of me in particular and the running community in general.

I hadn't seen the Run for Boston announced, but I do have 8 miles on the schedule and a blue shirt in the closet, so I'll be there. This evening our local running club participated in the "Say a prayer, light a candle, run a mile" event, where runners meet at a high school track at 9 PM and say a prayer, light a candle and run a mile.

Only in our case, the prayer was a moment of silence (which I prefer anyway); and the candle was a flashlight (the wind made candle-lighting difficult).

But the mile was a mile, and I ran it with a friend who has run Boston 10 of the last 13 years, and only missed this year because 2012's heat kept him from requalifying. "I know those spots where the bombs went off," he said. "My family sometimes stands right there."

From one perspective, things like "Run for Boston" or "Run a Mile" are just symbolic, but I don't think they're empty gestures. Solidarity and support can count for a lot.

For those seeking more material gestures, I'll recommend The One Fund Boston, a central fund to help victims of the bombing.

37) Coyote Autumn / Bill Wallace

This is a boy-and-his-dog story about Brad, a middle schooler who takes in an orphaned coyote pup, calls him Scooter, and makes him a pet. The story follows a predicatable arc from initial enthusiasm and cute puppy stories, through the difficulties of training and learning responsibility, to accepting loss.

I read this one with my son. I liked it despite its predicatability, and he thought it was one of the best books we've read in awhile.

***SPOILER FOLLOWS***
Good news: the dog doesn't die. The loss at the end has to do with Brad's acceptance of the fact that Scooter is a wild animal and will not make a good pet. Brad finally takes Scooter to an animal sanctuary where the coyote is released into the wild.

This isn't exactly a counterexample to "No More Dead Dogs," because some dogs do die: Scooter's parents and littermates are killed early on, in gruesome fashion by coyote hunters. But no dog is sacrificed for a maudlin tear-jerky ending. And that's worth a star or two all by itself.

***RUNNING POST***

You've got to love small-town runs. The 5K I ran on Saturday was won by a guy pushing a stroller.

That's right: I finished behind an infant. I'm big enough to admit that.

38) The Whale and the Supercomputer / Charles Wohlforth
Date: 2004

The author is an Alaskan journalist reporting on climate change. He gleans insights from the scientists who can measure changes in the coverage of sea ice and the proliferation of shrubs; and also from the native Iñupiat who can see changes in shifting hunting seasons and patterns of wildlife migration. The academic and the folk ways of knowing are generally exclusive, but have intersected in interesting ways.

This won the L.A. Times book prize in Science and Technology back in 2004 (it's been in the Someday Swamp for almost as long), and I can see why: it collects a lot of disparate threads relating to climate change, showing some ways the threads intersect while acknowledging that they're such a tangle they may never be unraveled.

There are numerous anecdotes and interesting characters, like the North Carolina schoolteacher who crosses Alaska by snowmobile and falls in love with its vast solitude then returns to the strange chaos of civilization; or Richard Glenn, a scientist and resident of Barrow, Alaska, who helps bridge the cultural gap between academics and natives. Glenn never finished his PhD, at least partly from a concern that it would affect his standing with other Barrow residents. Besides, he'd rather go whaling than write a dissertation.

Matthew Sturm, the author of Finding the Arctic (reviewed above in post #110), shows up frequently also. It was interesting to read about Sturm's work and reputation, which he had downplayed in his own memoir.

The stories and characters make the presentation appealing. But I'm afraid I had a little trouble with it. The author seems to wander from one setting and line of argument to another, with no overarching plan, or even any interest in finishing one thought before hopping to the next. The meandering treatment made it very easy to set the book aside, and not at all urgent to pick it up again-- although I usually found it enlightening when I did. I can't recommend it exactly, but it's probably a more subtle and demanding book than I'm capable of appreciating right now.

This is my Alaska book for the 50-state challenge.

There's no better place to start Cherryh than with The Pride of Chanur, and no sense in letting an arbitrary system prevent you from enjoying it!!!

Hi Roni!

Yes, I know ... it's just that the picking up of next books so often involves due dates and whim ...

Oh, hang it. I'm going on a trip this weekend and I'm packing The Pride of Chanur. It's settled.

Speaking of the trip: does anyone have recommendations for bookstores (or anything else, really) in Louisville, KY?

39) DAW #56: Friends Come in Boxes / Michael G. Coney
Tagline: One deathless day in 2256 A.D.
Date: 1973

By the mid-21st century, overpopulation has become a problem demanding a drastic solution: too many people have too many babies, and too many people are loving too far beyond their productive years.

Improvements in brain surgery make the drastic solution possible: at the age of 40 a citizen is required to have his/her brain removed and transferred into the body of a six-month old infant. This policy of "Forced Transference" solves the problem of adults in declining health; and it suppresses the birth rate because would-be parents are less inclined to bear children knowing any baby will be given the experience, intelligence and jaded personality of an adult stranger in just a few months.

As a population suppressant, Forced Transference works remarkably well. In fact, birth rates decline so rapidly that soon there are many more brains waiting for an infant host than there are infants to host them. In the meantime, brains are warehoused in transfer centers, where they can wait ten years or more for a new body.

The brains in the transfer centers are conscious and cooped up and desperate for distraction. To help a brains pass the time, a citizen can check one out of the transfer facility and take it on outings or even share life with it. The "friend" brain come in a handy little box with audio pickup and speakers so it can hold a conversation-- though it will tend to be grouchy from cabin fever.

The bulk of the book is five interlocking stories set in this world, all reaching a climax on the same day.

The whole thing is high-concept and manifestly implausible with too many holes to count, so I didn't expect to like it much. How wrong I was: these stories are thoughtful, well-crafted and dramatically satisfying. Oh, they're far from perfect: Coney is no poet and he has George Lucas's ear for romantic dialog. But you could say the same about Isaac Asimov, and Coney has thought a lot about his implausible scenario and fills in details nicely. Unlike Asimov there's also some casual homophobia, and some confusion over the difference between homosexuality and transsexuality.

I especially like how Coney explores the human yen for immortality as a root of all evil. One story compares greed and another lust to the desire to live forever, and the stories imagine how those other vices can be petty by comparison. I'll have to call this one flawed but fascinating, much like Coney's first one for DAW, the intriguing and exasperating Mirror Image (DAW #31).

The surreal triptych of a cover is by John Holmes.

Details, and maybe some spoilers, follow.

Creche.In the first story, a nurse in a transfer center uncovers illegal traffic in infants for black-market brain transfers. She also hides her own criminal secret: she has an unregistered infant at home.

The Never Girl. Mary Atkinson is a nonentity. Born and raised in secret, Mary has managed to avoid the authorities' notice for eighteen years, partly by sharing paperwork with her mother, also "Mary Atkinson." But when her parents are taken in for Compulsory Transfer, and Mary registers for their friendship, the irregular documentation is noticed by amoral transfer center clerk Nathan James.

When James realizes that Mary is a nonentity he decides to turn her in. But first he decides to have his way with her: she has no legal standing as a human being so it's not technically rape. But in his crafty plan for promotion and pleasure, James doesn't count on the ruthless revenge of Mary Atkinson.

Menagerie. Les Anstead is tired of waiting for his mother to die for good. Les is a bit of a profligate while his mother is thrifty and wealthy. She has also gone a bit crazy over her last couple of lifetimes, so it's just a matter of time until she'll be so loopy she'll be denied another transfer. Les just bides his time staying as close as possible to Mother's good graces.

But when Ms. Anstead's next transfer is denied, she is unwilling to accept it. She withdraws all her assets from the bank in order to seek a black-market transfer. Before you know it, Les disappears with the money and Ms. Anstead disappears altogether. Did Les see his opportunity and take it, or is there something even more sinister afoot?

A Woman and Her Friend Alice Lander is a placement officer, one of the functionaries who determines which brains get a new body and when. She considers it her duty to befriend brains from time to time, annoying and neurotic this might be. But her latest friend may be her last: distracted by the friend while driving, Alice hits and kills a young boy. Hoping that the police will never figure it out, Alice runs. But the friend knows what's happened, and will not balk at blackmail. The price of her silence will be a place near the top of the transfer list.

Charity Run Of course, not everyone complies with Forced Transfer. There are colonies here and there in secluded parts of the country where couple have unregistered children and where criminals refuse to report to transfer centers on their fortieth birthday. One such colony is Bovey Tracy, mostly ignored by authorities, but which can't be ignored forever. Bovey Tracy receives supplies from the outside world via unscheduled stops of a restored excursion train. But one day the train's freight car carries armed policemen instead of food and medicine.

