book reviews: half-assed edition
I have to admit that since March, I've only read five books. The first four were George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which is hugely problematic from almost any social angle, but has swords and wolves and thereby qualifies as escapist fluff for me. Also, Martin's pen name is such a blatant rip-off of Tolkien that it irks me, and by the fourth book I am wondering if this series is not going downhill fast. He claims that it was all one big book that his editors split in two and that all the characters I actually give a crap about will be in the fifth and last book, but I have my doubts. Some serious deus ex machina and/or multiple character deaths are going to be required. Seriously, all the ironmen could drown in a hurricane and I'd cheer. Was that storyline even remotely necessary? This is looking more like WOT than LOTR. And speaking of WOT, Martin was the guy picked to finish it, which seems to me to be more a nod to his rising authorian star than to any similiarity between his style and the late, unlamented Mr. Jordan's. So we shall see. WOT is supposed to be wrapped up in one book now. I'll be buying it just to finish my collection and then probably selling the lot on ebay b/c I'm tired of it taking up room on my shelves. Argh.
The fifth book was Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear. This was less a book and more a meta analysis of media reporting and statistics. I have the same problem with this as with The Gospel of Food: Glassner presents dense, researched data but fails to do more with it than make the most tenuous of connections between the data and what could be done with it. There's no context and no thesis or theory beyond the title blurb. It's like the book is half-finished. To be fair, this was better than The Gospel of Food, for precisely that reason. In Food, Glassner tried to marry his stats with a "don't worry; be happy" approach to eating, which failed miserably b/c he ignored context. There was some context in Fear, but it was slim, and Glassner wisely avoided tacking a solution onto such a flimsy backing. To be honest, though, I don't really recommend either book, b/c you can get similiar data, with more thorough analysis, from other sources, and also b/c...Glassner is not that good a writer. His prose is really dry and clinical. I'm not normally one to complain about this, but I found it hard to keep focused when reading both Food and Fear. Whatever other ADD manifestations I might have, reading is almost always a hyperfocused activity for me. So...if I can't pay attention to a book, I feel like it must be really bad, and not something to inflict on anyone unless its other merits justify a slog. And this book doesn't.
The fifth book was Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear. This was less a book and more a meta analysis of media reporting and statistics. I have the same problem with this as with The Gospel of Food: Glassner presents dense, researched data but fails to do more with it than make the most tenuous of connections between the data and what could be done with it. There's no context and no thesis or theory beyond the title blurb. It's like the book is half-finished. To be fair, this was better than The Gospel of Food, for precisely that reason. In Food, Glassner tried to marry his stats with a "don't worry; be happy" approach to eating, which failed miserably b/c he ignored context. There was some context in Fear, but it was slim, and Glassner wisely avoided tacking a solution onto such a flimsy backing. To be honest, though, I don't really recommend either book, b/c you can get similiar data, with more thorough analysis, from other sources, and also b/c...Glassner is not that good a writer. His prose is really dry and clinical. I'm not normally one to complain about this, but I found it hard to keep focused when reading both Food and Fear. Whatever other ADD manifestations I might have, reading is almost always a hyperfocused activity for me. So...if I can't pay attention to a book, I feel like it must be really bad, and not something to inflict on anyone unless its other merits justify a slog. And this book doesn't.