Venangoland Book Club

The Devil in the White City

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Erik Larson has a massive gift for writing history (some day we'll also talk about Issac's Storm). In this particular work, he creates parallel stories that ought not to work together, but they do.

On the one hand, we have Daniel H. Burnham, an architect who has the monumental task of creating the grounds for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. The sheer magnitude of the task is amazing-- we see the struggle to create and build a small city while managing the politics and personalities that accompany this massive undertaking.

At the same time, H. H. Holmes has set up shop in Chicago-- only in his case, that means a hotel with secret rooms that allow him to pursue his own passion, which is freakish and horrifying murder on a stunningly large scale. The fair provides him with the perfect backdrop to find fresh victims and continue his spree.

So riveting and exciting that you will frequently forget that this is non-fiction. Larson could have made a fine book out of either of these stories, but even though their connection is tenuous at best, each tale gains something by being told concurrently with the other. A great read.

One caveat-- this book will make you want to actually see the grand creations of the White City, but it has none to offer. Dover, however, has a fine book of collected photos that will let you see what Larson is talking about.

A Fine Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Back when I ploughed through most of what was on the self-help shelf, Judith Sills was my fave. She always manages to combine a foundation of real research with her own sharp insights, expressed in language that is accessible and clear for the average human. On top of that, she is great at laying out the terrain of an issue without adding any prescriptive notions about what you should or shouldn't do.

A Fine Romance follows that pattern, laying out the map of the territory between the beginning of courtship and married life.

Some of this map will strike you as odd initially. One of the major themes of the book is "Don't take it personally." That may seem counter-intuitive, but Sills main point is that a courtship/romance goes through a certain trajectory that is in most ways independent of the person being courted.

Mistaking these natural bumps and stages often leads people to make conclusions about their True Love Soulmate Perfect Match Etc that are not necessarily either true or relevant.

Sills does not suck the romance out of Romance, but she does make a case for responsible personal choice. In her model, romance is largely something you do, not something that happens to you. This does not make what happens (or doesn't) anyone's "fault," but it does give them the power and responsibility for charting their own course through the waters of love. An empowering and helpful book.

Vanished

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Joe Finder has continued to grow as an author, starting out as an espionage writer and then staking his claim to the world of corporate thrillers.

The trick with his corporate thrillers was to inject a sense of real danger into that world, a trick which Finder sometimes had to strain a bit to pull off. What's he's done with Nick Heller is ingenious, using the world of a private spy-for-hire to bridge corporate intrigue, geopolitical adventure, and violent adventure.

Heller's closest literary ancestor is Jack Reacher, but Heller has the advantage of a support system and ties to the legitimate, and sub-legitimate, world. He is a trained and experienced badass with a troubled family history and some complicated emotional ties to his brother's wife and her son.

Heller's adventures are launched with this highly personal puzzler-- the disappearance of Nick's rather estranged brother Roger followed by attacks on Roger's wife and step-son. In the process of dealing with this, we get to see the world of high-tech espionage, grey-area corporate finance, and political misbehavior. And Finder has anchored it all to the real world and real events with keen knowledge of world events and careful attention to detail (yeah, what ever did happen to that several billions of dollars that the US "lost" in the Persian Gulf).

With this work, Finder has really hit his stride, and it is the perfect time in his writing career to launch a series character. Tough, decent, troubled and dangerous, Nick Heller is a perfect choice to anchor a series, and Finder has surrounded him with characters that add color and interest to his professional and personal life, as well creating great possibilities for future novels.

This will be a successful series for years to come. Get in on the ground floor with Vanished.

Manhunt

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:09:00 +0000

James L. Swanson's book about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth is a fine example of "how" being as important as "what."

The "what" of this book is a collection of familiar and well-worn Booth-related material with a good helping of material about the folks who surrounded him on his dark and confused path. The material is through, well-researched and complete. There's really little or no information here that's not readily available in many other sources.

It's the "how" that makes the book work. Swanson packages the information as narrative, so that the assassination and subsequent pursuit unfold like a novel. The sense of what events were occurring at the same time, the speed with which events unfold, the reactions and actions of the various players-- all of these give the events an immediacy and reality that adds extra impact.