*** RUNNING POST ***

Saturday I ran the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon in Louisville, KY. The weather was great, with overcast skies threatening rain, keeping temperatures around 60. The clouds may have kept some spectators away, but the ones who came were enthusiastic and seemed to be having as much fun as the runners.

I'd expected more hills in Kentucky and even though I'd seen the elevation chart, which predicted one big hill at 11 miles and a smaller one at 23, I didn't really believe it.

Friends, it was flat. The "hill" at 11 miles turned out to be a series of hills that winds up and down Louisville's gorgeous Iroquois Park . It comes at a great time in the course: after you've set your pace but before you've lost your legs and your mind.

The hill at 23 miles on the other hand arrived when both my legs and my mind were getting shaky, and it killed what little momentum was left in me. I finished the race with several walking breaks, finishing off in 3 hours, 58 minutes, 20 seconds -- 15 seconds faster than my previous personal record of 3:58:35.

The highlight of the course was a lap around the infield of Churchill Downs. Horses were running the track: trotting? Cantering? Surely something that easy and graceful isn't a gallop? What do I know, non-horse-person that I am? Whatever it was was lovely, showing us amateurs how it's done.

So ... great day, great course, great event and a new PR. The biggest disappointment was my own two legs which gave out sooner than I'd have wished, but I'll just have to train 'em better next time.

Congratulations, Steve!

Congratulations on the run and PR, Steve!

Thanks for the congrats, Roni & Dejah! I did manage to read a little, too:



40) Some Remarks / Neal Stephenson
Date: 2012

From Locus Magazine's recommended nonfiction reading for 2012. This is a collection of shorter works by an author whose novels I have heretofore found too intimidating to begin. I ought to change that, because these pieces were interesting and entertaining as all get-out ... but also thoughtful and dense, which doesn't alleviate the intimidation.

Recurring themes are technology, science fiction fandom and geek subculture, and currency systems. The highlight is a long piece, "Mother earth mother board" which is a travelogue of "hacker tourism," describing the history and challenges of laying underwater network cables, with visits to points of interest where the cables come ashore join to other cables.



41) Pride of Chanur / C.J. Cherryh
Date: 1981

Excellent of course. This one is actually a re-read for me, though it's been a good twenty-five years since the first read. A revisit was long overdue, and this time I'll continue the series. Thanks for the nudge, Roni!

Woot! Woot! Go for it! Remember that the next three books are all one story arc--and what a story!

Gosh, I just passed up a used copy of that Stephenson book! I looked at it for a while and put it back on the shelf. Wish I'd gone ahead and picked it up. I read Anathem last year, and while it took me forever and a day to get through it I am SO GLAD I did! It's totally worth the effort. And really, once you get into the world/setting of the book, it just all falls into place and it's like going home every time you come back to read more.

I have some others of his on the shelf but haven't gotten to them yet. I may have to go back and pick up Some Remarks to add to the nest of Stephenson to read someday.

Roni: it's back to racing due dates for a few volumes (with a few DAWs) but I hope to get to Chanur's Venture by the end of the month.

Kathy: I know that I'd love the rest of the Stephens oeuvre, but I've abandoned several books recently for being too demanding when lately my brain has been best able to handle light, short, or both. I do hope you enjoy Some Remarks when you get your hands on it!

42) Eating Aliens / Jackson Landers

Jackson Landers is an outdoors writer and a hunting instructor with a solution for controlling invasive species: eat 'em.

Landers's role in this scheme is to hunt invasive species, find tasty ways to prepare the meat, then write about it. In this volume he tells about his adventures hunting and eating iguanas in Florida, feral pigs in Virginia, lionfish in the Bahamas, nutria in Louisiana, Asian carp in Missouri, and other game around the country in places where it shouldn't be.

Along the way, he tells how each species got where it is (always the answer is "humans," and usually it's a variation on "It seemed like a good idea at the time."), the damage it's doing do the native habitat, and of course whether it's good eating. Properly prepared, it usually is.

I'm not optimistic that Landers's proposal is a realistic solution. It seems to me that creating market demand for invasive species would have unintended consequences -- heck, a perceived market is often how they *become* invasive species -- but I can't fault his entertaining and informative writing. Recommended for outdoor enthusiasts, foodies, and "Survivor" fans.

43) Blood in Their Eyes / Grif Stockley

This is an investigation of the Elaine Race Riot, which took place in Phillips County, Arkansas in 1919.

You can read more details at the Wikipedia link above, but in a nutshell: the riot started late in the evening of September 30, 1919, when a sheriff's deputy and a railroad security employee interrupted a union meeting of black sharecroppers. Who shot first depends on whom you believe, but the railroad man William Adkins was killed. The violence spread and escalated, and by October 2 when federal troops moved in, five whites were dead and an undetermined number of blacks: accounts range from 20 to 856 dead.

Hundreds of blacks were arrested, but the state finally settled on twelve to prosecute. This book follows those twelve defendants through Arkansas's kangaroo courts and the appeals process, which eventually went to the Supreme Court as Moore v. Dempsey.

Grif Stockley is an attorney, and he makes excellent use of court transcripts and other legal documents. Stockley acknowledges the difficulty of determining exactly what happened, but uses his legal knowledge and experience to argue that the state's strategy betrays a concerted attempt to cover up what can only be called a massacre.

Similarly, Stockley uses his experience to argue that the lawyers who handled the defendants' appeals have sometimes gotten an undeservedly bad reputation from other historians. He analyzes the Realpolitik of defending black clients in early-twentieth-century Arkansas and argues that the lawyers may seem obsequious to us today, but were actually performing their roles in the only way the 1920s allowed.

It's unpleasant and infuriating, but Stockley's legal insight, his care in outlining what can and can't be known, and his clear, well-organized writing make for an enlightening slice of history.

This is my Arkansas read for the 50 state challenge.

44) I Am Not Joey Pigza / Jack Gantos

Fourth and most recent in Gantos's "Joey Pigza" series, about a middle-schooler with ADHD and a family with ADHD squared. Joey's adventures and experiences range from the clumsy to the life-threatening and would be horrifying if it weren't for Joey's perplexedly optimistic voice.

At the end of volume 3 (What Would Joey Do?, comments above), Joey thought that his self-centered, disruptive, scatterbrained father was out of his life for good. So Joey is gobsmacked when his mother announces that she and his father are dating again and they are planning a "remarriage" ceremony.

Oh, and they were never divorced anyway.

Oh, and his father has won the lottery. Not the jackpot, but enough to keep them comfortable for awhile.

Oh, and they'll be moving out of their home and into a refurbished quonset hut that his father plans to turn into a beehive-themed diner.

Oh, and everyone is changing their names to signify their new start in life: Joey will hereafter be known as Freddy Heinz. Like the ketchup.

Oh, and Freddy's mom is pregnant.

In this context, ADHD isn't a disability; it's a coping mechanism. If you're thinking this can't end well then you're either over twelve or smarter than Joey's parents. Possibly both. If you're thinking the inevitable train wreck could be entertaining and heartbreaking, then perhaps you've read a Joey Pigza book already.

I am already ready for another Joey Pigza book.

I haven't read any of the Joey Pigza books, but your review was delightful! I have Hole in My Life on the TBR, but of course that's a much different kind of book.

Added a ton of books to the BlackHole thanks to you, Stephen!

I think I'm about ready for another Joey book. :) I should go load a bunch up on my nook so I have them available at any emergency. ;) "Train wreck" sounds like the absolutely right way to describe your lates Master Heinz-Pigsa book.

I really enjoyed the first couple in this series--looks like I'll need to check this one out too.

>167 UnrulySun:: Thanks, Kathy! Hole in My Life is also on my radar as a good alternative to another Joey Pigza book. From online descriptions, I get the feeling that Gantos gets his insight into dysfunction through experience.

>168 alcottacre:: Back atcha, Stasia. There's more than one book swimming in the Someday Swamp with your name attached. Thanks for stopping by!

>169 cammykitty:, 179: Read 'em! Read 'em!

45) DAW #57: Ocean on Top / Hal Clement
Date: 1973 (originally serialized in 1967 in If magazine)

In a future overpopulated earth, power is strictly rationed and wastage is a crime. Power use is allocated and monitored by a Board. Recently the Board has detected evidence of power being generated under the ocean. It sends agents to investigate ... but they keep disappearing.

Our narrator "Tummy" is a Board agent investigating those disappearances. His arrival is disguised as a shipwreck, from which he descends in a bathysphere. On the ocean bottom he discovers an entire community on the ocean floor.

The inhabitants appear to be human, but they manage to survive without any diving gear; they've somehow adapted their bodies to oxygenate from the surrounding liquid, and to cope with the tremendous pressure a mile or more down.

