Since it's apparently suddenly October now, I guess it's time for the September book log. This month: ridiculous numbers of children, and not one but two separate trips to Trenton, New Jersey.
94.
What Language Is (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be) by John McWhorter
John McWhorter offers us a linguists'-eye view of language, considering questions like: what does it mean for a language to have a simple grammar vs a complex one, and what is it that causes the difference? He also explores a lot of ways in which the understanding and perspective of people who study language for a living can be very, very different from the intuitive assumptions of those of us who merely speak it, including questions of what's a "real" language (as opposed to sloppy, mistaken, or wrong language, or "primitive" or "impure" language), and what kinds of characteristics are "normal" in a language. (English, it turns out, is a little strange in some ways -- albeit ones that make perfect sense given its history -- and isn't the greatest standard by which to judge normality.)
McWhorter does go into a lot more depth than I was expecting, or, honestly, than I thought I was quite in the mood for, including lots and lots of (sometimes slightly technical) examples from languages both familiar and obscure. But I quickly became utterly fascinated by it all. It helps that he writes in a very accessible style, sprinkling the text with occasional dorky jokes, dorky references, or odd little personal asides. If you're familiar with his Lexicon Valley podcast -- and if you have an interest in language, it's worth a listen -- the book feels much the same in tone, it's just that he gets to take a much deeper dive into things than a half-hour podcast would ever allow.
I found it meaty, insightful, informative, and well worthwhile. Despite having already read a few other books on more or less the same subject, I feel like I've come out of it more enlightened than I went in.
Rating: 4.5/5
95.
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
Ten books into the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and I'm still finding it as warm and lovely as ever. This time, we finally get to know something about the life of the character formerly known as The Apprentice Who Is Not Charlie, mourn with Precious Ramotswe as she faces what looks like the end of her beloved little white van, and watch Grace Makutsi seething over the fact that her fiancé has hired her man-stealing nemesis to work in his furniture store. Oh, and there's also some investigation, of course, as the owner of a soccer team hires the ladies to find who is sabotaging his team so they keep losing. But, as always, the plot, such as it is, is far less the focus than the characters, the ups and downs of their lives, their endearing human foibles, their heart-warming basic decency, and their gentle musings on the human condition.
Interestingly, many of said musings, even more in this book than in previous ones, involve the nature and roles and differing interests of men and women, a subject I usually find unbearably annoying. But Mma Ramotswe's thoughts on the matter, somehow, offend me not at all, perhaps because they're less about lazy stereotypes and more about very real-feeling observations, and because she is always careful not to present those generalizations as absolutes. That, I suppose, and because the women always come out of it well.
Anyway. This series remains marvelous comfort reading for me.
Rating: 4/5
96.
Résumé with Monsters by William Browning Spencer
Philip Kenan works a tedious job at a print shop, and spends much of the free time his boss grudgingly allows him endlessly fiddling with the bloated horror novel he's been writing for the last twenty years. But he doesn't believe the Lovecraftian horrors he's writing about are merely fiction. He's seen them. Or he thinks he has, at least, even if everyone else in his life thinks he's crazy.
The basic concept here is something like the Cthulhu Mythos meets Office Space, with Lovecraft's monstrous Old Ones either representing or in league with the soul-crushing systems of corporate America. Which is an utterly irresistible premise. But, despite the fact that there are some really fun ideas and entertaining moments, this story never quite clicked for me the way I wanted it to. I'm not entirely sure why. I think mostly the balance between the wacky, ridiculous elements and the more serious ones never felt perfectly right, somehow. Or, at least, I was never quite able to calibrate that balance properly in my head. I suppose it also didn't help that that main character's stalkery behavior towards his ex-girlfriend was a bit of a deal-breaker for me when it came to being able to sympathize with him. Or, come to think of it, that the female characters were less believable than the extradimensional abominations.
Still, I can't help thinking that, handled the right way, this story could have served as the basis for a really entertaining offbeat movie.
Rating: 3/5
97.
F in Exams: Pop Quiz: All New Awesomely Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson.
A collection of dumb or smart-assed answers to test questions. Mostly smart-assed ones. This is apparently the third such collection, although I'd only previously read the first one. As I recall, the first one made a point of claiming in the introduction that these were real answers from real students. I notice this one doesn't, and it's honestly a bit difficult not to think they're probably fake. In any case I didn't find it quite as amusing as the first one, overall, although there were some that did make me laugh.
My hands-down favorite: answering "Give one advantage of having a telescope at the top of a high mountain rather than the bottom" with "The mountain doesn't get in the way." I mean, hey, they're not wrong!
Rating: 3/5
98.
Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
Izzy is eighteen and pregnant by a man who, it becomes clear, is not going to stay in the picture, when she is approached to become part of a strange new project in which ten families, all expecting babies at the same time, will live in a complex together and raise their children communally, with the kids not even knowing which ones are their biological parents until they are five.
