DOC'S 50

#31: Blood Rites, Jim Butcher

2008-07-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist. I picked up book 6 of the Dresden Files in a spare moment and got hooked. I think it was this line, from Harry Dresden's conversation with a vampire pal.

"Maybe you've heard of the concept. It's called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanse game shows, only without all the glory."

Anyway, in this episode Harry is hired to protect a producer of adult films and his crew from some form of "entropy curse" (highly unlikely and quite lethal things are happening to people connected with the producer). In the meantime, the vampires of the White and Black courts are laying traps for their least favorite Chicagoland wizard.

Blood Rites is Jim Butcher's usual bag of high action, urban fantasy, wry humor, and general cleverness. I enjoyed every minute of it. (A point, though, I kept waiting for something more interesting to happen with the puppy. I suppose he's saving that for the next story.)

Quick facts:
372 pages, genre=horror/fantasy, pub. in 2004

#30: Vagabond, Bernard Cornwell

2008-07-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

In this, the second book of Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series, Thomas of Hookton continues his search for the most sacred of all Christian relics, the holy grail.

This book is a worthy follow up to The Archer's Tale, a.k.a. Harlequin (depending upon whether you buy it in America or England, I believe). Lots more action, detailed battle scenes, historical trappings, and interesting characters are to be found between its covers. Cornwell has clearly formulated a successful style for blending "big" stories with historical facts. I am eager to finish up this series and try his Saxon tales.

Quick facts:
416 pages, genre=historical fiction, pub. in 2006

Extra: Comic Con 2008

2008-07-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I live in San Diego now. I have to live up to that fact. I'm not a Hoosier anymore. In fact, I was afraid I was going to lose some serious geek cred this year if I didn't make it to the pinnacle of all geeky festivities here in my new town, Comic Con.

Since absorbing comics (or ... er ... graphic novels by today's more precise lingo) involves reading, sort of, I thought I ought to post about my trip to the Con here.

My show experience started off kind of rough. I went straight to the Lego booth in order to pick up a limited edition Indiana Jones set for my older brother. They only made 500 of these, so I had to stand in line for a chance to pay $50 for one of the 100 sets released today. I waited in line five times. It kind of sucked. But, I finally got one. (And frankly, I don't know how they could have made the process any better and still be fair.) Now I have to decide how much I really like my brother. Apparently these sets are going on eBay for $300!

Anyway. On to the comics ... er ... graphic novels stuff.

I have to say, I really loved Comic Con. I have never considered myself much of a comic (... er ... I give up!) reader, but I really liked meeting the artists and hitting some of the small press/indie comic creators.

Here's what I picked up.

Two sketch books by William Stout, an old-school, Frazetta-like pen-and-ink guy who draws dinosaurs like nobody's business. William's web site is at http://www.williamstout.com/gallery/comics/.

A little indie book by Zach Marcus called Miner vs. Alien (http://ao-hatefulrobot.livejournal.com/). This was very cool. I bought it on a whim and I turned out to really like the quirky drawings and the odd, wordless story. The whole comic can be seen here.

Three posters by Mark Gonyea, another indie artist, www.MrOblivious.com. The posters are sequential single-frame images, laid out in a grid, which add up to a story of sorts. He calls them story posters, and you can see them here. My favorite is called Pixel Hero (above). They are honest to goodness 24x24 pixel drawings. You have to be 40 or better to really appreciate what this one's all about, don't you? Mark was super cool and very literate. Two of these are going into my office, I think.

Finally, I latched onto a copy of Incredible Change Bots by Jeffrey Brown. This guy is funny! ICB is simultaneously an homage, a spoof, and a moral condemnation of the Transformers cartoon. Totally cool. You can find Jeffrey's other stuff at Top Shelf Comics. Oh, and Jeffrey drew me a neat little robot inside the cover when he signed the book. I didn't chat him up and I walked away before coming back and buying it. The guy had no reason to want to please me. He could have just signed the book, but he went the extra mile. He's just that cool.

That's it. I spent about $60 (on myself) and I feel like I hit a winner every time. I have no real experience in buying comics; I mostly went on instinct. So I'm really pleased with what I brought home.

I'm also really amazed at how accessible all the big name artists and writers were. A friend of mine loves this image by Adam Hughes, depicting all the famous superheroines of DC comics out-of-uniform. I happened to see a poster of the image, and Adam sitting there by it without much of a crowd around him, so I went for it. Like everyone else I approached, he was really friendly and engaging. (No glassy eyed looks or staring at the top of someone's head while they sign your book!)

Also, big props to the Con organizers. I heard there were some troubles last year with overcrowding. This year they limited ticket sales and the staff did a great job of keeping the crowd in check. Yes, it was sometimes crowded or congested, but there were just a few people there ... like 125,000!

I had a great time, but my feet hurt.

#29: The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

2008-07-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

An aging Cuban fisherman has made a number of trips out without catching anything, but this time will be different.

This book is amazing. I find it really hard to muster much to say about it, because it is such a pure experience. There are lessons here, but nothing trite or overpowering. It is just a simple story extremely well told.

The directness and brevity of this story was a welcome point of clarity in an otherwise confusing, exciting, eventful, and exhausting two weeks of travel.

I "read" this title as an audiobook this time. (like Starship Troopers, I had read it once before.) I feel like listening to books gives me a slightly different experience, not better or worse, just different. Because the reader's voice differs from the voice in my own head ... we emphasize different things ... I feel like I am able to catch things in the work that I had overlooked or undervalued before. Anyway, this reading was by Charlton Heston. I though it was quite well done, actually, despite Heston's tendency toward over-dramatization.

Quick facts:
118 pages, genre=classic, pub. in 1952

#28: Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein

2008-07-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

Johnny Ricco has a bright future all planned out for him. As soon as he graduates high school, he will accept a temporary, low-level job in his dad's company, then work his way up to take over the whole operation. But Johnny has vague ideas that he wants something else, so he enrolls in the mobile infantry to serve a two year term. This is the story of his training and his participation in the interplanetary "bug war."