More: Tummy is greeted by one of the disappeared Board agents, alive and well and holding a position of trust in the community. The other agent convinces Tummy to undergo surgery that will allow him to join the others. Most of the rest of the book follows the narrator as he explores the underwater city.

This is a great setting, worked out in fascinating detail. Unfortunately, it is not matched with a good story. There are problems among the agents with unrequited love, but the interpersonal relationships are wooden and not very convincing.

For those who've read some of Clement's work this imbalance between setting and story won't come as a surprise. If you've liked his other work, then this one is not a waste of time. If you haven't, then start with Needle.

The Prince-Namor-ish cover is by Jack Gaughan.

46) Believing Bullshit / Stephen Law
Date: 2011

Stephen Law discusses rhetorical strategies used to justify irrational beliefs.

Young-earth creationism and certain sorts of theism get a drubbing, but Law claims to be less interested in debunking certain beliefs than in exposing the ways they are defended. For example, defenders of irrational beliefs might play the mystery card, claiming their beliefs are somehow immune to rational criticism; or, they may cry "But it fits!" deploying ad hoc and untestable arguments to force their dogma to fit the facts.

I like this approach, and I have wondered whether this kind of rhetorical analysis might have a place in science education. When I hear that creationism shouldn't be taught in science class because it isn't science, I think: the problem is that creationism sounds like science. And what better place than a science classroom to distinguish between science and non-science? I think: bring some creationist literature into the biology classroom they way a mathematician introduces an invalid theorem, as an exercise in spotting sloppy arguments. It's probably naive to think it's workable, school boards being what they are, but confronting the baloney seems like it would be a more effective approach than ignoring it.

This may be a book to do that sort of thing, or maybe not. It is readable, but at a cost of being occasionally slight. It covers a lot of territory, but it's neither exhaustive nor unique. I wish Law would talk about the value of *definitions*, though I suppose he'd argue that's covered under shifting the semantic goalposts. It wraps up with a pastiche of The Screwtape Letters which isn't as clever as one would hope, and which adds nothing to the argument.

Sounds like an interesting book. On to the list it goes!

Too bad that one wasn't more in depth, it sounds interesting.
And I agree with you on your teaching argument.

>174 drneutron:: Hope you like it, Jim!

>175 UnrulySun:: Yeah, I don't know exactly what I was hoping for, and the book certainly isn't bad. It delivers what it advertises, just stays maybe too much on an introductory level.

Interesting review of Believing Bullshit. I like that idea of studying the difference between science and non-science in science classes. I saw a teacher try this once, and when it came to the Chupacabra... In our school, there's always a kid that insists his Uncle saw one.

>Thanks, cammykitty! Again, I'm probably being naive, but Chupacabra sightings seem like a good opportunity to talk about strategies for gathering and evaluating evidence.

47) The Toughest Indian in the World / Sherman Alexie

This is a collection of stories with Native American protagonists, focusing on themes of identity, family, and home.

It starts out strong:

Regarding love, marriage, and sex, both Shakespeare and Sitting Bull knew the only truth: treaties get broken.

and wraps up great:

I lifted my father and carried him across every border.

Assimilation. A Coeur d'Alene Indian woman, happily married to a white man, feels an inexplicable and unavoidable desire for sex with another Indian.

The Toughest Indian in the World. A Spokane Indian newspaper reporter, en route to an interview, picks up a hitchhiker who fights for a living and remembers a strange bout he fought with a boy billed as the "toughest Indian in the world."

Class. Facing a difficult marriage, a Spokane Indian lawyer seeks danger and adventure and maybe himself in a seedy Indian bar.

South by Southwest. A white man holds up an IHOP, demanding one dollar from each customer and a partner to go on the run with him. An overweight Indian volunteers, and the two fugitives embark on a cross-country nonviolent killing spree.

The Sin Eaters. Near-future science fiction story in which all full-blood Indians are rounded up and taken to secret labs for reasons never made clear to them.

Indian Country A Coeur d'Alene Indian writer flies to Missoula to meet to woman he hopes to marry, only to find out that she has only just eloped with somebody else. Hanging around Missoula with nothing to do, he finds an old college friend who is facing family troubles of her own: introducing her future wife to her conservative parents.

Saint Junior. Two kids meet in college, fall in love, and grow old together. Basically a Native American soap opera, but it's surprisingly effective.

Dear John Wayne. An anthropologist interviews a Spokane Indian woman in a nursing home, and gets more story than he bargained for. The woman claims that years ago, working as an extra on John Ford's The Searchers, she had an affair with John Wayne.

One Good Man. A man and his diabetic father prepare for the father's death.

48) Prophet of Bones / Ted Kosmatka

In 1954 the world was proven to be just 6000 years old. This put to rest the myth of evolutionism, established the existence of an intelligent designer, and dramatically increased the power of churches in political and social life.

Paul Carlsson is a lab tech: he prepares samples for DNA analysis. Then a shadowy organization invites him to participate in an archaeological dig in Sumatra. But when the dig turns surprising, the team is attacked by rebel soldiers, beset by assassins, and unceremoniously booted from the country by a suddenly hostile government.

Back home, Paul is invited to keep his mouth shut and forget about Sumatra. Well, it's a thriller so you know how that's gonna work out.

This was a mixed bag for me: the thriller parts are done well; Kosmatka builds a menacing atmosphere and mostly keeps the suspense up. Some of the action stretches credibility and the denouement is a massive cop-out, but it kept my attention throughout as a thriller ought to.

The world-building though ... WTF? Kosmatka's history seems to match ours right up 1954, when Willard F. Libby used radiocarbon dating to prove the world is just 6000 years old. I'm not a chemist, and my knowledge of radiometric dating is strictly pop-science, so I'm not sure how it can be used to establish an upper limit for the age of the planet, but there you go.

It's not clear whether Kosmatka's world really is that young, or whether the religious powers-that-be managed to squelch evidence otherwise. Either way it feels wrong: if belief in a 6,000-year-old planet is just a religious/political conspiracy, then it's hard to see how a robust scientific community could fail to find plenty of other evidence pointing to the earth's actual age. And there are plenty of well-funded labs in Kosmatka's world, even independent ones.

On the other hand, if Kosmatka's earth really is that young, I don't buy that its only consequence is a shift in 20th-century politics. I'm not enough of a scientist to conjecture how a young earth would be different from the one we live in -- fewer stars in the sky, I suppose, and the Grand Canyon would be the Admirable Ditch -- but I'm pretty sure the differences would be more than just political.

Other details don't quite fit either way. For instance, characters keep talking about an "intelligent designer." But in our world the phrase "intelligent design" was coined circa 1990, specifically in contrast to standard evolutionary theory. In Kosmatka's world, evolution lost its currency in the mid-1950's, so where and why did the "intelligent design" rhetoric evolve? Why aren't they talking about a "creator"? With the churches in power there'd hardly be a stigma against the term.

It's a decent thriller with indifferent world-building, a three-star read at most. Not especially recommended.

49) The Life and Times of Guglielmo Libri / P. Alessandra Maccioni Ruju & Marco Mostert
Date: 1995

Guglielmo Libri was born in Florence at the dawn of the 19th Century, into a fading noble family, son of a man just beginning to go extravagantly mad. But Libri's colorful birth was no match for his colorful life as a respected academic and book collector.

Libri was a mathematical prodigy, and received early recognition from such distinguished academics as Laplace and Alexander von Humboldt. Despite his Italian heritage, Libri managed to get himself elected to the Académie des Science in Paris, and even secured a professorship at the Sorbonne. Besides his mathematical accomplishments, he also wrote extensively on the history of science, and wrote (part of) a history of science in Italy.

It seems that Libri's interest in the history of science also instigated his love of book collecting. Libri specialized in manuscripts and autographs of early mathematicians and scientists. He was instrumental in discovering works by Fermat, Euler, and Descartes, some of which had been thought lost.

Libri's collecting also brought to light the awful state of public libraries in 19th century France. Library collections were disorganized and poorly documented. Libraries' lending policies were lax and inconsistently enforced. Even librarians frequently had only the faintest clue of their institutions' holdings. Libri led a campaign to improve these conditions. He was appointed head of an official body charged with cataloging France's public library collections.

Problem was, Libri was a thief. One of the dirty rotten sort.

Libri would visit a library, ostensibly to catalog its holdings. In advance of his visit, he would request and review whatever partial catalogs existed, ostensibly to prepare for his visit. In fact, the preparation served his thievery: the catalogs supplied him with titles of potential acquisitions, and any title that *wasn't* in the catalogs was ripe for the taking upon arrival.

