[Book Reviews] Biters, Cursers, Dealers, Invaders, and other theatrical types
My Powell's impulse purchase was the technically accurate but somewhat overblown "Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings". While I generally enjoy real-life medical stories, this collection seemed to be a bit hyped to deliberately trigger a kind of delighted horror in the reader. That wasn't my interest. And while I did glean a few good tidbits of information from it (such as the ineffectiveness of vinegar washes on Portuguese man o' war stings) and a few confirming bits of personal experience (oh hey, there is a time delay before the neurotoxin from a black widow's bite kicks in, which makes it even more likely that that's what got me), overall I think there are better ways I could have spent $15. The book would also have been greatly improved by some illustrations of both the bitey critters and the results of their payload poisons, bacteria, viruses, etc. I don't think I'll be seeking out the other books of this author ("The Woman With A Worm In Her Head"? No.) -- it's just too much "OMG NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE" for me. Two parasitic amoebas out of five; I should have gone with "Parasite Rex".
Okay, "Cursor's Fury" makes it official -- I love Jim Butcher. My jury was out on this series for the first two books, despite my fondness for his hapless dork hero in the Dresden Files series. But success in urban fantasy does not success in sword-and-sorcery make, and I was chary about this new series since it looked so, well, common. But all props to Mr. Butcher for making it through three books without having his magicless hero suddenly discover that he has the Biggest Magic Power Evar; I kept waiting for that and cringing, and it didn't happen. (Or the just as dreadfully cliched My Power Is No Power, Ha Ha Ha You Can't Touch Me Magic Villain. Didn't do that either.) Although it's a different genre, I was reminded of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles books... same sort of ballsy plucky underdog saving the world despite nontrivial handicaps. (I loved those books too.) Interesting plot, enough world-detective stuff to keep your brain working, and pacing that lets you figure things out at about the same time as the protagonist if you're sharp. I think that's my ideal... I dislike both "I saw this coming 900 pages ago, why didn't you, oh moron hero" and "what? But that doesn't make any... aaagh, whatever". I was also pleased with his character's unexpected developments, he sets up plenty of interesting scenarios for future books, and his tactical dynamics and strategies are also well-rendered. Four exploding siege engines out of five.
In my attempts to read something outside my usual fare, I went for "Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm", an autobiographical graphic novel describing the life of hip-hop MC and sometime drug dealer Percy Carey, a.k.a. M.F. Grimm. The format of the novel really added to the emotional feel of it, making it starker and harsher than the same text would have been alone. And since one knows from the cover page how the story ends (it shows you Grimm in a wheelchair, post-prison), the interest is mainly in how he gets there. It's a hard read for the compassionate, in large part because the protagonist is not a likable person and makes no apologies for that. (When he comes to in the hospital and stabs his doctor, he really lost a lot of my sympathy.) But I don't want to just dismiss it as "not like me, therefore a jerk" -- the guy has clearly had a lot of life experiences that I haven't. (Regularly occurring shootouts would, I imagine, confer a harsher outlook on reality than I've had to experience.) I had a lot of sympathy for his mother and her attempts to get him to straighten up, and I laughed out loud at the scene where she punches out the pimp coming on to her daughter. Go Mom go. The book succeeded as a work of art, though, in shaking up my worldview and getting me to spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix violence and exploitation as the path out of poverty. Three and a half disturbing thoughts out of five.
My second Jared Diamond book (thank you, miss_adventure!), "Guns, Germs, & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" was a well-argued and interesting read investigating why the course of human history and who invaded whom unfolded as it did. And while I abstractly knew this, sadly, the one thing that the book most strongly emphasized to me was how massively unfair life is. Born into an area with few domesticable species? Sorry, but you're probably going to get conquered and genocided. Not enough east-west axis on your continent? Prepare for the invading army with their superior disease resistance. Etc. While I don't think his arguments are complete explanations (in this book, as in Collapse, he comes up with these factors that he explores but never explains how he got them), I do think that they go a long way towards explaining how we got where we are so far, and it's a vast improvement on all the stupid "$people are just less intelligent than us Aryans and that's why we won" racist idiocy that's the commonly promoted alternative explanation. (Everyone knows that scoring well on IQ tests makes you germ resistant, after all! [rolls eyes]) And I loved Diamond's point about indigenous people doing really well on most cognition tests in comparison to passive TV-watching first worlders. I'd really like to read further on what causes a well-functioning civilization to turn inwards and stop advancing technologically... there are several instances of that in human history (feudal Japan, early dynastic China), and I don't think we really understand why. It seems to me like that's also a majorly important factor. Anyway, very worthwhile read -- four marching herds of domestic beasties out of five.
In further efforts of reading things outside of my usual genres, I picked up Zeami's classic treatise on Noh theater acting "The Flowering Spirit: Classic Teachings on the Art of No" (Fushikaden). It didn't hurt that this was translated by one of my favorite Japanese translators into English, William Scott Wilson. [grin] Anyway, I found the first large chunk of the book and the intro completely incomprehensible, in part because I just don't know enough (read: anything) about Noh. Aaah, high context cultures. I don't blame Wilson for that; his footnotes are excellent as always. It's just that I don't know enough to understand the text -- regardless of how accessible you want it to be, as a translator, there's only so much you can do. Theater folk may find the work interesting, as it offers advice as to the development of an actor over the course of their lives, and how to work with different kinds of role-playing so as to give the most spirited and poignant performance. It also discusses how to stagger the use of your skills for maximum impact, adjusting to the environment you're performing in and the surrounding events. I find myself unable to give this book a rating, as my understanding is insufficient to comment on it, but I certainly found it interesting, and I imagine other thespians would too.