Starship Troopers is also Robert Heinlein's thinly veiled examination of moral philosophy and defense of militarism. In ST, Heinlein tackles subjects like suffrage, civic virtue, the necessities of war, juvenile delinquency, and capital punishment.

I read the book over the Independence Day weekend, and found it rather fitting but also a little scary. (I'll clarify that reaction in a minute.)

I've read the book before, but as a young adult. Now, like then, I found the story itself to be a great read. The detailed descriptions of military training and combat operations make it one of the seminal works in the sub-genre of military science fiction. (I would suggest Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is a great piece for comparison/contrast. I would also suggest Joe Haldeman's Forever War.) Heinlein's wry humor and the way he breaks the story up with flashbacks and transitions between different phases of Johnny's schooling and military service also add to the novel's readability.

The core ideas in the book are really seductive. Heinlein gives us a pretty simplistic view of the universe, humanity, and the science of behavior modification. It all sounds oddly "right" when you read it, and some of it is pretty sound stuff. There are some good thoughts about freedom in the book, for instance. Other things in the book made me a bit queasy and I knew they were "off", but I was too caught up in reading the story to stop and analyze them.

For example, there is a long passage (essentially all of chapter eight), where Johnny and his ex-military, high school, moral philosophy teacher are having a discussion about how to train a puppy (and by extension how to train a populace). The "obvious" method of training a puppy, says Johnny's teacher, is to yell at it, rub its face in poo, and then smack it with a newspaper. Now, as a person who has raised both puppies and children, I can tell you two things. One, puppies and children are quite different. Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, they are entirely different species with different instincts and intelligences. Two, showing your displeasure with a puppy/child's behavior is important, but not nearly as important or productive as showing a puppy/child when you are pleased with his/her/it's behavior. (And yes, I'm going to entirely sidestep the whole subject of striking/spanking.)

This book, and Stranger in a Strange Land were written concurrently and they represent Heinlein's first two forays into serious science fiction. Prior to writing these, he had mostly been writing juvenile sci-fi stories and space operas. (I read quite a few of these once upon a time and remember loving Space Cadet, Red Planet, and Between Planets in particular.)

There is a reason this book is still read after almost fifty years. It's a solid classic in the science fiction tradition and a generally thought provoking novel. (It has much more substance than the 1997 film version by Paul Veerhoven, in case you were wondering.) If you read the Wikipedia article on this book, you will get a sense of just how provocative it was ... is. In writing it, Heinlein became a target for sixties anti-militaristic views and it cost him a fair measure of respect, even within his own community of SF writers.

Quick facts:
272 pages, genre=science fiction, pub. in 1959

#27: Captain Hazzard in Python Men of the Lost City, Ron Fortier

2008-07-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

Captain Hazzard in Python Men of the Lost City, by Ron Fortier and Chester Hawks.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Captain Hazzard was a clone of Street and Smith’s popular adventurer-scientist, Doc Savage. In this, his first adventure, Captain Hazzard is called upon to track down a missing scientist. Accompanied by the lost scientist’s attractive and hardy daughter, as well as a crack team of specialists, Hazzard must thwart the plans of the evil Phoenix and his mysterious death field generator.

For this particular edition, published by Wild Cat Books, Ron Fortier has completely rewritten and fleshed out this old pulp story, first penned by Chester Hawks. In fact, The Python Men of the Lost City is a modern artifact of a pulp renaissance that has been building steam for a number of years now (a good example of which is the recent flood of Hard Case Crime novels).

Warning: if you don’t feel like a short history lesson, skip down to the “>>>” marks!

The pulps were magazine-like publications full of stories churned out by an army of starving writers. The name, “pulps”, comes from the heavy wood pulp content of the cheap paper on which the magazines were printed. Pulps have origins in the early 1800's, but the first pulp magazine is often considered to be Frank Munsey’s Argosy, printed in 1992. The decades of the 1920's and 30's were considered the golden age of the pulps, but some titles lasted well into the 50’s.

The wordslingers who filled up the pulps were paid only pennies per word. Some of them cranked out 20 pages or more of honest-to-goodness story every day, on manual typewriters. Very few of them ever made a comfortable living at the trade, and those who did make a fair amount of money mostly earned it in the years when their pulp stories were reprinted as paperback novels. Given the general rate of production, the majority of pulp fiction was formulaic, full of plot holes, and riddled with bad dialogue.

That part of pulp, the cheap production values and the often abysmal writing, is thankfully not part of the revival. At their best, pulps were full of knock out dialogue, fast-paced action, and incredibly inventive settings. Despite what you might have learned in your college literature class, modern genre fiction probably owes more to the pulps than it does to predecessors of higher literary prestige. The major tropes for science fiction, westerns, spicy love tales, adventure stories, fantasy, weird horror, hard boiled detective stories, and more were explored and established in the pulps.

There are a number of factors that have brought pulp fiction back to the foreground in modern America. Popular movies of the 80's, like Indiana Jones and Star Wars, played a role. New methods of publishing have also played a huge role, including self-publishing, e-books, print-on-demand, cheap and powerful software for wordsmithing, Internet shopping, etc. Minor influences include things like fan fiction, the surge of imported Japanese manga, and the plethora of “pulpy” video game themes.

>>>

As mentioned above, this particular book is a strange hybrid. It began when Ron Fortier picked up a manuscript of Chester Hawk’s that had fallen into the public domain. It was the first and only printed Captain Hazzard story, though it is suspected that several plots intended for CH were later repurposed for another pulp action hero. It was also a hastily slapped-together piece that was pretty much unreadable by modern standards.

Ron, with a two-fisted optimism worthy of the greatest pulp heroes, saw the possibilities in the manuscript and decided to rewrite it from beginning to end.

In my opinion, he did a great job. This novella really feels like a great, vintage pulp story. The action is both cool and totally relentless. In the first few chapters alone, the reader is shown a strange field that spells instant death for anyone caught in it, tangled up in an intense gun fight in a dark and cramped apartment, and then taken for a reckless drive in a flaming car with a smoking corpse in the back seat!