If a title existed in the catalog, he'd often steal a valuable copy and replace it with an inferior edition. Otherwise, he'd quietly make off with things that appealed to him, keep them for awhile, then sell them on the open market. He'd have identifying marks removed, or sometimes alter a book or document before reselling it. Altering a book's text served to disguise his thievery, but it also meant he could resell the book at a higher price, advertising the doctored book as having "the most interesting variant readings."

Libri did not only take volumes entire; sometimes he'd content himself with extracting valuable illuminations. According to one account, he kept a knife with him at all times; when asked, he claimed that he carried it for protection as he feared the Austrian government wished to have him assassinated. Respect for his position and reputation kept most librarians from challenging him further.

For book lovers, it's difficult to read this through without a kind of fury. But Libri was so bold, so devious, and capable of such charm that to the end of his life he had defenders. Even when his culpability was all but certain, friends who should have known better insisted he was innocent: French novelist Prosper Mérimée took up his cause, as did the English logician Augustus DeMorgan and one of my own professional heroes, Antonio Panizzi, the expatriate Italian rock star of the British Museum.

Maccioni Ruju and Mostert have put together a fascinating and remarkably readable academic biography of Libri. It does not read quickly: copious footnotes and many extended quotations dampen the pace. Also, the authors expect a certain level of knowledge about 19th-century European history and terminology of the book trade which kept me running to Google and Wikipedia. And I frankly could have done with less Italian politics. But this detailed and multifaceted examination of Libri's complex personality was worth it. It's compulsive reading even at a slower pace.

I wouldn't recommend it for reading on the plane or the beach, but if you'd like a meaty tale of books and scoundrels -- if you thought The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was too fluffy -- then take a look at this one.

Prophet of Bones sounded promising initially, but you've convinced me to skip it. Thanks. The Life and Times of Guglielmo Libri however sounds rather fascinating. How did you come across this one?

Dejah,

The first I remember learning about "l'affaire Libri" was in an article from The Journal of Library History, but I don't remember where I first found out about Maccioni Ruju and Mostert's volume. It's been in the Someday Swamp for a long time.

The JLH article summarizes the book-theft parts of the story pretty well, and could be a good alternative if you're interested in reading about that without the Italian politics:

McCrimmon, Barabara. "The Libri Case." The Journal of Library History. Vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1966), 7-32.

Thanks, swynn!

50) Maigret at the Crossroads / Georges Simenon

This is an omnibus volume containing three early mysteries featuring Parisian detective Jules Maigret.

Maigret at the Crossroads. (La nuit du carrefour.) A Jewish jewel merchant is found dead in a stolen car, parked in a home at a rural crossroads. This one involves drug smuggling and the mob and includes more action than other Maigret mysteries; it was filmed by Jean Renoir in 1932.

Maigret Stonewalled. (M. Gallet décédé) A con man is found shot and stabbed in his hotel room.

Maigret Mystified. (l'Ombre Chinoise) A wealthy businessman is found murdered in his office, leaving a wife, a mistress, a prodigal son, and an ex-wife with a failure of a second husband. To investigate the murder, Maigret must first understand the victim's private life.

51) The Disappearing Spoon / Sam Kean

The premise of this book is that "there's a funny, or odd, or chilling tale attached to every element on the periodic table." Over the course of the book, Kean tells a story about each of them.

For example, the book's title refers to the claim that gallium (element 31) is a favorite of undergraduate chemistry majors. You see, gallium is a light and moldable metal. It's much like aluminium in that respect, except that it has a low melting point: 85 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's a favorite prank of chemistry students to mold a spoon out of gallium, then offer it with a cup of hot tea to some unsuspecting victim who is shocked to see the spoon disappear into the Earl Grey.

You might imagine a book of such stories to be a reference work, or a coffee-table book at best; but Kean has arranged his stories into a series of essays discussing the history and design of the periodic table; the history of chemistry; chemistry in art and society; and future directions of chemistry. This organization takes Kean's idea a step beyond anecdotes, and into a work that is not only entertaining but enlightening as well.

The only reservation I have is that I often had the sense that Kean was simplifying matters a bit too much. He obviously wants a readable and witty book for general audiences, but some of the writing is too precious. For example, he explains how atom bombs are built on the notion of atomic nausea:

"... by 1940 scientists knew that absorbing a neutron made an atom queasy, which made it explode and possibly release more neutrons."

Also, endnotes are sparse, but that's probably appropriate for this breezy introduction to chemistry. When Kean stays out of his own way with his inappropriate anthropomorphizing and dodgy cuteness, he's a pretty good writer telling pretty good stories, and I'll recommend it to those who think it sounds interesting.

52) Beauty / Bill Wallace

Luke is an 11-year old boy who moves from Colorado to Oklahoma after his parents divorce. Luke and his mom move in with Luke's crusty old Grampa, who growls a lot and has unreasonable rules like serving meals only to those who come to the table when called.

Worse, Grampa expects Luke to ride Beauty, a tired old work horse. Luke has some experience riding trail horses in Colorado, and is exasperated that the stupid old farm horse doesn't understand simple directions. His first time out with Beauty, Luke spends more time with his backside planted in the dirt than in the saddle.

Slowly, Luke and his mother establish a new life in Oklahoma. Luke warms to Grampa and to Beauty. In fact, Beauty becomes a friend that he can share all his secret thoughts with.

I found this a genial book but not a very special one. My son couldn't believe I thought we might want to read it together -- horse stories are for girls, he explained, even when the main character is a boy. He suggested I get another dog story next time.

Lucky for him, this ended like a dog story. You know what I mean.

The Disappearing Spoon has hit my list, thanks. It sounds like my kind of science!

>188 UnrulySun:: Hope you like it, Kathy!

53) Chanur's Venture / C. J. Cherryh

After the events of The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur is just getting things back to normal when a Mahendo'sat trader dumps her with a worrisome but not not unwelcome cargo: Tully, the human who caused so much trouble in the previous book just by existing. Unfortunately, Tully's trouble and Pyanfar's have only just begun.

Before she can growl "deja vu," Pyanfar and her crew are entangled in more politics, intrigue, and physical peril than they can understand, never mind unravel. The Kif still want Tully, the Mahendo'sat still want human trade, and the Hani still behave more like rivals than friends. And Tully just wants Pyanfar, but isn't entirely forthcoming with his motives.

The whole mess is a darned good read, and leaves off midstream, almost midsentence, on the verge of tense negotiations. I'm left with the irrational sense that characters' lives depend on my ability to quickly get my hands on The Kif Strike Back. And I can't even say Roni didn't warn me.

Librarians in pop culture post:

I'm reading Joe Hill's new book NOS4A2. It's mostly good, a little "could be better," a lot "could be shorter," but Hill gets extra special bonus points for this:

As a child, the heroine Vic had a special talent for finding things: she would hop on her bicycle and ride across an imaginary bridge. (The exact status of "imaginary" is one of the novel's themes.) At the other end of the bridge, she'd arrive at a place where she could find the thing she sought.

Vic lost this ability as she grew up -- so she thinks -- but there comes a point when she decides to tell her husband about it. He guesses (correctly) that she eventually used her finding power to find someone who could tell her she wasn't crazy.


"It's the logical next step," Lou said. "Discover magic ring, seek out the Guardians of the Universe. Standard operating procedure. Who was it?"

"The bridge took me to a librarian in Iowa."

"It would be a librarian."


Damn right it would.

Indeed, you cannot say I didn't warn you!

>192 ronincats:: I won't make the same mistake again. I ordered both The Kif Strike Back and Chanur's Homecoming through AbeBooks. Tully and Hilfy only have to hold on until next week sometime.

54) Wayside School is Falling Down / Louis Sachar

I didn't get quite the same Kafkaesque vibe from this follow-up, but if you enjoyed Sideways Stories for their silliness then you'll probably find these funny too. In fact my son seemed to think they were even funnier.

I need to read more C. J. Cherryh....June?

>195 Dejah_Thoris:: I'm having the same thought, Dejah. Why did I wait so long to read this? I really ought to read more.

Of course, I get a similar feeling pondering just about anything in the Someday Swamp: so much to read ....

>53 ronincats: Wise man, since the same thing happens at the end of The Kif Strike Back--those three books are one book, forced to be published as separate books by the publisher...and maybe the fact that 1000 page books are unwieldy.

55) NOS4A2 / Joe Hill

In the post above I mentioned Vic's talent for finding things: she's our hero. Our villain is Charlie Manx, a genial fellow who drives a vintage Rolls Royce Wraith, license plate NOS4A2, in which he takes children to a magical place where it's Christmas every day. They're not quite human when they arrive, but why complain? It's Christmas! More I won't tell.

