Peter's Book Report

Under Heaven

2012-01-24T08:57:00.002-06:00

by Guy Gavriel Kay

In 2010 when Under Heaven came out, I heard an NPR reviewer gush about Guy Gavriel Kay as a writer, saying more people should be reading his books. She said the possible reason people hadn't heard of him was because his books don't fit neatly in a fiction category. They are largely historical fiction, often based around real events and people, but his books frequently incorporate fantastical elements that often result in them being classified as fantasy. Which is fine, and I like that genre, but this is not your average wizards and dragons fare. And a lot of people who would probably love Guy Kay's prose have overlooked him because they don't generally read fantasy.

I have since discovered that Guy Kay has several highly acclaimed novels and series, but I chose to read Under Heaven first because it was the first I had heard of him. I immediately fell in love with the book, and could scarcely put it down. I had forgotten how fun it is to discover a new book or author that I love so much. The characters were vivid and interesting, and Kay's prose is simply sublime. The first hundred pages open so many interesting mysteries and questions, I couldn't wait to find out the answers.

Unfortunately, I never got all the answers I wanted. Under Heaven is set in a world based on the Tang Dynasty in China during the time of the An Lushan Rebellion. The book soon scales back to follow a dozen characters through this political and military upheaval, and it loses the tight focus on the characters and the mysteries introduced in the first portion. This isn't to say that the latter part of the book is bad—it's still quite good. I just wasn't in love with it like I was at first.

After finishing it, I would call this book a beautiful disappointment, one that I don't regret reading at all. It wasn't what I expected, but it did introduce me to a great new author, and I can't wait to read more of his stuff.

Just My Type

2011-10-17T15:29:00.001-05:00

by Simon Garfield

As soon as I heard about this book on NPR I knew I had to read it. As if I didn't have enough nerdy interests, I've become interested in fonts and typefaces over the last few years. Fonts first caught my attention when I found some great open-source font projects, and from there I began to notice and appreciate how well-crafted letters helped communicate ideas and promoted clarity. Simon Garfield's book Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, would probably be best enjoyed by a font nerd like me, but it has an interesting combination of history, art, and cultural movements that would appeal to more people than you might initially think. From Gutenberg to the iPad, the book looks at how fonts have evolved and how artistic and cultural trends affected (and were affected by) fonts. For example, I had never thought about any certain font being a "Nazi" font, for example, but the Third Reich had some very distinct (and sometimes conflicting) opinions about the typefaces its citizens used. And if you are familiar with the font Helvetica, its place in the Bauhaus movement seems obvious. There are amusing anecdotes about the "fontroversy" when Swedish furniture maker Ikea switch to the Verdana font, and a review of why Comic Sans is just so terrible. (Or is it?) I really wouldn't call this a well-written book. It relies on strange authorities to support its positions at times, including random tweets and YouTube comments. But it's almost always interesting, and it helped cement in my mind the rock-star status of certain famous typographers such as Matthew Carter (Verdana, Georgia), Claude Garamond (Garamond), Adrian Frutiger (Univers), John Baskerville (Baskerville), and Eric Gill (Gill Sans, and quite a few controversies). If you even bothered to read this whole book review, you'd probably like this book.

Post Script: If you were wondering, this blog currently is displayed in Neuton, a Roman-style open-source font by Brian Zick that is available to use on any website through Google Web Fonts.

Arcadia

2011-07-27T13:40:00.001-05:00

by Tom Stoppard

Arcadia is actually a play rather than a book, but I read it rather than saw it performed. I actually had never heard of the play before a friend proposed it for a book club. I was much more familiar with Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which we also considered reading. The two plays have a lot in common, but I vastly preferred Arcadia, and couldn't believe that I had never heard of it before.