Wild Cat Books should also be praised for the production values exhibited in this book. The binding, paper, cover, etc. are all solid. The book also includes a number of b&w interior illustrations by Rob Davis, a wild cover by Tom Floyd executed in true pulp style, previews of the next Captain Hazzard story and comic book, an interview with Ron Fortier, and some other nice extras.

Quick facts:
152 pages, genre=science fiction (?), pub. in 2006

Extra: Half-time Report

2008-06-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

I promised to do a checkup at the halfway point, and here it is.

So far in 2008 I have read about 8,000 pages.
The average length of the books I am reading is just over 300 pages.
Nine of the 26 books I've read so far were audiobooks. (Actually, it's 8.5, I mixed listening and reading on one selection, alternating chapters.)
About 60% of the books I've read fall into the categories of Fantasy, Science Fiction, or Classics. No surprise there, at least not to me.
I have only read one comedy this year.
The oldest book I've read this year is The Iliad, it dates to the 8th or even 9th century B.C.E.
By publishing date, the oldest book I've read this year is from Carmilla, printed in 1872.
The most recently published book I've read this year is 1776 or The Road, both from 2006.
I am at least one book ahead of the pace I need to keep in order to finish the year having read 50 books.
So far my favorite read for 2008 is probably The Road.

Here is the quick list of titles:
Carmilla*
The Concrete Island
Lord of Light
Burning Chrome
Journey of the Gun
The Hobbit
The Scar
The Jungle Books
The Picture of Dorian Gray* (mixed audio and traditional reading, actually)
The Road
Carry On, Jeeves*
Grendel
1776*
Beowulf*
Death Masks
Call of the Wild
Blood Meridian
Mexico Set
London Match
Diary
The Archer's Tale*
No Country for Old Men
Rendezvous with Rama*
The Shrinking Man*
Before Adam*
The Iliad

#26: The Iliad, Homer

2008-06-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Iliad takes place in the ninth year of the Trojan war. To review, it all started when Paris of Troy visited Menelaus, the King of Sparta. In a move that probably makes Paris the worst house-guest ever, he made off with Menelaus hot wife, Helen. Menelaus called in all his political allies, the kings of other city-states, and built a massive army. They sailed to Troy, struck camp around their beached ships, and began laying siege to the city. After ten years of fighting, the Achaeans pull the famous Trojan horse stunt and take the city. But the Iliad is neither the story of how the war began or how it ends; it simply recounts the most eventful year of the war and the fates of many of the famous persons involved. The story specifically begins with a feud between Menelaus and Achilles over a girl who was taken in battle as a prize. Achilles decides to quit fighting in protest. His return to battle signals the final stages of the story. In between lots of cool things happen.

There are two things I particularly liked about The Iliad in my first reading of it: the description of battle action and the depiction of the Greek gods warring with each other over their favorite humans on the battlefield. I have a lot to say about both, but I'm going to restrict myself to the former. Otherwise this post would just get ridiculously long.

I was amazed at how graphically the violence is described in The Iliad. I'm not sure I've ever read a better blow-by-blow account of battle. The serene cover above belongs to the edition I read, a translation by Robert Fagles. In contrast, I found this crazy cover on the Internet and thought its cinematic tagline was pretty accurate.

Gore and glory is indeed the balance that Homer strikes. The battlefield narrative vacillates between the glorious Greeks in their ornate arms and the gruesome demise of various unlucky soldiers. Homer takes care to describe the helmets, spears, shields, breastplates, belts, greaves, chariots, and other instruments of war in a fair amount of detail. In fact, book 18 is mostly one long description of Achilles' wonderful shield, which depicts scenes from both the rural and urban lives of the Greeks. Homer never lets us forget, though, that all of this glittering gear is made for bloody war. I can't resist reproducing some passages of Fagles' wonderful translation here to illustrate the point.

Diomedes vs. Pandarus - 5:320-328 (book:lines)
"With that he hurled and Athena drove the [spear] shaft
and it split the archer's nose between the eyes --
it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze
cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw
and the point came ripping out beneath his chin.
He pitched from his car, armor clanged against him,
a glimmering blaze of metal dazzling around his back --
the purebreds reared aside, hoofs pawing the air
and his life and power slipped away on the wind."

Antilochus vs. Mydon - 5:672-678
"Antilochus sprang, he plunged a sword in his temple
and Mydon, gasping, hurled from his bolted car facefirst,
head and shoulders stuck in a dune a good long time
for the sand was soft and deep--his luck day--
till his own horses trampled him down, down flat
as Antilochus lashed them hard and drove them back
to Achaea's wating ranks."

Tuecer vs. Hector - 8:342-352
"The archer [Tuecer] loosed a fresh shaft from the bowstring
straight for Hector, his spirit longing to hit him --
but he missed and cut Gorgythion down instead,
[...] As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,
drooping its head to one side, weighed down
by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,
so Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder
weighed down by his helmet."

Note the contrast created between the metaphor of a beautiful poppy and the lolling head of a soldier that just got nailed by an arrow. Homer's battle metaphors are pretty cool. Sometimes he gets caught up in talking about predatory animals (lions in particular), but other times his level of invention is pretty amazing. Here is another one describing a deadlock between the Achaeans and Trojans. They are fighting over a defensive wall erected by the Achaeans near their ships.

12:489-493
"As two farmers wrangle hard over boundary-stones,
measuring rods in hand, locked in a common field,
and fight it out on the cramped contested strip
for equal shares of turf--so now the rocky bastion
split the troops apart and across the top they fought"

And another agricultural metaphor...

