October Book Log
Seems like it's been kind of a weird month, book-wise. Weird, but productive. Or at least it would be, if I hadn't also gone on a month-long book-buying spree for reasons I do not entirely understand. Oh, well. Repeated themes this month include politics, history, violence, photography, the desert southwest, guys named Shaun who fight zombies, and politics. (Yes, politics really does belong on there twice.)
On to the books:
115. Timeline by Michael Crichton
A group of historians is recruited by an eccentric billionaire to retrieve the person his company's secret time travel project has left trapped in the fourteenth century.
In fairness, I'm probably not in the best position to pass judgment on this one, as I read most of it in small, exhausted moments during a particularly action-packed vacation. But, well, I have read books while on vacation that distracted me from the sightseeing and kept me up later than practical for getting that good early-morning start on the next day's activities, and I can say without hesitation that Timeline was not one of them.
The physics behind the time travel is actually kind of interesting and reflects some real research on the author's part, but unfortunately he doesn't seem to have fully grasped the concepts behind said research, and the logic of it all becomes muddled and fuzzy very quickly. Also, I find that I'm losing patience with the dumb cliche of corporations secretly developing fantastic technologies based on dozens of decades-ahead-of-their-time discoveries that for some inexplicable reason they completely fail to exploit in any sensible way. And while I can't speak to the accuracy of the history, as that's not remotely my field, I do have the strong suspicion that actual historians are likely to roll their eyes a bit at the way their profession is depicted.
Nor are the time travel hijinks all that interesting, as they mostly seem to consist of the main characters getting captured, escaping, being chased, being captured again, escaping again, and so on, punctuated with bouts of various kinds of fighting and, of course, contrived catastrophes in the present that conveniently prevent them from being retrieved too soon. Crichton does seem to want to go for a kind of you-are-there vibe for the historical period, but his attempt to do that consists mostly of throwing in lots of gore and architecture, and it doesn't work particularly well. If anything, he almost gives me the impression that he's just going down a checklist of what readers expect from this kind of story -- Jousting, check! Castles with secret passages, check! -- while failing to weave those elements into much of a plot. The writing isn't that great, either, being full of "As you know, Bob" dialog, among other things.
As I recall, Crichton did write some decently entertaining airplane novels. I know Jurassic Park passed the time very nicely for me on a flight to Philadelphia back in nineteen-ninety-something. But either he rapidly lost his cheesy-but-fun touch, or else I've gotten a lot pickier in the intervening years. Possibly both.
Rating: 2.5/5
116. Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca & Flora Lichtman
A scientific look at all the little things that drive us crazy, from strangers on cell phones to that guy at work who just won't shut up about how great he is. As the authors are careful to point out, this isn't actually an area into which a lot of research has been done; in fact, many scientists who study human brains and behavior don't even recognize annoyance as a separate emotion. So there are times when it feels like this book is stretching a bit for subject matter, and it's much more about questions than it is about conclusions. But the little experiments and scientific insights it describes are interesting, and the style is pleasantly breezy. I'd say it's well worth reading for the chapter about fingernails on a chalkboard alone.
Rating: 4/5
117. Why New Yorkers Smoke edited by Luis Ortiz
An anthology of short stories inspired by the theme "What is there to fear in New York City?" Several of them have science fiction or fantasy elements, and, unsurprisingly, many touch directly or indirectly on the memory of 9/11.
I really wanted to like this book. The theme sounded great. But while a few of the stories have an interesting central metaphor or idea, they never really do much with them, and none of them left me feeling satisfied, emotionally or otherwise. The SF elements were generally weak and unoriginal, too, and ultimately the whole thing feels like an exercise in style over substance.
It's possible that I might have been a little bit more affected by some of it if I had more of a personal connection to NYC, but I really don't think that's the deciding factor in forming my opinion.
Rating: 2.5/5
(Note: This was an ER book from the July batch.)
118. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Llewelyn Moss is hunting in the desert one day when he comes across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. He comes away from the encounter with a suitcase full of money and the realization that now both parties involved are after him, as well as the local sheriff. This initially seems like a completely standard action thriller plot, although McCarthy's sparse, literary writing elevates it many notches above standard thriller quality without sacrificing any of the tension. Among other things, I have to admire the way he manages to effectively portray the main bad guy as really, really scary using just a few very simple brushstrokes.
Ultimately, though, the plot isn't what the novel is about at all, and in the end it all but abandons it in order to become what it really is: a meditation about the deterioration of American society. Which is a little disconcerting, perhaps, but it works better than you might expect. I am particularly impressed by the fact that the perspective it's told from, a conservative point of view I normally have very little sympathy for, elicited very real feelings of empathy and understanding in me.
The one thing about MCarthy's writing that doesn't thrill me is his apparent hatred for any form of punctuation other than the period. I think this sort of worked in The Road. I remember commenting after reading that one that it gave the impression that all the apostrophes had been destroyed in the apocalypse, and it's possible I wasn't entirely joking; perhaps it did help to enhance that novel's particular sense of bleakness. In this one, though it mainly struck me as irritating and a little pretentious. (Not that this one isn't also bleak, mind you, but it's bleak in a different way.) Worse, there were a couple of places where the lack of a comma or an appropriate set of italics led to enough ambiguity that I found myself confused for a paragraph or several. And this, folks, is the reason why these conventions exist in the first place! Fortunately, it's a good enough book in all other respects that I was able to get past that. Mostly.
Rating: 4/5
119. Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine
Former New York suburbanite Doug Fine recounts the triumphs and tribulations that ensue when he moves to a ranch in New Mexico in an attempt to reduce his environmental footprint as much as possible, while not entirely giving up such modern luxuries as iPods and ice cream. Which may not be the world's most compelling personal adventure, but it's interesting enough and often very amusing. Fine is serious and enthusiastic about green living without coming across as a zealot, and his style is more self-deprecating than self-righteous. (Although his, "Oh, gosh, I'm a crunchy liberal partly surrounded by people who voted for Bush!"-type jokes sometimes feel a little self-consciously awkward.) It's an entertaining read for those who simply enjoy anecdotes about, say, a guy running out of his house naked in a (largely futile) attempt to chase off a coyote, but I imagine it's likely to be particularly appealing and perhaps even useful to those contemplating adopting this sort of lifestyle themselves, as Fine is extremely candid about the difficulties and compromises involved, as well as the rewards. Although he also makes me wonder how the heck anybody manages to afford the initial outlay.
