Books are my only friends

You could have it so much better

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:18:00 +0000

So I was pretty excited for Warren Fahy Fragment, a heavily promoted novel about a lost island with a divergent ecosystem, said to be in the spirit of Jurassic Park and the Ruins. Well I read it, and it isn't like those books. Let's start with the Ruins. That book is, I think falsely, viewed as a thriller. Like Smith's only other book, the amazing A Simple Plan, the book is a rich study of torment, both emotional and physical. Fragment is many things, but it is not strong on emotions or characters. The death toll has no apparent impact on the characters other than to make them grimly determined. The book's two rivals, meant to portray different versions of science, are laughably stereotypical, one angelic and one eeeeeeevviilllll.

The comparison to Jurassic Park is also inapt. Crichton always (after Andromeda Strain, at least) put story before science. He let it support and ground the story, but not derail it. Fahy just loves his material too much. He provides paragraph after paragraph of example, theory and idea. The examples are the worst, where one might suffice, he is happy to provide five. He also chops up the action with a bit too much description of the monsters.

When it comes time to tell the story, the book works pretty well. The set-up is great as a reality show science expedition stumbles onto the Lost World, a violent ecosystem similar to that in the Skinner. We get a pair of redshirt holocausts, political infighting and a number of imaginative horrors. The book shifts from adventure mode to political thriller as changed viewpoints lead the surviving characters in a race against time.

If this were a movie (and I am sure it will be), I would say you should Netflix it. As it is, head down to the library for this one. I tore through it, but my pleasure decayed as the book continued. I hope the next one is better.

A question to which I don't really need the answer

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:37:00 +0000

After a delightful lunch at Russell Street BBQ, my eldest and I walked past a thrift store. I saw a stack of the Left Behind series up for quick sale. I recall these being the top of the news for quite awhile, but talk is mostly done. I wonder what the Millenarians read now?

The Show that Smells

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:36:00 +0000

Derek McCormack's The Show That Smells isn't your average read. It reads like a screenplay and features Lon Chaney, Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and an unfortunate country singer suffering from consumption. It reminded me quite a bit of a John Waters film, something out of the Polyester era, not quite as crazy as his early work, but not for the masses either. The humor is strange, scatalogical and sexual. It's experimental, probably a bit too experimental for me, but should appeal to fans of outre post-modern fiction.

You can read an excerpt here. McCormack will be at Hawthorne Powells tomorrow, July 16 at 7:30. I suspect hearing him read from the book will be particularly interesting.

Getting into Phish

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:37:00 +0000

Not me silly, Carrie Brownstein. She of Monitor Mix asked what bands people liked that their friends could not understand. Phish came up huge. She realized that people had opinions about the band without ever listening to them. She has challenged herself to become a Phish fan and you can watch this video as she drives down to the record store to swap CDs for a bunch of new Phish ones. It's quite funny.

I actually attended a Phish show in 1993 (it may have been 1994, I don't remember). It was a Phish heading lining HORDE tour. I was a little, uh, under the influence, so I honestly don't recall much. Even whether they played Reba, a song I honestly like. Here they are playing it at fan favorite Hampton Coliseum.

Scandal in the Asquith Cabinet

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Once I find a writer I like, I tend to binge on them. I stop when I have had enough or when I realize I am about to exhaust the oeuvre. In the mid-90s I read all of Robertson Davies and was sad when I all I had left was personal letters and the lik e. I similarly tore through Patrick Robinson's and Dennis Lehane's crime novels and the Barset Chronicles by Anthony Trollope. Robert Goddard's body of work turned out to be too large to consume all at once. Already in the teens when I started him, I read four or five in a row. loving them all, and then moved on. His books were great, but I guess I had enough of moody, English thrillers for the time.

I had forgotten about him until Stephen King came out calling him his top read for 2008. I picked up a copy of Past Caring late last year and just got to it this week. It was actually even better than I recalled.

Past Caring is lengthy, but that is because it has to fit in the diaries of a long dead British minister as well as the historical research of the less than ideal Martin Radford. Radford is a failed academic and teacher who seems to enjoy drink more than books. A chance visit to Madeira leads him to hunt down the story of Edwin Strafford, a rising political star in 1910 who disappeared from politics for mysterious reasons. As he digs deeper, Radford finds that there are those who wish to keep the story buried along with Strafford.

