Pages on my Mind

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

2010-02-16T14:20:00.003-05:00

Another enjoyable non-fiction read. I've let too much time lapse since I've read it to do it justice. It succeeded in giving a taste of the data mining we expose ourselves to as we throw of all the bits of our personal info into the internet, with and without our knowledge. It's an interesting interface of privacy, technology, and the positive and negative impacts that will follow in the years to come.

The book was light on actual math; long on conversations with people in the field, and. offered many insights at an appropriately lay-person level. I think it's worth reading for a good and timely take on how society is going to be quantified (and is quantified). I certainly believe this is a trend that is only going to escalate and will absolutely impact your personal life. It would be a shame not to be aware of it.

An easy and illuminating read that raises concerning questions without being alarmist.

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen

2009-12-08T12:23:00.004-05:00

This was a pretty good book. I picked it up because I've always wondered how much of the little I knew about Marco Polo was fable and how much was fact and figured I should read a non-fiction book every now and then. I was pleasantly surprised.This book was eye opening about the state of knowledge during Marco's days, how much Marco influenced the world, and how complicated and subjective reconstructing his life and travels really is. The book is well written, highlights the high-points for you, and does a good job of explaining why the reader should care. It's packed with detail and reads well. I thought it admirably balanced story-telling, fact presenting, and context setting. I'm glad I read it.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

2009-08-18T08:44:00.010-04:00

Where to begin... The paperback edition weighs in at 893 pages. After reading, you can’t help but think. What is it all about? When you read other professional reviews you see words like ‘electrifying’, ‘devastating’, ‘masterpiece’… the superlatives just pile up. But none quite prepare you for the experience of reading it. And, I would add that after reading it the superlatives don’t really work; I’m not sure we even have a vocabulary for describing works like this. A review by Adam Kirsch at Slate reads,

“According to Proust, one proof that we are reading a major new writer is that his writing immediately strikes us as ugly. Only minor writers write beautifully, since they simply reflect back to us our preconceived notion of what beauty is; we have no problem understanding what they are up to, since we have seen it many times before. When a writer is truly original, his failure to be conventionally beautiful makes us see him, initially, as shapeless, awkward, or perverse. Only once we have learned how to read him do we realize that this ugliness is really a new, totally unexpected kind of beauty and that what seemed wrong in his writing is exactly what makes him great.
By this standard, there is no doubt that Roberto Bolaño is a great writer.”

That seems pretty fair. Mr. Kirsch continues later to add,

“It is a shame for a reviewer to have to reveal even the outlines of these stories: The best way to experience 2666 is without warning, as in a dream in which you find yourself on a road that could lead absolutely anywhere.”

I would add that his use of ‘lead’ is mis-leading as it implies the promise a identifiable destination. But otherwise I also agree.

As I’ve said in other postings, there is no shortage of reviews in the world. I avoided reading them until after I finished 2666. If you love reading and truly love the experience of discovering something different and profound on your journey, I strongly encourage you to do the same. Granted, I doubt anyone reads these posts.

2666 has 5 chapters. Each unique, each without any particular plot or resolution. None of them obviously indicating where 2666 is going. However, as you read, little clues seep out and threads start to tie together. Or perhaps they unravel. It’s a bit of a mystery why…or what.

Semblance. This word appears significant. I believe 2666 attempts to demonstrate the semblance of life’s meaning, of human endeavor. And by taking the reader down paths that twine and unravel, that can be beautiful, insane, dreadful, immediate, detached, clinical…, Bolaño’s virtuosity shows that anything we derive from experience of life is simply semblance. We seek purpose and meaning, we perceive form and appearance. The individual pursuits by which we attempt to frame humanity amount to little more than gesture.

Chapter 1: The Part About the Critics introduces for literary critics who devote their careers to the analysis of the works of Benno von Archimboldi. We tediously follow their travels from conference to conference. We reiterate endlessly their passion and love of the works, the depth of their intellectual pursuit (Tellingly, learn absolutely nothing about the substance of what von Archimboldi actually writes). We follow the critics as they start sleeping with each other. Their intimate relations are cool and portrayed with little passion. Archimboldi is nominated for the Nobel, but nothing is known about him beyond his works. The critics stake their careers on a clue that Archimboldi is living in Mexico near Santa Theresa. They travel to Mexico. The closer they get to the end of their lead, the more they start fall apart. The trail goes cold, as does their confidence in the worthiness of their profession and their enthusiasm for their sexual relations. We learn women are being murdered in Santa Theresa.

I found book one tedious and sterile. After 150 pages I was feeling cheated, ‘Ok, ok, made his point that intellectual pursuits are empty and that lacking passion in love slowly kills your passion for life. Get on with it. We’ve got 800 more pages.' On the plus side, it’s certainly interesting how Bolaño gets inside the characters through extensive descriptions of their dreams. This creates a slightly disturbing sense that perception and reality aren’t so easily compartmentalized.

One review I read suggested that 2666 is a date on the future horizon, a vanishing point where the story is resolved. To take this suggestion and run with it, the vanishing point, the end, the conclusion is death. Reaching the end of one’s pursuits, especially empty ones, constricts one’s construct of the semblance of life to nil, emptiness, the infinite vanishing point. The critics nearly got there, and pulled back.

But what about the murders?

Chapter 2: The Part About Amalfitano. Sudden transition to a minor character of the previous chapter, Amalfitano. A minor literary critic who had aided the four critics in Mexico. The book begins to redeem itself. Amalfitano has a beautiful daughter and they are loving and functional together. His wife left to follow a mystic poet. Again, the pursuit of high ideals leads one away from love and family. Amalfitano is going insane. (I seemed to find through out 2666, the insane seem so mentally healthy and connected to what matters). Almalfitano hangs a geometry text on a clothes line for no apparent reason other than to see how it, the text, reacts. Amalfitano knows he’s going insane, he observes the deterioration of the mind and the deterioration of the text. The text I believe represents rational constructions of the form of the world—geometry, as created by rational minds. How absurd they seem through the eyes of someone losing his mind. Yet, Amalfitano is a wonderfully whole character. Rich in humanness. And he worries about his daughter. After all, women are being murdered in Santa Theresa.

Chapter 3: The Part About Fate. The title here perhaps a bit of a joke by the author. By this time in the reading, you feel as if it’s time for the author to come clean about what it all means, where’s the plot taking us. ‘About Fate’ seems to be a weighty and significant title. Ta Dah! Nope. Fate is the last name of a black American journalist sent to Santa Theresa to cover a boxing match, he’s not even a sports writer. He writes for a black-owned and operated magazine and the sports writer died. When he gets the word to go to Mexico, he’s in the middle of interviewing a former Black Panther, Barry. Barry gives motivational speeches. But Barry is clearly nuts, at least judging from the text of his talks. However, I have to say one of his speeches is beautifully profound, kind of. Fate describes one speech.

“He talked about the stars you see at night, say when you’re driving from Des Moines to Lincoln on Route 80 and the car breaks down, the way they do, maybe it’s the oil or the radiator, maybe it’s a flat tire, and you get out and get the jack and the spare tire out of the trunk and change the tire, maybe half an hour, at most, and when you’re done you look up and see the sky full of stars. The Milky Way. He talked about star athletes. That’s a different kind of star, he said, and he compared them to movie stars, though as he said, the life of an athlete is generally much shorter. A star athlete might last 15 years at best, whereas a movie star could go on for 40 or 50 years if he or she started young. Meanwhile, any star you could see from the side of Route 80 . . . might have been dead for millions of years, and the traveler who gazed up at it would never know. It might be a live star or it might be a dead star. Sometimes, depending on your point of view, he said, it doesn’t matter, since the stars you see at night exist in the realm of semblance. They are semblances, the same way dreams are semblances.”

There’s that word. Semblances. Meaningless or meaningful. Substance or substanceless. Hard to say. Like life; Like 2666.
Barry makes his way to Santa Theresa. Meets the locals. We get a feel for the town. We meet a local reporter. The murders of women become more ominous. We think we’re about to hit the mystery plot full on. Time to roll, this book is getting good.

Chapter 4: The Part About the Crimes. Whoa. I think this section was around 300 pages and I have to say it was amazing. It impacts. Now we learn about the murders. But, not in a way I was prepared for. The bulk of this chapter is blunt, unadorned descriptions of the murders. One by one, dead women are found and described. It goes chronologically, year by year, month by month. Like this.

“In the middle of November the body of another dead woman was discovered in the Podesta ravine. She had multiple fractures of the skull, with loss of brain matter. Some marks on the body indicated that she had put up a struggle. She was found with her pants down around her knees, by which it was assumed that she'd been raped, although after a vaginal swab was taken this hypothesis was discarded. Five days later the dead woman was identified. She was Luisa Cardona Pardo, thirty-four, from the state of Sinaloa, where she had worked as a prostitute from the age of seventeen. She had been living in Santa Teresa for four years and she was employed at the EMSA maquiladora.”

The relentlessness of these descriptions is ultimately heartrending. Your feel a great evil. You sense the madness. One by one you feel closer to the victims you never knew and you want some explanation, some resolution, some justice. Yet, the contrast in the chapter is the lack of societal recognition of the tradgedies occurring. I became acutely aware of the parallel in real life. The news reports, the wars, the deaths. It’s really hard to care in society today. There’s so many and they’re so removed from the things you do in your life. Eating breakfast, going to work, etc. All these events consume your daily life and take the complete precedence of your attention, while extreme tradgedy proceeds unchecked.

