August book reviews
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry - Jon Ronson (non-fiction) (**)
The non-fiction genre can basically be divided into two groups: mediocre books by experts; well-written books by non-experts. I’d normally err on the side of wanting to read the latter kind of book, because who the hell wants to endure shitty prose? However, non-experts writing about a highly complicated subject matter is not without its pitfalls.
Imagine, say, a journalist wandering into a woman’s home, observing her kids for a few minutes and drawing the conclusion that they’ve been wrongly diagnosed as bipolar. The journalist - someone completely outside the medical profession - effectively accuses the mother of being a hysterical who can’t discipline her kids and so pumps them full of drugs instead.
That’s what Jon Ronson does in The Psychopath Test.
I mean, maybe Ronson is right and these kids aren’t bipolar, but since he has a BA in Media Studies (not a doctorate in Psychology), his opinion is worth about as much as that of my pet goldfish.
It’s not that The Psychopath Test isn’t diverting fare. It’s funny in places and there’s none of the turgid prose you might expect from an academic. But there’s really no there there.
Ronson boasts the book’s lack of structure proudly. This was a journey he took, whimsically bouncing from subject to subject (and from country to country), but unfortunately the end result is just a mess. It’s not really about psychopaths, because Ronson wanders off that subject into the aforementioned bipolar stuff, by way of some conspiracy theory tosh that he lifted from his previous book, and yet another rehash of Paul Britton’s undoing.
Shouldn’t journalists be searching for the truth?
Ronson just seems like he’s searching for the next thing he can spin into a witty book in order to earn his next paycheck.
Gone (Gone, #1) - Michael Grant (fiction, teen, fantasy) (**)
Gone is a Lord of the Flies/Heroes mash-up: everyone over the age of 14 disappears, leaving a bunch of kids to forge their own adult-free society - and it’s no coincidence that some of the kids have also developed superpowers.
However, it was the TV series Lost that Michael Grant’s dystopian epic reminded me of most strongly. They have in common a sense of “I’ll just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”. If you’re willing to follow Gone down the rabbit hole (or down the glowing hatch), you might enjoy it. But, personally, I found it difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to immerse myself in Grant’s world.
The trouble is, Grant doesn’t seem to trust the inherent drama of his premise. Lord of the Flies is about normal children going savage, but Gone is about psychopathic children going savage. Grant pulls out a narrative cheat by conveniently placing a school for troubled teens within the novel’s setting. It’s much less fascinating to read about a bunch of mentally-disturbed bullies becoming... slightly more mentally-disturbed bullies.
Instead of digging deep into the makeshift society that the kids are forced to create, Grant just adds more and more fantasy elements to the story. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to stay engaged with it all. Once Grant adds in a telenovela-esque plot twist and some talking animals, the whole thing just gets silly.
There are some ooky gender issues within Gone - all the ‘nurturing’ falls to the girls, while the boys get all the power - but, honestly, you can’t accuse Grant of creating flat female characters, because he also creates flat male characters. I didn’t feel an emotional connection to anyone within the novel. The characters are just functions, there to prop up the plot.
(Can we call a moratorium on hearty trios consisting of a heroic boy, his doofy male best friend, and a brainiac girl? It worked in Harry Potter, but I’m a little sick of the trope now.)
If you’re looking for a dystopian teen thriller, read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother instead.
Greenlit: Developing Factual TV Ideas from Concept to Pitch - Nicola Lees (non-fiction, TV) (***)
I read Greenlit as research for a story I’m writing, but it actually turned out to be quite an enjoyable book. Nicola Lees not only gives advice to budding development producers, she also demystifies the whole process whereby documentaries and reality TV shows make it onto our screens.
The best part is the TV show case studies. Lees obviously interviewed a lot of producers and, in doing so, managed to glean some fascinating stories about how shows like Survivor, Supernanny and The Deadliest Catch came to be greenlit. For example: Supernanny had an air date before it had a leading lady. And eventual star Jo Frost is the world’s most unlikely pottymouth.