It is a technique that has limits. In particular, there remains little to illuminate the mind of Booth, and so Swanson is reduced to speculation, some of it thinly stretched, about the motivation behind some of Booth's choices. Other participants left ample documentation to create a picture of their thoughts and motivations, but the central player in this mess remains a bit obscure.

Swanson has been thorough in assembling his cast, from better-known figures such as Dr. Mudd, to Boston Corbett, the self-castrated soldier who likely shot Booth.

This is a vivid and well-told tale of an electrifying episode in American history. If you already know the facts and details, it will help bring all of them into a sharper, more real, relief. If you only know the broad outlines, this will create a fuller and more compelling picture of those twelve dark days.

Anathem

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:06:00 +0000

Neal Stephenson writes novels about ideas as well as anyone ever has.

Here we get characters who are essentially science monks on a world much like ours, but not ours (which is part of the eventual point), wrestling with politics, quantum cosmology, religion, and story-telling.

The plot is a fairly simple structure, as old as early Heinlein-- young man nestled in a set society suddenly has everything turned upside down, forcing him to embark on adventures and to grow up.

The society itself is fascinating enough that the reader is sad when it is wrenched apart. And the adventures become increasingly striking and challenging, from slogging over the North Pole to penetrating deep space without a spaceship.

It wouldn't be Stephenson if the action weren't punctuated with deep and instructive conversations. But in Anathem he welds the pieces together with more subtlety and finesse than in, say, the Baroque Cycle (which I also loved but--damn, it's a challenge). The thinking in this book is pretty heavy duty and ultimately integral to the action, not merely a thematic complement.

The otherworldly setting also allows Stephenson to indulge one of his other stylistic strengths, which is to take familiar language and give it a slight twist that makes it seem fresh, that perks up the brain a bit.

This is a big book, but fast-moving and exciting, thoughtful and thought-provoking all at the same time. A great read, smart as hell, and bizarrely fun.

Farm

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:44:00 +0000

Journalist Richard Rhodes spent a year with a corn farming family in Missouri. What comes out of that experience is an account of farm life both technical and personal.

The book is now about twenty years old, but still holds up pretty well. Rhodes avoids the pitfall of overwrought romaticising of farming and the clueless citified gee whizzery that can occur when an urban writer tackles rural material. At the same time, the book is often evocative and emotional, so that it doesn't read like a dry textbook account of what farming life is like. And Rhodes manages to be reasonably balanced, his pseudonized subjects treated as real human beings, neither perfect not terrible.

You may have to hunt for this one, but it's worth a look.

Taking on the Trust

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:26:00 +0000

Steve Weinberg's goal is to tie together the stories of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller; the pioneer journalist and pioneer industrialist usually make appearances in each others' stories, but Weinberg's stated intention is to devote the book to "their epic collision course."

Weinberg's area of expertise is journalism, and so the focus here is ultimately on Tarbell. The last paragraph of the introduction clarifies his intention "But believing in Truth as a means to change the world, Tarbell invented journalistic techniques to accomplish her goals. The saga of how she reached that point and of how John D. Rockefeller and the Standard oil Company ended up in her path is about to begin."

So Tarbell takes the lion's share of the attention here. That's not a bad thing; Tarbell has never been extensively or deeply covered, and Ron Chernow's Titan doesn't leave much to be said about Rockefeller (Weinberg quotes from it frequently).

By weaving there stories together, particularly in the early days before they each achieved the success that would make them famous, we get an interesting picture of two people caught up in the same larger tides of their day. And Weinberg sets an excellent pace. This would be an easy structure to flub. Too much time in either individual's life and we lose sight of the larger picture; too little, and the work becomes too superficial to be useful. There are some times, later in the book, where this becomes mainly Tarbell's story, but for the most part, Weinberg has controlled his material well.

Informative and a useful study of the very collision that he sets out to chronicle. The hardcover version has gone out of print, but the paperback should be along shortly. Definitely worth a read.

The Thoreau You Don't Know

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Robert Sullivan's previous best-seller was Rats, so he has taken a definite step up in subject matter.