In between, the deaths, we follow detectives investigating the cases, we follow leads and read slices of narratives about the lives of the people the leads lead to. We become frustrated at the inability to discern a pattern, to find the guilty. Klaus Haas is arrested, a German. We spend some time in Klaus’ story. We learn of criminals, of criminal organizations, of the mechanics of wealth and power and the semblance of justice. Klaus is in jail but the murders continue. Chapter 4 is certainly the fulcrum about which the book pivots. If I could have read the chapter in one sitting, I would have. Amazing.

Chapter 5: The Part About Archimboldi. Change the subject again, change the style again. We now follow the life of Archimboldi, pen name for Hans Reiter, from odd, aquatic youth to German soldier in Nazi Germany, to writer, lover, mysterious author, and uncle of Klaus Haas. It’s a good story, largely a linear one. Hans doesn’t ever form opinions. He lives, he observes, he exists. He shows great capacity for life and he resonates as a sympathetic character. He develops a style of writing that sounds very much like that of Bolaño. The chapter has many self-referential comments about writing. And a hits on semblances repeatedly. For example:

“He began to think about semblance…and he began to think about himself. He felt free, as he never had in his life, and although malnourished and weak, he also felt the strength to prolong as far as possible this impulse toward freedom, toward sovereignty. And yet the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance troubled him. Semblance was an occupying force of reality, he said to himself, even the most extreme, borderline reality. It lived in peoples sould and thir actions, in willpower and in pain, in the way memories and prioritites were ordered. Semblance proliferated in the salons of the industrialists and in the underworld. It set the rules, it rebelled against its own rules (in uprisings that could be bloody, but didn’t therefore cease to be semblance), it set new rules.
National Socialism was the ultimate realm of semblance. As a general rule, he reflected, love was also semblance. My love for lotte isn’t semblance. Lotte is my sister and she’ little and she thinks I’m a giant. But love, ordinary love, the love of a man and a woman, with breakfasts and dinners, with jealousy and money and sadness, is playacting, or semblance. Yourth is the semblance of strength, love is the semblance of peace…"

In conclusion. Yes, it’s a good book. It probably redefines what good can be. I don’t know, I’m not a literary critic. It works on levels that extend beyond the story, which to me is a hallmark of a great novel. Did I feel I was reading a great work of literature? Chapter 4, yes. The rest of the book, I felt I was reading a good work. It didn’t meet the hype, rather it side-stepped it and delivered something else. The test of time will tell us what it actually delivered. Check back in 2666, I suppose.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

2009-08-05T12:47:00.005-04:00

I was skeptical about this book as it seems only my more 'crunchy' friends were recommending it. Then my very non-crunchy father gave it a nod and I decided to dive in.

Wow. I have to say, this is a must read for everyone who eats. Period.

A fantastic book that presents our relationship to food in ecological, phylosophical, industrial, cultural, personal and even scientific contexts. The book exceptionally well researched and constructed, although you'd never need to notice because it is also so well written. Often when something is decribed as thought provoking, I interpret that as meaning I'm going to have to think hard to understand it. Well, this book is though provoking because it presents so many immediate issues of direct impact to everyone's lives, in such a straigh-forward, enjoyable to read manner, you wonder why no one has ever done this before. Maybe they have, but I suspect that this is a one-of-a-kind book.

It doesn't preach, it doesn't take sides (not very much anyway). What it does is show the cost of bringing food to the table beyond the price you pay at the store. It argues that maybe it's time that you and the world take the question of 'What should I eat' with the gravity that feeding yourself deserves. I challenge anyone to read this and not come away unaffected. In a few years health problems resulting from diet are going to be the number one cost driver in health care. It's time to re-examine how we eat.

Again the quality of the research behind this book is exemplary. I'm sure many might wish the book to stronger stances against or for things. But that's not the point. The point is to start a dialog; to prod individuals to question. I applaud Pollan for maintaining as much neutrality as he was able. The end product is an amazing, accessible and thought provoking book. A must read.

By the way, Twinkie, Deconstructed is still a worthy read as well.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

2009-08-05T12:21:00.002-04:00

I didn't realize, until I looked it up in Wiki, that Neverwhere is an adaptation of a BBC television series by Gaiman. I'll have to go rent that now. In this book Richard Mayhew (a normal person, of course), with a fiancee several social status levels above him, rescues a bleeding, injured girl named Door. And, thus, he enters a parallel Underworld beneath the streets of London. Underworld is a vast and oddly magical community of all those who seem to fall or disappear from the normal world above. A world full of the less seemly, where alliances are made and what you don't understand can kill you. Underworld is a fascinating mix of real modern subway grit and grim and feudal fiefdoms that don't really exist in the real world.

I loved the inventiveness and richness of the character Door. Her familial talent to act as a key to unlock and journey through doors. Again, I thoroughly enjoy the way Gaiman imbues magical qualities in human form. Door is a wonderful character I liked much the same way as I liked his personification of Death in the Sandman series.

Neverwhere delivers rich descriptive story telling that creates a believable world. I found myself peering into the dark corners of subway systems for quite awhile, hoping to catch a glimse of some of this world.

The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

2009-08-03T21:33:00.003-04:00

Another good yarn from Gaiman. A folk tale, essentially. Usually, I feel when I read Gaiman's prose that it creates a subliminal cadence through the book, a groove in my mind anyway that echoes the form of the story. Anansi Boys had the groove of a folk lore story told as a fireside chant. This groove doesn't really occur in my mind line by line, but more paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter. Ananzi Boys had a feel of wonder, magic and that things could not turn out any other way than they did. That the destiny of the gods among us works out the way it does because that is their destiny. This stories genesis is with the West African spider God, Anansi.

Granted, my musings don't really have much to do with the story, just my perception. Your mileage may vary. Fat Charlie just wants to be average, the tricks and tales of his father have plagued him his whole life and he just wants to be normal. The brother he didn't know he had has all the charm. He surprised when he's told he has a brother and skeptical when also told that his brother can be contacted by asking a spider (any spider) to invite his brother over.

I love the way Gaiman transitions from normal reality to magic. There's the moment when Fat Charlie makes the leap to ask a spider and then reality slowly dissolves and the story grows. A good yarn always asks the reader to make that mental leap away from reality and into the story. With Gaiman its easy to begin to wonder if the magic isn't real after all.

Ranking the story against his others... I like American Gods best, Neverwhere more(comments pending). Still an enjoyable and recommended read.

The Rainmaker by John Grisham

2009-08-03T21:27:00.003-04:00

Dull, but passes the time. Not the best from Grisham.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

2009-04-02T07:53:00.007-04:00

Frightening. I didn't actually know what the book was about when I picked it up. I enjoyed Everyman and had decided to add some more of Roth's books to my queue. I didn't expect it would be a re-imagining of history as if Charles Lindberg, aviator and Nazi sympathizer became president on a platform of keeping the US out of WWII. I though, 'hoo boy, this is going to be hard to suspend disbelief on. Well, it was and it wasn't.
Obviously, we didn't elect a Nazi supporter and although the book slid into the concept fairly unobtrusively, it ultimately is hard to buy. It requires one to reimagine the US as xenophobic and easily duped; you'd have to assume that the white America heartland dominates political thought. Accept that unlikely premise and the book seems very true.
It would likely feel more true if one had a personal history of feeling persecuted in one's family/community.
That said, the book has a certain element of visceral dread. Of a country eating itself. I found the tone compelling and frightening. Finishing up this write up several months after I read the book, it still sticks with me, but maybe seems more contrived. I wouldn't call it a great book by a great author. Maybe a decent book by a great author.

Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Viktor Pelevin

2009-02-05T12:23:00.006-05:00

This was one of the NYTimes top 10 best of 2008. I basically ask for most of the fiction list for Christmas. I didn't realize the risque nature of the cover, or the book, making it a bit awkward at a family opening.

It's translated from Russian and reviews promised fun, philosophy, as well as satire. ...I don't know.

It was an OK read. Not great. There was a lot of brooding and side observations dressed up in literary and political allusions. Could be I'm just to simple minded to get the big picture, however, I didn't feel that it achieved any great meaning or synthesis. Rather it dumped a bunch of intellectual seeming droppings on an otherwise thin fantasy tail about were-creatures.

The may have been layers of meaning. There certainly seemed to be an impression of layers of meaning. Lots and lots of potentially overlapping layers. It could be fun to probe this. I just didn't find the book compelling enough to spend the effort probing into these layers.

From a pure fantasy perspective. I didn't get the arc of the plot really either. What was the point?

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

2009-02-05T12:20:00.004-05:00

I had a blast reading this book. It's a time travel farce/romance/mystery novel. In the future, someone returns from the past with a cat from the Victorian era. This creates incongruities in the fabric of time that may destroy history. The mission, take the cat back. But, apparently excessive time travel makes one a little loopy. Our hero arrives in the 1800s with a mission, but not quite knowing what that mission is. He was sent on this mission so he could get some rest from his employer. Who is trying to rebuild a replica of Coventry Cathedral in the future after the original was made into a shopping mall.

Like I say above, you can locate better plot summaries elsewhere on the web. What I liked about this book was the conversations. They were witty and sharp. And for the first half of the book portrayed a time addled traveler very well. I was laughing for many chapters. The suspense of the book was sweet. For me it wasn't whether they'd save the universe so much as if they'd actually get to fall in love. The first half of the book was more fun than the second, but as the mystery progressed, you start to realize that everything was based on the wrong assumptions, the plot gets more entangled...the book switches over from farce to pretty good who done it. Or, better, when done it. I think.