This book works better than most thrillers because he is interested in his characters as well as his plots. This makes the book twice as long as many similar books, but it is well worth the investment. At many points in the back half, I thought I could tell where the book was going only to have the plot shift in a surprising way. The ending was also true to the characters and did a great job tying it all together.

I think I am going to get on another Goddard jag now.

Unjustly forgotten

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:39:00 +0000

There are a lot of reasons that most people are unaware of how great a song Kim Gordon's Panties. The most important of course is the band name. When you call your band Rapeman, you are asking for people to hate you. It doesn't help that the output is, overall, the low point of Steve Albini's recording career. Sure you have an amazing song about the combination of low self esteem and sex addiction, and a nice song about how vegetarians should shut up about the meat eating, but overall, the output is not great.

Kim Gordon's Panties, though, is fantastic. Really. Not only is a bizarre paean to Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, but it is also a salute to the Sonic Youth song Schizophrenia. In the song, Albini sings that Thurston Moore, husband of Kim Gordon is not getting any play. Incredulous, Albini claims that if he "had that to go home to, I'd never leave my bed." He then goes on to claim that any red blooded male would act differently. Not surprisingly, the Sonic Youth folks didn't take kindly to this and dedicated Beat on The Brat covers to Albini in subsequent shows.

Even though much of my enjoyment of the song comes from the sophomoric humor, I love the musical build up and the drum crescendo mid-way through the song. Listen for yourself.

Of course work sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

William Browning Spencer is an underappreciated novelist in the vein of Tim Powers, James Blaylock and Jonathan Carroll. He writes stories of men, often writers, beset by terrible supernatural forces. I loved his Zod Wallop and I recently got my hands on a copy of his Resume with Monsters. When I say underappreciated, you should read that also as out of print. The status of his book would certainly vex his main character, Phillip Kenan, who fights through dead end job after dead end job in hopes of getting his massive novel published.

Phillip's daily drudgery is made all the worse by this constant combat with Lovecraftian forces. I don't mean alluding to Lovecraft, but actual Cthulhu mythos creatures like Azathoth and the Old Ones. This shouldn't work well, but until the very end of the book, it is not clear whether Kenan is delusional or is really fighting eldrictch foes. Spencer writes the loner who no one believes quite well.

Spencer spends a lot of time satirizing the work place in this book. It gets better as it goes along. It isn't a pretty vision, as he has hate for companies large and small, but I still found it amusing.

This book is a bit like the Atrocity Archives, and a lot like the Kings of Infinite Space. I think the author of the latter was more than a little inspired by Spencer's book. The latter book is funnier, but the Spencer book has its charms. The most significant are the wild swings in plot. Much of what happens is completely unexpected. The book is a tad long for what it is, but it is worth reading. Note, I tried this book three years ago and gave up on it. Here is what I thought then. Starting over, I can see why I gave up on it, but I am glad I stuck with it. I was somehow more ready for it this time.

Blasphemy

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Douglas Preston, of the Preston Child writing duo, writes some of the better techno/scifi thrillers out there. His most recent novel Blasphemy is another fun one, but it feels a bit calculated to create controversy. There is a disclaimer in the back about how the book is not anti-religious, since the hero is a practicing Catholic and former monk.

Still, the book involves crazed fundamentalists creating acts of intense mayhem and a crooked television preacher riling up the rubes. The end of the book also calls into question the notion that the book isn't anti-religious.

With this in mind, the book is a good thriller, with red herrings, mounting tension and lots of action. It isn't his best, but it works pretty well.

Nice sentence

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:06:00 +0000

I burned through a number of Robert Goddard's novels back in the late 90s. I burned out and moved on, but I just recently picked up his first one called Past Caring. I have to thank a recent Stephen King hat tip for rekindling my interest. Any doubts about the read were dispelled by the excellent first sentence* which is below:

The spring of 1977 found me, newly past thirty, a bad case of wasted talent in a largely waste city - an unemployed, divorced ex-schoolteacher of foundered promise and dismal prospect.

That's really packing in some info in a sentence.

*Technically not the first sentence as there was a brief prologue.

Mixed

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:57:00 +0000

The parody of the NYT bestseller list is quite funny. Sometimes it satirizes specific books, other times whole genres as in Cracked Like Teeth by Dexter Egan: A memoir of petty crime, drunken brawls and recovery by a writer who was addicted to paint thinner by age nine.

Do you miss the days of the Creature Feature with the local host with the spooky name and bad make up? I certainly have fond memories. In my case, we had Dr. Madblood, who is still doing his thing, and then some other guy who wore green make up and did a lot of extreme close ups. i09 has some clips from one of these old shows that makes me think I wouldn't like it as much these days.