Here he provides us with the 1,423rd re-consideration of Thoreau. You would think that the world doesn't need to take one more walk around this American monument, but Sullivan's book is a worthy treatment of the American icon, and Sullivan achieves that by treating Thoreau not as an icon but as, well, a guy. Who did some stuff and wrote some things.

Those who write about Thoreau tend to fall into one of three camps. 1) He was a pure, unadulterated genius, forsaking ordinary life for deep communion with nature. 2) He's an overhyped sham. 3) Wasn't he that guy who lived in the cabin?

Sullivan steps over all three of these boxes and treats Thoreau as if he'd just discovered him for the first time. He is occasionally ingenuous, being surprised by facts that even casual Thoreau scholars already knew. But he humanizes Thoreau, treating him as neither genius or con job. He puts many of Thoreau's achievements in perspective and in context, so that even things we knew about Thoreau make a bit more sense.

Sullivan is ultimately most interested in Thoreau the environmentalist, but he pays attention to the writer, the worker, the citizen, and most of all, the man. In bringing Thoreau down to human scale, Sullivan makes him both more impressive and more accessible. There are no shocking new revelations about Thoreau here, but in a breezily-written slim volume, Sullivan lets us see Thoreau's accomplishments as part of the bigger picture of his life, while also connecting it all to the modern world as well.

Not the shocking new view of Thoreau that some PR suggests, but a solid, readable book about an important American voice. Well worth the read.

Cod

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:49:00 +0000

You may remember hearing about Mark Kurlansky's book when it first hit big over a decade ago. If you passed on it at the time, consider giving it a read now.

It's not a massive tome, but a fun little book that looks at the history of one small fish and how that story had an impact on many other stories through history.

Perhaps most interesting is how cod influenced the discovery and exploration of the new world. Kurlansky, using the judicious eye of both historian and journalist juxtaposes those ancient tales with the state of modern cod fishing, which may in fact represent the end of the history of cod fishing as anything other than casual pastime

The cute extra touch with this book is cod recipes and tips for those of you who can afford salt cod.

The book is reminder of the early importance of fishing and the seagoing way of life in America. Kurlansky does not belabor his point, nor drag it out, and one of the tiny remarkable features of the book is how succinctly and aptly he can sum up events such as, say, the American revolution.

A quick read, but interesting and fun (from the same author who gave us a history of salt).

The Skull Mantra (Inspector Shan Tao Yun)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:52:00 +0000

Eliot Pattison is steadily creating one of the most hauntingly beautiful mystery series in print.

Shan is a gifted Chinese detective, an inspector who in his prior career took on powerful officials, leading to a sentence in a Chinese gulag. This series finds him in varying degrees of unofficial release from that imprisonment, investigating murders that are complicated not just by a web of motives and mystery, but by the web of politics and faith that surround them.

Patison's real subject in all of these books is Tibet, and the complex and difficult complex of Chinese political that surrounds Tibetan affairs. Each mystery is complicated by the Tibetans' own spiritual faith and painful history as well as a Chinese system that worries more about the shifting sands of political power. The Tibetans value a spiritual truth, the Chinese value political truth, and Inspector Shan must try to find some measure of truth and justice in the midst of it all.

The mysteries are intricate and intriguing. The mood is darkly poetic. Shan is a man largely beaten down by life, trying to pursue a spiritual path while somehow surviving. The novels also serve as travelogues, illuminating the Tibetan struggle and culture.

The series is best read in order, and all are great, though Beautiful Ghosts is particularly strong, taking Shan to America and into a fascinating hidden temple. These are great books, intriguing mysteries and fascinating studies of a complex and little-understood culture.

The Gormenghast Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:27:00 +0000

Understand that if I could only get you to take my book advice a couple of times, this is one of the works I'd want you to experience.

Gormenghast is a vast an ancient kingdom set we-know-not-where in an unknown time. Its centerpiece is a sprawling castle filled with a giant gallery of grotesques, and we discover it just as a bitter, vengeful kitchen boy begins a ruthless and brilliant rise to power, even as the heir apparent comes of age, angry, sullen and wishing to be free of his weighty heritage.