My one real complaint is that the little enviro-fact boxes scattered randomly throughout the text are annoyingly distracting. I think I'll choose to believe those were insisted on by the editor.
Rating: a slightly generous 4/5
120. A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
A guy named Maskull travels, through some mysterious means, to a planet of the star Arcturus. As he wanders around, he finds his body and his perceptions changing with his surroundings. He first comes to a place whose inhabitants are full of empathy, self-sacrifice and pacifism, then a land of selfishness, impulsiveness and violence. From there things get stranger and more complicated, as he encounters surreal landscapes, random characters who show up to offer cryptic bits of philosophy, and visions of something that might or might not be God. Taken on a literal level, none of it makes the slightest bit of sense, but it's clearly not intended to be taken literally, but rather as some sort of extended, obscure philosophical/theological meditation.
There's obviously a lot of thought and imagination that's gone into this novel, and it does have its moments: a vivid metaphor here and a bit of interesting commentary there, as well as an intriguingly dreamlike atmosphere and a bizarre yet weirdly compelling ending. On the whole, though, I found it not so much profound as tedious and overly abstract, and to the extent that I actually understand the concepts and viewpoints it's exploring, I don't personally see a lot of truth or value in them. There's also a persistent obsession with gender stereotypes through the whole thing that I find deeply annoying. By halfway through the book, I was already tired of it all. I really just am not sufficiently mystically-minded to find this sort of thing appealing.
Rating: 2.5/5
121. Full Moon by Michael Light
A collection of photographs from various Apollo moon missions (and one slightly out-of-place Gemini mission) strung together to create a wordless composite narrative including liftoff, looking back at the Earth, taking a spacewalk, exploring the moon, and returning to the Earth. The images include both sweeping panoramic landscapes and small, strangely mundane close-ups of tools and equipment. Many of them are extremely striking, and editor Michael Light deliberately chose some of the more obscure images from the NASA archives, so a lot of them were unfamiliar to me, as well.
I wasn't entirely sure, as I paged through the photographs, just how well the central conceit worked, as I found myself wishing for a little more context and maybe a little less of an art project vibe, but then I realized that the back of the book included captions for everything, as well as an essay about the photographs and the conditions under which they were taken, which satisfied my desire pretty well. It also includes a slightly longer essay by Andrew Chaikin. This perhaps suffers a little by trying to describe all the Apollo missions all at once, as if he were trying to condense his excellent A Man on the Moon down to less than a dozen pages. But the quotes he includes from the astronauts about what they saw and felt on their journeys are marvelous.
Rating: I'm not entirely sure quite how to rate this, but I think I have to give it at least 4/5, if just for the breathtaking lunar panoramas alone.
122. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Young Haroun's father is a gifted storyteller, but when that gift dries up, Haroun takes an unexpected opportunity to get it back for him and soon finds himself traveling to the source of all stories, which is itself facing a terrible danger. It's a charming and highly amusing kids' story of the kind that can be enjoyed equally well by adults, and the concept of the Sea of Stories, where narrative constantly flows and changes and renews itself, is absolutely inspired.
Rating: 4/5
123. The Course of Irish History edited by T. W. Moody & F. X. Martin
The history of Ireland in 23 chapters, each written by a different historian or scholar. Some of the earlier chapters cover a lot of time in a very short amount of space -- as much as two centuries per chapter -- so needless to say much of it is very broad, and there are undoubtedly some fairly arbitrary choices about what to concentrate on and what to leave out. By the time we got to the 18th century, though, the time frames were getting smaller and the focus sharper, and I began to find it considerably more engaging. Which is unusual for me, as I generally think ancient civilizations are much more interesting than recent politics. The chapters covering the 19th century, in particular, were truly compelling. Other sections could be a little dry, however; parts of the Middle Ages involved such an assault of names, places, and dates that I sometimes felt my eyes start to glaze. Still, on the whole, it's a pretty good overview of a troubled and interesting history.
Rating: It's hard to know how to rate this, since it ranges from the mildly tedious to the utterly fascinating. Averaging it out, I guess I'll call it 3.5/5.
124. Every Thing on It by Shel Silverstein
I don't remember how old I was when I first read Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends (other than very young indeed), but I do remember the incredible delight I felt, because I've never stopped feeling it. Every time I pick one of his books up, the feeling instantly comes flooding back. Silverstein was one of the best things about my childhood, and, no, I don't think I'm exaggerating there. His poems are silly and clever, deliciously evil, laugh-out-loud funny, strangely insightful, and wonderfully subversive in ways that even little kids who've never heard the word "subversive" in their lives can instantly relate to. I adored them then, and I still do now.
I wasn't holding out lots of hope for this new collection, though. After all, books published years after the death of their author often turn out to be second-rate, unedited rejects scraped from the bottom of their desk drawers, right? Besides, encountering something like this for the first time can't possibly be the same when you're forty. Right?
Except, whaddaya know, it turns out it can be. And if this came out of the bottom of Silverstein's desk drawer, I can only hope there's a lot more down there where it came from. I swear, reading this made me feel like a little kid again, complete with all the delight I felt when I first read A Light in the Attic. Which isn't quite the same delight I felt when I first encountered Where the Sidewalk ends, since Silverstein was a brand new surprise then, and that only happens once. But it's more than enough.
A few pages in, I was thinking, in that wistful way I sometimes do when reading good kids' books, that I wished I could hop into a time machine and send this back to me-as-a-child, knowing she would have been absolutely over the moon. By halfway through, I was thinking, "Screw little-kid me! She can't have this one! It's mine!"