It's more dark fantasy than horror -- think a Clive Barker story written by Stephen King -- but that's a genre that appeals to me, and I found this story flying by quickly. Complaints? Sure: Hill's style is kitchen-sink. Sometimes you wish he'd stop being clever and just tell the story. He does have a flair for compelling images, but not all of them are hits ( "The sky was the color of a migraine." Ummm, what?) and tighter prose could have made this book a knockout.

On the other hand, the same approach made Dad rich so who am I to criticize? Vivid characters and a rich imagination excuse a lot of rambling, and if you don't mind it much in King you're not likely to hold it against Hill.

Fair warning: there is graphic violence and children in peril.

>197 ronincats:: I have been warned. I will be prepared. As it happens, I already have a copy of Chanur's Legacy, so I can pull that out too should I feel the need after Chanur's Homecoming. Thanks, Roni!

56) The Getaway / Jim Thompson

Fast little crime thriller about a bank robbery that goes according to plan and a getaway that doesn't. It has despicable characters, casual violence, and bad endings-- what's not to like? Well, the last chapter takes a weird, almost surrealist turn that didn't quite work for me but the first 93% was genre-perfect.

I am putting Joe Hill on my wishlist! Thanks for the useful review, swynn.

Hope you enjoy it, Rosalita!



57) And Hell Followed With Her / David Neiwert

Just after midnight, on the morning of May 30, 2009, Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia were shot dead in a home invasion in the border town of Arivaca, Arizona. His wife Gina Gonzales was also shot but survived.

Authorities' first suspicion was the shooting was drug-related, as Junior was a small-time drug dealer whose business was on an upswing thanks to a shakeup in the local drug smuggling community. But the investigation quickly focused on Shawna Forde, an activist in the border militia movement.

Shawna had been active in the "Minuteman" movement that organized citizen "patrols" of border areas. But she had split off from the official organization(s) -- such as they were -- and established her own. Forde had struck upon the idea of funding her new militia by robbing from drug smugglers and dealers. Hence Junior Flores.

Neiwert's goal in this book is not only to tell about the Flores murders, but to link Forde's actions to the broader Minuteman movement. To this end, he spends about half of the book exploring the background and development of the Minutemen.

Personally, I found the argument a bit of a stretch, and the two stories felt like two different books written in alternating chapters. Both are interesting: the true-crime story of the Flores murders is hypnotically lurid; and the expose of the Minutemen is by turns outrageous and slapstick-funny. But the two stories don't fit together quite as neatly as Neiwert wants us to think they do, and the book suffers a bit as a result.

Add to that Neiwert's political bias, which I happen to share but would have preferred to see toned down a bit. From Neiwert's account the Minuteman organizations are nothing but scams designed to fleece the Fox News audience. That much may be true, and his account of their finances certainly supports charges of fraud. But Neiwert also leaves the impression that the movement's supporters are either rubes or racists, and commonly both. It's my suspicion and my very limited experience that things are probably more complicated than that, and more nuanced.

Legion the Minutemen's faults may be, but I'm not sure they deserve to have Shauna Forde counted among them. Yes, she worked for them, and yes they should have conducted a background check just as they swore they did for every volunteer. And yes: the rhetoric endorsed by many in the movement seems like an invitation to sociopaths. But Forde was a sociopath long before she met the Minutemen; at one time she was a Clinton Democrat and was running petty scams even then. Shall we blame those games on the communitarians?

Recommended with caveats. If you're a true-crime fan you may find the Minuteman history boring; if you're interested in the Minutemen movement you may find it biased and sensationalized, as I did.

This is my Arizona read for the 50 state challenge.

RUNNING POST

Or rather: not-running post. My plan for most of the year has been to run an ultramarathon on my birthday, September 15. I'll be turning 45, and I wanted to run a distance of at least 45 miles.

I had picked out and all but registered for a 50-miler in Wisconsin that weekend, and my 16-week training schedule was to start this last week.

Unfortunately, this Wednesday I did ... something ... to my calf muscle or Achilles or both. At the time it felt like cramping, but it must have been something more: I couldn't run at all on Thursday because my leg was on fire from my heel to the back of my knee, almost from the first step.

I don't think it's terrible bad -- it supports my weight, I can still walk comfortably, and I have no visible bruising. But I'm taking a couple of weeks off from running, enough to make training for a 50-miler on September 15 unwise. And enough to make me and the family crazy from the carbs aching to burn.

It could be worse: it could have happened on week 15 of the 16-week schedule, for instance. I could have damaged the muscle more severely, and I would have had it coming for ignoring my body's signals. And I did read a lot this weekend. So there's a bright side.

So sorry about your injury. I hope it heals up speedily.

I'm catching up after a long absence - not in any kind of order.
-So glad you are loving revisiting Cherryh (and reading the rest of the Chanurs?) - I am on such a profound Cherryh jag it is a little bit alarming.
-It's so unfortunate that Clement couldn't build character and story the way he built situations. He might have been a writer who would have benefited from writing with a partner, methinks.
-Would my daughter (17, just finishing up Chemistry - which she enjoyed very much) like The Disappearing Spoon do you think?
-I was one of those who thought the 'man who loved books too much' was not much of a book - so maybe the Libri would be interesting.

I'm so sorry about your injury, swynn, and the derailing of your birthday plans. It's nice to learn you're another Virgo, though!

I think I'll be skipping And Hell Followed With Her - thanks for the review, though. If you post it to the work page, I'll happily give it a thumbs up.

Thanks for the commisseration on my injury. I confess to feeling pretty down about it last weekend; Mrs. Ninja advises, though, that this could be an opportunity to think about cross-training so I am giving that some thought.

204: agreed about Clement's strength and weakness. In a fantasy-football spirit, who do you think would have made Clement's ideal writing partner?

I would recommend The Disappearing Spoon your daughter. It is very accessible, and offers a wide collection of interesting anecdotes with a chemical theme.

I hope you enjoy the Lubribri book if you decide to pick it up.

205: Thanks for the encouragement, Dejah! I'm not big on posting my reviews, and I think I'll hold off on this one, especially as my thoughts are a bit malleable on this topic.

Sorry to hear about the injury, Steve. Hope that leg is feeling better soon!

Thanks, Roni!

58) A Cold and Lonely Place / Sarah J. Henry

A body is recovered from a frozen lake while workers build an ice palace for a winter carnival. The body belongs to Tobin Winslow, son of a rich Connecticut family, a good-time boy who had been slumming in rural Saranac Lake. When Tobin disappeared a few weeks before, everyone assumed he had just moved on. Turns out he passed on instead.

Freelance journalist Troy Chance is there for a story on the ice palace and witnesses Tobin's extraction. Though Troy didn't run in the same circles as Tobin she recognizes him immediately because her roommate Jessamyn was in love with Tobin. Troy soon becomes even more involved in the Tobin Winslow story when the local newspaper's editor commissions a series of articles exploring his life and death.

This is a follow-up to Henry's first novel Learning to Swim. I read and enjoyed the first, as did many others: it won an Agatha and an Anthony for best first novel, and was nominated for other awards. I can't say I liked this one as well, since the pacing was much slower and suspense all but absent. To be fair, I think Henry was more interested in creating a certain "cold and lonely" mood than in building suspense.

What I did like is Troy's investigative technique: rather than focusing on clues and suspects, she investigates the victim and his story. When it works, this approach can create compelling character dramas like Simenon's stories featuring Maigret. Unfortunately, this one didn't quite work for me. I lost interest with about 50 pages to go, and I had to fight to keep from skimming.

Others have reacted more positively so I'll just say I don't get it. I do recommend the first in the series, however.

59) Gulp / Mary Roach
Date: 2013

After seeing the love heaped so frequently and exuberantly by 75ers on Mary Roach, I decided to give her latest a go. It's a breezy tour of the alimentary canal, heavy on wordplay and sarcasm, riffing on mastication, salivation, swallowing, digestion, and voiding. I'll read more Roach.

Not crazy about the cover though.

>209 swynn: I really liked Learning to Swim - it was the best of the Edgar First Novel nominees by far - but I didn't get far into A Cold and Lonely Place before giving up on it. I like the setting - I worked two years at a summer camp on the far side of Lake Placid (accessible by boat only, at least in the summer) - but that wasn't enough to hold me. I may give her next book a try on the basis of the first, but I was disappointed. It's selfish, but I'm glad I wasn't the only one!

>210 swynn: I'm still avoiding Gulp....

So your next book will be Ready Player One?

Dejah,

I'm also glad I'm not the only one!

Gulp is certainly not for the faint-of-stomach, but I give Roach credit for making unsettling subjects amusing.