My reaction to this book is interesting, because while I feel like I mostly liked it all right, when I sit down to think about it, all I can focus on are its flaws. Like the fact that while the project described here is certainly a social experiment, it's really not a scientific one, despite being presented that way. And while you could have gotten away with pretending something like this is scientific in the 70s, I really don't think it would fly today. And then there's the secondary main character, Dr. Grind, the founder of the project. He's a fairly interesting personality, but I just don't find his backstory creditable. So I had a little trouble with suspension of disbelief, in general.
More significant is the fact that, while Izzy lives with these nine other families for years, I never got a good sense of who most of these people are. Generally they were so underdeveloped that nothing about them really stuck in my head, to the point where I ultimately stopped trying to keep track of who was who. And while, unsurprisingly, there's a lot of drama and conflict in this non-traditional family, the novel skips lightly over most of it, skimming over all the years these people spend together and just occasionally dipping in to give us a glimpse of how things are going and telling us what the problems are, rather than letting us experience it immersively. Which is not really very satisfying.
But, like I said, I did like it okay, anyway. I think that's mostly down to two things. The first is the inherent interest value of the idea. And the second is the character of Izzy, who is really well-realized and interesting. The early part of the novel, which is set before she joins the program and focuses very strongly on her and her life, is by far the best, and it earned a lot of goodwill from me, I guess. I do feel like our sense of Izzy as a person gets weaker as the novel goes on, though. So, again, not totally satisfying.
I suppose, in the end, I'd characterize this as a decent and fairly interesting, but very far from perfect. Maybe a bit like the experimental family itself.
Rating: I suppose I ought to call it a 3.5/5.
99.
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein
Eccentric game designer Luigi Lemoncello has just built a fantastic new public library, complete with lots of nifty extras and some impressive futuristic technology. He's invited twelve twelve-year-old essay contest winners to spend a night in the library before it opens, during which he reveals a contest: The front door is shut tight, but there is another way to escape from the library (without using the fire exits!). Whoever follows the many clues provided to discover the exit will win a fabulous prize.
I wasn't super impressed with this one at first. I mean, I'm immediately well-disposed towards anything set in a library, but it otherwise seemed like a fairly run-of-the-mill kids' book, with a not terribly interesting protagonist and a deeply annoying antagonist. Plus, Mr. Lemoncello, while he's compared to Willy Wonka in the story, isn't nearly as interesting.
But once the challenge got started and the puzzle plot kicked into gear, I have to say, I was hooked. It was clever and lots of fun, with the puzzles and clues complicated and non-obvious enough to thoroughly to engage well-read adult me, but without, I think, being too hard for bright kid readers to follow along with and enjoy. I ended up liking it way more than I expected to. I'd definitely recommend it for kids who like books and/or puzzles, and it's entertaining for adults who like kids' books about books and puzzles, too.
Rating: 4/5
100.
Natural Lives, Modern Times: People and Places of the Delaware River by Bruce Stutz
A look at the people, places, wildlife, and history of the Delaware River, with a particular emphasis on the natural habitats it provides for plants and animals, on people who live (or once lived) traditional lifestyles along the river, such as fishing or farming, and on how the river has changed, often in troubling and destructive ways, over the course of time.
I grew up in the Delaware Valley, myself, but my particular piece of New Jersey was a wasteland of seemingly endless suburban sprawl, and my views of the shores of the Delaware consisted largely of the slums of Camden on one side and the streets of Philadelphia on the other. So it was interesting to me, at least in principle, to get a broader look at a river I never knew quite as well as I should have. And this is a very broad look, as Stutz covers a lot of ground, spending time with everyone from muskrat trappers to historians to biologists to kids on a canoe trip.
But, I must say, the book itself varied a lot in how interesting I found it, with some sections I found engaging, and others that seemed to drag rather badly. And while overall it follows the geography of the river, heading upstream as it goes along, it feels very, very rambly and not particularly structured. It's also probably a bit dated, as it was published in 1990, and the future of many of the places and people Stutz talks about was already very uncertain then. On the other hand, many of the environmental issues he brings up are no doubt still extremely relevant.
I think this is one of those books I wouldn't necessarily recommend to someone who's just looking for some good nature writing in general, because as nature writing it's okay, and it makes some good points, but it doesn't particularly stand out. On the other hand, if you have a specific interest in the Delaware and the past, present and future of its people and environment, it may well be the book you want to read. Although I'm not entirely sure whether it's still in print or not.
Rating: 3.5/5
101.
Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D. Simak
Two space-going newspapermen, an experimental pilot, a famous scientist, and a woman -- also a scientist -- who has been in suspended animation for a thousand years make contact with aliens from the edge of space, and are recruited to help save the universe from a devastating threat.
I liked this a lot. For much of the time I was reading it, I kept thinking that I liked it more than I probably really ought to. It was, after all, published in 1950, and it has a very old-fashioned feel to it, of a kind that does not often age well. The characters have a habit of standing around explaining things to each other in stilted fashion. Many of the scientific details are dated or downright nonsensical. And it plays on an SF trope I've come to dislike: the idea of humans as somehow extra-special and possessed of abilities or strength of character that nobody else in the universe has.