So, thank you, Mr. Silverstein. I'm sorry I ever doubted you.
Rating: 5/5
125. Deadline by Mira Grant
This is book two of Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, featuring bloggers, zombies, and big old conspiracies.
I spent a fair bit of last month looking for a good "airplane book." You know, something fast-paced and fun, something engaging but not too demanding. You wouldn't think that would be difficult to find, but somehow I kept ending up with tedious, poorly-written stuff that just seemed calculated to make a long plane flight seem even longer. The best of them was Robopocalypse, and even that was a little too generic and cheesy to be entirely satisfying. Clearly, I should have just grabbed this one off the to-read stacks instead, because it's got pretty much everything I was looking for: action, humor, suspense, an interesting premise, a zippy pace, even a bit of intelligent subtext involving things like the trade-off between freedom and security. Also, dialog that doesn't read like the author has somehow never heard actual humans speaking, something that is by no means a given.
But, while I did like the first book in the series, I just didn't expect this one to be quite as enjoyable, mainly because I thought the most appealing aspect of Feed was in the thoughtful, surprisingly believable way that it explained the zombie plague and explored the social consequences of living in a post-zombie-apocalypse world. And I didn't figure there was a whole lot more to say about that. But if anything, I actually I liked this one better. It does, in fact, explore the zombie-animating disease and its implications a little more, but mostly it's just a fun read.
It's certainly not a perfect or flawless book. Among other things, the conspiracy plot may require more suspension of disbelief than the zombies. But, boy, did it scratch the itch. Or, at least, it would have if it hadn't ended on a huge, WTF-ish cliffhanger. When the heck is book three coming out?
Rating: 4/5
126. Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy's Journey to Becoming a Big Kid by Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg, star of such nerdy classics as Shaun of the Dead and Spaced, gives us a rambling memoir full of youthful anecdotes (an astonishing number of which seem to feature girls he had crushes on), thoughtful digressions about the craft of comedy and the current state of pop culture, deeply silly humor, and a constant sense of gleeful, fanboyish amazement at how many childhood heroes he's been able to meet and work with in the course of his career. Also lots of talk about Star Wars. It all feels a little self-conscious, perhaps, but there's a certain charm in that, and on the whole I found it very entertaining.
Rating: 4/5
127. Albuquerque: Then and Now by Mo Palmer
A collection of old photographs of historical sites in the city of Albuquerque, presented side-by-side with photos of the same locations today, sometimes with the old buildings (or remnants thereof) still in place, and sometimes not. Each photo is accompanied by a paragraph-long caption, so while there's not a lot of information on any given page, the book as a whole adds up to a nice little local history lesson. The then-and-now photographs are generally interesting, although sometimes a little depressing, as I often can't help thinking that the older scenes have more character than the modern ones. Though that might just be misplaced nostalgia. I do have one big criticism, though, which is that none of the photos comes with a date attached. The text may explain when the buildings went up and came down, but I'd really like to know when the specific pictures were taken, even if it's only an educated guess at the year.
Rating: 3.5/5
128. John Brunner: Three Complete Novels by John Brunner
This omnibus volume contains three unrelated science fiction novels by Hugo winner John Brunner:
Children of the Thunder: A journalist and a social scientist get together to investigate the existence of a group of exceptionally bright children with powerful mind-control abilities and psychopathically amoral attitudes. The "evil mutant children among us" trope is an old and somewhat tired one, and while some of what Brunner does with it is interesting, it's a decidedly flawed effort. The story is a little too slight to really be worth 280 pages, for one thing, and even if you're willing to buy the basic kids-with-superpowers premise, a lot of the specifics of the plot seem vaguely ridiculous. Still, despite a few odd quirks -- including an unfortunate attempt at some made-up swear words -- Brunner's writing is quite readable. And his world-building is interesting. This was originally published in 1988, and its then-near-future setting reflects pretty much every issue that a late-80s Englishman would have found worrying: AIDS, holes in the ozone, racial tensions, Thatcherism, etc., etc., etc. Toward the end, he may be laying on the doomsday scenarios a little thick, but for the most part it feels like a perfectly plausible alternative to the world we actually got. Indeed, in a few disturbing respects, it's not all that different from the world we got. And ultimately I think it ends on a rather effective note, even if you do have to deal with a plot twist that's equal parts obvious and silly to get there.
The Tides of Time: Gene and Stacy, having returned from a journey, uh, somewhere and on the run from, well, someone, come to a small Greek island, where they enter a cave and sleep. Then, in each subsequent chapter, we see them living lives that are different from one another yet all essentially the same, each set at a time further back in the past. Constantly, they are visited by travelers from beyond the island, and occasionally there are hints that things, unsurprisingly, are not what they seem. And at the end of each chapter comes a story-within-a-story about people who found worlds that were just what they were looking for only to eventually become disillusioned with them. What does it all mean? That is a damned good question, and the answer, when it comes, is rich in metaphor, but short on logical sense. But despite that, and despite the repetitive nature of the story, which really seems like it should get old quickly, the novel does seem to work. It's odd -- very odd -- but also oddly compelling. I have no idea what to make of it in the end, but it certainly didn't bore me.
The Crucible of Time: The centuries-long, multi-generational story of an alien planet and its scientific and technological progress -- progress it badly needs, since it's headed slowly but surely for cosmic destruction, with a lot of smaller disasters to tide it over along the way. The idea of a species (ours or someone else's) desperately needing to develop a space program in order to avoid extinction is a venerable SF trope, and the "Hey, let's watch an alien civilization make the scientific breakthroughs we've already discovered" plot is also fairly familiar. (Although at least neither is remotely as much of a cliche as evil mutant children.) Brunner does a pretty good job with it, though, largely by avoiding the usual flaws found in these kinds of stories. For one thing, he doesn't go the implausible route of imagining some single alien genius who invents everything from the telescope to the interplanetary rocket, instead portraying science as the slow and faltering process it really is. And while this book does have the usual superstition vs. rationality theme, it's a bit more nuanced and less relentlessly heavy-handed with it than some other examples I've seen. And, most importantly, his aliens aren't just humans in ill-fitting alien costumes. They do have fairly humanlike thought processes and motivations, certainly enough to make them easily comprehensible, and some of their scientific discoveries parallel our own, mostly in ways that make sense, since the laws of physics are the same for all of us. But Brunner's put some real effort into giving them consistently alien biology, technology, and culture. He also manages to remember, as far too many works of science fiction fail to, that planets are big, and thus can be expected to be home to many different climates and cultures. Some of the science, or at least some of the biology, does seem a bit iffy to me, but he captures the spirit of scientific discovery pretty well. The end result of all this Doing It Right isn't exactly a wow-inducing page-turner or anything, but it is a solid, well-done example of the kind of thing it is.