Along the way there's comments on art, poetry, literature. All in all my kind of fun book. A bit long for an airplane, however. I did read most of it on planes, but emphasize planes, plural. It is a good travel/vacation read despite the slight heft in length.

The Mission Song by John le Carré

2009-01-31T20:12:00.003-05:00

A perfectly adequate read. Le Carré does a good story. This story didn't really hit any pulse throbbing highs. It was more of a character story revolving around a multilingual translator mediating a coup in Africa, his home country. All the characters were developed well. I thought he got inside the head of his character better than his other novels I've read. And, the plot was tight and intricate. So, overall, a good book for the plane or any other time killing occasion. A cut above fluff, not necessarily memorable.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King

2009-01-17T21:44:00.004-05:00

I've only read a few Stephen King novels, The Stand, of course. Dreamcatcher. I've been consistently surprised by how much I enjoy them. I liked this one too. It wasn't quite horror. A lot of it was pleasurably dreamy and touching. Woman can't quite get over the loss of her husband a famous author (with passing similarities to Mr. King, I thought). She talks to him, he talks back. He leads her on a puzzle hunt through memory, time, and alternate reality.

I love how King takes the ordinary, expresses it so well, and slowly builds it into something complex that spans reality, emotion, and the supernatural. This story had a very human heart to it. Loss, love, desire for a safer place. The book worked in classic King fashion, but I though enriched it by connecting with real sincere emotions and maturity.

I like it.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

2008-12-09T08:44:00.004-05:00

Another book with a movie I haven't seen. Krakauer tells a good tale. I really enjoyed Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, and was really impressed with Under the Banner of Heaven: A story of Violent Faith.

I dunno. I enjoyed the story. You do get a decent feeling of glimpsing the mind of a young man that would leave everything behind to experience life to the fullest. Krakauer's also pretty honest about why the story attracted him, and that personal connection adds to the book. In the end though, I found myself coming down on the side of, "why do we need to glorify the youthful stupidity that would lead a young man into the wild to die.

Granted, Krakauer succeeded in convincing me that Christopher McCandless wasn't stupid and more so likely succumbed not to an inability to live off the land, but to toxic mold. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that this was just the story of another careless person not thinking...and paying for it.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

2008-11-25T14:46:00.005-05:00

I didn't realize that this was about to be a major motion picture.

This book was certainly gripping and an entertaining read. The author goes on a little long about the human condition and society but not enough to kill the story. General gist is that with out our eyesight and thus the functioning of society, we're more or less animals. Dogs are drawn upon for comparison. The author would have us fear that we are just a slight step away from our fellow mammals.

Scientifically, I have issues with 'viruses' that act in a few hours. I got over it though.

I have a hard time envisioning how this will break any new ground on the big screen. It's basically a sci-fi thriller with a gimmick of everyone going blind. The book makes a good read because it can go inside the head of the characters.

A fair read. I was engrossed.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2008-10-20T08:02:00.004-04:00

Ah...back to good books. Not exactly sure what I thought about this book as a whole. In brief, boy finds amazing book by unknown author. Someone is destroying all books by author. Boy decides to find out more about author. The plot thickens in post-revolution Spain where everyone has ghosts they'd either like release or bury forever. It was a good book , no doubt about it. Once again affirming for me that reading The Da Vinci Code was a waste of time (what a dumb book that was).
Howver, The Shadow of the Wind seemed to glide from one genre to another as it progressed. For me, this pulled me out of the story as I got distracted wondering what kind of book this was supposed to be. For me, it didn't live up to the hype of recommendations. Maybe I just circulate with a bunch of Zafon fans, I dunno. In the first section of the book, the main character is a boy. The story is one of wonder and mystery. Then he gets older and meets a beautiful blind girl. "Aha!" I think, "It's a coming of age story with mystery." Move forward a few more years and all of a sudden the protagonist is smart and dark humored. I guess it's really a noir genre, hard-boiled with a twist of naivette (can books be noir or is the term just for film noir?). This continues.

However, the characters were excellent. The dialog very good. Every character has a secret, a love, a tradgedy. The threads connecting every one, as the hero tries to unravel the mystery, are rich and engaging. The tragedy of love weaves through out. I'd have to give it an A+ for the love interests and intrigues. The Cemetary of Lost Books is curiously a central part of the book, but a bit of a white elephant. Nothing comes of it in the end, at bit like the closet in the Chronicles of Narnia. It's just a portal to the story and little else; a quick symbol of magic and wonder that gets forgotten in the end.

Half Life by Hal Clement

2008-10-20T07:57:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I read the whole thing. Tedious. I suppose if you like excruciatingly detail about the mechanics of ramjet flight in methane atmospheres under low gravity in support of a completely boring story with hollow introspective characters, then this might be the book for you.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

2008-09-21T09:34:00.007-04:00

If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize it would have to be Greg Mortenson. What an amazing story. What an amazing life. What an amazing impact. If there were 10 people like Greg in the world, the world might very well be transformed. This book has convinced me that there is truely only one way to fight intollerance and militant fundamentalism, and that is through education, particularly of women. I plan to donate to the cause.

http://www.gregmortenson.com/

This book describes Greg Mortenson's devotion to bringing schools and education to remote Pakistan (and now Afghanistan), particularly to young girls. After failing to summit K2 (hardly a failure) he wanders into a remote Pakistani village where he recovers his health. He is overwhelmed by their generosity, their humanity, and their poverty and vows (as do many Western climbers) to do something for these people to return their kindness. He promises to build them a school. What makes Greg stand apart from the rest of humanity, is that he keeps his promise. And then continues his mission building school after school in some of the worlds most remote, harsh, and poorly understood regions. Amazing.

He estimates that it will take about $20,000 to build the first school. The problem is Greg has nothing. He lives in a car. Nothing but willpower and dedication. The rest of the story is just jaw-dropping.

2008-09-16T08:04:00.009-04:00

I couldn't put this book down. When I did, my mind would drift back to the images from the book and I'd seek any little opportunity to get back into it. I was almost wishing it were twices as long.

Gaiman has an interesting talent to weave myths and reality so that each is just as natural as the other and the distinction is not clear at all. The language he uses is so comfortable it's surprising it has the power that it does. A comparison that I don't think is unfair is to Stephen King (although Gaiman is not writing horror). King uses very ordinary language and completely sucks you in to his nightmares. Gaiman uses more poetic but still rather direct language and pulls you into his dreams.

If you've ever found yourself enjoying tales of ancient gods and dieties, mythology and magic, you'll be hooked. Stardust (written up below) is a cute and pleasant puff piece compared to American Gods. I don't particularly think American Gods has any real deep meanings. It does make a comment/exploration on what it means when diverse cultures and tribes come to America and slowly abandon their old ways. And, suggests that there are new 'Gods' that we now worship. It does make you think, and question reality a bit. Mostly, though, it's a great ride and a unique story.

Shadow is released from prison after serving three years. He's fundamentally a good guy, not troubled overly by morality but means well. Knows coin tricks. Wants to get his life back. The day he gets out he finds out his wife and his best friend died in a car crash, and then this strange dude shows up knowing all about him and offers him a job of unspecified responsibilities. Soon he's in a bar fight with a man claiming to be a leprechaun.

He enters a world of American Gods. The deities of brought to America by waves of immigration and forgotten as they left the old customs behind. Like people, the Gods are struggling to get by in tough times, a recession of faith if you will. Shadow walks both worlds, the real and the other and tries to make sense of both but not committing to either.

I can see that I'm meandering. This books strength is its imaginative power, it's suggestion of ancient dreams and gods and the impact they have, and just darn good story telling.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

2008-08-30T17:28:00.006-04:00

I enjoyed this book. I posted my thoughts on My Name is Red earlier. Sadly, I've been a bit over committed lately and haven't had time to put more effort into this blog, the kind of effort I would like. One of the things I extract out good fiction is a sense of the culture behind it. That' a lame way of saying that I appreciated Snow for the perspective it gave me on Islamic identity. The story takes place in Turkey, the town of Kars. Ka is a poet and political exile returning from Frankfurt to Turkey to write about the recent suicides of headscarf girls. And, to meet and marry the beautiful Ipek.

The story is layered and complex. It's a love story and a tragedy. The metaphor of Snow runs thoughout. The general gist of the metaphor (not the narrative) is that we are all unique like snowflakes yet each of us has an internal symmetry and order that is shaped by the influence of the world. Because we necessarily have a fundamental structure in our individual, internal life, our life can only be understood by deeply probing the balance of these forces. However, like snow, we drift in our own random trajectories through life, falling to the ground silent, and eventually wash a way. That, anyway is my best attempt to phrase the intellectual introspection of the book.

The narrative of the book is very rich and what I've said above doesn't at all describe the story, which has a lot going on. I enjoyed the story, I didn't find it to be a page turner. There's a lot of crosses and double crosses and mystery regarding who is playing who for a fool that is very engaging. It's a complex book; deeply thought through but not ponderous. I didn't love it, but I did enjoy and respect it. The love story tragedy was moving although I find the relationship through a the eyes of a Turkish male to be pretty shallow. Actually, though, lots of male authors are lame at the emotional part of relationships. The lame ones are essentially, "She's beautiful and I obsess therefore I love her." This isn't too far from that, but perhaps justified in this book because culturally, women don't get much of a role in society so hows a man to have a deeper relationship anyway. From that perspective Snow provides some valuable insights and understandings into why the fundamentalist nations are so incomprehensable to Western society.