It's hard to state concisely what Arcadia is about. The whole play takes place in the room of an English country house, but the scenes alternate between the early 17th Century and the present day. The period scenes revolve around the family's tutor and his student, the brilliant young daughter of the family. The modern scenes involve researchers and professors trying to determine the identity of the hermit that lived on the residence and the events surrounding a visit to the house by Lord Byron. The dialogue is very clever and often very amusing, but it's also awash in philosophical and scientific concepts. Newtonian physics, chaos theory, determinism, entropy, classicism, romanticism, and scholarship all become topics of conversation at one point or another. But despite the heavy topics, the dialogue is quick and light. As the play draws to a close, the two time periods begin to blend together, with props and sounds from one era appearing the other. By the final scene, characters from both periods appear on stage together, and their dialogue spliced together is both hilarious and poignant.

I absolutely loved Arcadia, and wish I could see it performed. It just finished up a Broadway run in June, but it is often called Stoppard's finest play, so hopefully there will be more productions in the future.

Three Cups of Deceit

2011-04-20T16:11:00.001-05:00

by Jon Krakauer

My reasons for reading Three Cups of Deceit were complicated. First, it was free as a PDF download for the first 72 hours of its release. Second, its release represents a new attempt to market long-form journalism. This "book" (which is almost short enough to be a long article) is the first in a series of nonfiction released by a new publisher called Byliner, which hopes to release non-fiction and journalistic pieces a la carte, similar to Amazon's Kindle Singles. But the third reason started reading Three Cups of Deceit is the reason I finished it: because the allegations it directs at international best-seller and humanitarian, Greg Mortenson, were too severe to ignore, and because for all his ills, Jon Krakauer tells a gripping story.

If you don't know who Greg Mortenson is, you have likely heard of what he does. He founded the Central Asian Institute, which builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson wrote the the popular book Three Cups of Tea, which stayed on the New York Times Bestseller list for three years. He is a frequent speaker at universities and events, and his story is remarkable. According to Mortenson, his mission to build schools came about accidentally, when he took a wrong turn and stumbled into a small Pakistani village on his way back from a failed attempt at climbing K2, the world's second-tallest peak. The village people took him in, nursed him back to health, and in return, he rashly promised to build a school there so the village children could get an education. He did that, and his book details how he kept going, building hundreds of schools in a war-torn region and braving Taliban kidnappings, treacherous journeys, and overcoming bureaucratic obstacles to give kids an education.

It's an inspiring story, but as the book documents in great detail, a lot of it isn't true. Krakauer was one of Mortenson's early supports and financial backers, but he became disillusioned by Mortenson's lax financial practices and refusal to answer to anyone. As Krakauer tells it, Mortenson used the charity for his personal gain, to market his books and pay for plush accommodations, private jets, and a high annual salary. Krakauer's skill at drawing together facts and people, which served him so well it books like Into Thin Air, is in full effect here. Three Cups of Deceit is definitely worth a read, in part because it may represent the future of journalism, but mostly because it's a solid piece of investigative reporting.

Momo

2011-04-12T11:10:00.001-05:00

by Michael Ende

Momo is a young homeless girl who befriends and is befriended by the people of a city. They take her in, and she makes their lives more magical and meaningful. She listens to their problems, diffuses neighbor disputes, and transforms the children's games into magical adventures. When the "timesaving" obsession sweeps through the city, making it so on one has any time to spend with people they care about, only Momo and her friends notice the change and can do something about it.

The whimsical adventure in Momo is a clear allegory about modern society. Everyone is in a hurry, we buy countless gadgets and devices to make our lives easier, and yet we seem to have less free time, not more. The book also touches on issues such as how we care for children and the quality of work. Michael Ende, who also wrote The Neverending Story, wrote Momo in 1973, but if anything, his criticisms are more salient in an era of always-on devices. (I almost felt bad that I was reading Momo on my phone as an ebook.)

The story of Momo is marvelous, and kids will enjoy it. But for an adult, it also does a good job at making you reexamine your time and pace of life.