Rating: It's a bit hard to rate this one, because the individual novels in it are a little hard to rate. If pressed, I guess I'd give them a 3/5, 3.5/5 and 4/5, respectively. Which I guess averages out to a 3.5. Or would if my rating scale were linear, which it's kind of not. But let's call it 3.5/5, anyway.
129. Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies by Brett Kahr, Ph.D.
Brett Kahr is a psychotherapist and a couples' counselor. During the course of his practice he became interested in things his clients had to say about their (sometimes troubling) sexual fantasies. and curious as to how normal such fantasies are and what kind of effect they have on people's lives. So he did a study on the subject, surveying many thousands of English and American adults via the internet and conducting extensive interviews with a small subset of individuals.
This is, I maintain, an intriguing and worthwhile topic. I'm always interested in the question of what makes human beings tick, and sex is, after all, a remarkably large part of our psychologies. And the way in which our sexual imaginations can incorporate so many odd elements that have little or nothing to do with the basic reproductive act is wonderfully bizarre. I also think there are some genuinely important questions in this area that it would be great if psychology could answer. For instance, are sexual fantasies which incorporate violent elements generally harmless, or do they indicate an increased likelihood of violent sexual behavior? And is it better, when attempting to treat someone with pedophilac tendencies, to encourage them to channel their impulses into fantasy scenarios in which no actual children are harmed, or is indulging those kinds of thoughts just more likely to result in them being acted on?
So I did find a lot of what this book as to say interesting. However, Kahr is a Freudian psychotherapist, a school of thought I am, to say the least, highly skeptical of, and his results are very much filtered through a Freudian lens. Which means that even his most reasonable and believable-sounding conclusions are almost all speculation, rather than science. Most particularly, his attempts to discover the origins and meaning of specific fantasies provided by his interviewees, while thoughtful and well-meaning, often display a logic that is extremely tenuous, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. It does provide a very useful look at the Freudian mindset, though, and has given me a much clearer understanding of how it works and what people see in it.
And, yes, OK, I will admit to a certain amount of prurient as well as scientific interest. Come on, who isn't at least a little curious about the contents of other people's private sexual imaginations? It turns out, though, that reading other people's sexual fantasies can get boring surprisingly quickly. Well, except for the really disturbing and/or depressing ones, anyway. And speaking of surprising, I am deeply bemused by the fact that so many British people seem to have sexual fantasies about the Royal Family. I truly had no idea.
Rating: 3/5
130. Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel sends Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch off on an enforced holiday in the country. Where, of course, he quickly finds some crime to fight, starting with a murder and ending with the rectification of a great injustice. I always greatly look forward to a new Discworld novel, although these days I look forward to them with a little bit of trepidation, ever since the announcement of Pratchett's diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. Clearly he's still not doing too badly, though, because this one did not disappoint. The trademark Pratchett wit may be a little uneven here, but it's still very much in evidence. The plot is good, with some genuinely exciting action scenes. And Commander Vimes is still one of his best characters. I wouldn't rank this one among the very best of the series, but it is a good, entertaining installment.
Rating: 4/5
131. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
A collection of four stories, mostly somewhere in the novella range, plus a short bonus one tacked on at the end, for some reason I'm not entirely clear on. "1922" is about a man who enlists his teenage son to help murder his wife, then suffers for it forever after despite having technically gotten away with it. "Big Driver" features a detective story writer who, after being beaten and raped, goes looking for revenge on her assailant. "Fair Extension" shows us a man dying of cancer who makes a deal for a little more time, at a price he's entirely too willing to pay. "A Good Marriage" is about a couple who have precisely that, until the wife finds evidence of her husband's deep, dark secret in the garage. And the bonus story, "Under the Weather" is about a man whose wife is just a little sick, really... no matter how much his nightmares are telling him otherwise.
Holy crap, is this book aptly titled. This stuff is dark. We're not talking about pleasantly scary little horror stories for Halloween here. With the exception of "Under the Weather," which is a little creepy but mostly just horribly sad, these stories are brutal. And I use that word deliberately, because they really are mostly about human beings being incredibly brutal and callous and horrible to other human beings, and most particularly men being brutal and callous and horrible towards women. They're really good stories, mind you. Well-written, strangely compelling, and populated with characters who often feel painfully real even when they're doing terrible and unlikely things. But, man, they're depressing. Which is clearly exactly what they're meant to be.
Rating: 4/5 stars. It might even deserve 4.5/5, except that I just can't manage to be quite that happy about what it did to my brain.
132. This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich
This book was published in 2008, but with the Occupy Wall Street movement garnering national attention, now seemed like the ideal time for me to finally get around to reading it. Ehrenreich has a lot to say about the widening gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us, the difficulties involved in being poor in America (including the problem of health care), and the abuses corporations get away with heaping on their employees. She also talks a bit, towards the end, about issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and the cultural mindset that gives us such self-deluding self-help principles as "the Secret."
Each chapter here is only three or four pages long, delivering a small, pointed little nugget of social criticism. I believe all or most of these were originally published elsewhere, although it would have been good for that to have been stated in the introduction, since it feels oddly structured if you try to approach it as a unified work: a little disjointed, occasionally slightly repetitive, and prone to rely more on anecdote than on deep analysis. Ehrenreich's often-satirical writing is very sharp, though, sometimes blisteringly so, and the problems she's addressing are important and very real. In the end, it isn't terribly cohesive, but it does manage to be simultaneously entertaining and rather depressing to read.