Ka lies at the nexis of fundamental Islam and Western ideal, between freedom and political repression, between love and hopelessness, art and banality, reality and dreams. The book is really a must read for the experience is brings. It's on the challenging side. Ka's experience in Kars results in many poems being revealed to him. As he continues, he begins to realize these poems have a deep symmetry that he matches to the structure of a snowflake. 6 points created by three axis lines representing reason, imagination, and memory. He places his poems on these axis and learns that they map his life. I don't think I fully appreciated the structure here. I wonder if knowing the structural conventions of Turkish poetry would have helped.

Ultimately, the contrast presented us in Snow is that of fate versus choice. The tragedy is that they are irreconcilable, I think.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

2008-08-07T07:34:00.009-04:00

I like Murakami books; I've read most of them. It pains me to say that I got nothing out of this one. Part of my disappointment is the structure of the novel. But, I'm also suspecting that a significant amount of Murakami magic was lost in translation. Which bring up one thing I've always wondered--how much of what I enjoy about Murakami is the author and how much is the translation. I'm sure there is a Japanese sensibility that resides in the language, and that not everything ports well to English. I note that After Dark was translated by Jay Rubin and that all my favorite Murakami works were translated by others (Alfred Birnbaum, Philip Gabriel). I did enjoy parts of After the Quake (Jay Rubin) but that was a series of shorts and the better ones, in my opinion, were very un-magical. The one with some magic elements I hardly remember and didn't really like. I remember thinking as I read After the Quake that something had really changed in Murakami's style, and it only occured to me weeks later that maybe it was translation.

I found the text of After Dark ordinary, clumbsy, tedious and uninspired. A handful of pages in and I was honestly thinking, "My god, hasn't this translator heard of a thesaurus!" OK, now that I've beaten up on the poor translator, I'll go spend the rest of the day criticizing the Pope's theology. What do I know?

I blame the rest of my dismay on the author. Murakami's books tend to have their protagonists finding their way to the other side of something. There is a mystery or puzzle (often dealing with memory or emotions or awareness) and the resolution involves some form of crossing over to this other place (emotional or magical). The deal with After Dark is that Murakami seems to be exploring these transitions where there really is no crossing over and resolution. The book is full of boundaries of understanding, of people connecting, of people relating and not crossing over, for whatever reason (or for no reason). The only transition that does happen is the transition from night to day. And I thought that there was a very intentional contrast between the inevitability of this transition to the other side that is inevitable, deep and indicates the true harmonious functioning of the world and the non-harmonious, halting, unpredictable, awkward failures of human beings to transit to a state of understanding another human being. So, now I've just argued that the book has some meat and, perhaps, merit. I mean, I did read it after all.

There were intersecting stories in alternate chapters. A third of the book was given over to a painfully tedious description of a woman sleeping. It was, admittedly more than just sleeping, there was Murakami weirdness involved. But man, it was tedious and clumby and uninspired. If there was a point to be made that would have made it worth reading, I'm guilty of missing it. I don't know, make a point about time and space by writing slowly and taking a lot of space? In my separation for recovering some meaning I, of course, turned to Wiki. I found a quote from a a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, Dōgen Zenji.

"To study Buddhism is to study oneself. To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to realize oneself as all things [in the world]. To realize oneself as all things is to strip off one’s own mind and body and the mind and body of others."

So maybe part of this book, and other Murakami, books is the authors own continuing quest to explore the meaning of self and identity by stripping apart his characters and asking what's left. Still, it made for tedious reading.

The characters were likeable and the dialog was actually pretty good. The almost love story was enjoyable, and made me wish there was more of it. The people were almost on par with good Murakami. It really wasn't a bad book. It was just not one of Murakami's best efforts. In the Murakami canon, I lable this forgettable. My wife liked the book. She has good taste.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

2008-08-04T11:32:00.007-04:00

Yes, this has been made into a movie. No, I haven't seen it. I was a collector of the Sandman comics that Neil wrote back in the day. They were beautiful things. I still have the entire set including a perfect, signed #1. Wonder if it's worth anything?

Gaiman, is basically a master of the fairy tale. He manages to spin a yarn of enchantment and magic, while still creating characters you can relate to as an adult. Stardust is a perfect, escapist fairytale. It weaves together, has some humor, takes you on a pleasant journey and doesn't leave a bitter aftertaste. A quick, breezy enjoyable read. And except for one breif sexual encounter with a fairy, this is mostly suitable for the older child.

From what I read of the movie, it sounds as if the movie took a tight and magical story and overblew it in to a Adventures of Baron Munchausen-like farce. One of the very pleasent aspects of the Gaima magic is its economy. He manages to create magic and wonder with very little overt effort. More beguile than bombast. His stories have the feel of a really good dream rather than really good CGI. It's not Tolkien where one feels the need to amass eons of backstory and legend to get to the motivation of the principles, neither is it Piers Anthony where the fantasy world is shallow and pretty and the characters are simplistic, if not binary. Stardust would most certainly be consumed by the Renaissance Faire types but also makes pretty decent escapism (got a long trip on an airplane or time on a beach?) for normal types too.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

2008-07-31T10:16:00.008-04:00

An excellent book. For some reason, in the past, I judged Kurt Vonnegut books by their covers and never read them. My mistake. I read Slaughterhouse-Five about 2 years ago and was impressed. Cat's Cradle also impressed me with the depth hidden under it's simplicity and humor. I suppose the book has been deconstructed by thousands better at it than me but here goes.

One of the inventors of the atomic bomb (Dr. F. Henikker) can't relate to people and lives in his head of pure science and inquiry. He invents Ice-9, a novel form of ice that is solid up to ~115 degrees F, and can see crystallization of water it touches. and dies. He three children each keep a piece of Ice-9.

The narrator and three children as adults end up on a fictitious Island... (you know, just read Wiki for a synopsis -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle). Frankly, I think synopsis spoil the fun.

The themes of the book deconstruct what it means to be part of something greater than yourself, be it religion or civilization or war or government or mythology. And, in Kurt V's humorous style pokes holes in all the assumptions people generally have that these greater things are actually good or even exist in reality. Early in the book the father is completely fascinated with string, specifically the cat's cradle game. He approaches his 6 year old son, with the string between his hands and completely frightens his son, who has never interacted with this stranger. It represents a moment of a failure to comprehend the bigger issue of learning to relate to other humans in a meaningful way. And the cat's cradle comes to represent something more in the book, as you might guess from the title. The cat's cradle signifies the greater complexity and interrelated aspects of the web of human relations, yet if you just look at it, 'it just a bunch of X's'. It represents that huge disconnect between understanding something larger and not connecting or feeling at all. Ominously, by the time the narrator realizes what it all means, there's no one left to tell.

And, the point of the book is showing the awful tragedy of failing to connect with other humans. Or worse, accepting all the big constructs of civilization (government, war, religion, mythology, etc.) as substitutes for connecting. I believe Kurt makes a poignant argument for living as an individual, not as a collective and viewing life as a something that thinking individuals must live directly rather than allowing civilizations mechanisms to take over ones life.

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

2008-07-31T09:42:00.006-04:00

Another literary thriller. I really enjoyed this one. It was a fair contrast with The Book of Air and Shadows. TBoA&S was highly constructed, intricate, and twisty. The Club Dumas gave over to more atmosphere, love of literature, dark moods, shadows, and character development. TBoA&S had a mostly logical conclusion. The Dumas Club had an element of a (enjoyable) Shaggy Dog story. The Dumas Club follows a freelance rare book dealer, Lucas Corso, with an adjustable moral code depending on the price. He is tasks with verifying the authenticity of two manuscripts, one a handwritten chapter from The Three Musketeers and the other a book for summoning the devil. As you can imagine from the title, some familiarity with the works of Dumas would help the reader become immersed in the story. Fortunately, I've read the extended Three Musketeers works (Twenty Years After, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, Man in the Iron Mask) . I've also read Moby Dick which gets referred to a bit. The plot, as the hero identifies it, is following that of the Three Musketeers. His revalation is that only by looking at it through the lens of literature does it make sense. The story takes place in Spain and France, mostly.

I liked all the characters. They were rich and developed. A young woman, Irene Adler, shows up to watch over Lucas as the mystery deepens and people start dying. Her passport gives her address as 221B Baker St. and the name is one of Sherlock Holmes' enemies. Ha ha. She may or may not be one of the fallen angels who fought on the side of Lucifer and was banished from heaven.

So, a mix of old books, mystery, death, fallen angels, gin, the occult, D' Artagnan, forgery, a bit of a thesis on the life of Dumas and the Three Musketeers... It sounds like quite a hodge-podge of stuff. It all hangs together nicely though. A good read.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

2008-07-22T08:48:00.004-04:00

I decided to read some thrillers. I understand that this one falls into the subgenre of literary thrillers. Two obvious ones leapt to mind, The DaVinci Code and The Name of the Rose. The quality of the latter far exceeding the quality of the former--The Book of Air and Shadows falling in the middle but leaning toward the better The Name of the Rose. I admit, I couldn't put The DaVinci Code down, but I was really annoyed reading it. All pace, no substance. The Name of the Rose, which I should read again someday, actually had some development and mystery.