Intelligence: A Novel of the CIA

2010-07-27T08:57:00.001-05:00

by Susan Hasler

I heard about this book on NPR, and it sounded interesting. Susan Hasler worked as a counter-terrorism analyst at the CIA for over two decades, and the NPR interview discussed some interesting topics like intelligence failures. So I requested the book from my local library and started it with some modestly high expectations. And while certain aspects of the book were illuminating and occasionally entertaining, Intelligence was a disappointment for me.

The basic story of Intelligence follows an analyst named Maddie James who suspects there is an impending terrorist attack on U.S. soil. She and her small team race against the clock and fight against incompetent superiors as they try to identify and prevent the attack. Intelligence is most successful at conveying the sheer volume of data and the near impossibility of accurately identifying threats to national security or American interests abroad. The frustration of the characters as they sift through endless intelligence reports and intercepts clearly comes from Hasler's own personal experience.

But the rest of novel is fairly sub-par. The writing is sophomoric, but at least it isn't too distracting. Hasler develops her own intra-organizational series of terms and metaphors, with analysts referring to the organization as the "mines." Everything has a mining or metallurgic slang term, like alchemists, mine shafts, veins, canaries, drilling down, etc. Regardless of whether this jargon is genuine (I suspect is not), it was used inconsistently and got on my nerves. Also annoying were the various sexual encounters of the characters during the crisis. Do intelligence analysts really jump into each other's beds in the midst of terrorist threats? For our country's sake, I hope not.

Unfortunately, the major flaws of Intelligence weren't limited to the common foibles of a writer's freshman offering of fiction. The terrorist attack involves model airplanes at a major league baseball park, and the plan is so elaborate that it strained even my willing suspension of disbelief. But this isn't a book about analysts versus terrorists. The terrorists are basically gone halfway through the book. The real bad guys are the incompetent and overly-ambitious administrators in the intelligence community and the corrupt and deceitful presidential administration that tries to parlay the threat into an excuse to invade Iran. Perhaps in the hands of a more skillful author these themes wouldn't be as forced and clumsy, but in Intelligence they come across as heavy-handed echoes of Bush-hatred that was so common during the time Hasler was writing the novel. By the end of the book, the character of Maddie James is so embittered and cynical that she almost loses her credibility to explain to the public what actually happened. In my estimation, the novel as a whole essentially shares that same fate.

The Kite Runner

2010-03-04T10:07:00.002-06:00

by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner is a rarity on my reading list in that it is a popular best-seller. I read a lot of genres, but NY Times best-selling fiction isn't my usual fare. But I got this book for Christmas a few years back, and I've been meaning to read it for a long time. The narrator had a privileged childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan, but fled the country during the Soviet invasion. Twenty years later he receives a call from an old friend that summons up memories of his childhood and calls him back to an Afghanistan he no longer recognizes. This is a harsh book of betrayal, guilt, transition, and redemption.

One of The Kite Runner's strongest points is its vivid description of pre-Soviet Kabul. The book is a window in to Afghan society and culture, including the the kite flying that gives the book its title. That rich heritage is juxtaposed with the brutal regime of the Taliban that the narrator witnesses upon his return. The Kite Runner is mostly very depressing, but I still enjoyed it because it gave character and flavor to a place that I normally only hear about in headlines.

The Road

2010-02-08T12:39:00.002-06:00

by Cormac McCarthy
If I had to describe The Road in one word, it would be "bleak." This relatively short novel follows a man in his young son as they try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear holocaust. Human civilization has disintegrated, the landscape is covered with ash, and no plants can grow. The few survivors of the fall-out either scavenge for food or join together in violent, cannibalistic gangs.

This would be an excruciating book to read if it weren't so sublimely written. Cormac McCarthy's prose is as gray and spare as the landscape he describes. The story is so grim that I wanted to detach myself emotionally from the characters, but I was still wracked as the father internally debated whether it would be better to keep going or to accept death on their own terms.