Helenus vs. Menelaus (dubbed Atrides here) 13:678-682
"and Helenus' arrow hit Atrides right on the chest,
on the breastplate's curve but the arrow sprang away.
High as the black-skin beans and chickpeas bounce and leap
from a big bladed shovel, flying across the threshing floor,
sped by a whistling wind and a winnower's sweeping stroke--
so the arrow flew from fighting Atride's breastplate"

One of the best things about Homer's descriptions is that, in just a few lines he can make turn a completely anonymous figure (who is about to get skewered by a well-thrown spear) into a sympathetic human being, complete with a past and a lost future. Here is another example. Sorry for the length, but I can't help myself.

Iphidama vs. Agamemnon - 11:256-
"Iphidamas, the rough and rangy son of Antenor
bred in the fertile land of Thrace, mother of flocks.
Cisseus reared him at home when he was little--
his mother's father who sired the fine beauty Theano--
but once he hit the stride of his youth and ached for fame,
Cisseus tried to hold him back, game him a daughter's hand
but warm from the bridal chamber marched the groom,
fired up by word that Achaea's troops had landed.
Twelve beaked ships saile out in his command,
trim vessels he left behind him in Percote,
making his way to Troy to fight on foot
and here he came now, up against Agamemnon,
closer, closing. . .
Atrides [Agamemnon] hurled and missed,
his spearshaft just slanting aside the man's flank
as Iphidamas went for the waist beneath the breastplate--
he stabbed home, leaning into the blow full weight,
trusting his heavy hand but failed to pierce
the glittering belt, failed flat-out--the point,
smashing against the silver, bent back like lead.
And seizing the spearshaft powerful Agamemnon
dragged it toward him, tussling like some lion
and wrenching it free from Iphidamas' slack grasp
he hacked his neck with a sword and loosed his limbs.
And there he dropped and slept the sleep of bronze,
poor soldier, striving to help his fellow Trojans,
far from his wedded wife, his new bride . . .
no joy had he known from her for all his gifts,
the full hundred oxen he gave her on the spot
then promised a thousand head of goats and sheep
from the groundless herds he'd rounded up himself.
Now the son of Atreus stripped him, robbed his corpse
and strode back to his waiting Argive armies,
hoisting the gleaming gear."

In reading passages like that it's impossible not to think about the stories we hear of families who have lost sons and daughters to the war in Iraq.

By the way, if you are a little annoyed with Agamemnon after reading that passage, no worries. He gets his when he returns home from the war! You can read about it in Aeschylus' tragic play, Agamemnon.

I can't say that I recommend The Iliad to everyone. It's definitely a challenge. I like epic poetry. I've read Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, The Inferno, Beowulf, and other classic titles in several translations each. Even so, every time I took a break from this book I had a hard time picking it up again.

Translation has a lot to do with readability, so if you feel driven to pick up one of these epic poems, PLEASE do some research first. I have posted on Beowulf and Gilgamesh in this blog, and have given some suggestions on best translations for both. If there are better translations of The Odyssey or The Iliad than Fagles', I haven't read them. However, I have skimmed Ian Johnston's freely available translation of The Iliad and it looks quite good. It is perhaps a bit more "plain" than Fagle's translation. This makes it slightly more readable, but also less rich.

Quick facts:
683 pages, genre=classics, (translation) pub. in 1990

#25: Before Adam, Jack London

2008-06-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

Before Adam is the story of a proto-human in the pleistocene age. The narrator tells us that he pieced the tale together from nightmares he has experienced his whole life, nightmares which he later recognized as ancestral memories after taking an evolution class in college. He names his alter-ego Bigtooth, because of his large incisors, and the assembled account tells of Bigtooth's struggle for survival in world filled with fierce predators and competing proto-humans in various states of evolutionary advancement.

I've got a lot to say about this book, so please bear with me. I'll try to keep each paragraph focused on a single topic, so you can easily skip the parts that don't interest you.

This was the second time I have read this book, and neither reading was "conventional." I first read it as a free Project Gutenberg file on a PDA, a Palm m505. (I used to love to reverse the text-ground colors on it and lower the intensity so I was reading light text on a dark background in low-light situations. It was a great way for me to read in bed at night without keeping my wife awake. For my money, it was a much better way to read electronically than the new Kindle product, but I can see the advantages of that machine too.) This time I downloaded an audio book version from audiobooksforfree.com, a quirky site that definitely deserves its own write up at some point. I have been very pleased with every recording I have purchased from audiobooksforfree and this one was no exception. (FYI, I buy the 48kbps, separate-file, download versions for $7 per title.) The narration by Silas Hawkins was perfect. (Though I had to laugh when his polished voice was forced to utter prehistoric growls!)

The narrative frame of this story, the explanation that he gives for his freakish ability to access ancestral memories, frankly doesn't work. Even if the science behind his ancestral memories were plausible and logical, which they aren't, the pieced together account doesn't follow the rules he laid down for himself in the explanation. If you listen/read closely, you will note occasions in which the narrator knows things he should not, or with an unlikely preciseness. No matter, though, both the narrative frame and the tale are entertaining. If you just grin a little at the slightly-forced mechanism for delivering the story and the antiquated scientific notions, you will find plenty of interesting things this book. (Though some would argue, myself included, that London's popular science notions are in themselves an interesting artifact of his time. More on this in the paragraph on related literature.)

So what's good about the story? For one thing, it's an entertaining and short little adventure story. Beyond that, I kind of felt like I was watching Meerkat Manor or some fantasy penned by Diane Fossey after a long day of watching mountain gorillas. At times, London does an admirable job of imagining what a very intelligent ape without the use of language at his disposal might be thinking, feeling, and doing. There are some sour notes, but generally I found London's writing to be an interesting take on a fairly challenging little writing exercise. London later wrote a book with a similar premise called The Star Rover, in which a condemned prisoner puts himself into a trance and experiences his past lives.

The novel is also remarkable as a literary object. There are other "lost worlds" novels written before this one, but I can't think of any that tries to scientifically tackle pre-humans from their own point-of-view. Related contemporary works to Before Adam that I have enjoyed include Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World (1912); Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land that Time Forgot (1918), Tarzan of the Apes (1912), and At the Earth's Core (1914). More recently, Clan of the Cave Bear (1980) by Jean M. Auel is an interesting comparison. Both Clan and Before Adam portray competing branches of proto-humans, for instance. According to modern anthropology, this conceit is scientifically accurate. I also enjoyed reading Sunset of the Sabertooth, by Mary Pope Osborne, to my children. It's a book from the Magic Treehouse series in which two children travel back in time and encounter ice-age humans.