Rating: 3.5/5
On to the books:
115. Timeline by Michael Crichton
A group of historians is recruited by an eccentric billionaire to retrieve the person his company's secret time travel project has left trapped in the fourteenth century.
In fairness, I'm probably not in the best position to pass judgment on this one, as I read most of it in small, exhausted moments during a particularly action-packed vacation. But, well, I have read books while on vacation that distracted me from the sightseeing and kept me up later than practical for getting that good early-morning start on the next day's activities, and I can say without hesitation that Timeline was not one of them.
The physics behind the time travel is actually kind of interesting and reflects some real research on the author's part, but unfortunately he doesn't seem to have fully grasped the concepts behind said research, and the logic of it all becomes muddled and fuzzy very quickly. Also, I find that I'm losing patience with the dumb cliche of corporations secretly developing fantastic technologies based on dozens of decades-ahead-of-their-time discoveries that for some inexplicable reason they completely fail to exploit in any sensible way. And while I can't speak to the accuracy of the history, as that's not remotely my field, I do have the strong suspicion that actual historians are likely to roll their eyes a bit at the way their profession is depicted.
Nor are the time travel hijinks all that interesting, as they mostly seem to consist of the main characters getting captured, escaping, being chased, being captured again, escaping again, and so on, punctuated with bouts of various kinds of fighting and, of course, contrived catastrophes in the present that conveniently prevent them from being retrieved too soon. Crichton does seem to want to go for a kind of you-are-there vibe for the historical period, but his attempt to do that consists mostly of throwing in lots of gore and architecture, and it doesn't work particularly well. If anything, he almost gives me the impression that he's just going down a checklist of what readers expect from this kind of story -- Jousting, check! Castles with secret passages, check! -- while failing to weave those elements into much of a plot. The writing isn't that great, either, being full of "As you know, Bob" dialog, among other things.
As I recall, Crichton did write some decently entertaining airplane novels. I know Jurassic Park passed the time very nicely for me on a flight to Philadelphia back in nineteen-ninety-something. But either he rapidly lost his cheesy-but-fun touch, or else I've gotten a lot pickier in the intervening years. Possibly both.
Rating: 2.5/5
116. Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca & Flora Lichtman
A scientific look at all the little things that drive us crazy, from strangers on cell phones to that guy at work who just won't shut up about how great he is. As the authors are careful to point out, this isn't actually an area into which a lot of research has been done; in fact, many scientists who study human brains and behavior don't even recognize annoyance as a separate emotion. So there are times when it feels like this book is stretching a bit for subject matter, and it's much more about questions than it is about conclusions. But the little experiments and scientific insights it describes are interesting, and the style is pleasantly breezy. I'd say it's well worth reading for the chapter about fingernails on a chalkboard alone.
Rating: 4/5
117. Why New Yorkers Smoke edited by Luis Ortiz
An anthology of short stories inspired by the theme "What is there to fear in New York City?" Several of them have science fiction or fantasy elements, and, unsurprisingly, many touch directly or indirectly on the memory of 9/11.
I really wanted to like this book. The theme sounded great. But while a few of the stories have an interesting central metaphor or idea, they never really do much with them, and none of them left me feeling satisfied, emotionally or otherwise. The SF elements were generally weak and unoriginal, too, and ultimately the whole thing feels like an exercise in style over substance.
It's possible that I might have been a little bit more affected by some of it if I had more of a personal connection to NYC, but I really don't think that's the deciding factor in forming my opinion.
Rating: 2.5/5
(Note: This was an ER book from the July batch.)
118. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Llewelyn Moss is hunting in the desert one day when he comes across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. He comes away from the encounter with a suitcase full of money and the realization that now both parties involved are after him, as well as the local sheriff. This initially seems like a completely standard action thriller plot, although McCarthy's sparse, literary writing elevates it many notches above standard thriller quality without sacrificing any of the tension. Among other things, I have to admire the way he manages to effectively portray the main bad guy as really, really scary using just a few very simple brushstrokes.
Ultimately, though, the plot isn't what the novel is about at all, and in the end it all but abandons it in order to become what it really is: a meditation about the deterioration of American society. Which is a little disconcerting, perhaps, but it works better than you might expect. I am particularly impressed by the fact that the perspective it's told from, a conservative point of view I normally have very little sympathy for, elicited very real feelings of empathy and understanding in me.
The one thing about MCarthy's writing that doesn't thrill me is his apparent hatred for any form of punctuation other than the period. I think this sort of worked in The Road. I remember commenting after reading that one that it gave the impression that all the apostrophes had been destroyed in the apocalypse, and it's possible I wasn't entirely joking; perhaps it did help to enhance that novel's particular sense of bleakness. In this one, though it mainly struck me as irritating and a little pretentious. (Not that this one isn't also bleak, mind you, but it's bleak in a different way.) Worse, there were a couple of places where the lack of a comma or an appropriate set of italics led to enough ambiguity that I found myself confused for a paragraph or several. And this, folks, is the reason why these conventions exist in the first place! Fortunately, it's a good enough book in all other respects that I was able to get past that. Mostly.
Rating: 4/5
119. Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine
Former New York suburbanite Doug Fine recounts the triumphs and tribulations that ensue when he moves to a ranch in New Mexico in an attempt to reduce his environmental footprint as much as possible, while not entirely giving up such modern luxuries as iPods and ice cream. Which may not be the world's most compelling personal adventure, but it's interesting enough and often very amusing. Fine is serious and enthusiastic about green living without coming across as a zealot, and his style is more self-deprecating than self-righteous. (Although his, "Oh, gosh, I'm a crunchy liberal partly surrounded by people who voted for Bush!"-type jokes sometimes feel a little self-consciously awkward.) It's an entertaining read for those who simply enjoy anecdotes about, say, a guy running out of his house naked in a (largely futile) attempt to chase off a coyote, but I imagine it's likely to be particularly appealing and perhaps even useful to those contemplating adopting this sort of lifestyle themselves, as Fine is extremely candid about the difficulties and compromises involved, as well as the rewards. Although he also makes me wonder how the heck anybody manages to afford the initial outlay.