About Air and Shadows--my impressions. This is a well crafted book. Lots of turns and twists, lots of information to think about. Lots of satisfying detail. Its very engaging and kept me guessing throughout. The plot was so intricate and woven I began to think some Deus ex Machina surprise was going to have to be invoked to solve it all. I'm happy to report the author wasn't guilty of this. At least not in any unforgivable way. Probably 99.99% of thriller/mysteries have to have small compromises, they make it exciting. Air and Shadows was by this measure very tightly and well constructed-- a definite success and a cut above.

I actually liked the characters. They were unique, different, engaging, and you got to get into their heads. Even the bad guys came off as real people. They all, however, did seem to have irreconcilable character flaws. 'Irreconcilable' isn't the right word. They all had unyielding elements of their nature that provided their motivation. The IP lawyer who can't stop womanizing, the young hero who (for reason I couldn't quite accept) is hopelessly obsessed with the girl even though she lies, cheats, steals, left her children with an abusive man, and whores around (but is otherwise a fragile thing...). anyway the characters were a bit extreme and inflexible in their character. That said their characters were complexly and fully developed. I think if a lesser book had created these characters it would just be a quick potboiler (heh, maybe like The DaVinci Code...). But in this book, they actually evoked sympathy and empathy. To a degree that surprised me as a reader. My other thought was, 'this book was certainly written by a man.' The women were not really characters. Well, can't have everything.

So, you can google somewhere else for a plot synopsis. The hunt is on for a Shakespeare related work. There's literature, professors, lawyers, gansters, nazi's (sort of), rare books, cryptography, extreme weightlifting, divorce, love... There's a lot to enjoy.

Not a great work, but a very good one.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

2008-07-04T22:32:00.006-04:00

An excellent book over all. Not as good as Everything is Illuminated (I wrote up somewhere below), in my opinion but a worthy read nonetheless. I actually didn't know this was a post 9/11 book when I started reading. What impressed me was the depth of feeling the book manages to convey about loss on a grand scale as well as loss that is intimate and personal.

The principle character is a young boy, and my nitpicky criticism is that I didn't think the boy was the right age. His given age seems just a couple years to young for his ability and independence. But then if he was older he would have lost that emotional innocence. So, I was torn. It was a great book with what I thought was a slightly impossible hero.

The book was beautiful. JSF has the ability to take real people and create fluid, creative emotional interplay. It's touching, heart wrenching and magical. I thought this book fell short of perfection just because of the impossibility of the character. Maybe because I'm a parent?

On thing JSF does really well is present the reader with a lot of seemingly unrelated images and then string them together in an emotionally coherent truth. The book was particularly interesting because the the boy was trying to reach some emotional resolution about personal loss and love in the context of a incomprehensibly huge and tragic event. Other characters in the story are also dealing with these issues and they too are almost magically and tragically portrayed. But, the boy interfaces with the world by collecting, mostly photos. The book has many interesting photos and images (the boy's) scattered through out and they have their subconscious effect of presenting that undistilled interface the boy has with the world to the reader. And as he put it together, so do we. The effect is poignant. The images a familiar, obscure in meaning, hint a things we think we could understand if we had more context. Kind of like making sense of life itself. If only we were omiscient and could see the big picture, would we be better off? Would we be at more peace with the world? We all try to make sense of the world emotionally. But really we're no better equiped at this than children and that is one of the things this book powerfully portrays. Touching.

I'd strongly recommend it, however.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2008-05-28T07:40:00.005-04:00

Another enjoyable book. The story/history of a child, Calliope Stephanides, who developed and was raised as a girl due to a rare inherited disorder, but was genetically male. So, she is intersex. More than that though, this book is about the family history of Greek immigrants, beginning several generations back in the old country and on through Detroit in the 50's-70's. I kept trying to figure out if there was some deeper metaphor in the book. Middlesex refers to the place they eventually live in Detroit and maybe represents a kind of middle-class life in addition to the obvious gender reference.

So, in the end I decided that the deeper theme of the book is about transitions. Being one thing and becoming another; and, the desires that play out as life presents options and challenges that put you on one side or the other, or hopelessly stuck in the middle. Is the Stephanides family American or Greek, can they escape lower-class and achieve upper-class status, do they hold together or fall apart. Who makes these decisions? Calliope's (aka Cal) father, Milton, would likely claim that people make their own destinies. Her grandmother would suggest that it is fate and God's curse or blessing. I suppose, Cal is a microstudy of this family history, fated to be what she is, but discovering the free will to chose who she is, with plenty of Greek mythology and eternal truths to carry her along.

In that sense, this is a great American novel, made more so by being set in Detroit. A city of potential and ambition, that divided itself and fell apart. It sounds cheesy but I suppose there's a 'united we stand divided we fall' philosophy. The story transits through wars and cultural revolutions, good times and bad, and you watch the centrifugal force that pulls families and beings apart and simultaneously you observe the centripetal force holding them together. Cal's journey is to sense these forces within her and reconcile them.

All in all, I think I enjoyed the greater family narrative about the same as Cal's personal one. The writing is smart. I'm always amazed at how well people write. Of the things on this blog, I'd say Special Topics in Calamity Physics (August '07) might be it's nearest neighbor. A coming of age girl surrounded developed by excellent writing and interesting detail, with good characters all around. Neither book, I felt, hit that home run of deeper meaning for me, but both were wholly enjoyable and recommendable.

Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger

2008-04-24T08:25:00.005-04:00

The full title is Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats.

whew. Like the Twinkie, a mouthful. I happen to love Twinkies. If I'm out at a convenience store to get milk, and my more health conscious spouse or candy loving child are not with me, I'll frequently indulge in a pack of Twinkies and a lottery ticket. Every pack is perfectly tasty; a perfect junk food form.

Yes, I've read the ingredient list. Yes, it's long. Yes, I've wondered what it all means.

Now, I don't have to wonder. This book tells all. Actually, it's pretty fascinating. It goes ingredient by ingredient and tells the story, in detail, of what each ingredient is, where it comes from, how it's made, and what it does in the Twinkie, and in modern food in general.

Each chapter is an easily digestible (ahem) unit that takes on an ingredient. Corn sweeteners. Great chapter. It's really amazing what the food industry does with corn. Anyway. I enjoyed the book. It was light reading. I read a chapter every now and then when I wanted a 10 min story. It didn't any long term commitments. It's a perfect read for those who like to entertain others (or bore others) with their obscure knowledge of factoids.

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins

2008-04-09T07:42:00.006-04:00

After reading a Tom Robbins novel reviewers seem to feel enormous pressure to describe the experience in brilliant and wild phrases. I can see why. Tom Robbins has a way of crafting extravagant sentences that are poetic and florid and twisted and exhilarating and thoughtful and brash. But mostly Fun. With this, I've now read all his novels. I think I started with Skinny Legs and All when it came out, and because I think TR readers like to compare, my favorite is Jitterbug Perfume. Villa Incognito might be in a tie for next favorite.

There's a little less of a sermonizing point to Villa Incognito, and that makes this a much more enjoyable book. TR's characters frequently expound on the function of sex, religion, and orthodoxy in society in various peculiar and alternately insightful and goofy ways. I'm often annoyed when they go on in a somewhat artificial, forced way. The reason I enjoyed Villa Incognito so much was the comfortable flow of this books prose. Yes, characters expounded. But, they were natural in their goofy element.

I think this book might be the best written of all of TR's novels. There aren't many writers like TR (my limited survey) and it would be a shame to go through life with out reading one of his books. Villa Incognito would be a good choice.

If I were to find fault with Villa Incognito, it would be this. I think he could have made a stronger point with out hurting the narrative. There are many things going on in the story that are commentaries, or maybe I should change that to 'riffs' on our current state of foreign policy that almost disappear in the story. Villa Incognito comes right on the heals of the 9/11 NYC terrorist attacks. The books story ends on that day. It's writing presumable occurred as we were contemplating invading Iraq. A time that to many, like myself, seemed a period of governmental insanity. The nation elected a none-to-bright 'compassionate conservative' who seemed to be an isolationist focused on a domestic agenda. And became a leader transformed into a reckless diplomat and fear-monger, determined to invade Iraq.

Villa Incognito tells of 3 Vietnam veterans 'lost' in the war who decided to remain lost. They are anti-war, educated and erudite. The parallels of the un-winnable Vietnam War and our current war with Iraq are pretty obvious. Also included in the book are CIA agents that more than mirror the domestic spying 'police state' elements of today.

I realize this all makes me sound like a radical, which I'm not. I opposed the Iraq war, but now that we're there I oppose with drawing, e.g.

The failure, if any, of Villa Incognito is that it lacks meaning. I should say, more obvious meaning. On the other hand, this is also its strength. it doesn't sermonize and rant like many of his other books. Villa Incognito sits back on beauty and humor and intelligence. Which is enough to make this a worthy read. It's also a rather short read.

All in all, a lovely book. And showcases the best from Tom Robbin's repertoire of word play.

Everyman by Philip Roth

2008-03-24T07:54:00.006-04:00

It's been ages since I read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych and I imagine Tolstoy and Roth are not the only authors who pondered death's inevitability. I remember DII as the slow decent of a man who was dying of unknown cause and is troubled thinking that this would not have happened to him had he led a better life.

Everyman is similar in theme but a much better work, at least for middle aged man of this century. I haven't read any other Roth books. I likely will now. It's a very easy read, short (I understand the brevity is unusual for Roth). Everyman, however, contains so much in those few pages.