One final historical note of interest. In 1906 Stanley Waterloo, having also written a story of proto-humans in the ancient world, accused London of plagiarism after reading three installments of the serialized Before Adam. Waterloo's book was called The Story of Ab. There doesn't seem to be a lot of grounds for his charge of plagiarism, but there are a few "odd" coincidences. London's response was pretty pointed, and you can read the dialogue between the two in this New York Times article, from November 24, 1906. The chief difference, according to London, is that his work takes a decidedly more scientific approach to the subject.

Oh, and I should mention that this book answers the timeless question, "What would you do if your best friend ate your new puppy?" :-)

Quick facts:
249 pages, genre=science fiction, pub. in 1907

#24: The Shrinking Man, Richard Matheson

2008-06-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

In the middle of reading two other books (Sailing Alone Around the World and The Iliad), I managed to squeeze in an audiobook version of this vintage SF/Horror story.

You may recognize Richard Matheson as the author of I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, Somewhere in Time, A Stir of Echoes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Duel, Hell House, and other stories.

I believe that ALL of the above titles have been reworked for movies and/or television, and The Shrinking Man is no different. A year after publishing the novel, Matheson adapted it for the screen and added the word "Incredible" for a pithier title. Unfortunately, as with his other stories, it is often the celluloid incarnations that most people have experienced and remember. There have been no less than three versions of I am Legend, Vincent Price convincingly portrayed The Last Man on Earth, Charlton Heston cursed his fate as The Omega Man, and most recently Wil Smith starred in I Am Legend. Ironically, while the most recent film accurately reflects the title of the story, it is probably the least faithful adaptation of the three. The Last Man on Earth is regarded by most (myself included) as the best of the three. It is a nice little low-budget film from the mid-60's.

In The Shrinking Man, an entirely normal family guy, Scott Carey, encounters an entirely abnormal mist that affects his physiology in a unique fashion. He literally begins to shrink. The story recounts the physical challenges and ever-increasing alienation that Scott experiences as he gets smaller and smaller. Eventually he is reduced beyond the state where he can even function as a human being and must struggle against horse-sized spiders, stair steps like cliff walls, and overwhelming loneliness.

While the premise of this book is a bit absurd, it combines the best parts of an adventure/survival novel with a story about someone undergoing a crippling illness. Structurally, these two themes are separated by the novel's sense of time and pacing. The main character's ongoing struggle as a creature of less than an inch in height is punctuated by flashbacks to his former life and the progression of his illness. Only a callous simpleton could fail to empathize with the main character as he systematically loses contact with every meaningful part of his former life. As his job, his wife, his child, and even his own identity slip away from him, he must fight to continually redefine his existence and reform his will to live.

Surprisingly good stuff.

Quick facts:
207 pages, genre=science fiction, pub. in 1956

#23: Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

2008-05-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

Rendezvous with Rama delivers the type of straightforward science fiction one is unlikely to find in any book written after the 1970's. It's full of interesting, but largely unconflicted and entirely rational characters. What's more, the sole purpose of these characters is to provide a human perspective on the scientific wonders that the author, Arthur C. Clarke, wants the reader to see. The book is (mostly) not about people, which will strike many as synonymous with saying the book is mostly pointless. After all, aren't humans the ultimate study of humans?

Are they? Why? Can't a book be about more or less than us?

I was out fishing near the kelp beds in La Jolla the other day and, as often happens to me in a grandiose natural setting, I was again struck by that feeling that "it's not about me" ... or you, or humans in general, or the stuff that we all create, admire, hoard, and then bury in some landfill. Life, the universe, and everything is bigger than us. That's why I laugh whenever I hear some doomsayer announce that we are going to destroy the Earth. What he or she means, of course, is that we are going to destroy ourselves, which is an entirely different thing. Yet we somehow think "us" and "the world" are synonymous. "Self" is the classical and egotistical obsession of Western civilization. (I believe it Protagoras who said "of all things man is the measure." Socrates adds "know thyself.") I have news for you, the Earth doesn't much care what we do and isn't all that phased by our actions. We are a barely tolerated virus of which it takes little notice. However, when we have finally made a big enough nuisance of ourselves, the Earth will fight off the infection that is us with a few millenia of ice or some such. We may be fascinating, but we are not everything.

What does all that have to do with Rendezvous with Rama? Well, it's a story of discovery ... of humans discovering something new and bigger than themselves. It's a story of first contact. In the final analysis, the characters in the novel don't learn much about themselves, unless they weren't already aware that they didn't know everything.

Imagine you were sitting in your back yard barbecuing when, out of nowhere, a bizarre alien creature the size of a greyhound bus decides to plod across your perfectly manicured lawn, blasting through your privacy fence on either side and taking almost no notice of you at all. On a cosmic scale, that's what Rendezvous with Rama is like.

A rapidly approaching asteroid turns out to be a cylindrical spaceship on a course that will take it zooming through the (our) solar system. Scientists throw together a plan to grab the one-time opportunity of exploring this "spaceship" in the few weeks before it is beyond reach.

Knowing that the "story" and characters are going to be slightly flat, this book is a marvelous, expository exercise in detailing a fantastic (and scientifically plausible) world. Clarke unfolds the interior of Rama to the reader in the same manner it is discovered by the explorers, one small piece/chapter at a time, complete with unexplained and unexpected surprises.

Enjoy the ride.

Quick facts:
288 pages, genre=science fiction, pub. in 1972

#22: No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

2008-05-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

Some of you reading this blog will recall that I was a bit nonplussed by Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. While I still find the critical acclaim of that book a bit thickheaded and frustrating, I enjoyed reading his The Road enough that I hadn't totally discounted picking up McCarthy again, perhaps at some point in the unforeseeable future.