(Kudos to this book indeed, because it actually made me want to watch The Deadliest Catch, which I never had the slightest inclination to do before.)
My only criticism would be that the attention to detail/editorial input isn’t quite there. For example, Lees spends two pages describing the inception of Robot Wars without ever mentioning the show’s name. She also starts describing cross-platform TV experiences and somehow spends a whole page writing about Survivor spoilers (why? I don’t know!). Worse are the continual instances where she simply name-checks a TV type without mentioning their job title or the channel for which they work.
(Another gripe: why is the font size so small? *weeps*)
Although mainly of interest to would-be producers, Greenlit also makes an entertaining read for TV nerds.
A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (****)
If I’m honest, the first two books in the Ice and Fire series erred on the side of *meh* for me. Poor plotting and unrealized potential let them down. So it was heartening to find that A Storm of Swords is a massive improvement.
The plotting is much tauter (although George RR Martin’s scene construction continues to drive me crazy*), and the set pieces are more vivid and shocking. The various story threads are still wildly disparate, but Martin finally seems to grasp the importance of creating parallels and recurrent themes.
(*I swear, every single chapter begins with a character staring off into middle distance and brooding about their emotional state. Then we get a lengthy description of the landscape. And then, finally, after about 5 pages, the action resumes. Do I have to point out that this isn’t good scene construction?)
Daenerys’s storyline resumes its rightful place as the BEST EVER OMG, and it’s clear that part of the reason it succeeds is that Martin’s real skill lies in world-building details. By contrast, it’s no surprise that King’s Landing, of which there is so little new to say, became the least interesting story strand.
I often see Martin criticized in fandom for being a harsh puppet-master, but I actually think he’s best when he’s ruthless. There were a lot of overdue deaths in Swords and, honestly, I thought there should have been more. Despite its fantasy setting, bracing realism is what gives this series weight.
---LOL, TAKE IT ALL BACK. I'm reading Book 4 and it suuuucks.
The non-fiction genre can basically be divided into two groups: mediocre books by experts; well-written books by non-experts. I’d normally err on the side of wanting to read the latter kind of book, because who the hell wants to endure shitty prose? However, non-experts writing about a highly complicated subject matter is not without its pitfalls.
Imagine, say, a journalist wandering into a woman’s home, observing her kids for a few minutes and drawing the conclusion that they’ve been wrongly diagnosed as bipolar. The journalist - someone completely outside the medical profession - effectively accuses the mother of being a hysterical who can’t discipline her kids and so pumps them full of drugs instead.
That’s what Jon Ronson does in The Psychopath Test.
I mean, maybe Ronson is right and these kids aren’t bipolar, but since he has a BA in Media Studies (not a doctorate in Psychology), his opinion is worth about as much as that of my pet goldfish.
It’s not that The Psychopath Test isn’t diverting fare. It’s funny in places and there’s none of the turgid prose you might expect from an academic. But there’s really no there there.
Ronson boasts the book’s lack of structure proudly. This was a journey he took, whimsically bouncing from subject to subject (and from country to country), but unfortunately the end result is just a mess. It’s not really about psychopaths, because Ronson wanders off that subject into the aforementioned bipolar stuff, by way of some conspiracy theory tosh that he lifted from his previous book, and yet another rehash of Paul Britton’s undoing.
Shouldn’t journalists be searching for the truth?
Ronson just seems like he’s searching for the next thing he can spin into a witty book in order to earn his next paycheck.
Gone (Gone, #1) - Michael Grant (fiction, teen, fantasy) (**)
Gone is a Lord of the Flies/Heroes mash-up: everyone over the age of 14 disappears, leaving a bunch of kids to forge their own adult-free society - and it’s no coincidence that some of the kids have also developed superpowers.