The book is about dying and aging, not puppies and flowers, so I can't say it's a feel good book. It does make you want to live your life better and not waste your vitality away. There's actually a lot of honest introspection and humor from the main character. The man loves his life, screwed (literally and figuratively) a lot of it up, lived the way he wanted to live, and then in middle age his health started deteriorating. Thus, begins 25 years of bitter descent, as the body gradually fails while the mind and it's desires stay strong. If only one knew the full value of vitality while one had it. The main character never accepts his body's decline. Anger, depression, envy, bitterness are all there as well as blunt humor and insight.

There are many well crafted metaphors running through the book--Permanence (diamonds), Change and Inevitability (ocean and death that it washed ashore). The book is so well crafted and so well written, that for the most part, you don't even notice the craft that went into it. I mean this as high praise.

Everyman really is a very good book. I'd hate to read it in my 70's. It was hard enough in my 40's. But worth it.

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

2008-03-10T07:48:00.008-04:00

Well, I waded back into Pynchon again. I had a rough time with Mason & Dixon. I think largely due to needing more sleep in my life. That, and Pynchon is hard to get into. I had hard time understanding where Mason & Dixon was going. When I got to the end, I thought that the plot seemed kind of linear with very little foreshadowing or structure. Then it hit me, "this is a book that's all about linearity!", i.e. The Line. I kicked myself for being so dense. I enjoyed and struggled my way through Gravity's Rainbow which has more than its fair share of contemplation of the arc. I should've have clued in. Mason & Dixon is fundamentally a meditation on the Line.

A line can go forward or backward, you can progress along it. It divides, it bounds, it separates, it partitions. A line doesn't deviate, it transits. A line can be extended to project and radiate.

Mason & Dixon is the story of the lives of title characters and their journey to America to draw the Mason-Dixon line separating Maryland and Pennsylvania in colonial America. The line settled border disputes and came to separate the slave-free North from the slave owning South. But in it also comes to represent, as they extend the line West, the inevitability of Westward expansion and the human divisions and intersections that expansion brings.

Pynchon has so many sub-themes and micro-plots and diversions, it would take pages to summarize. There's certainly a major theme of slavery and subjugation of peoples. Obviously, black slaves and native Americans, but there's more. I think Pynchon portrays it as an inability to cross that cultural line that divides people.

The characters, Mason & Dixon, are wonderfully developed if you can track the complexities of Pynchon's storytelling. Mason, the straight man in the comedy, has personal loss of his wife that haunts him making him reticent and looking back toward the past (along the line of time). He's reluctant to interact with others. Dixon, is more carefree and jovial, he pushes forward, launches into other cultures (food, women, conversation, etc.) and feels the pull of the West. Following his personal line forward always. Their lives are intimately bound in the pursue of charting the stars, time, and the lines they allow one to draw on the earth. They can't seem, however, to transit the line that separates them as humans though they both long to. There's a fundamental inability to relate to each other that is the poignancy of the book and the interaction that is echoed in all the other themes.

I also realized that one of the 'magical' themes is the 'pull' of unseen forces. The pull of the compass point by mountains rich in iron oar, the pull of the dowsers rod, the positive and negative pull of the desire for human interaction as Mason and Dixon have there bondings and difference. All these pulls, are things that deviate from the straight and predictable line.

I didn't really like the way the story is set up. It's told as by a member of the M&D party to his family one wintery night years after the event. The narrative will pop out of the story and into the random (to me) comments of the gathered listeners. These transitions always frustrated me, and honestly I never saw the point to it. I really feel I would have been a better novel without this pointless device. I'd have been happy with an invisible narrator. But I suppose the author has his reasons.

There's a lot of emotional beauty in the book; beautiful in the richness and patience with which it is portrayed. It's a challenge for me to follow the complexity of the writing. I know I missed much. Pynchon makes me wish I were a better reader. The satisfaction of this book is in the portrayal, not so much in the story.

Four Novels of the 1960s by Philip K. Dick

2007-12-06T08:14:00.001-05:00

Another famous genre writer I had meant to read for years is Philip K. Dick. Early in 2007, I began to remedy that lapse. Before I started this blog, I read The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, and Minority Report. Then I heard that The Library of America was publishing Four Novels of the 1960s, which contains The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ubik.

I'm not sure where to begin. Maybe I'll break this up into smaller chunks as I go. The more of his works that I read, the more I'm impressed with his originality. I often go on author binges and what I usually notice is that authors have their bag of tricks that they draw from and sometimes it doesn't take too long until I start viewing it as their bag of recycled tricks. Certainly, P. K. Dick has his repertoire, but even within it I'm struck by the originality of his insights.

His themes tend to revolve around perceptions of reality and identity, and what forces drive the perceived order of the universe. He sets up a story with facts and observations and, as the characters progress, these facts and observations begin to collide in a way that makes you question the fundamental assumptions and aspects of their reality. The science fiction aspects are not just there to yarn on about a fanciful imagining of the future. The are a stage that is set up to provide an altered lens to peer into what is means to be human.

Sometimes the writing seems simplistic or obviously allegorical but just when you get comfortable (and maybe a little worn) with that simplicity another dimension slips in and you are forced to again reevaluate the frame of reference. I am quite surprised by the consistency with which P.K. Dick surprises me.

This compilation of four works is great.

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

2007-12-06T07:53:00.002-05:00

Another good read from Mr. Chandler. A bit of a mixed bag when I try to compare Farewell, My Lovely to The Big Sleep. For style, character, language, wit and humanness, Farewell, My Lovely seemed like a better book; the plot line, however, had a more of a shaggy dog story feel--albeit a more rich and textured one than The Big Sleep.

Reading the two back to back, I felt as if maybe I've covered the spectrum of what Chandler offers. Perhaps, I'm wrong. I'll likely stop my binge and maybe reserve future works for vacation reading.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

2007-11-28T16:44:00.001-05:00

Wow, what a difference from A. Christie! Hard to believe the two books were written in the same decade. In my opinion, and limited exposure, R.C. makes A.C. look like a hack.

The influence of Chandler on the noir genre in film is something that I hear about a lot. My favorite movie, after all, is The Big Lebowski. And, all those parodies of the noir prose, hard boiled and blunt as a grave diggers shovel, they had almost convinced me that there wasn't any literary value in the works-why read them? Reading The Big Sleep, however, showed me otherwise. Parody is corny, Chandler's prose borders on poetry.

I've read a few blurbs that go on about Chandler as an example of American writing. I'll have to look into that someday. Sure, it's set in California, and non-American's will accept anything pertaining to California as defining what America is about. Maybe it's the direct, self absorbed character with a dark hear of gold that's 'American'. I don't know.

The story is certainly convoluted. It doesn't plod along in a line like The Orient Express. It doesn't come across as over-intellectualized, it feels like it grows from the characters and taint of the environment they inhabit.

Great story teller. I'm going on a Chandler binge. Stay tuned.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

2007-11-08T07:20:00.001-05:00

A classic in a genre that I have read very little of. I had to try very hard not to remember how it all ended--forget the movies I may have seen, the conversations I may have had...But, even when you you know 'who dunnit' it still has a pleasant surprise at the end. I'm not sure, however, this style of mystery is my thing. I have to make concessions to it being over 70 years old. Lots of things seem pedestrian or dated now when they are that old. I did like the detective H. Poirot. A good character and I can see why the book would build some loyal fans for A. Christie.

I don't think I can really add much illumination. A good quick read. I enjoy Paul Auster more.

Schrödinger’s Ball by Adam Felber

2007-11-07T07:41:00.002-05:00

Again, I'm a sucker for a book with a science geek title. And, I'm a fan of NPR's 'Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! where Adam is a regular. I'm glad I read this little book.

You don't need to get all the allusions to quantum mechanics to enjoy the wit and humor of this book. It extrapolates some of the concepts of quantum mechanics and extends them to life. Some of these concepts (very roughly) are the duality of matter (wave-particle) and deterministic causality (that particles can occupy more than one place in space and time), and how the interpretation of these states depends upon the observer. The result in a literary sense is a book that may or may not make sense depending on how you view it, I suppose.

It's the story of several lives that are connected by the unseen laws of human interaction. I found the book fun to read, enjoyably random (or maybe everything is connected), touching, and humorous. At the core is Johnny, who may or may not be dead depending on the observer. I viewed him as an ambiguous 'Jesus' figure who somehow transcends the world while existing in an undefined state. He has a gentle charisma that anchors the relationships of the key characters as they work out the intricacies of friendship and love and this forms the feel good heart of the story.

Memorably, another minor character is a homeless person, Bernie, who talks to God and whose narrative is laid out in the style of the Old Testament. I loved this. The Lord has commanded Bernie to live the live of a homeless Vagrant despite Bernie's talents to be a giant of capitalism. The Lord does so so that Bernie can cross the street at the time of the Crossing. This conversation with Bernie while he relieves the pressure of his loins in the men's room is precious.