Ready Player One is in the pipeline, but there are several titles ahead of it:

I'm in the middle of an old Ace Double including Suzette Haden Elgin's The Communipaths and Louis Trimble's The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy (I finished the Elgin last night and will finish the Trimble today or tomorrow);

Fatal Journey, an account of Henry Hudson's last voyage;

Anna Dressed in Blood, which Kathy (UnrulySun) recommended in irresistible terms;

The Deputy, a contemporary noir about a corrupt Oklahoma cop;

other books in the "not now but soon" category (thanks to less pressing due dates) include David Quammen's Spillover, Peter Nabokov's Tijerina and the Courthouse Raid, and Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark (which I blame on you and Richard).

and I'm still waiting for The Kif Strike Back, which will jump to the front of the line when it arrives.

60) The Communipaths / The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy / Suzette Haden Elgin and Louis Trimble
Date: 1970

The Communipaths is the first of Elgin's "Coyote Jones" novels. In the far future, human settlements are scattered across three galaxies. Communication is a problem among the colonies and the starships that connect and supply them.

Telepathy is the only effective and rapid method of communication for intergalactic distances, and "communipaths" who form the telepathic network must be trained young. They can also expect an early death from the stresses of the job.

So when Anne-Charlotte bears a child suspecting it has telepathic ability, she does not report the birth, knowing it will be taken from her and placed in a government creche. But the child is indeed a strong telepath whose abilities interfere with the communipathic network. Coyote Jones is sent to confiscate the child, a duty which he performs with distaste.

Anne-Charlotte herself, facing the loss of her child and charges of treason for her failure to report the birth, goes a little mad.

This is a thoughtul story about the tension between individualism and social responsibility. Nobody has a course of action free of ethical dilemmas. The story is told through multiple viewpoints, including one arresting chapter from the viewpoint of the precocioius infant.

I liked this story a lot, so its faults were especially annoying. Some of the language and attitudes haven't aged well, and the writing could have used some polish. Jones talks about "hard rock" music and "chicks" like some posthuman hipster. And Elgin abandons her tragic tone to end with a cheap feel-good copout of a flourish.

Take those faults away and Elgin would have a powerful wallop of a story. Faults and all, it's still worth a read.

The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy, on the other hand, is a muddle. I think it's set in the same universe as Trimble's The Wandering Variables, as it uses the same conceit of social scientists recreating past human societies, ostensibly for research but actually for nefarious purposes.

In this case, govenrment agent Zeno Zenobius is charged with infiltrating an experimental recreation of Victorian London. Turns out experimental London is a veritable labyrinth of agents, double agents, and triple agents, and it's Zeno's job to tangle out the threads of intrigue. It doesn't help that the whole thing makes zero sense in the first place, as if the most powerful and crafty thinkers in the galaxy had hired Rube Goldberg to architect their plans for apocalypse.

I have The Communipaths bundled into an omnibus edition of all three, I believe, Coyote Jones books. Haven't read them for year, but if I reread anything at this point, I think I want it to be the Ozark books. It was such a pity when Elgin succumbed to dementia--she was a very interesting person.

I haven't read the Ozark books, and this is the second of her Coyote Jones books I've read and enjoyed. I met Elgin once at a conference where she talked about science fiction in academia and was captivating.

61) Anna Dressed in Blood / Kendare Blake
Date: 2011

Kathy (UnrulySun) recommended this Buffy-ish YA paranormal about young love, high school, and killing ghosts. I agree: it was fun, and I'll read the sequel (though probably not this month).

62) Fatal Journey / Peter Mancall
Date: 2009

In 1610, Henry Hudson set out in the ship Discovery with a crew of 24 men and boys, in search of the Northwest Passage. In 1611 the Discovery returned with just eight men aboard. Hudson was not among them.

The survivors told a remarkable story of starvation, exposure, mutiny, and ambush: after enduring a freezing winter, some sailors mutinied and set the captain adrift with a handful of other crew in a small boat. As fortune had it (God's wrath, maybe?), the leaders of the mutiny were all killed a few days later in an attack by natives.

"Mutiny" was not yet a formal criminal charge, so the survivors were charged with murder. But according to their accounts the murderers were all dead, the survivors mere innocent bystanders, and their stories all agreed. Perhaps the stories agreed too well, but without contrary evidence all were acquitted. Frankly, the investigating bodies seemed more interested in the Northwest Passage than in Hudson's fate.

From the vantage point of contemporary geography, we know that Hudson "discovered" Hudson Bay and overwintered on the southern coast of James Bay. But really we don't know anything more about his fate than the English authorities who heard the survivors' tales. There's precious little in the way of primary sources, and those we have are more self-serving than reliable.

That ambiguity makes the story intriguing, but it also means there's not much to tell with certainty. Mancall does his best to pad it, and sometimes it works. For instance, we have no records describing the crew's winter on James Bay-- but we do have a detailed account from Thomas James's voyage some twenty years later, and James's excruciating experience strongly suggests the cold and privations that Hudson's crew must have endured.

Other times, it's just padding. Describing the Discovery's passage near Greenland, Mancall exposits about the thriving settlements along Greenland's east coast, only to end by saying that the Discovery crew couldn't have known anything about that and besides they were on the west coast anyway. In another spot Mancall mentions that the Cree near James Bay knew at least 200 species of birds-- then begins to list them.

I knew nothing of this story before reading Matthew Sturm's Finding the Arctic earlier this year. In that book, Sturm and his friends visit James Bay, where the Discovery crew spent the winter of 1610/1611. The story intrigued me, mostly because, well jeez, set adrift in Hudson Bay and never heard from again? How can you not be intrigued? But I also have a family connection: I'm told I'm a greatity-great-grandnephew of Captain Hudson, and Helenliz's TIOLI Challenge was sufficient nudge to read about Uncle Henry.

This book satisfied my curiosity, and if your interest is piqued it's probably enough to satisfy yours too. Otherwise, it's not especially recommended.

63) The Deputy / Victor Gischler

I said above that this is a noir about a corrupt Oklahoma cop. That's not right: Toby Sawyer isn't corrupt he's just a slacker, a "bad cop" maybe but only in the sense of incompetence.

After high school Toby left his back-of-nowhere hometown to play guitar in a band out west. When that fell through, he wandered back home, got a girl pregnant, married, and stayed. The local chief of police offered Toby a position as a half-time deputy to keep him out of trouble and in beer and cigarettes until he moved on. Toby just doesn't know when -- or how -- to move on.

Then a local rowdy shows up dead in a pickup truck in the middle of the night. The Chief calls Toby, who shows up with his badge pinned to a Weezer T-shirt and his pistol in his hand because hanging the holster on his waistband makes his sweatpants sag below his ... well, too low. The Chief tells Toby to watch the body while the full-time officers take care of business. But watching a corpse is about as much fun as it sounds so Toby wanders over to his underage girlfriend's house for a quickie. What's the victim going to do, wander off?

By the time Toby returns to the pickup, the victim has wandered off.

Toby spends the rest of the evening being chased, beaten, and shot at. The mayhem moves quickly if not always quite believably, and it's pretty fun as long as you don't think too hard. Recommended for fans of noir thrillers; others, be warned that there's lots of violence, very few sympathetic characters, and some casual racism. The last is pretty mild considering the rural Oklahoma setting, but still.

Well, this is interesting. Last week Mrs. Ninja mentioned that a friend had talked her into reading Fifty Shades of Grey, could I bring it home from the library? I gave her the standard warning that what is read can't be unread, but when she persisted I gave in.

The verdict: it's awful. It's much too long, the characters are idiots, even the sex is dull.

And could I bring the next one home from the library?

LOL!

Haha, that's great! :D

Steve, I finished The Disappearing Spoon and will review it soon. Thanks again for the rec on that one, it was quite fun.

>220 ronincats:: Exactly.

>221 UnrulySun:: Excellent! Glad you liked it, and I look forward to your comments.

Good news: The Kif Strike Back arrived today. For those keeping track, these others arrived in the same package:
Chanur's Homecoming by C. J. Cherryh
The Face by Jack Vance
One on Me by Tim Huntley
The Battle of Forever by A. E. Van Vogt
The Magick of Camelot by Arthur H. Landis

Finally! But at least you got them both at the same time so you can continue Pyanfar's story straight through this time.

>218 swynn: For some reason, your synopsis of the novel made me think of "The Zippo" episode of Buffy. :)

Hm... inept schlep has accidental adventure while more competent colleagues save the world? There's certainly a resemblance there.

Although, this being the genre it is, it's probably not a spoiler to say that some of Toby's more competent colleagues are among the people trying to kill him. Not even Xander had luck that crappy.