The Road is undoubtedly the best book I read in 2009. I cannot recommend it highly enough. But I'm not interested in seeing the recent film adaptation, even though it stars the excellent Viggo Mortensen. I felt on edge the whole time I was reading the book, and some of the imagery was disturbing. To see it all on film would be too horrific.

Jump the Shark: When Good Things Go Bad

2010-01-14T10:22:00.000-06:00

by Jon Hein

Jump the Shark is a pop culture reference to an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie jumped over a shark tank on water skis. The stunt was so absurdly over the top, that moment came to symbolize the inevitable decline of the show. Thanks to Jon Hein and a clever website, the term "jump the shark" has been applied to almost any cultural figure or icon, and this book chronicles some of the famous shark moments.

My favorite jump the shark moments are often the ones with single-word answers. When did The Beatles jump the shark? Yoko. When did The Cosby Show jump? Olivia. Scooby Doo Scrappy. Harrison Ford? Sabrina. Napoleon Bonaparte? Waterloo. Bill Clinton? Monica.

But sometimes the past-their-prime moments aren't as obvious, which is where the fun comes in. The original Jump the Shark website (now run by TV Guide) had millions of people arguing back and forth about when their favorite shows or celebrities jumped. I don't agree with all of the assessments in this book. For example, Hein is convinced that The Simpsons never jumped the shark, whereas I say it jumped in the late 1990's when Barney went sober. But the disagreement and debate is part of the charm of shark-jumping analysis.

The book was released in 2002 so it's a little dated. For example, the entries on Joe Biden, Al Gore, and other public figures are off. But most of it is right on. The book essentially serves as a review of American pop culture, told in small packages of rise-and-fall stories. One thing I noticed about reading this book was that I really haven't watched much TV. I only watched a few of the shows mentioned with any regularity, and I wasn't very familiar with even some of the classic sitcoms. I guess it's a product of my deprived cable-less childhood.

Jump the Shark isn't anything brilliant, but if you like pop culture, it's a fun read.

Enna Burning

2009-11-30T14:11:00.001-06:00

by Shannon Hale

Enna Burning is the sequel to Goose Girl, but it departs from the fairy tale retelling of the first book. Rather than following the story of Isi, the princess-turned-goose-girl-turned-princess, the second book follows the story of Enna, the forest girl who became friends with Isi in the first book. The country of Bayern finds itself at war with its southern neighbor and Enna comes across a text that teaches fire magic. But Enna soon finds the same thing Isi has discovered with wind magic, that before too long she can't turn it off.

I enjoyed Goose Girl immensely, but this book lost a lot of the charm that the first one had. I even disliked it in the middle, although by the time it finished it was good enough. I never got attached or invested in the character of Enna, and the plot was a bit trite at times. Enna Burning is worth a read if you really liked Goose Girl, but if you're a newcomer to the series I would stick with the first book, which stands on its own quite well.

The Hunger Games

2009-11-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

by Suzanne Collins
Not since Ender's Game have I been so utterly incapable of putting a book down. I read The Hunger Games in the space of an afternoon, and I would have gone without meals if possible. Suzanne Collins creates a partially dystopian vision of the future in which a central power dominates other city states across North America. Each year a young boy and girl are selected from each outlying district to participate in the Hunger Games, a survival competition in which the young people fight to the death on live television.

Nothing about The Hunger Games is completely original, but the book is so good that I still couldn't get enough. This is a serious contender as the best book I have read this year, and I highly recommend it. Even though it involves fighting and killing, the book isn't particularly graphic, and I would recommend it to young and old alike.

Cyteen

2009-10-07T13:33:00.000-05:00

by C.J. Cherryh

Cyteen follows the history of Ariane Emory, a brilliant scientist, businesswoman, and politician who has herself cloned after she dies. Her clone is then part of a life-long experiment in which her childhood and development is closely controlled to mirror that of her predecessor, in homes of producing another multifaceted genius. This experiment happens with the backdrop of interstellar political intrigue and competing factions within Emory's enormous corporation.