My one real complaint is that the little enviro-fact boxes scattered randomly throughout the text are annoyingly distracting. I think I'll choose to believe those were insisted on by the editor.
Rating: a slightly generous 4/5
120. A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
A guy named Maskull travels, through some mysterious means, to a planet of the star Arcturus. As he wanders around, he finds his body and his perceptions changing with his surroundings. He first comes to a place whose inhabitants are full of empathy, self-sacrifice and pacifism, then a land of selfishness, impulsiveness and violence. From there things get stranger and more complicated, as he encounters surreal landscapes, random characters who show up to offer cryptic bits of philosophy, and visions of something that might or might not be God. Taken on a literal level, none of it makes the slightest bit of sense, but it's clearly not intended to be taken literally, but rather as some sort of extended, obscure philosophical/theological meditation.
There's obviously a lot of thought and imagination that's gone into this novel, and it does have its moments: a vivid metaphor here and a bit of interesting commentary there, as well as an intriguingly dreamlike atmosphere and a bizarre yet weirdly compelling ending. On the whole, though, I found it not so much profound as tedious and overly abstract, and to the extent that I actually understand the concepts and viewpoints it's exploring, I don't personally see a lot of truth or value in them. There's also a persistent obsession with gender stereotypes through the whole thing that I find deeply annoying. By halfway through the book, I was already tired of it all. I really just am not sufficiently mystically-minded to find this sort of thing appealing.
Rating: 2.5/5
121. Full Moon by Michael Light
A collection of photographs from various Apollo moon missions (and one slightly out-of-place Gemini mission) strung together to create a wordless composite narrative including liftoff, looking back at the Earth, taking a spacewalk, exploring the moon, and returning to the Earth. The images include both sweeping panoramic landscapes and small, strangely mundane close-ups of tools and equipment. Many of them are extremely striking, and editor Michael Light deliberately chose some of the more obscure images from the NASA archives, so a lot of them were unfamiliar to me, as well.
I wasn't entirely sure, as I paged through the photographs, just how well the central conceit worked, as I found myself wishing for a little more context and maybe a little less of an art project vibe, but then I realized that the back of the book included captions for everything, as well as an essay about the photographs and the conditions under which they were taken, which satisfied my desire pretty well. It also includes a slightly longer essay by Andrew Chaikin. This perhaps suffers a little by trying to describe all the Apollo missions all at once, as if he were trying to condense his excellent A Man on the Moon down to less than a dozen pages. But the quotes he includes from the astronauts about what they saw and felt on their journeys are marvelous.
Rating: I'm not entirely sure quite how to rate this, but I think I have to give it at least 4/5, if just for the breathtaking lunar panoramas alone.
122. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Young Haroun's father is a gifted storyteller, but when that gift dries up, Haroun takes an unexpected opportunity to get it back for him and soon finds himself traveling to the source of all stories, which is itself facing a terrible danger. It's a charming and highly amusing kids' story of the kind that can be enjoyed equally well by adults, and the concept of the Sea of Stories, where narrative constantly flows and changes and renews itself, is absolutely inspired.
Rating: 4/5
123. The Course of Irish History edited by T. W. Moody & F. X. Martin
The history of Ireland in 23 chapters, each written by a different historian or scholar. Some of the earlier chapters cover a lot of time in a very short amount of space -- as much as two centuries per chapter -- so needless to say much of it is very broad, and there are undoubtedly some fairly arbitrary choices about what to concentrate on and what to leave out. By the time we got to the 18th century, though, the time frames were getting smaller and the focus sharper, and I began to find it considerably more engaging. Which is unusual for me, as I generally think ancient civilizations are much more interesting than recent politics. The chapters covering the 19th century, in particular, were truly compelling. Other sections could be a little dry, however; parts of the Middle Ages involved such an assault of names, places, and dates that I sometimes felt my eyes start to glaze. Still, on the whole, it's a pretty good overview of a troubled and interesting history.
Rating: It's hard to know how to rate this, since it ranges from the mildly tedious to the utterly fascinating. Averaging it out, I guess I'll call it 3.5/5.
124. Every Thing on It by Shel Silverstein
I don't remember how old I was when I first read Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends (other than very young indeed), but I do remember the incredible delight I felt, because I've never stopped feeling it. Every time I pick one of his books up, the feeling instantly comes flooding back. Silverstein was one of the best things about my childhood, and, no, I don't think I'm exaggerating there. His poems are silly and clever, deliciously evil, laugh-out-loud funny, strangely insightful, and wonderfully subversive in ways that even little kids who've never heard the word "subversive" in their lives can instantly relate to. I adored them then, and I still do now.
I wasn't holding out lots of hope for this new collection, though. After all, books published years after the death of their author often turn out to be second-rate, unedited rejects scraped from the bottom of their desk drawers, right? Besides, encountering something like this for the first time can't possibly be the same when you're forty. Right?
Except, whaddaya know, it turns out it can be. And if this came out of the bottom of Silverstein's desk drawer, I can only hope there's a lot more down there where it came from. I swear, reading this made me feel like a little kid again, complete with all the delight I felt when I first read A Light in the Attic. Which isn't quite the same delight I felt when I first encountered Where the Sidewalk ends, since Silverstein was a brand new surprise then, and that only happens once. But it's more than enough.
A few pages in, I was thinking, in that wistful way I sometimes do when reading good kids' books, that I wished I could hop into a time machine and send this back to me-as-a-child, knowing she would have been absolutely over the moon. By halfway through, I was thinking, "Screw little-kid me! She can't have this one! It's mine!"
So, thank you, Mr. Silverstein. I'm sorry I ever doubted you.
Rating: 5/5
125. Deadline by Mira Grant
This is book two of Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, featuring bloggers, zombies, and big old conspiracies.