>>#219

Yeah, I'm familiar with that situation. Not with respect to that particular series, but I've certainly experienced that perverse impulse too often to have any right to moral judgement. :)

>226 lyzard:: Oh, I don't pretend to any moral high ground. With me it's B-horror movies, during which my interior monologue goes something like this:

Why am I watching this?
Why am I watching this?
Why am I watching this?
Well, that was awful.
.
.
.
Let's watch another.

Of course it's more amusing in others. This weekend, my son wandered into the living room while his old man was watching "Once Upon a Time in the West" for the umpty-umpth time:

Jeez, Dad, nobody wants to watch this old stuff.
You need to get with the times.
How many times have you watched this?
Can't we watch something else?
.
.
.
Come on, Mom! You're blocking the television!

Good lord! You don't suppose we were separated at birth, do you, because all of that sounds awfully familiar...!

Right down to the multiple viewings of Once Upon A Time In The West, in fact.

LOL! So typical!
You know I'm a tv junkie, and I usually end up recording wayyy more than I could ever watch, and ditching stuff if they don't capture me in the first few minutes. Except for bad horror movies. I HAVE to finish them, even if I fast-forward a little here and there. Must finish! And they usually disappoint... but then I record another one!

The only thing that can challenge a bad horror movie for me is a bad disaster movie. :)

>228 lyzard:: Oh dear ... the thought of another person with the same compulsion for bad horror ... I don't know whether that's comforting or frightening. There must be enough of us though, because the movies keep being made and it's surely not for their quality. I think I'd better watch another to maintain demand.

On the other hand, a compulsion to watch "Once Upon a Time in the West" is totally justifiable.

>229 UnrulySun:: Oh dear again ... I remember the heyday of VHS: I'd record films on the slowest speed in order to fit three films on a tape. Even at that economy, I still had a couple of hundred tapes. I'd tape the films I knew I ought to watch and the films I really wanted to watch.

Let's just say I've seen and loathed all of the "Leprechaun" movies, some more than once, but I still ... deep breath ... I still haven't seen "Breakfast at Tiffany's." (Sorry, Audrey, I really do love you. It's Mickey Rooney I don't want to watch.)

I STILL have boxes of videos (more than "a couple of hundred", I'm afraid) that I am working through at a snail's pace, and yes, a disproportionate number are taken up with bad horror movies.

Your anti-Rooney impulse is fully justified.

>232 lyzard:: Just what I fear.

This is the one I was reading when the Chanur books arrived:



64) Dead Until Dark / Charlaine Harris
Date: 2001

This series hasn't tempted me much for the past 13 years, but several 75ers (notably Dejah and Richard) have expressed enthusiasm for series, noting that the author ends the series on a high note.

I think I see the appeal: as Dejah notes, the characters are southern but not stock: we have a cast of working-class people who worry about money and love and family. Sure, most of them happen to enjoy beer and guns and pickups and occasionally let slip a "glory to God," they are southern after all, but you'll find no pidgin-talking voodoo priest, no rot-toothed redneck, no philandering Bible-thumper. Okay, there is *one* caricature, but Bubba's clearly supposed to be one, and he made me chuckle as intended.

The mystery was very light: the detective's investigation involves reading people's minds when she happens to think of something other than her hunky vampire boyfriend. And it's a bit too romancey for me, so I doubt I'll continue the series soon. But despite those complaints, the book held my attention and even provoked smiles to the end, which can only recommend it.

65) The Kif Strike Back / C. J. Cherryh
Date: 1985

How did Cherryh manage to keep the tension building for 300 pages solid? I am in awe.

This cover, by the way, is by David Cherry, and it's pretty good. Good as it is, it still makes me wish Michael Whelan had done it, which goes to show just how fantastic *his* work is.

That's the cover I have, too. So, I know for a fact that you have gone straight on to Chanur's Homecoming, because you have no possible choice. You can pause before reading Chanur's Legacy because that's about Hilfy and 10 years down the road, but no way you cannot go straight to the chase right now. Looking forward to your reaction at the end of this next one.

Already there, Roni. I'll resurface in a few days.

66) Chanur's Homecoming / C. J. Cherryh
Date: 1986

Whew. I don't know what to say about the plot that isn't a spoiler: suffice to say that the political intrigue continues, uneasy alliances are tested, epic battles rage among fleets of space ships and down the corridors of space stations, and everything plays out to a satisfying conclusion.

The pace is moderated somewhat from The Kif Strike Back and if I have a complaint, that's it: after the relentless buildup of the second book, this third one seems to open with a lot of waiting around and un-Cherryh-ish infodumps. But lulls in the action accommodate Pyanfar Chanur's increasingly astute political and tactical maneuvers.

Taken as a whole, these three books are the sort of story that the word "epic" was made for: a large cast, a huge stage, and multiple themes explored in depth. Chief among the themes is kinship: What is family, and who gets counted? Friends? Allies? Partners? What kinds of loyalties do we owe them? How do encounters with other cultures alter kinship? And of course the classics: love, revenge, loss, growing up and proving yourself and then getting too damn old ...

Thanks Roni for convincing me to pick up this series 25 years late.

Oh, and that Michael Whelan cover ... perfect.

*FIST PUMP!*

67) The Schwa Was Here / Neal Shusterman

On a much smaller scale and with a smaller cast, this is the latest YA book I read with my son. It get a thumb up from me and one down from him.

Anthony "Antsy" Bonano is an unremarkable kid from Brooklyn who befriends another unremarkable kid: the "functionally invisible" Calvin Schwa.

"The Schwa" is a boy so remarkably unremarkable that people don't notice him. Classmates can't quite remember him. Teachers mark him absent because they don't notice he's seated at his desk. Early in the book Antsy conducts a series of tests to see just how invisible The Schwa is. Dressed in a cat costume and wearing an orange sombrero, singing "God Bless America" in the boys restroom, people still don't notice him. They remember someone acting weird but they're hazy on details.

Poor Schwa is like a guy in a gorilla costume at a game of catch.

Through a series of misadventures, Antsy and The Schwa find themselves indentured as dogwalkers for a cranky and eccentric millionaire, become rivals for the affections of the millionaire's granddaughter, and try to figure out what it means to be friends and not to disappear completely.

I found the story funny and occasionally touching. My son on the other hand found it an excellent sedative. Since this was bedtime-story material, I guess I can count it a success.

>239 ronincats:: Excellent recommendifying, Roni!

Oooh, a neologism!

Those are definitely my favorite 4 Cherryh and have withstood the test of time. I need to try her latest extensive series, however, which others have raved about. Currently I'm finishing up Hellburner, early in the Company Wars books, but next have to go over to the Cyteen books, as they are being referenced here.

I read and enjoyed Foreigner about 20 years ago, but never got around to continuing the series. I'm interested in reading more Cherryh, though, and will probably read Chanur's Legacy after a little break, then maybe go back to the beginning of her oeuvre with Gate of Ivrel.

68) Shoot the Piano Player / David Goodis
Date: 1956

Eddie is a piano player in a Philadelphia dive. Once he was a concert pianist with an audition for Carnegie Hall. But then the war happened, and then life happened, and then he's a piano player in a dive in Philly, trying not to get involved.

Then his brother shows up with a couple of professionals on his tail and some perverse impulse makes Eddie decide to help him get away. Suddenly Eddie is very involved: not only have the professionals noticed him, but his good-Samaritan act has caught the attention of a knockout waitress with a heart of gold. Together they try to stay a step ahead of trouble-- but this is fifties noir fiction, so you know how that's gonna work out.

This is classic noir, with the usual themes: the random cruelty of experience; the inescapable past; and the difficulty of choice in a morally bankrupt world, all wrapped up in tough-guy prose. You recognize all the pieces so it's only special if it's written really well. This is.

This was originally released as Down There, reissued under the new title after the success of François Truffaut's terrific film adaptation.

WARNING: POLITICAL POST

I don't put much politics in this thread, because I'm generally turned off by it in others, but I gotta say:

Hoo. Ray.

As recently as a year ago I'd have sworn that it would never happen in my lifetime. And I'm curious, word-lover that I am: is there a term for the elated feeling of being proven wrong? Because it turns out crow tastes like bacon.

If there is, it's probably in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Beware, though, once you find out what it's called, you may experience "aimonomia"--the fear that learning the name of something—a bird, a constellation, an attractive stranger, an emotion—will somehow ruin it, transforming a lucky discovery into a conceptual husk pinned in a glass case, which leaves one less mystery to flutter around your head, trying to get in.

Gerard,

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't have access to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, but a Google search turned up the author's website, where many of his wonderful definitions can be found.

I didn't find one for the joy of being completely wrong, but here's a feeling I recognize:

moledro

n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.