A month or so later I was stuck in a hotel in rural Oregon and decided to watch No Country for Old Men. I loved it, but I think my impression was aided by everyone who told me they were disappointed in the ending. If you haven't seen the movie yet, let me tell you a few things that will help and which I wish the makers of the movie had made a bit clearer. The sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is definitely the main character of the book. In the movie you will be tempted to think it's Lewelyn, but it isn't. That will become clear at some point two-thirds the way through. This will make the last third of the movie more entertaining and intelligent-seeming than you might have otherwise found it. Also, the ending is abrupt. I can tell you that, but you still probably won't be ready for it. I wasn't. I immediately hit the rewind and watched the last five minutes over. I still wasn't ready for it, which made me laugh.

I enjoyed the movie so much that, having plowed through Diary by Chuck Palahniuk and having made the mistake I said I wouldn't make again in an earlier post (travel without a backup book), I picked up No Country for Old Man at the airport bookstore.

WOW. Capital W capital O capital W. I thought this book was spectacular. Better than the movie. However, I might tell you to go ahead and see the movie before reading the book (even though that's horrible advice 99 times out of 100). The casting was so brilliant that it really helped lend quality visuals and voices to the reading experienced. Also, the movie will hint at some of the complex messages that you will find more fully explored in the books.

What I like best about McCarthy's writing is that he draws all the dots for you and numbers them, but he doesn't insult you by going ahead and drawing all the lines between the dots. You have to make some of the connections yourself, and only then does the whole picture emerge.

So, how do I write a summary paragraph for this book? First of all, I'm not even sure what genre to stick it in. It's probably going to go in general fiction, though it is part thriller and 100% an unconventional western. (Okay, that's a paradox, to say a book typifies a genre but that it's unconventional. I suppose if you find the "anti-western" section at your local bookstore, this might be one of the few books on that shelf.)

No Country for Old Men is about an aging sheriff who encounters a string of unsolved crimes that rock his sense of identity. (If you don't agree with me, that this is what the story is about, I suggest you look at the title of the book again.) In accomplishing this larger tale, the reader is told the story of a hunter who happens across a drug deal gone sour and then spends a good deal of book trying to extricate himself from the resulting mess. That story is full of action and suspense, and is the part of the movie most people will tell you they loved. The sheriff's story, however, is the part that will stick with you. The reader should not overlook the ironic fact that he or she gets the full story even though the sheriff does not.

By the way, the dialog in this book is amazing. It's also infectious. Even now, I am actively curbing a serious "hankerin'" to go around talking like the characters in the book.

Quick facts:
309 pages, genre=general fiction (thriller or western?), pub. in 2005

Extra: Books for the Kids

2008-05-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

Some of you may be wondering what I'm reading to my kids right now. We've consumed a number of things since the disaster known as The Call of the Wild.

1. We listened to some radio drama, including the BBC dramatization of The Hobbit and NPR's dramatization of Star Wars. I am a fan of radio drama, old and new. I think the kind of active listening and imaginative participation these dramas require are a real challenge for young people of this generation. Active listening and visualizing from the written or spoken word are fantastic skills for a person to develop, at any age, and radio drama is one of the best and most pleasant means for exercising these underused muscles.

2. We have been reading some books that are aimed more at capturing my four-year-old's attention. Right now we are on book #9 of the Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osbourne. This is a great little series of chapter books for early readers. In them, a boy and a girl (siblings) find an abandoned treehouse full of books. Opening one, the boy casually remarks "I wish we could go there." ... and they do. Each book is an adventure in a different time/place. Eventually they meet a rather famous literary character who is a magical librarian and owner of the treehouse. The books are self-contained stories, but they also work in smaller clumps (four at a time seems to be the pattern) and in the context of the larger series. I believe there are around 40 of these things now. The newest books are being labeled "stepping stones." I have noticed that they get a tad bit longer as the series progresses.

3. We read a bit from a couple of really funny books that I bought for my eight-year-old and which he totally devoured several times over. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the sequel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules, are witty little creations with stick figure illustrations by Jeff Kinney. The books feature that peculiar brand of humor that young boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 12 love so much. Mostly this means jokes about the less flattering aspects of the human body (boogers and farts) and a light-hearted look at the cruelty of kids to one another as they compete for the attention of their peers. I would have said this book was primarily aimed at boys, but it was introduced to me by a girl who was a fan. Times have changed in the last 30-40 years, I guess. I'm not sure the girls I knew in elementary school would have enjoyed this book much. My advice to you is, if you want to be the cool uncle, aunt, parent, or grandparent, buy the 8-12 year old person you are closest to one of these books.

Extra: I, Claudius, Robert Graves

2008-05-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

One of the first audiobooks I listened to (back in 1992, I believe) was I, Claudius. Written by Robert Graves, read by Nelson Runger, and produced in unabridged form by Recorded Books, this is still one of my favorite audiobook readings ever. The copy I listened to belonged to the public library. I listened to it again the next year, and went back for it a couple of years later ... only to find the library had sold it in one of their book sales. Apparently, I was the only one to ever have checked it out. I'm sure it's shelf space was given to a Clive Cussler potboiler, or something equally unworthy.

Anyway, I have been keeping my eyes open for a copy for years. I happened to think about it tonight, after learning that BBC radio aired an abridged reading of the book in 2007. So I checked eBay, that great bazaar where we all buy back our past at some point or another, and there it was. $13.00, including shipping/handling, and it's mine! All mine!

Now I just have to do the work of converting the cassettes to mp3's ... a process at which I am an old hand.

If you have never read this tale of a most unlikely (and surprisingly likable) Roman Emperor who survives all the malicious plots of his scheming relatives, you should. I have never seen the television productions, myself, which makes me a bit of an oddity. (Anyone who happens to know the title I, Claudius, is more likely to have seen the TV series than read the book.) The sequel, Claudius the God, is also pretty good. (And there is a Nelson Runger recording of it as well.) Having read that book once, though, I don't have any desire to return to it.