Okay, "Cursor's Fury" makes it official -- I love Jim Butcher. My jury was out on this series for the first two books, despite my fondness for his hapless dork hero in the Dresden Files series. But success in urban fantasy does not success in sword-and-sorcery make, and I was chary about this new series since it looked so, well, common. But all props to Mr. Butcher for making it through three books without having his magicless hero suddenly discover that he has the Biggest Magic Power Evar; I kept waiting for that and cringing, and it didn't happen. (Or the just as dreadfully cliched My Power Is No Power, Ha Ha Ha You Can't Touch Me Magic Villain. Didn't do that either.) Although it's a different genre, I was reminded of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles books... same sort of ballsy plucky underdog saving the world despite nontrivial handicaps. (I loved those books too.) Interesting plot, enough world-detective stuff to keep your brain working, and pacing that lets you figure things out at about the same time as the protagonist if you're sharp. I think that's my ideal... I dislike both "I saw this coming 900 pages ago, why didn't you, oh moron hero" and "what? But that doesn't make any... aaagh, whatever". I was also pleased with his character's unexpected developments, he sets up plenty of interesting scenarios for future books, and his tactical dynamics and strategies are also well-rendered. Four exploding siege engines out of five.
In my attempts to read something outside my usual fare, I went for "Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm", an autobiographical graphic novel describing the life of hip-hop MC and sometime drug dealer Percy Carey, a.k.a. M.F. Grimm. The format of the novel really added to the emotional feel of it, making it starker and harsher than the same text would have been alone. And since one knows from the cover page how the story ends (it shows you Grimm in a wheelchair, post-prison), the interest is mainly in how he gets there. It's a hard read for the compassionate, in large part because the protagonist is not a likable person and makes no apologies for that. (When he comes to in the hospital and stabs his doctor, he really lost a lot of my sympathy.) But I don't want to just dismiss it as "not like me, therefore a jerk" -- the guy has clearly had a lot of life experiences that I haven't. (Regularly occurring shootouts would, I imagine, confer a harsher outlook on reality than I've had to experience.) I had a lot of sympathy for his mother and her attempts to get him to straighten up, and I laughed out loud at the scene where she punches out the pimp coming on to her daughter. Go Mom go. The book succeeded as a work of art, though, in shaking up my worldview and getting me to spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix violence and exploitation as the path out of poverty. Three and a half disturbing thoughts out of five.
My second Jared Diamond book (thank you, miss_adventure!), "Guns, Germs, & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" was a well-argued and interesting read investigating why the course of human history and who invaded whom unfolded as it did. And while I abstractly knew this, sadly, the one thing that the book most strongly emphasized to me was how massively unfair life is. Born into an area with few domesticable species? Sorry, but you're probably going to get conquered and genocided. Not enough east-west axis on your continent? Prepare for the invading army with their superior disease resistance. Etc. While I don't think his arguments are complete explanations (in this book, as in Collapse, he comes up with these factors that he explores but never explains how he got them), I do think that they go a long way towards explaining how we got where we are so far, and it's a vast improvement on all the stupid "$people are just less intelligent than us Aryans and that's why we won" racist idiocy that's the commonly promoted alternative explanation. (Everyone knows that scoring well on IQ tests makes you germ resistant, after all! [rolls eyes]) And I loved Diamond's point about indigenous people doing really well on most cognition tests in comparison to passive TV-watching first worlders. I'd really like to read further on what causes a well-functioning civilization to turn inwards and stop advancing technologically... there are several instances of that in human history (feudal Japan, early dynastic China), and I don't think we really understand why. It seems to me like that's also a majorly important factor. Anyway, very worthwhile read -- four marching herds of domestic beasties out of five.
In further efforts of reading things outside of my usual genres, I picked up Zeami's classic treatise on Noh theater acting "The Flowering Spirit: Classic Teachings on the Art of No" (Fushikaden). It didn't hurt that this was translated by one of my favorite Japanese translators into English, William Scott Wilson. [grin] Anyway, I found the first large chunk of the book and the intro completely incomprehensible, in part because I just don't know enough (read: anything) about Noh. Aaah, high context cultures. I don't blame Wilson for that; his footnotes are excellent as always. It's just that I don't know enough to understand the text -- regardless of how accessible you want it to be, as a translator, there's only so much you can do. Theater folk may find the work interesting, as it offers advice as to the development of an actor over the course of their lives, and how to work with different kinds of role-playing so as to give the most spirited and poignant performance. It also discusses how to stagger the use of your skills for maximum impact, adjusting to the environment you're performing in and the surrounding events. I find myself unable to give this book a rating, as my understanding is insufficient to comment on it, but I certainly found it interesting, and I imagine other thespians would too.