Yes. Oh, yes.

Oh, yes, that is a VERY good one!

Wow, you've read a ton since I've been here! Yes, wise response on the Chupacabra! I'm sure I could get some kids writing grants to go study it. ;) Love Sherman Alexie! & Shoot the Piano Player sounds fun.

Katie,

Drafting a grant proposal could be an interesting exercise. But it involves writing, so it would probably have to be for extra credit.

I did enjoy The Toughest Indian In the World. I saw that Alexie has a YA novel, Diary of a Part Time Indian, and thought about reading it with my son. Have you read that one?

I did read Diary of a Part Time Indian and loved it. I'll warn you though, it's the kind of book designed to embarrass a professor of Kid's Lit. I have one friend who was teaching it and just trusted it. He was playing the audio when he got to a rather embarrassing section about masturbation. So be warned! It may be a little embarrassing to read with your son.

Yes, the grant proposal is a little ambitious but you know they'd love to go down to Mexico to try to catch a chupacabra on film.

Thanks for the warning. Reading that together could be uncomfortable. When I get around to it I'll read it myself first.

Heck, the students could probably write up a proposal for a reality series. The science would go almost completely out the window ... except for the "sciencey" member of the cast, who looks great in a halter top and says skeptical things such as, "I like science? But I keep and open like mind? You know?" Duck Dynasty watch out.

except for the "sciencey" member of the cast, who looks great in a halter top and says skeptical things such as, "I like science? But I keep and open like mind? You know?"

You've been watching bad horror movies again, haven't you?

>253 lyzard:: Guilty.

Ahem. Piranhaconda arrived in my mailbox the other night...

Lucky dog. I missed it when it was on "Syfy" and it hasn't shown up on Netflix yet.

I mean, why in the world would you want to watch that?

Speaking of consuming media when I shoulda known better ...



69) A Bad Day for Scandal / Sophie Littlefield

I enjoyed the first in the Stella Hardesty series, but was turned off by the romance in the second, and said that I wouldn't continue with the series.

But I'm so fond of the idea: a middle-aged survivor of an abusive relationship, jaded but not resigned, offers not-quite-legal protection and enforcement services to clients in abusive relationships. I even like the idea that she and the local sheriff have an attraction based on their mutual love of justice and opposite approaches to it.

In this one, stuck-up small-town girl turned stuck-up Kansas City businesswoman Priss Porter breezes back home with a body in her trunk. Priss offers Stella a large fee to help her dispose of it. When cash doesn't work, Priss reveals that she has photos of Stella in action. Still Stella refuses: her services aren't legal but they don't include disposal of bodies, and hang the consequences.

When Priss disappears the next day, Stella sets out on a search: not for Priss necessarily, because disappearing couldn't happen to a nicer person. But those photos Priss had could cause a lot of trouble in the wrong hands. Soon Stella knows more than she wants about Priss's business and the connections she still has in small-town Missouri.

When I saw wandering_star's TIOLI challenge to "read a book with an everyday household object on the cover," I thought of this one and the series's premise and decided to give it another chance. I really should have Pearl-ruled it after the first paragraph:

"I believe I'd like to stick my face right smack in the middle of your pie," Sheriff Goat Jones said in his whiskey-over-gravel voice, causing Stella Hardesty to nearly drop the pan she was holding."

So I really can't pretend to be surprised at how many words are wasted on Stella's lust for the sheriff. But I didn't stop. And really, I don't think it's bad: there are bits that stretch credibility, and a couple of loose ends, but it's light and has attitude and you'll never guess whodunit. It's just not so much my thing. But if you enjoy some PG heavy breathing with your mysteries it may be yours.

Heck, I'll probably read the next one myself once the memory of this one fades. Because I do like the idea.

I'm counting this as my Missouri read for the 50 state challenge.

Steve, it's gotten so I turn to your thread for my daily belly laugh! Love your review.

>257 ronincats:: I'm always glad to have you, Roni!

70) DAW#58: Bernhard the Conqueror / Sam J. Lundwall
Date: 1973

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

This is a picaresque novel following the adventures of Bernhard Rordin, a mostly-unlock slob who describes himself thus: "I'm a soldier," Bernhard said. "I don't have any higher goals than sleep, food, drink, and sex."

Bernhard doesn't meet those goals very often. He begins on the prison planet Ol' Slow Death, from which he escapes to a 20,000-mile long generation ship where conditions are even worse. On the giant ship he dodges killer hydroponics, gets caught up in petty revolution, drops into a refuse level twice, and witnesses the annual migration and breeding behavior of televisions.

Then Bernhard is captured by a group of 653 officers who have been despairing for a pirate to boss around; then by a space tyrant, whom he usurps to become a space tyrant. Soon it's Bernhard's turn to be usurped and he gets booted out an airlock.

Fortunately, the ship happens to be traveling through an atmosphere belt at the time of Bernhards unceremonious evacuation. He hitches a ride on a bicycle-balloon contraption to his next stop where he narrowly escapes death a few more times at the hands of a black-market organ merchant, an angry mob, a carnivorous body double, and the founder of a utopian society. He finds his way to another utopian society, where he marries an android, mortgages his children's future to the fifth generation, and escapes through a sewer. At the end of his journey he learns that his apparently aimless wanderings were in fact carefully planned by a godlike computer brain in order to gather parts for its model railroad.

Lundwall's targets are militarism and consumer culture. Easy targets but reliable ones:

"I didn't know TV sets could get tired," said Bernhard, surprised despite everything.

"Well, they can, and you would be too, if you had to watch all these silly TV programs all day long. Do you know they've stepped up the percentage of commercials again? It's fifty-four minutes every hour now and I have to watch every damned minute of it!" The voice spat disgustedly.

"It's just like back home," said Bernhard, flipping away a nostalgic tear. "Do you have a daily five-hour speech by the Emperor, telling you to be brave and steadfast and loyal and to fight the rotten enemy at all cost?"

"No," said the TV set. "But we have a daily five-hour speech by the captain, telling us to be brave and steadfast and loyal and to fight the rotten enemy at all cost."

"It's good to be home again," sighed Bernhard. "How do I get out of here?"

The plot ain't much, but the incidents are amusing and the prose is sharp and snarky, like a space-opera Candide.

The whimsical proto-steampunk cover is by Tim Kirk.

71) Tijerina and the Courthouse Raid / Peter Nabokov
Date: 1969

On June 5, 1967, a small armed force stormed the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, county seat of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Though nobody was killed, two men were shot, dozens terrorized, and responding police cars were so riddled with bullets that veterans on the force were reminded of Vietnam. The perpetrators spent some time searching the courthouse, then left with two hostages: a reporter and a deputy sheriff.

The raid was conducted by members of the group Alianza, an organization that advocated for land rights related to the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo. Alianza's leader was a charismatic former evangelist named Reies Lopez Tijerina.

Tijerina and Alianza's demonstrations had been increasing in scope and militarism over the last year. In July 1966 members had conducted a three-day march on Santa Fe; then in October they occupied the Echo Amphitheater, symbolically reviving a 19th-century community there. During the occupation they "arrested" two forest rangers and tried them for trespassing. The rangers were given suspended sentences then released.

New Mexico officials were concerned about the group's methods. Hard-liners -- notably the DA's office -- wanted a no-tolerance policy, but others -- notably the governor -- did not wish to alienate constituents by appearing to ignore civil rights issues. The state's political games sent Alianza mixed messages, and in the spring of 1967 an Alianza rally turned into mass arrests, and attempts to defuse the situation were bungled.

Tijerina became convinced that the solution was to execute a citizen's arrest on District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez. He believed that Sanchez would be in the Tierra Amarilla courthouse on June 5, and the raid was intended to execute that arrest. As it happened, Sanchez was in Santa Fe.

Peter Nabokov was a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican at the time, and conducted interviews with many of the participants, including Tijerina himself in the days after the raid, while he was still in hiding. Nabokov does not dig deeply into the issues raised by Alianza, though he does describe the various positions of Tijerina, the governor, and the district attorney in vague terms. Instead of the philosophical and political issues, Nabokov lays out the events as a newspaper journalist would: Alianza's background, the events of the day, and the aftermath with Tijerina's trial. This alone is no small feat, thanks to numerous conflicting accounts.

For those who may be more familiar with the story, this just-the-facts account probably stops before it gets interesting. I had never heard the story before, and found the narrative fascinating.

This is my New Mexico read for the 50 states challenge.

Steve, I have to agree with Roni. Your reviews never fail to make me smile, no matter the subject! :)

Kathy, it's always good to see you around here too.

I've made a new thread for the rest of the year-- everyone join me yonder!