This book was very hard for me to get into. For the first 200 pages the major character, Ari Emory, does some really repulsive and twisted thing. I wanted to stop reading, but I kept on because I had heard that it got better.

I'm so glad I stuck it out, because it did get better. It got so good that I could scarcely put it down. It really made me think at times, about what makes us human and ideas of social engineering and the ethics of forming a person's mind. Cyteen won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and after reading it I can say that it is well deserved.

Guardian of the Spirit

2009-10-01T12:00:00.003-05:00

by Nahoko Uehashi

Guardian of the Spirit is the first book in a popular ten-book Moribito series of novels by Nahoko Uehashi. The fantasy stories are set in far-away lands long ago, with warriors, magicians, and magical creatures. The best reason to read these books, however, is for the main character. Balsa is a female body-guard who was forced to train at an early age after her father was killed. She's smart and clever, and a very strong and entertaining female character. In this book she is forced to protect a young prince from his enemies, both traditional and magical. I saw the anime series before I read the book, and I actually liked it better because it showed more of Balsa's character, but I suspect the series as a whole is the best. It's a fun, quick read. Only the first two books of the Moribito series have been translated into English so far, but I hope the rest are on the way because it's a fun series.

The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

2009-09-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is easy to read and quite entertaining. This collection starts with The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a fairly short novel. It's quite good, although rambling at times. I've only ever read Wilde's plays before, so it was strange to read his signature silly dialogue in a mostly serious novel. It was good, and worth the short read. This collection also included several of Wilde's plays: Landy Windermere's Fan, which was okay; An Ideal Husband, which is decent, and The Importance of Being Ernest, which is deliciously funny. My only problem about that last one is that I have seen the film adaptation, and I cannot imagine the characters of Jack, Agly, and Lady Bracknell as anyone but Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, and Judi Dench (respectively). The collection wraps up with the narrative poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," which he wrote in prison towards the end of his short but flamboyant life. It's a good assortment of his work; I highly recommend this collection to anyone wanting to get to know Oscar Wilde better.

This book also gets bonus points for using the famous photograph of Wilde taken by Napoleon Sarony, which was the subject of a very famous copyright lawsuit that established that photographs could be copyrighted.

The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy

2009-06-15T10:57:00.000-05:00

edited by Christopher Cerf

I have a deep fondness for short stories. I think they are the perfect length to present an idea, develop it, and draw a conclusion. They are also very readable. Even during law school, when I was up to my eyeballs in cases to read, I could always find time to read a good short story or two. So when I saw a dog-eared copy of The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy in a give-away book bin, I snatched it up to see if it was any good. I wasn't disappointed.

This was an amusing collection of short stories by some really great authors. Some of them, like Roald Dahl or Arthur C. Clarke, are very well-known. Other I had never heard of, but they were great nonetheless. Most of these stories were written 40-50 years ago, so they have a fun campy feel when they talk about what the future will be like.

I think science fantasy is an interesting genre. It's not fantasy because of its futuristic or technological elements, nor is it sci-fi because it doesn't really care about technical or scientific details. The fantastical devices are merely vehicles to explore interesting concepts. Science fantasy is arguably just a part of science fiction, but its definitely different from hard sci-fi. It's also very accessible, even to people who wouldn't imagine reading most science fiction.

The Story of World War II

2009-04-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

by Donald L. Miller and Henry Steele Commager

I picked this book out from the library because I liked the cover and I wanted to know more about World War II. For that purpose it was perfect. The Story of World War II was accessible and rarely boring, with plenty of photographs and maps to make the narrative real to the reader. Much of the history is told in the words of soldiers or journalists embedded with the American troops or sailors. This is a revision of an orginal work that was published in parts during and immediately after the war. My only criticism is that the book focuses almost exclusively on the American experience of the war, but if that doesn't bother you it is a great way to skim the survace of an enormouse worldwide event. I recommend it to anyone who would like to know more about World War II without delving into a decade of study.