Awhile back I saw a video that replaced the lyrics to an A-ha! video with a literal description of what was going on. That one was funny, but the one for Total Eclipse of the Heart is funnier.

McNamara RIP

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:32:00 +0000

Until the coming of Rumsfeld, we had yet to have as complex a Secretary of Defense as Robert Strange McNamara. There are a lot of takes on him out there like a nod to his World Bank work at Marginal Revolution, this negative one from Mickey Kaus via Matthew Yglesias, a short take from Robert Farley that leads to others, and a thoughtful note from Kevin Drum.

Update: As I suspected, Stephen Walt's take is direct and brutal.

I will sidestep giving an opinion and instead beg that you watch the Fog of War. Don't watch it to judge whether McNamara should be forgiven or not. Watch it to see one of the best ruminations on war on film. We can only hope that Rumsfeld does something like this eventually. The full movie is embedded below:

It's the same old thing

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:38:00 +0000

I love the Ramones. No matter what happens, the Ramones will always be greater gods of my rock pantheon. The first four records are astounding, the next four solid and the follow on albums are, to be kind, so so. I feel the same way about the films of George Romero. His early works are excellent and worthy of horror film canonization.) His recent effort, the Diary of the Dead, is crap.

Diary of the Dead combines two moribund approaches to film making, zombie social commentary and Point of View film making. Zombie movies are mostly played at this point(although I hold out hopes that World War Z will be good,) but this movie is killed by the use of the point of view style.

The movie's characters are a group of film students making a horror movie in the PA forests when they hear about the zombie attacks. While they pack up the film crew RV and head to their families, one of them decides to film for posterity. There is some pushback from his friends, but they mostly go along with it. The device becomes more and more unbeliveable as the film continues. They film while people are being killed or while they are in huge peril. This is a comment on media, I know, but I doubt college kids would act the way they do in this movie.

I suppose everyday conversation can be as stilted and ridiculous as the dialogue in this movie, but I doubt it. The acting doesn't help. Most annoying of all is the film school teacher who takes breaks from his booze drinking only to deliver horrendously cheesy pronouncements of world weariness.

There is a sequel to this film being made now. If I hadn't seen this film and wanted to take a guess at its likely quality, I could take note that one of the characters is named "Nicotine" Crockett. I hope Don Johnson gets the role.

Crack Up

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Big Black is one of those bands which attracts eternal followers. One of the tasks of the followers is to gather all of the desiderata. If you want giant hooks, you have come to the right place. Rather than forcing you to buy the otherwise uninteresting God's Favorite Dog, here is Crack Up.

USA books

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:39:00 +0000

Happy Independence Day! Here are a few good books on the US that I have enjoyed.

The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S Wood. It dispels the notion that the American revolution was a conservative affair.

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff. The title is not ironic.

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. It's thick but it is good one stop shopping for the Civil War.

The USA trilogy by John Dos Passos. For the literary minded, this critical take of the early 20th century is outstanding.

Special Providence by Walter Mead Russell. The best treatment of American foreign policy that I have yet found.

Newsweek loves books

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:15:00 +0000

I like the new Newsweek. The longer articles are better and the new visual style is fresh and appealing. I am most happy though that the new issue is titled What To Read Now. The title refers to a book list that is more interesting than the typical top books list. Starting any list with an Anthony Trollope is going to make me happy, but I was particularly happy to see Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes. He remains an underappreciated crime novelist and I hope to see his books re-released.

There are also author interviews, the "best books ever" by a few experts, and other articles including this one on re-reading books. Jonathan Lethem's photo tour of literary New York is worth a peek too.

Kids today

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:55:00 +0000

It's easier to be a fan of genre writing than literary writing. If your favorite author comes out with something you don't like, you can take solace in that he or she will pump out another one in a year, or even less. Some literary writers take so many years between books that we have to make do with the occasional essay or short story.

So I am excited that Michael Chabon has a new essay in the NY Review of Books. It is titled the Wilderness of Childhood and it is about the cult of safety that parents, including Chabon himself, in which parents today find themselves mired.

He speaks to the possible impact on literature, as kids who do not explore have less chance of developing an adventurous imagination. He also talks about the conflict he feels as a parent:

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play?