This work really isn't like anything else in the literary world. I had it first recommended to me almost forty years ago because I was reading, again, the Lord of the Rings. "If you like that," said my teacher, "you'll probably like this." Well, on the face of it, that recommendation is absurd. Peake's books were marketed as fantasy adventures, but there is not a single hint of magic, not the slightest dash of fantastic creatures.

What it has in commmen with Tolkein and other fantasy greats is a completely realized created world, a world that at once makes no sense and which makes perfect sense. And good lord can Peake write. The language in these books is a finely wrought and dense as poetry, and it just keeps coming. Just to read his description of a set of rooms is awesome.

The characters are all bizarre-- extreme grotesques and yet somehow completely human. There is action, political machinations, well-turned plot threads, stunning set pieces-- even some of the most hilarious passages and scenes I've ever read.

This volume collects the three published novels. The first two are the heart of the work, detailing Steerpike's vicious rise to power and Titus's attempt to avoid it. The third, written later and not entirely completed before Peake was wracked by debilitating illness, literally takes us into another world. This volume also includes the few brief notes completed for a fourth work. Also included are some scholarly articles and Peake's own drawings (he was actually an illustrator by trade).

This is a book I read again every few years, and I always approach the last pages with sadness to think that this is all there is. But what there is is a lot, a fabulous reading feast. This book gets the highest recommendation I know how to give.

A Voyage Long and Strange

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:11:00 +0000

As he did in Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz mixes historical writing with travel journalism as he explores the earliest ventures into North America.

Horwitz is perhaps a bit disingenuous at first (is it really that much of a surprise that people landed here before the Mayflower) but his "debunking" of popular myth allows him to undertake an entertaining journey of discovery as he retraces the steps of the earlier exploration of the continent.

His well-researched capsule versions of the early travels, from the Vikings to the Spanish, from winners like Coronado to the astonishingly ill-fated Cabeza de Vaca, are breezy and readable, quick colorful capsules of what actually happened.

As a modern-day journalist, his strength appears to be quickly ingratiating himself with the folks he encounters. From tour guides to amateur historians to people he just happens to meet, Horwitz seems to be able to get them to open up and share points of view that are colorful and illuminating. These modern-day adventures in tourism bring the struggles and triumphs of the early adventurers into sharp relief.

It's all fun and informative and entertaining at the same time. A great way to get your pre-colonial history and see some interesting parts of America all at the same time.

Passionate Sage

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:17:00 +0000

Joseph J. Ellis has contributed several fine works to the recent spate of ink devoted to our founding fathers (American Sphinx and Founding Brothers). This particular work deals with John Adams, fast becoming my favorite founder.

First published in 1993, the new edition allows Ellis to expand on a few points, but the thrust of the book remains the same-- an examination of Adams' legacy, looking at what he influenced, what he left behind, and how has come to be remembered (or, unfortunately, not so remembered).

For folks who like their Famous Guy Bios focused rather than thorough, this is a good choice. There are so many difficult episodes in Adams' life, and so much of his own writing to poke through, that it would be easy to ramble on forever about the man. What Ellis manages to do is find a focus that allows us to avoid being sucked down any side streets and still come away with a full-ish picture of a man who was in many ways the most difficultly human of the founding fathers.

In other words, among the many Adams works out there, this is an excellent place to start for a thorough but accessible overview, creating a picture of a man both infuriating and lovable, humble yet hungry for a fame that he feared would escape him. By focusing on the later period of Adams' life, Ellis manages to show what is perhaps the most satisfying picture of Adams-- that of a man who comes to terms with himself, his past, his legacy, his victories and losses. It is a work written with obvious affection, but with an equal degree of honesty.

With the paperback version available currently for a measly eleven bucks, this is a worthwhile addition to any history-laden shelf.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:03:00 +0000

I love Sarah Vowell. That's a testament not just to how well she writes, the intelligence of the observations, the sharpness of her vision, but to the fact that you end up feeling that you know her personally as you read her work.