#21: The Archer's Tale, Bernard Cornwell

2008-05-07T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Archer's Tale, a.k.a. Harlequin, is my first introduction to the fiction of Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell is a prolific writer of historical fiction and is best known for his novels about Richard Sharpe, a soldier in the colonial British army. (A quick count of his Wikipedia entry indicates there are about two dozen "Sharpe's ***" novels alone.

While this book ranks slightly lower on Amazon.com than some of Cornwell's other novels (4 stars), I thought it was a very enjoyable adventure story with some nice historical trappings. It is the first book in the Grail Quest Trilogy, and I'm pretty certain I will pick up the other two, even though The Archer's Tale is a self-contained story. The story is definitely devoted to high action and an agile plot. I would call it a Romantic tale, if it weren't for the fairly realistic gore. To achieve this style, Cornwell does occasionally push the envelope of believability. However, I am pretty sensitive to such things and it never reached the tearing point for me. Had it done so, I would probably be writing a sarcastic review now, rather than contemplating reading the next two novels n the trilogy.

"The archer" is Thomas of Hookton, an English longbowman in 14th century England. Thomas joins the forces of King Edward the Third to fight against France at the beginning of the Hundred Years War. The story begins with the sacking of Thomas' home town, Hookton, and the death of his father, the village priest. Worse, the town's holy relic, the lance of St. George is stolen. The story revolves around Thomas' quest to establish himself as a longbowman, a vocation his father most definitely did not want him to pursue, and to recover the lance. The holy grail is mentioned in the story, but its real importance seems to be a matter for the sequels.

Quick facts:
400 pages, genre=historical fiction (adventure), pub. in 2005

#20: Diary, Chuck Palahniuk

2008-05-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Diary is about Misty Wilmot, a once-upon-a-time artist who lives with her daughter, overbearing mother-in-law, and the memory of her husband, a failed suicide in a persistant vegitative state. Misty is doing her best to make ends meet, but it doesn't seem good enough for her daughter and mother-in-law, who both want her to take up the brush again and paint a masterpiece that will save them from poverty.

If you think this sounds like one of those toothless modern fiction stories about real people with sucky lives, well, you would be wrong. It's much more sinister than that, though I would be doing the book a disservice to explain that comment any further. Perhaps it would be enough to tell you that Chuck Palahniuk also wrote Fight Club.

Reading this book is like trying to pass a horrible highway accident without rubber-necking. You really don't want to look. Your first glimpse shows you something vaguely nauseating and frightening, and rather than looking away, you stare harder. Even though you don't want to know more or see more, you stare harder. Because you have to. Yep, that's what Diary is like. Have a great time. Try not to dream about it. Might as well leave a light on when you go to bed.

On a quick side note, as a person who used to paint a lot, was pretty good at it, but does't much anymore. Wow! Palahniuk writes a psychological portrait that seems real to me. Either he used to be a painter himself, or he has done his research, or he has a pretty amazing empathy for other creative types.

In the final analysis, Palahniuk is a masterful writer, but it takes some fortitude to read his dark prose. I am pretty certain I will pick up another of his books soon. I'm just as certain it will be at least a month or two before I'm brave enough.

Quick facts:
261 pages, genre=horror, pub. in 2003

Extra: D. Kelley Fine Used Books, Newport, RI (USA)

2008-05-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

I love finding a new bookstore, don't you?

From time to time in this blog I'm going to give a nod to great "unchained" bookstores that I discover. (I might also talk about some of my favorites from past encounters.) These will primarily be used bookstores, but will also include those rare bookstores that sell new books but are not part of a chain. (I have nothing against chains, by the way, but they are easy to find and they are pretty much the same experience no matter which town you find them in.)

I would also like to hear about your favorite unchained bookstores. As soon as I collect a dozen or so, I'll put them in a Google map and share it.

Today I want to point you to D. Kelley Fine Used Books in Newport, Rhode Island (330 Broadway, (401) 846-4140). I discovered this book store while on a recent business trip. I needed the third book in the Len Deighton Game-Set-Match trilogy, and I knew it was out of print. I happened to drive by this corner store, stopped, and there was London Match on the shelf!

I wish I had talked with the owner some, so I could share his story here. I'll remember that next time. All I can tell you is that this was a cozy, old, hardwood-floored store with lots of room between the aisles. The selection was rich, if not expansive; it had more quality than quantity. Obviously, it's better to have both, but if you have to skimp on one or the other, this is the right mix.

The store manager took the time to comment on my purchase and we agreed that cold war spy fiction had kind of seen its day ... that most people today wanted to read something more current in this genre, usually involving terrorists. At least that was our rationalization why such a fine series of books could be out of print.

#19: London Match, Len Deighton

2008-04-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick not to say I finished the Game, Set, Match trilogy by Len Deighton. It continued strong to the end. The third book had more action scenes in it, perhaps, than the other two. It felt a bit more "hollywood."

Quick facts:
416 pages, genre=thriller, pub. in 1985

#18: Mexico Set, Len Deighton

2008-04-21T02:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to some rich lamb chops I ate last night in my hotel after a long day of traveling, I got the chance to finish this excellent spy thriller early this morning. Digesting rocks might have been easier for my stomach, but this book was better than antacid for taking my mind off my gastronomic quandry.

The link in the post title above will not take you to Mexico Set, however. Instead, it points you to the first novel in this cold-war, spy thriller trilogy, Berlin Game. The third novel is London Match. (Game, Set, Match ... get it?) I am definitely looking forward to it. Each book is self-contained. In fact, I read Berlin Game over a year ago. I enjoyed it immensely, but never bothered to pick up Mexico Set until now. Obviously, you should read the books in order. (Did I really have to say that?)