"Lord, what is it You would have me do in the Crossing? For Thou has told me nothing of it save that I must Cross." 13. And the lord replied [...] "The design hath been assembled lo these long years, though the design knows it not. But I do know it, good Bernie, and I see that it doth require thine presence." 14. And Bernie did ponder this, and asked the Lord, "God if the design is set, then am I not part of the Design?" "Indeed thou art, Bernie, as I have told thee, thou art bound up in the Machinery of Fate," spake the Lord. "Then," said Bernie, "why dost Thou command me to do what Thine design hast made inevitable? Why dost Thou not simply allow me to take part in the Crossing unknowing, as Thine other Creatures do? Why dost Thou tell me this and command me? Dost this telling me really accomplish aught but the calling of attention to Thyself and Thy name?" 15. And the Lord did take a moment and spake not as Bernie dried his hands. And when the Lord did speak again, His voice was like the thunder and did echo across the tilings. "Dost thou question Me, the Lord, your God?" came the angry voice of the Lord, for He was wroth. " Dost thou, a mortal, who knows naught of My Design and does naught but eat and sleep, think that thou couldst perform better the Considerable and Taxing works of the Lord? Perhaps I should step down from My Place in the heavens among the Angels, and allow thee to take My place. Would thou likest that? Oh, verily, perhaps that is what I should do if thou art Dissatisfied with My Works." 16. And Bernie did cringe at the Lord's mighty sarcasm, and he spake naught but apologies, for he did know how Difficult the Lord was when He got like this."

So, does the book have a Design? Is it necessary to understand the intent of the creator to enjoy the story? Depends on your perspective. You can rightly assume that, as much as the nature of existence is questioned, so is the nature of purpose and design in life. Is life random or some grand design? How can it be random if things as wonderfully complex as falling in love happen all the time and feel as if there were no other purpose to life? To me that's the crux of this wonderful little ditty of a novel.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

2007-10-24T16:33:00.003-04:00

Maybe the third time I've read this over the last 15 years. Still a good read. It's still neat how the vision of the future doesn't seem so far fetched yet. Certainly, a lot of movies have been taken directly from these pages. The two that come to mind for me are Johnny Mnemonic and, of course, The Matrix. Very prescient book, and much of our language about the net can be traced to this book, I understand.

I love the set up of the book and most of the narrative. I'm always a little disappointed at the end. I like the edgy gritty feel of everything that leads up to the end. It's the street level view of the future with all the dark corners that seems so 'real'. Towards the end there's an image of a wasp nest that's invoked and I guess I just don't relate to it. For me it saps the story by being the vanguard metaphor.

None the less, this is the classic read for cyberpunk and its ilk. And very much worth the read.

Vive La Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution by Mark Steel

2007-10-22T07:16:00.002-04:00

The back cover promises, "An actually interesting, unapologetically sympathetic and extremely funny history of the French Revolution." Well, two out of three isn't so bad, and it left out "irritatingly poor grasp of the analogy."

I managed to never take history in college and my H.S. history was rather pointless. Except for the two weeks we spent studying Rodeo in American History because I lived in a Western state and the teacher rode bulls. That was actually pretty useful; now I always have something in my back pocket for those uncomfortable lulls in conversation at the pub.

Anyway, the French revolution interests me but I don't have a head for names and I get lost. The plus side of this book is that it gave a great overview of the time and the people, the ideas and the events. It did a pretty decent job of being accessible and informative, and mostly a breezy read for a history. I did learn something. A key theme was how individuals can bring about revolutionary change if they all band together for a cause. The author cites his frequent participation in protests for labor causes, so there you go.

The name Mark Steel seems familiar to me but I can 't place it. I know nothing about the guy. From reading the book, I have to say that my inference into the life of the author would be that he is a leftist liberal, spent a few too many years smoking grass and perhaps some psychedelics, is most likely an completely charming and charismatic individual, desperately wants to be liked, struggles to be comfortable with his homosexuality, but has no capacity for logical thought and made this book from a compilation of lecture notes and one liners that sorta worked for the giggly front row in class.

This is mostly derived from the occasional incoherence, fetish, forced charm, and other oddities poking up throughout the text.

The book has a failed joke or illogic analogy at least every page, and one that sorta works about every 8 pages. For example, at one point the book portrays the new Republic's debate of how it will conduct the deposed King's trial. Would Louis XVI be tried as a criminal, a criminal king? Could the new Republic acknowledge that Louis was king since the basic tenet of the revolution was that in the Age of Reason it was unnatural that a King could exist? If he went on trial, formally that would allow the possibility that Louis XVI could have been a good and legal King--not a Reason-able position. Thus, the book sets up and deftly presents an interesting historical vinette on Freedom, Reason, and Royalty. Then it proceeds...

"To make his point clear, St-Just went on, 'I do not see the possibility of any middle way: this man must either reign or he must die.' This did make an impact. The flaw in the debate about monarchy had been to discuss the merits of Louis XVI as an individual. It's similar to Britian today, when one of the most common arguments employed in defense of monarchy is that 'They bring in a lot of tourists.' Which is a strange idea, as it is assumes New York and Paris have no tourists. Presumably when people go to the top of the Eiffel Tower they say, 'Hmm, well it's a nice view, but the lack of a monarch spoils it somehow.' In any case the musical The Lion King brings in a lot of tourists but I hope no one would advocate making Elton John head of state.

St-Just's argument showed how far the revolution had gone..."

What the...? Not the least, it DOES NOT logically follow that there is any assumption about tourists in NY or Paris. I fail to see any close analogy between viewing Louis XVI as a non-hereditary King and viewing the British monarchy as a revenue stream. Louis' worth to society was not an issue. I wish I could say that the 'punch-line' about The Lion King and Elton John was atypical... heck, I wish I could say it was funnier in context. But, it wasn't.

The end summation is that the desperate attempts at the humorous analogy through out the book are 1) not humorous, 2) not really analogies, and 3) desperate. They were formulaic and persistent. Which is a shame because the history was relatively accessible, enjoyable, and educational. And I enjoyed the story.

I could go into how he lambasts other historians for coloring their descriptions and interpretations of leading figures (things like toad-ish appearance, etc.) yet he himself goes on to characterize their thoughts and motives by relating them to modern leftist, populist, workers rights ideals. But, I assume every historian projects themselves into their work so that doesn't seem a mortal flaw to me. It would to another historian, I'm sure.

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky

2007-09-29T16:34:00.001-04:00

Mark Kurlansky wrote Cod and then Salt, histories of each. I read Salt and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is an Oyster-centric history of New York City. It bounces around and rambles but is full of interesting trivia. More or less enjoyable. It's one-third oyster biology/ecology, one-third homage to eating and preparing oysters in a historical context (many old recipies), and one-third history of New York City. It's not as good as Salt. I thought the more narrow focus didn't serve Mark's 'throw a bunch of facts in the mix and make a fun story' style so well. I think if you are familiar with New York City and the area it's more interesting. I would not have enjoyed it quite as much with out some local familiarity to attach it to.

The book's subtext is a bit of how man pushed into the environment as NYC grew, changed the harbor and the oyster. It's not a story unique to NYC so there is a greater context. Overall, the bottom line is that I like oysters.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

2007-09-16T22:24:00.002-04:00

I like books that really try to do more than tell a story. This one tells a murder mystery in an unconventional way. Does it through the lens of 15th century manuscript illuminators (miniaturists) and delves into the philosophies of art, style, faith, purpose that drove them to create works of art. It does this against the backdrop of the expansion of the power of the Christian European nations riding the Renaissance and the threat this new culture presents to Islamic nations (the book is set in Istanbul). And, it does it all very well. If it has a failing, I would say that it also tries to weave a love story into it, and that love story just didn't come through so well for me. Maybe it's the translation. The author is a lifelong native of Istanbul. In my presupposed bias, I just don't think that a male Turkish author could write a love story that would meet Western standards. My two cents.

But there's a lot of meat to the story and a lot of beauty. I bet it is amazing untranslated. I'll never know. Each chapter is told in the first person by all the characters, and also by some illustrations given a voice. The story is absorbing. I did, however, struggle through the first few chapters to find the 'groove' of the book. By the middle, though, I was really absorbed and wanting to read it to find out what happened next. In the process, I also feel I took a little history and art history lesson of the times. I always enjoy that.

The flat style Persian miniaturists employ when illuminating manuscripts, and the arrangement of the subject on the page, reflects their faith and how they viewed man's relationship to God. The manuscripts were not meant to represent how man sees the world but how God sees the world. When the Venetian portrait masters brought there realistic perspective to the canvas it challenged the Islamic faith. This element of the story brought some depth that made for richer reading. It also provided the complex emotional basis for the murder that is investigated through out. But, on the downside, the person trying to solve the murder is motivated by love, a love that I thought was under-developed and thus not so convincing. Also, three miniturists are suspects in the murder mystery and while they go to great and enjoyable depths explaining their motives with respect to art, I couldn't tell them apart with respect to the murder mystery. Solving the mystery just didn't make sense. A bit of a plot device with out a good plot at times. The story on the whole was good, however.

I picked up this book because it was on the 'Staff Recommended' table and because it had a 'Winner of the Nobel Prize' sticker. I wasn't sure if the Prize was for this book or for some other work. I figured it was likely to be a good read. I'll give it a qualified recommendation. I'm glad I read it, I felt I learned something worthy, but I don't feel so attached to it after the fact.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

2007-08-29T08:17:00.001-04:00

This book is a riot. It's language is colorful, propelling and fun. There's a glorious clash/mash of cultures (Russian, Latino, Urban, Rural, ...Absurdistani) that's exhilarating and feels authentic. You can smell and taste and feel the cultures as you read. There were two books that came to mind as I read this. One was Everything Is Illuminated the other was...hmmm, now I forget. The similarity with EisI was the filtering of English language and American culture through the eyes of an Eastern European who wants to be American. Here, the prose wasn't deliciously mangled like EisI. Rather, it was assimilated in a way that made you feel the pull of the American dream. Sweaty, oily, pungent descriptions of urban life in New York, the food, the noise, the closeness.