Danny the Champion of the World

2009-03-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl has earned his place in the Pantheon of beloved authors for children and young adults. His whimsical books offer windows to fantastical worlds that appeal to adults just as much as they appeal to children. Dahl has been wildly popular during most of my lifetime, selling millions of copies and having several major feature films made from his novels, such as The Witches, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love those books, but my favorite Roald Dahl book has always been Danny the Champion of the World. I reread it over the weekend, and it's still great.

The book is told by a small boy who grows up with his father in a small gypsy wagon, working in his father's gas station and mechanic shop. Danny's father is an almost magical character, full of fantastic stories and fun idea, and Danny loves his father more than anything in the world. One night Danny discovers his father's darkest secret, which leads them to a new adventure that makes Danny the Champion of the World. I won't elaborate any more, because the journey is so much fun. Unlike many Dahl books, there isn't any actual magic involved. But the tone of the book is completely fantastical, because the marvelous father-son relationship that Danny has with his father is its own sort of magic.

For some reason Danny isn't as well-known as other Dahl books, but I recommend it to anyone.

Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia

2009-03-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

by Tony Horowitz

This is one of those books that I happily discovered by accident. I was at my favorite used bookstore with my wife's uncle while he was selling some books back, and they wouldn't take this one. He had just been recommending Tony Horowitz to me, so he gave me to book to keep. Baghdad without a Map is Horowitz's autobiographical tale of his time as a free-lance report stationed in Cairo. Horowitz travels to over a dozen Middle Eastern countries, including Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. Each location Horowitz visits has different people, cultures, languages, and customs, but they all have the common unifying faith of Islam, even if it is practiced differently in different countries. Horowitz is an excellent writer, and treats the tragic and the ridiculous alike with sensitivity and honesty. I definitely enjoyed Baghdad without a Map. It made me want to travel -- if not to the wasted refugee camps of Sudan.

Accelerando

2009-02-03T15:48:00.037-06:00

by Charles Stross

I have a hard time describing Accelerando. It is sort of a cyberpunk extension of Web 2.0 principles to a vision of the future, and it is mostly confusing. That isn't to say that the book is bad, but it sprawls across four generations of characters and gets too drawn out for my taste. Charles Stross imagines that humanity is on the verge of "singularity," where computers and technology take on a life of their own and render humanity largely obsolete. Stross isn't the first one to imagine this concept, but he takes it one step further by juxtaposing the singularity concept with the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi famously asked his colleagues that if there were multiple intelligent species in the galaxy, why couldn't we see any sign of them. In Stross's Accelerando world, the vast network of intelligences mostly stay at home because they are all intelligent programs living in vast computers powered by Dyson spheres, communicating through wormhole networks. The story haltingly follows several brilliant people who figure out how to contact alien species and escape irrelevance within our own solar system.

Accelerando is full of tech jargon -- Stross is a computer programmer -- and it is broken up into roughly nine different stories with the background of the technology singularity. It is fascinating at times, but I ultimately didn't enjoy it much. I actually started reading it back in 2005 and when I picked it up again last year I had to slog through the middle sections through sheer force of will.

Lost in a Good Book

2009-01-13T10:04:00.002-06:00

by Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book is the sequel to The Eyre Affair and part of the whimsical Thursday Next series. Jasper Fforde imagines a world time travel and pseudo-science are real, with plenty of fantastical characters and events. But the biggest fantasy of all is that in this world people actually care about literature. In this second book the main character, Thursday Next, is plunged deeper into the surreal world of jumping between books and solving literary crimes. The series definitely takes a sharp turn in this book that I didn't expect when reading The Eyre Affair. And by the end of the book the larger plot is just beginning to unfold. I'm usually reluctant to start a series of books because of the time commitment, but these ones are quick and entertaining reads so I don't mind too much. If you actually remember something from your high school Brit Lit class, you'll enjoy these books.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

2008-12-11T08:12:00.000-06:00

by Cory Doctorow

I had previously read some of Cory Doctorow's short stories and blog posts (he runs BoingBoing.net), but I had never read any of his novels until now. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom first caught my attention when I read in an article that Doctorow released it online under a Creative Commons license. Since it was free to read and came in virtually every format imaginable, I thought I'd give it a read.