But, regardless, I liked it a lot. It's chock-full of interesting SF ideas, even if not all of them do make a whole lot of sense. And the old-fashioned feel it has, rather than feeling dusty and annoying, had a certain odd, nostalgic charm for me. Rather like watching an old black-and-white movie with slightly cheesy sensibilities, but surprisingly good production values. Or maybe an episode of the classic Twilight Zone. Although, towards the end, it began to feel more like original-series Star Trek to me (which I regard as no bad thing). There are moments where the writing is surprisingly evocative, in a low-key but effective way, conjuring up a real sense of the vastness and strangeness of the universe and the exciting possibilities of humanity's place in it. Plus, Simak may not have been the only SF author in 1950 able to write a female character who doesn't feel terribly offensive or embarrassing to modern readers, but there are certainly few enough of them to make it worth noting, anyway.
Rating: 4/5.
102.
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
Louise has an encounter with a man in a bar that ends with a kiss, after which she has trouble getting him out of her head. Then she discovers that the man is her new boss. And then she (literally) bumps into the guy's wife and somehow finds herself entering into a friendship with her, even while there's something developing between Louise and the husband. So far, so Jerry Springer, but then things get really weird. There is obviously something very, very odd going on in that marriage, but it's not remotely obvious what. And the wife is clearly pursuing some scheme, but is she a villain or a victim?
I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but this is another book I feel like I enjoyed maybe more than I actually should have. I mean, the plot is nuts. Just nuts. I'm not sure how well any of it holds up under too much scrutiny. It also does this thing of starting out feeling like it's grounded in the real world only to introduce some mystical or paranormal idea partway in, which is usually something I find very annoying. I like fantasy elements, but only if they're clear from the start, rather than feeling like the author is expecting me to believe these things are real. It didn't bother me nearly as much here as it usually does, though. And I actually managed to find Louise somewhat sympathetic despite the fact that she makes all the worst, most awful, most eyeroll-inducing decisions in the world, which leaves me unsure whether to feel irritated or impressed at the way she's written.
And then there's the ending, which is touted all over the dust jacket as a shocker. I was feeling rather smug about the fact that I saw it coming at least 50 pages ahead, but it turned out I only guessed about half of it. The things I didn't had part of me feeling quite pleased that I got an unexpected ending after all, while the rest of me (probably the more rational part) protested feebly that it wasn't sure any of it actually worked, on any number of levels.
But. Well, it did keep me entertained and interested the entire time I was reading it. Which is possibly all I ask of this kind of novel. Maybe that's just because I happened to be in exactly the right, not-very-critical mood, but, y'know, I'll take it.
Rating: 4/5. Based, of course, entirely on my enjoyment levels rather than on some objective attempt at assessing its quality.
103.
Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan
Humorous musings and anecdotes from comedian Jim Gaffigan about the experience of raising five young kids in a small apartment in New York City. I never found it laugh-out-loud funny, but it's mildly amusing (even if he does tend to reuse the same basic kind of jokes a little too often) and sometimes cute. I gotta say though, even though it's very clear Gaffigan loves his kids no matter how much chaos they cause in his life, my main reaction to reading the whole thing is a sort of horrified relief at the fact that I've managed to escape living this life by virtue of not having kids. I'm feeling very, very good about that life choice right now.
Rating: a slightly generous 3.5/5
104.
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
My intermittent re-reading of Pratchett's City Watch books continues with Night Watch. In this one, Commander Vimes is flung back in time while chasing a psychopathic murderer and finds himself fighting in a revolution he already lived through once, but seems destined not to live through this time.
This is often named as possibly the best of Pratchett's Discworld books (a category with a heck of a lot of competition). I'm not sure it's my own personal favorite, but it is damned, damned good. Pratchett's writing often features some extremely insightful reflections on what we might call the human condition -- much more so than you'd expect from what purports to be a fun, humorous fantasy series -- and that is very much in evidence here. Pratchett looks full-on at the often uncaring messiness of the world and its depressing cycles of repeating history, but tempers that with some affecting examples of the hope that community ties and the integrity and humanity of individuals can provide in the face of faceless oppression. It may have left me with a bit of a lump in my throat at the end. And, of course, it once again provides an excellent showcase for one of Pratchett's best characters, and comes with a generous helping of Pratchett's trademark wit.
Also, I'm not saying that Mad Lord Snapcase -- who is raised to power by people desperate for change largely on the basis that he pretends to pay attention to them as he waves from his fancy carriage, only to immediately prove to be a self-centered and terrible ruler -- well, I'm not saying he makes me think of anybody in particular. I'll just say that none of these books seems to have gotten any less timely and relevant-feeling since the day they were published.
Rating: 4.5/5
105.
Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
Book fourteen (ish) in Janet Evanovich's series about Stephanie Plum, bumbling bounty hunter. This time, Stephanie takes a side job as security for an aging singer, she and her sometimes-boyfriend Joe Morelli end up babysitting a teenager who's obsessed with an online RPG, and it turns out there may be nine million dollars hidden somewhere in Morelli's house.
Really, what is there to say after fourteen-plus of these? It's quick-reading and mildly diverting but instantly forgettable. Or, basically: it's another Stephanie Plum novel.
Rating: 3/5