This book is more of a farcical adventure story. Misha Vainberg, an over-weight, abundantly entitled, American educated, son of a Russian oligarch/mobster is shaped, molded, driven by but can't escape his past. Though escape is what he desperately want to do. He's trying to get to America but can't because of his father's Russian mob connections. He decides to try to get to the US via Absurdistan, an oil rich middle Easter nation that reminds one of many a gulf nation crossed with the Republick of Elbonia from Dilbert. Misha loves food and his girl. I don't think I can really encapsulate the plot. Read a professional review.

This was also on some top 10 lists for 2006. I read this before Gilead and Special Topics, so unfortunately my memory is fading. Although, I also really enjoyed this book I'm not sure if there's going to be a lasting impression left. I didn't feel as if it has a great sense of purpose or truth behind it. Although, it had a very good subtext around relationships with the father. Here though, its very subtle. You feel it but it's not openly stated. I admire that approach, it sounds more true. As hints are dropped, the picture of Misha's past adds a nice touch of poignancy and sincerity, that fills out a very fun romp of a book.

Special Topic in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

2007-08-19T21:40:00.002-04:00

I'm a sucker for any thing with a techno-geek like title or cover. In my defense, this book was on the several top 10 of the year lists. As it turns out, no defense necessary. And, it is not a techno-geek book. It's an incredibly engaging story of a terribly smart and well read girl (Blue van Meer) in her last year of high school. It is a bit of a murder mystery. And a bit of a mystery in general. I can't really do the book justice in a description. There's some devices that seem a little overplayed and showy at first but once you get into the groove of the story, and this doesn't take long (a few pages), you won't be distracted by them. And, they add much to the fun of the story and underscore the intelligence of the writing.

Several things impressed me. First was the aforementioned intelligence of the writing. The book was just dense with well crafted descriptions. Flourishes that were so enjoyable but never over the top. With a book this size, I was just impressed that it could be so solidly good for it's whole length. The whole arc of the story works and Blue's emotions at her times of crisis were so natural and moving, so unforced or contrived, it was a pleasure to read something so observantly natural, touching and humorous. Definitely, worth the read for that alone. Even better that the story around it was good.

I seem to be reading a lot of books that revolve around resolving relationships with fathers. In this book, Blue thinks the world of her father. And, he's very worthy of admiration. He's practically perfect and in complete control of his self and life. In a way, this is how most kids think of their parents, if not all adults. Then as they grow up, the illusions and mysteries of adults, how they seem to know everything and never seem to be at a loss, slowly fall apart. That's one of the subtexts, I thought. Except, in addition to the mystery of adults and growing up. There's some bona fide mysteries...or are there? I've said enough on that.

One little gimmick that I enjoyed tremendously was the many many citations for her statements. Blue is so well read, she views life through the lens of every book she's ever read. Every observation has a citation. And the citations are also part of her language she uses to tell her story. It's different, creative, and it worked for me. Kudos.

I passed this book off to my spouse, she loved it too. It's a pity I can't think of a better way to write about it. It belongs on the years 10 best lists, no question.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2007-08-17T09:33:00.004-04:00

Midway through reading the Bourne trilogy (Robert Ludlum) I decided my next read would be something beautiful. Gilead was on the 'staff recommended' table. Pulitzer winner. "So serenely beautiful and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it."--The Washington Post.

By page two, I'm hooked. Profoundly simple, oxymoronic as that may be, is my early summation of my first thirty-five pages. Perhaps, simply profound? There's a grace, wisdom, and depth in the prose that falls so effortlessly that you'd miss it if it weren't for the natural gravitation you feel to slow down and take it all in at a leisurely pace. It begins as the recording of thoughts a terminally ill pastor wishes to preserve and communicate to his young son.

Now that I've finished the book my summation is that it is a wonderfully beautiful book full of wisdom and grace. I'm not a member of any faith but I had a strong Lutheran upbringing. The book is very spiritual and draws heavily on the bible. For the practicing Christian this is a plus. For the atheist or agnostic, this could be a turn off and dissuade you from reading it. Don't let that happen, for the most part the book brings out what is truly good about human nature and faith and living in the world. It would be a shame to miss out because of ideology or lack thereof.

As the book progresses it explores the characters relationship to his father and grandfather, and their relationships to their sons. All those acts and misunderstanding that accumulate during ones life that a man in his final years needs to atone for or bring into balance. On page 7 there's a passage that impressed me.

"I believe I'll make an experiment with candor here. Now, I say this with all respect. My father was a man who acted from principle, as he said himself. He acted from faithfulness to the truth as he saw it. But something in the way he went about it made him disappointing from time to time, and not just to me. I say this despite all the attention he gave to me bringing me up, for which I am profoundly in his debt, though he himself might dispute that. God rest his soul, I know for a fact I disappointed him. It is a remarkable thing to consider. We meant well by each other too.
Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension."

Gilead means 'mount of testimony'. He likens his life to a burning coal. It burns bright then settles down under a graying husk as the ember glows within, diminishing. When events poke or stir the ember, sparks fly as odes to life or his testimony. His diary, I believe, represents his sparks, prodded into fire by his need to communicate to his son, and through that process, his need to reconcile himself with the memories of his fathers.

There's much more in the book, of course. This is a small taste. It doesn't really have a plot that resolves, rather the book is very much that warm, beautiful, and memorable ember.

The Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum

2007-08-17T08:49:00.001-04:00

I was kind of surprised to find that I hadn't read any Ludlum books before. I'll have to correct that. I think I inadvertently lumped Ludlum into the works of John Le Carre although I've only read a few of those (I just learned from Wiki that Le Carre is a pseudonym).

I've really liked the Bourne movies; I haven't seen the third yet. Still, nothing beats a good book. So I started reading The Bourne Identity (1980), the Supremacy (1986), and the Ultimatum (1990). Book one was good. The movie mostly follows it. There's more going on in the book as you might imagine and the ending is completely different. Motives are different. It's a good read. The action flows, the plot works. The concept good. The girlfriend character in the book is much cooler than in the movie, no offense to Franka who has some real cool roles (Run Lola Run). Actually, that's one of the bonuses of the book. The strength of the secondary characters. I think a lot of them ultimately turn out to be more engaging than Bourne. The book revolves around Bourne's dual identity and the need to find out who he really is (a good guy) so that he can be grounded in sanity and who he's obviously been trained to be (a bad guy) so he can survive when everybody seems to want to kill him. Ludlum does tell a good tale.

The Supremacy. Also a good book. Nothing like the movie. They're different stories altogether. The second movie is more drawn from the end of the first book. By now Bourne is living a dual life as normal David Webb, scholar and the alter ego he wishes to put in the past, Bourne the US trained killer. This book adds a bigger more international plot/conspiracy. It works here, but to me it seems this is where Ludlum starts to reach his limits. He can't quite keep the personal interest in the characters going while also building that paranoid sense of a larger evil at work. Plus the evil lunatic in charge of the all the bad guys is just to loony and poorly developed to believe. It's only a small chapter where he's portrayed but it left a ridiculous, and false aftertaste I couldn't shake off. In this book Bourne is manipulated by our government to save his family and become a killer again. He had found himself as the mild mannered, family loving Webb. The government needs Bourne back. The plot revolves around the hand off of Hong Kong from British rule back to Chinese rule. Thus it dates itself and if you weren't at least peripherally aware of this major event and the concerns leading up to it, you might not get or feel the story working so well. Still a good read.

The Ultimatum. Well, I read it. It has it's moments. Every global conspiracy, network, agency gets involved as Bourne is forced to face down his foe, Carlos. This book was overly ambitious. It just keeps stopping and starting as one story breaks to another. The flow isn't there. Again, some of the best parts are the characters and how they interact. It's the ever mounting ludicrousness of the size and scope of the confrontation to end all confrontations that collapses this book. I had to read it for completeness because something compels me to. But I don't think this ones worth reading on its own merits.

Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War ~ Michael Isikoff & David Corn

2007-08-17T08:17:00.001-04:00

I don't read much non-fiction but lately I've been trying. I think my core interest in the more political arena is the foundations of the 'inalienable rights' we enjoy. I think many would like to believe that they are granted by god or nature, but I always felt that was silly. They're rights granted to us by ourselves, no matter how self-evident they may be. The first book I read and enjoyed was Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light by Susan Dunn. It compared the French and American revolutions and why ours succeeded while the French failed. Anyway, I went on to read 1776 and John Adams both by David McCullough, then felt maybe I'd try something more current. I picked up State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff & David Corn and commenced to read them simultaneously.

State of Denial remains unfinished; Hubris, however, was fascinating. Whatever one may think about the Iraq war, the real story is here. The paperback has an additional chapter from Spring of 2007 so it's very current, closing with the Libby trial. For a book so full of interviews and events and bits of detail strung together, it reads very well. Almost gripping at times (not gripping, almost gripping).

My thought afterward was, 'I pray to god this isn't how our government really works!' I've heard Bush referred to as the incurious President (he is, and that's part of the tradgedy). But, that more people aren't following this story and getting incensed about it only highlights that a significant amount of blame falls on the incurious public for not pursuing both the idiots AND the political schemers in charge for dragging this great nation into a war it didn't need, and then proceeding to mismanage it until...well, here we are. Draw your own conclusions about the war. Every voting citizen should read this and keep it in mind when our next President takes office.

This book provides an incredible look into the way the Bush administration sold the war. INCREDIBLE. My reaction was one of fear. Yours might be different. It's a good read.