This was Doctorow's first novel, and to some extent it shows. It has that eager and imaginative feel I've seen in other out-of-the-gate sci-fi writers. My favorite thing about science fiction writing is the presentation of an Idea. A good sci-fi story or novel usually has one or two ideas or concepts about what the future or another existence could be like, and then it tells a story in that imagined environment. Doctorow's contribution to the sci-fi corpus is The Bitchun Society, his vision of a future in which technological innovations have conquered sickness, death, and information barriers. This would be fairly ho-hum techno-Marxism if it weren't for Doctorow's vision of what he calls "Whuffie," a constantly updated score of popularity/accomplishment/influence/power that each person carries. You gather Whuffie by creating things or working or helping people out, and you deplete your Whuffie when you use things or need people to help you. Also part of this vision of the future is what Doctorow calls the "ad-hocracy," the individual groups of people who informally get together to run a community or a university or a city. With the different ad-hocracies running the show, there isn't a need for a traditional government.

This hypothetical world view sets the stage for the exploits and struggles of the main character, Julius, who lives and works in the ad-hocracy that runs part of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. Julius and his companions fight to preserve the traditional format of the Haunted Mansion as popular new-comers with lots of "Whuffie" try to change it to something like a virtual reality experience. If it sounds odd to create a sweeping vision of the future and then set a novel in Disney World, well, it is odd. The novel is entertaining for the most part, but not particularly strong. Several of the flashbacks seem intended just to develop Doctorow's idea of "The Bitchun Society" rather than to move along the story. By the end of the book, I didn't care much about the main character, which is always a problem. Still, it a was fairly entertaining read, even if the world view was more interesting than the plot.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

2008-11-25T11:44:00.000-06:00

by Baroness Orczy

Several years ago I saw the 1934 movie adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was based on the play that was in turn based on the original novel by Baroness Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi. Let's just call her Baroness Orczy for short. The movie was silly and didn't appeal much to the modern viewer, but the story itself had a lot of promise. It tells the adventurous tale of a secret organization of young English men who smuggled French aristocrats out of Paris during the bloody revolution in order to avoid more senseless killing. Their enigmatic and fearless leader was a man of mystery, known only by his assumed name: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Despite its title, the novel mostly follows the viewpoint of Lady Marguerite Blakeney, a French actress who married an English baronet. Her brother is exposed as one of the band of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and an evil French agent forces her to help him discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel in exchange for her brother's life. The story has plenty of twists and turns, and while most of them are fairly obvious, they are still enjoyable. The reader figures out who the Scarlet Pimpernel is long before Lady Blakeney, and even the surprise ending isn't much of a surprise. This is straight-forward spy stuff. The bad guys are obviously bad and the good guys are obviously good. There is also a fair amount of editorializing by the author, a Hungarian who lived in both France and England. Baroness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel around the turn of the 20th Century, and she lauds the heroic English while condemning the violent French revolutionary government. But none of this overly detracts from the exciting story.

I should also mention that, rather than reading this book, I listened to it as an audiobook. I found a particularly good Librivox recording of the book ready by Karen Savage, who mercifully knew French and did not butcher the French names and dialogue. Kudos to her and to the Librivox project.

Stardust

2008-11-14T21:14:00.001-06:00

by Neil Gaiman

This is one of those books I have been meaning to read at some point, but I only just rememberd to check it out of the local library. Stardust was made into a film last year, which was fairly decent. The book, of course, is better, but I could appreciate some of the quirky elements the screenwriters imported from the book that gave the movie its signature Neil Gaiman feel. Gaiman has a knack for writing fantastical stories that are infused with fairy tales and mythology and yet do not take themselves too seriously. Stardust was amusing and a very fast read. Most of all, it was very enjoyable. (I actually missed my stop when I read it on the bus this week!)