I spent a fair bit of last month looking for a good "airplane book." You know, something fast-paced and fun, something engaging but not too demanding. You wouldn't think that would be difficult to find, but somehow I kept ending up with tedious, poorly-written stuff that just seemed calculated to make a long plane flight seem even longer. The best of them was Robopocalypse, and even that was a little too generic and cheesy to be entirely satisfying. Clearly, I should have just grabbed this one off the to-read stacks instead, because it's got pretty much everything I was looking for: action, humor, suspense, an interesting premise, a zippy pace, even a bit of intelligent subtext involving things like the trade-off between freedom and security. Also, dialog that doesn't read like the author has somehow never heard actual humans speaking, something that is by no means a given.
But, while I did like the first book in the series, I just didn't expect this one to be quite as enjoyable, mainly because I thought the most appealing aspect of Feed was in the thoughtful, surprisingly believable way that it explained the zombie plague and explored the social consequences of living in a post-zombie-apocalypse world. And I didn't figure there was a whole lot more to say about that. But if anything, I actually I liked this one better. It does, in fact, explore the zombie-animating disease and its implications a little more, but mostly it's just a fun read.
It's certainly not a perfect or flawless book. Among other things, the conspiracy plot may require more suspension of disbelief than the zombies. But, boy, did it scratch the itch. Or, at least, it would have if it hadn't ended on a huge, WTF-ish cliffhanger. When the heck is book three coming out?
Rating: 4/5
126. Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy's Journey to Becoming a Big Kid by Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg, star of such nerdy classics as Shaun of the Dead and Spaced, gives us a rambling memoir full of youthful anecdotes (an astonishing number of which seem to feature girls he had crushes on), thoughtful digressions about the craft of comedy and the current state of pop culture, deeply silly humor, and a constant sense of gleeful, fanboyish amazement at how many childhood heroes he's been able to meet and work with in the course of his career. Also lots of talk about Star Wars. It all feels a little self-conscious, perhaps, but there's a certain charm in that, and on the whole I found it very entertaining.
Rating: 4/5
127. Albuquerque: Then and Now by Mo Palmer
A collection of old photographs of historical sites in the city of Albuquerque, presented side-by-side with photos of the same locations today, sometimes with the old buildings (or remnants thereof) still in place, and sometimes not. Each photo is accompanied by a paragraph-long caption, so while there's not a lot of information on any given page, the book as a whole adds up to a nice little local history lesson. The then-and-now photographs are generally interesting, although sometimes a little depressing, as I often can't help thinking that the older scenes have more character than the modern ones. Though that might just be misplaced nostalgia. I do have one big criticism, though, which is that none of the photos comes with a date attached. The text may explain when the buildings went up and came down, but I'd really like to know when the specific pictures were taken, even if it's only an educated guess at the year.
Rating: 3.5/5
128. John Brunner: Three Complete Novels by John Brunner
This omnibus volume contains three unrelated science fiction novels by Hugo winner John Brunner:
Children of the Thunder: A journalist and a social scientist get together to investigate the existence of a group of exceptionally bright children with powerful mind-control abilities and psychopathically amoral attitudes. The "evil mutant children among us" trope is an old and somewhat tired one, and while some of what Brunner does with it is interesting, it's a decidedly flawed effort. The story is a little too slight to really be worth 280 pages, for one thing, and even if you're willing to buy the basic kids-with-superpowers premise, a lot of the specifics of the plot seem vaguely ridiculous. Still, despite a few odd quirks -- including an unfortunate attempt at some made-up swear words -- Brunner's writing is quite readable. And his world-building is interesting. This was originally published in 1988, and its then-near-future setting reflects pretty much every issue that a late-80s Englishman would have found worrying: AIDS, holes in the ozone, racial tensions, Thatcherism, etc., etc., etc. Toward the end, he may be laying on the doomsday scenarios a little thick, but for the most part it feels like a perfectly plausible alternative to the world we actually got. Indeed, in a few disturbing respects, it's not all that different from the world we got. And ultimately I think it ends on a rather effective note, even if you do have to deal with a plot twist that's equal parts obvious and silly to get there.
The Tides of Time: Gene and Stacy, having returned from a journey, uh, somewhere and on the run from, well, someone, come to a small Greek island, where they enter a cave and sleep. Then, in each subsequent chapter, we see them living lives that are different from one another yet all essentially the same, each set at a time further back in the past. Constantly, they are visited by travelers from beyond the island, and occasionally there are hints that things, unsurprisingly, are not what they seem. And at the end of each chapter comes a story-within-a-story about people who found worlds that were just what they were looking for only to eventually become disillusioned with them. What does it all mean? That is a damned good question, and the answer, when it comes, is rich in metaphor, but short on logical sense. But despite that, and despite the repetitive nature of the story, which really seems like it should get old quickly, the novel does seem to work. It's odd -- very odd -- but also oddly compelling. I have no idea what to make of it in the end, but it certainly didn't bore me.
The Crucible of Time: The centuries-long, multi-generational story of an alien planet and its scientific and technological progress -- progress it badly needs, since it's headed slowly but surely for cosmic destruction, with a lot of smaller disasters to tide it over along the way. The idea of a species (ours or someone else's) desperately needing to develop a space program in order to avoid extinction is a venerable SF trope, and the "Hey, let's watch an alien civilization make the scientific breakthroughs we've already discovered" plot is also fairly familiar. (Although at least neither is remotely as much of a cliche as evil mutant children.) Brunner does a pretty good job with it, though, largely by avoiding the usual flaws found in these kinds of stories. For one thing, he doesn't go the implausible route of imagining some single alien genius who invents everything from the telescope to the interplanetary rocket, instead portraying science as the slow and faltering process it really is. And while this book does have the usual superstition vs. rationality theme, it's a bit more nuanced and less relentlessly heavy-handed with it than some other examples I've seen. And, most importantly, his aliens aren't just humans in ill-fitting alien costumes. They do have fairly humanlike thought processes and motivations, certainly enough to make them easily comprehensible, and some of their scientific discoveries parallel our own, mostly in ways that make sense, since the laws of physics are the same for all of us. But Brunner's put some real effort into giving them consistently alien biology, technology, and culture. He also manages to remember, as far too many works of science fiction fail to, that planets are big, and thus can be expected to be home to many different climates and cultures. Some of the science, or at least some of the biology, does seem a bit iffy to me, but he captures the spirit of scientific discovery pretty well. The end result of all this Doing It Right isn't exactly a wow-inducing page-turner or anything, but it is a solid, well-done example of the kind of thing it is.