There is a small grocery store around the corner, not over two hundred yards from our front door. Can I let her ride there alone to experience the singular pleasure of buying herself an ice cream on a hot summer day and eating it on the sidewalk, alone with her thoughts? Soon after she learned to ride, we went out together after dinner, she on her bike, with me following along at a safe distance behind. What struck me at once on that lovely summer evening, as we wandered the streets of our lovely residential neighborhood at that after-dinner hour that had once represented the peak moment, the magic hour of my own childhood, was that we didn't encounter a single other child.

Even if I do send them out, will there be anyone to play with?

(via Bookstorm)

Last week we were at Eagle Crest, a vacation spot in Central Oregon. In the evening, the kids from connecting condos would rush out and play amongst the golf course trees. I remember doing this almost every night as a kid, but this was out of the ordinary for my kids.

Short takes

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:36:00 +0000

Here are a few notes on some recent reads.

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief by James McPherson. Written by the leading popular authority on the Civil War, this is a concise study of Lincoln as military commander. This is not a military history, but a easy to understand study in civil-military relations. It is easy enough for the uninitiated, but also helpful to fans who want to understand why Lincoln put up with the incompetents as long as he did.

Postcards from Tomorrow Square by James Fallows. This is a collections of Fallows China essays for the Atlantic. The quality is high, so you will probably want to read them all. Unlike other collections, I actually read this one cover to cover. It is typical Fallows, plenty of insight in reader friendly prose.

Nobody Move by Denis Johnson. This one didn't do it for me. The small time crooks trying to game one another felt like a Elmore Leonard novel with more hard boiled language. It wasn't bad, but I didn't care enough about the story to get fully invested.

The Issues of Red Seas Under Red Skies

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:46:00 +0000

I'm in the happy position of owning a large number of unread very large fantasy novels. I've been watching the pile grow, but getting The Blade Itself for Father's Day made me decide I really had to tame the beast. I chose Red Seas Under Red Skies for the next one. Short review: Good read, but no Lies of Locke Lamora.

More on that later, but I have to mention a fundamental problem with these books. The main characters are thieves who happen to be as good with a weapon as they are with a cheeky quip. They are just too nice to be thieves in the nasty world that author Scott Lynch portrays. Lynch has a town where bored aristocrats pay money to watch the poor publicly tortured. Assassins are everywhere and the powerful are venal to a person. Danger is everywhere.

The thieves just don't act like the worn down people they would have to be. They regularly spare people, even people who were just trying to kill them. At one vexing point, someone tries to cut a rope that if cut, would lead to a violent death. They escape and let the fellow go, with a mild beating. This was done no doubt for plot purposes I have yet to see, but it is simply unbelievable. In another scene, a young man loses a contest and dies for it. Locke Lamora goes over to say a little prayer for him. Really? I know he wants us to like the guy, but come on.

It is like he wants a brutal world like China Mieville's while populating it with happy go lucky Oceans 11 characters. I felt the same way about the first book, but I was willing to let it slide because the plotting was so good. The less well crafted sequel makes the fundamental problems more glaring.

Anyway, it is good enough to continue. I will see if he can rescue the book.

Albums as set lists

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:57:00 +0000

Carrie Brownstein delivers the news that the Pixies will be playing Doolittle in track order in an upcoming tour. This follows similar efforts by Sonic Youth with Daydream Nation and Liz Phair with Exile and Guyville. I think that someone like myself, who missed the band in the heyday and really wants to hear a certain set of songs, is the target for these shows. This raises the question of which shows, prompted perhaps, by a need to pay for the kids's steep college bills, we would like to see. I suspect my top votes would be for Slanted and Enchanted, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and Q:Are We Not Men A: We are Devo. I was going to say London Calling (impossible I know) but there is a bit too much fluff there.

A bad way to start your week

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:14:00 +0000

I've made no secret that good covers are among my favorite things on Earth. Some covers though are about as fun as someone vomiting directly into your mouth. The Spinnerette cover of Devo's The Day My Baby Me a Surprize makes the horrendous No Doubt cover of Stand and Deliver seem like Cash's cover of Hurt. In fact, pretend I didn't tell you about this Spinnerette garbage and just listen to the Man in Black instead.

Or check this TV special version of Cash's cover of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, with Jim Varney as an Army of Northern Virginia regular.

You can come back Lizzie, indie rock never forgets

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:18:00 +0000

Liz Phair is to indie rock fans as Anakin is to Obi Wan at the end of Revenge of the Sith. As she turns to the dark side, we weep and cry out "You were the Chosen One!" Then we see her dispatched in the fiery lava of critical lambast. It is my hope that we may now be approaching the scene where she turns back to the Light and tells us "You were right, tell the fans, you were right."