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

2008-05-19T08:36:00.004-05:00

by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I love history books that let the reader get to know some of the most fascinating characters in history. For that reason, I really enjoyed Team of Rivals. Not only does it explore the character and strategies of President Lincoln, it also explores the personalities and traits of some of the other great men of that generation.

When Lincoln was running for the presidency, he was the long-shot, darkhorse candidate. Most people thought William Henry Seward would easily get the nomination of the new Republican Party, and if not him, then Salmon Chase or Edward Bates. But Lincoln cleverly positioned himself, from the frontier of America, to swoop in and clinch the nomination when Seward faltered in the end. But that wouldn't be very remarkable, if he didn't immediately thereafter bring all of his former rivals into his cabinet. Some of them came kicking and screaming; others came out of a sense of duty; still others came because they saw a chance to grab the next presidential nomination. But in the end, they call came to respect and admire the man whom they initially thought was a simple, unrefined country lawyer.

Throughout the course of the book I came to appreciate the roles these men played during the crucial period of the American Civil War. I admired Secretary of State William Seward's selfless willingness to support the man who had the position Seward should have won. I appreciated the dogmatic hard work and gruff exterior of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. I was impressed by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles' transformation of the American Navy from a few dozen dilapidated ships to a modern superpower. I was somewhat disgusted by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase's perpetual back-stabbing and self-righteousness as he tried (unsuccessfully) to outmaneuver Lincoln politically. And I was touched by the sacrifice of Attorney General Edward Bates as he was separated from his family and worked hard until he was over 70.

However, even though there are many great men and women with important roles in this period of American history, the book's view of the other men merely serves to reinforce the monolithic character of Lincoln himself. We usually think of him as Honest Abe, but that doesn't mean he was simple. He managed to cobble together an enormously talented cabinet during a time when traitors and Southern sympathizers literally threatened to tear the government and military apart. He played his rivals off each other and held together the newly formed Republican Party, which threatened to split at any moment. His unshakable faith in the Union and his own abilities was contagious, bolstering his cabinet members and the soldiers he repeatedly visited in the field. And his refusal to hold grudges diffused many situations and allowed him to win over many of his most bitter critics. As his formal rivals, who quickly became his colleagues and supporters, came to know Abraham Lincoln, they reached the same conclusion that I reached: that Lincoln was the best (and perhaps only) man to bring the country safely through that crisis. Doris Kearns Goodwin is a fine historical writer. She is obviously a Lincoln fan, and after reading Team of Rivals, I have to agree.

Howl's Moving Castle

2008-03-02T07:46:00.004-06:00

by Diana Wynne Jones
I didn't even know about this book until Hayao Miyazaki made a movie version. The film was quite good in its own right, but now that I have read the book, I realize that he made quite a few changes that I can't exactly explain. And as is almost always the case in books adapted to movies, the book is better.

Howl's Moving Castle follows the story of Sophie, a young woman who works in a hat shop. Her sisters have left and were leading exciting lives, but as the dutiful oldest daughter, Sophie felt trapped in her tedious world. All that changes when the Witch of the Waste comes to the shop and becomes angry with Sophie. The Witch curses Sophie, turning her into an old woman, and Sophie flees before her family can discover what happened to her. In desperation, she eventually takes up residence in the strange moving castle that roams around the town, said to be owned by the evil Wizard Howl. In the castle, Sophie meets Wizard Howl and many other colorful figures, and has plenty of adventures of her own.

A lot of the characters and subplots in Howl's Moving Castle are fairly confusing, but it all comes together in the end. I thought the book was extremely imaginative, and it has a very humorous tone; the characters are genuinely funny and vivid. I'd recommend this book to anyone, both young and old.