Rating: It's a bit hard to rate this one, because the individual novels in it are a little hard to rate. If pressed, I guess I'd give them a 3/5, 3.5/5 and 4/5, respectively. Which I guess averages out to a 3.5. Or would if my rating scale were linear, which it's kind of not. But let's call it 3.5/5, anyway.
129. Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies by Brett Kahr, Ph.D.
Brett Kahr is a psychotherapist and a couples' counselor. During the course of his practice he became interested in things his clients had to say about their (sometimes troubling) sexual fantasies. and curious as to how normal such fantasies are and what kind of effect they have on people's lives. So he did a study on the subject, surveying many thousands of English and American adults via the internet and conducting extensive interviews with a small subset of individuals.
This is, I maintain, an intriguing and worthwhile topic. I'm always interested in the question of what makes human beings tick, and sex is, after all, a remarkably large part of our psychologies. And the way in which our sexual imaginations can incorporate so many odd elements that have little or nothing to do with the basic reproductive act is wonderfully bizarre. I also think there are some genuinely important questions in this area that it would be great if psychology could answer. For instance, are sexual fantasies which incorporate violent elements generally harmless, or do they indicate an increased likelihood of violent sexual behavior? And is it better, when attempting to treat someone with pedophilac tendencies, to encourage them to channel their impulses into fantasy scenarios in which no actual children are harmed, or is indulging those kinds of thoughts just more likely to result in them being acted on?
So I did find a lot of what this book as to say interesting. However, Kahr is a Freudian psychotherapist, a school of thought I am, to say the least, highly skeptical of, and his results are very much filtered through a Freudian lens. Which means that even his most reasonable and believable-sounding conclusions are almost all speculation, rather than science. Most particularly, his attempts to discover the origins and meaning of specific fantasies provided by his interviewees, while thoughtful and well-meaning, often display a logic that is extremely tenuous, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. It does provide a very useful look at the Freudian mindset, though, and has given me a much clearer understanding of how it works and what people see in it.
And, yes, OK, I will admit to a certain amount of prurient as well as scientific interest. Come on, who isn't at least a little curious about the contents of other people's private sexual imaginations? It turns out, though, that reading other people's sexual fantasies can get boring surprisingly quickly. Well, except for the really disturbing and/or depressing ones, anyway. And speaking of surprising, I am deeply bemused by the fact that so many British people seem to have sexual fantasies about the Royal Family. I truly had no idea.
Rating: 3/5
130. Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel sends Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch off on an enforced holiday in the country. Where, of course, he quickly finds some crime to fight, starting with a murder and ending with the rectification of a great injustice. I always greatly look forward to a new Discworld novel, although these days I look forward to them with a little bit of trepidation, ever since the announcement of Pratchett's diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. Clearly he's still not doing too badly, though, because this one did not disappoint. The trademark Pratchett wit may be a little uneven here, but it's still very much in evidence. The plot is good, with some genuinely exciting action scenes. And Commander Vimes is still one of his best characters. I wouldn't rank this one among the very best of the series, but it is a good, entertaining installment.
Rating: 4/5
131. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
A collection of four stories, mostly somewhere in the novella range, plus a short bonus one tacked on at the end, for some reason I'm not entirely clear on. "1922" is about a man who enlists his teenage son to help murder his wife, then suffers for it forever after despite having technically gotten away with it. "Big Driver" features a detective story writer who, after being beaten and raped, goes looking for revenge on her assailant. "Fair Extension" shows us a man dying of cancer who makes a deal for a little more time, at a price he's entirely too willing to pay. "A Good Marriage" is about a couple who have precisely that, until the wife finds evidence of her husband's deep, dark secret in the garage. And the bonus story, "Under the Weather" is about a man whose wife is just a little sick, really... no matter how much his nightmares are telling him otherwise.
Holy crap, is this book aptly titled. This stuff is dark. We're not talking about pleasantly scary little horror stories for Halloween here. With the exception of "Under the Weather," which is a little creepy but mostly just horribly sad, these stories are brutal. And I use that word deliberately, because they really are mostly about human beings being incredibly brutal and callous and horrible to other human beings, and most particularly men being brutal and callous and horrible towards women. They're really good stories, mind you. Well-written, strangely compelling, and populated with characters who often feel painfully real even when they're doing terrible and unlikely things. But, man, they're depressing. Which is clearly exactly what they're meant to be.
Rating: 4/5 stars. It might even deserve 4.5/5, except that I just can't manage to be quite that happy about what it did to my brain.
132. This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich
This book was published in 2008, but with the Occupy Wall Street movement garnering national attention, now seemed like the ideal time for me to finally get around to reading it. Ehrenreich has a lot to say about the widening gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us, the difficulties involved in being poor in America (including the problem of health care), and the abuses corporations get away with heaping on their employees. She also talks a bit, towards the end, about issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and the cultural mindset that gives us such self-deluding self-help principles as "the Secret."
Each chapter here is only three or four pages long, delivering a small, pointed little nugget of social criticism. I believe all or most of these were originally published elsewhere, although it would have been good for that to have been stated in the introduction, since it feels oddly structured if you try to approach it as a unified work: a little disjointed, occasionally slightly repetitive, and prone to rely more on anecdote than on deep analysis. Ehrenreich's often-satirical writing is very sharp, though, sometimes blisteringly so, and the problems she's addressing are important and very real. In the end, it isn't terribly cohesive, but it does manage to be simultaneously entertaining and rather depressing to read.
Rating: 3.5/5