However, it was the TV series Lost that Michael Grant’s dystopian epic reminded me of most strongly. They have in common a sense of “I’ll just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”. If you’re willing to follow Gone down the rabbit hole (or down the glowing hatch), you might enjoy it. But, personally, I found it difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to immerse myself in Grant’s world.
The trouble is, Grant doesn’t seem to trust the inherent drama of his premise. Lord of the Flies is about normal children going savage, but Gone is about psychopathic children going savage. Grant pulls out a narrative cheat by conveniently placing a school for troubled teens within the novel’s setting. It’s much less fascinating to read about a bunch of mentally-disturbed bullies becoming... slightly more mentally-disturbed bullies.
Instead of digging deep into the makeshift society that the kids are forced to create, Grant just adds more and more fantasy elements to the story. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to stay engaged with it all. Once Grant adds in a telenovela-esque plot twist and some talking animals, the whole thing just gets silly.
There are some ooky gender issues within Gone - all the ‘nurturing’ falls to the girls, while the boys get all the power - but, honestly, you can’t accuse Grant of creating flat female characters, because he also creates flat male characters. I didn’t feel an emotional connection to anyone within the novel. The characters are just functions, there to prop up the plot.
(Can we call a moratorium on hearty trios consisting of a heroic boy, his doofy male best friend, and a brainiac girl? It worked in Harry Potter, but I’m a little sick of the trope now.)
If you’re looking for a dystopian teen thriller, read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother instead.
Greenlit: Developing Factual TV Ideas from Concept to Pitch - Nicola Lees (non-fiction, TV) (***)
I read Greenlit as research for a story I’m writing, but it actually turned out to be quite an enjoyable book. Nicola Lees not only gives advice to budding development producers, she also demystifies the whole process whereby documentaries and reality TV shows make it onto our screens.
The best part is the TV show case studies. Lees obviously interviewed a lot of producers and, in doing so, managed to glean some fascinating stories about how shows like Survivor, Supernanny and The Deadliest Catch came to be greenlit. For example: Supernanny had an air date before it had a leading lady. And eventual star Jo Frost is the world’s most unlikely pottymouth.
(Kudos to this book indeed, because it actually made me want to watch The Deadliest Catch, which I never had the slightest inclination to do before.)
My only criticism would be that the attention to detail/editorial input isn’t quite there. For example, Lees spends two pages describing the inception of Robot Wars without ever mentioning the show’s name. She also starts describing cross-platform TV experiences and somehow spends a whole page writing about Survivor spoilers (why? I don’t know!). Worse are the continual instances where she simply name-checks a TV type without mentioning their job title or the channel for which they work.
(Another gripe: why is the font size so small? *weeps*)
Although mainly of interest to would-be producers, Greenlit also makes an entertaining read for TV nerds.
A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (****)
If I’m honest, the first two books in the Ice and Fire series erred on the side of *meh* for me. Poor plotting and unrealized potential let them down. So it was heartening to find that A Storm of Swords is a massive improvement.
The plotting is much tauter (although George RR Martin’s scene construction continues to drive me crazy*), and the set pieces are more vivid and shocking. The various story threads are still wildly disparate, but Martin finally seems to grasp the importance of creating parallels and recurrent themes.
(*I swear, every single chapter begins with a character staring off into middle distance and brooding about their emotional state. Then we get a lengthy description of the landscape. And then, finally, after about 5 pages, the action resumes. Do I have to point out that this isn’t good scene construction?)
Daenerys’s storyline resumes its rightful place as the BEST EVER OMG, and it’s clear that part of the reason it succeeds is that Martin’s real skill lies in world-building details. By contrast, it’s no surprise that King’s Landing, of which there is so little new to say, became the least interesting story strand.
I often see Martin criticized in fandom for being a harsh puppet-master, but I actually think he’s best when he’s ruthless. There were a lot of overdue deaths in Swords and, honestly, I thought there should have been more. Despite its fantasy setting, bracing realism is what gives this series weight.
---LOL, TAKE IT ALL BACK. I'm reading Book 4 and it suuuucks.