You may have caught last year's re-release of Exile In Guyville, her epochal debut release. Last year she played a few shows during which she played only songs from Exile (I should have caught one of these. Oh well, I get to see the Pogues with Shane this year). She is now apparently working on a new solo record, which is supposed to be a return to the early sounds. The video below gives me some hope as she mocks her lost decade and her sex kitten reputation.

It's hard to overstate how much I loved this record when it came out. She brings so much emotional power to her lyrical short stories that I listened again and again. Haters will argue that the only reason indie guys like her is that she is A) hot and B) frequently given to dirty, dirty talk. Both of these things are true, and are in fact, awesome. This is certainly an element in her success, but without it we would like only slightly, only slightly less than we used to.

Still, the sex element can't be dismissed. You can point to her covering the classic ode to masturbation Turning Japanese, or lyrics as blue as "I want to fuck you like a dog, Ill take you home and make you like it." I still maintain it is the truth in songs like Divorce Song that makes her the special artist she can be.

So I await the new album with measured excitement. It could be something quite good, if she really is going back to the roots. Yes, she is working with Banana Republic, but indie gods Sonic Youth put out a hits ALBUM with Starbucks. So I am willing to cut her some slack there. Won't you?

Fuzzy

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Back in the late 90s, we lived in Boston. Some of our friends regaled us of tales of bands we missed by getting there too late. One of them was Fuzzy. By the time we heard it, the band's time had passed. The alterna-guitar sound had moved into a quiescent phase. The band wasn't around for the return. Here is 4 Wheel Friend, my favorite from the self titled CD. You may find the singing a bit languorous, but it works for me.

Crossing over county lines

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:51:00 +0000

We just got back from a week long trip to Central Oregon. From my experience, when people think of Oregon, they think of Portland -- rainy, green and filled with beer drinkers and hippies. Central, and particularly eastern Oregon is dry, brown and sparsely populated. It reminds me of Utah really. Below is a photo of Ayers Rock/Uluru like Fort Rock which rises out of the flat desert. Highly recommended.

While out there, we visited the farming family of my wife's cousin. They do have neighbors, a handful or so within a circle of ten miles. So I am very pleased to be reading Michael Perry's Population 485, a collection of autobiographical essays about working as an EMT in a very small Wisconsin town. While the geography is different, I am looking forward to reading about life in small communities.

The book is part of Citizen Reader's upcoming book menage. Do participate, won't you? Also, congratulations are in order, as CR will be guest blogging on Book Ninja!

A bit of military history

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:36:00 +0000

There are a number of books that I want to read, but then I see them on the remainder table. More often than not, books on the remainder table are bad news, but sometimes bad luck or publisher overestimation of interest lands them in book purgatory. Stephen Budiansky's Air Power: Men, Machines, and Ideas That Revolutionized War, From Kitty Hawk To Gulf War II is a book that interested me, but I saw it on the dread remainder table AND it had that word revolutionized in the title.

That word appeared to me, at least, to be code for the idea that Air Power had transformed warfare and made all other forms of power redundant. For the most part, the book isn't like that at all. Instead, it reviews the history of airplanes as a weapon from World War I all the way up to the Second Gulf War. Budiansky is critical of most of the leaders of Air Forces. He criticizes the World War 2 generals in particular for their single minded focus on strategic (read: city) bombing at the expense of tactical support of armies. These leaders became the leaders of the new Air Force who then built a bomber centric air force incapable of handling the tasks before it in Korea and Vietnam.

So far so good. Lots of critical analysis, the right balance between technology and application, a great discussion of airframes, and a number of great stories. It all falls apart in the last chapter.

In the last chapter, Budiansky seems to become a convert to the Air Power cause with the advent of precision munitions. He lauds the use of these weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan and notes that these weapons essentially won the war. Well, we now know they didn't.

These problems aside, the book is a good read for a narrow audience. For those who want to go beyond a basic understanding of airplanes as weapons, it is a good place to start. Many will find it too long. Those more deeply read in the field will dislike the cursory treatment given to many subjects.

2012

noreply@blogger.com (Tripp) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:14:00 +0000

Have you seen this ridiculously awesome looking trailer for 2012, Roland Emmerich's disaster movie? There are so many excellent scenes, but the aircraft carrier rolling onto the White House has to be one of the best.