By the looks of things on Amazon.com, this series is out of print. I'm pretty sure you can readily find it in your better used book stores, however. I am going to skip the usual summary, because too much detail would spoil the novels for you. If you are at all inclined to read spy fiction, then you can't afford to give these a miss. Having read spy novels that were either a pile of sloppily-plotted action or, perhaps worse, spy novels written in an obfuscating literary style (I'm looking at you, John le Carre!), I can tell you that this one is both intelligent and highly readable. Len Deighton knows what a story is, bless his ink-stained soul!

P.S. You could do worse than to read John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, or Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy. I'm just sayin'. What the heck was up with A Perfect Spy? I want ten hours of my life back!

Quick facts:
346 pages, genre=thriller, pub. in 1984

Extra: The Classic Tales Podcast

2008-04-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Do you like audio books as much as I do? If so, or even if you think you might but aren't sure, you ought to sample the Classic Tales Podcast by B. J. Harrison. The title of this post is a link to the podcast's home page. The rss feed, showing recent episodes, can be found here.

I particularly wanted to point out that his latest episode, #50, is a fine reading of one of the best Jeeves and Wooster short stories from a book I reviewed on this site earlier, Carry On Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse. Before that, episodes 47-49 were devoted to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Most episodes are perfect for a commute or lunchtime listen. If you aren't comfortable with podcast "catcher" software, you can listen online and/or download the files individually.

#17: Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

2008-04-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

Blood Meridian was the book I went looking for when I ended up finding and reading The Road some weeks ago. (See my earlier review.) As it turns out it's a good thing I read the books in the order I did. I loved The Road. Sadly, I found Blood Meridian to be a tedious and pretentious read, for the most part.

I should quickly point out that this opinion puts me in the minority. Of 284 reviews at Amazon.com, 191 of them award the book the full five stars. Only 61 give the book one to three stars. So, two out of three readers think this work is pure genius, and three-fourths of them think the book is at least a great read.

Blood Meridian is loosely based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850's. It follows the fortunes of a fourteen-year old from Tennessee, as he falls in with a pack of scalp hunters working their way west, toward California.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I like westerns that bust out of the old tropes to embrace the period in a more realistic and gritty fashion.

The texture of the writing in Blood Meridian was impressive at times. Times, that is, when the author's intentional disregard for grammar and mechanics didn't force me to read the same sentence two or three times in order to puzzle out its meaning. As I mentioned in my earlier review of The Road, McCarthy's style generally abandons the use of capitalization, commas, and possessive apostrophes, among other standard practices and tools of the English language. He writes in run-on sentences, seldom names characters, and fails to mark dialog with quotation marks or attribute lines to their speakers. In Blood Meridian he also scribes some conversations in Spanish, leaving monolingual readers in the dark (though some of these dialogs can be pieced together from context). While I enjoyed this style a bit in The Road, because of the stark subject matter of that book, I found the unconventional language a lot more difficult to wade through, and less suited to the subject in Blood Meridian.

In addition to being hazy about what was happening on occasion, I was nearly always apathetic about what would happen next or how the characters fared. In fact, the landscape itself has more personality than most of the characters. The main character is nearly invisible. He is known only as "the kid." The most colorful character in the story, "the judge," seems like something out of a fantasy novel. A giant, hairless, and perhaps albino genius turned scalphunter/rogue. Only the last third of the novel reads much like a story, and it's only in this section of the book that the characters really come alive. The first two-thirds are simply a string of horrific events that are as random as the violence they portray.

Oh, did I forget to mention that this book is not for readers with a weak stomach? Blood Meridian is to Pulp Fiction what Pulp Fiction is to Mary Poppins. The characters are, to a man, morally bankrupt, living only to please their basest natures and committing atrocity after atrocity for the sheer hell of it. I personally didn't hate the book for this reason; I have a pretty high tolerance for violence in fiction. I do wish, though, it had all been in the service of making a more interesting point.

The theme of the novel is the ritual of war. The judge philosophizes on this theme quite a bit in the last third of the tale, along with his ongoing lectures about finding order in the universe. (Until the last third I was unable to find any point in the reading at all. If I weren't so damned stubborn, I would never have finished this one.) This bloody and very sad theme, war, is mapped onto the "taming" of the lawless and savage west by U.S. citizens, who are the most lawless and savage characters in the novel. Blood Meridian offers no moral justification (or condemnation for that matter) of this violent westward expansion. It simply paints the experience with an ugly, haphazardly applied brush dripping with blood.

Quick facts:
337 pages, genre=western, pub. in 1985

#16: The Call of the Wild, Jack London

2008-04-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

Buck, a family dog from California, is abducted and sold as a sled dog to feed the voracious appetite for such animals created by the gold rush in Alaska. From his sunny days of quiet contentment, Buck is hurled into a dog-eat-dog world (literally) where he struggles to survive. In the process a more ancient and feral dog is awakened within him.

I recently finished reading this book to my boys. Wow, was that a bad choice.

First of all, I didn't remember this book being so overwritten. The diction was bordering on ridiculous. (London would rather "flail an expired quadrupedal equine" than simply "beat a dead horse," if you catch my drift.) The long passages about Buck, the canine protagonist, reverting to his primal state were also tedious. Oh, and there was lots of violence that I had forgotten about. This was the part that my eight year old did like, by the way. Once he puzzled his way through the language, that is, to figure out that some dude had just gotten a spear in the guts or had been torn apart by a wolf-dog. Little boys live for this stuff. This, and poop jokes.

The story is good. Don't misunderstand me. It's a first class adventure with some poignant moments. During the reading, the hind parts of my brain were wishing it could be rewritten in simpler and more straightforward prose without violating its classic status and the author's voice. In fact, I often substituted simpler diction and skipped passages on the fly while reading it to the boys.

The best part of the story, for me, was the passage that described a dysfunctional trio, a man, his new wife, and her brother, trying to cash in on the gold rush without any knowledge of how to survive the extreme environment. Their end is sad, but only in the grand scheme of things. Empathizing with their plight is almost impossible because they are so foolish and unlikable.

It's worth a quick read, but not really for kids.

Quick facts:
160 pages, genre=classics, pub. in 1903