This particular book collects a large helping of short pieces, offering insights on everything from the ubiquitous desire to claim Rosa Parks as a personal model to the intersection of love and tension in hosting the family Thanksgiving dinner. There are also pointed insights involving the Wonder Twins, Tom Cruise, the parks service, tourism at Salem, Canadian Mounties, and the failings of the national press.

Her observations are always sharp and pointed, honest and funny. Vowell leans to the left, but it's a matter of convictions and conscience rather than ideology. Like P.J.O'Rourke, another favorite of mine but on the other end of the political spectrum, she's trying to understand and explain, not jam things into a pattern that fits her pre-conceived notion of How The World Works.

This is a great and funny book, a nice place to start if you're unfamiliar with her work and want something that won't stretch your attention span.

Dog On It

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Spencer Quinn clearly looks to start a franchise with this book, subtitled "A Chet and Bernie Mystery." It's a good piece of gumshoe detective fiction featuring a narrator with a strong and distinctive voice. It's Chet, and he's the gumshoe's dog.

There are a hundred ways this little idea could go wrong, and Quinn avoids all of them. Chet isn't just a furry human-- he's a dog (Quinn captures the canine attention span to often hilarious effect). He's strong, loyal, and sharp-sensed, and his voice is just as distinctive and infectious as that of Kinsey Milhone, Stephanie Plumm or Marcus Didius Falco.

Here's the first paragraph of the book:

"I could smell him-- or rather the booze on his breath-- before he even opened the door, but my sense of smell is pretty good, probably better than yours. The key scratched against the lock, finally found the slot. The door opened and in, with a little stumble, came Bernie Little, founder and part owner (his ex-wife, Leda, walked off with the rest) of the Little Detective Agency. I'd seen him look worse, but not often."

Bernie is a former police detective, and Chet was trained as a police dog ("I'd been the best leaper in K-9 class, which had led to all the trouble in a way I couldn't remember exactly, although blood was involved"), and now they're a pair of down on their luck PI's.

The mystery itself is fairly straightforward (fake kidnappings, crooked land deals, Russian loan sharks), but as with much of this style of fiction, it's the fun and comfortable voice of the main characters that keeps you involved. Chet is a real participant in the solving of the case, not just a set of eyes along for the ride, and has some unique insights on human behavior. Here's the first appearance of the client who kicks off this mystery:

"She got out of the car, a tall woman with long fair hair and a smell of flowers and lemons, plus a trace of another smell that reminded me of what happens only sometimes to the females in my world. What would it be like, having it turned on all the time? Probably drive you crazy. I glanced at Bernie, watching her, patting his hair into place. Oh, Bernie."

If you're a fan of gumshoe detective work, do not be put off by this novel's gimmick, which somehow enhances the telling of the tale without intruding on it. Fun book, fun characters. It's even more fun if you're a dog owner, but a good read even if you aren't.

The Fate of Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:26:00 +0000

Martin Meredith's big book of African history since the emergence into independence in the 1950's a complete, complex, clear, detailed, and utterly heartbreaking.

Meredith moves forward from the 1950's geographically and chronologically. It's complete without being overwhelming, and shows clearly the insights that he has gleaned from devoting so much of his life and career to the continent. If you feel as if you should know more about the continent than you do, this is a perfect one stop shop to see and comprehend all that has unfolded there since Africa's many and varied nations climbed out from beneath the control of other nations.

It is, unfortunately, not a very uplifting tale (or group of tales). The struggles are ongoing and gutwrenching, all the more so because there is no happy ending, and there are no heroes. Africa ultimately emerges as a complex of nations used and exploited by outsiders, and then wrenched by brutal civil wars between "leaders" who have no interests but their own. Meredith's summation at the end is stark but simple-- "In reality, fifty years after the beginning of the independence era, Africa's prospects are bleaker than ever before."

Meredith has no axe to grind, and studiously avoids what appears to be the most frequent-- and deadly-- impulse in dealing with Africa: the impulse to cast each struggle as a battle between good and evil. Particularly disheartening for Americans will be the discovery that few, if any, of the "natural disasters," the starvation, the dieing hundreds of thousands-- pretty much all of this is the work of humans, not of nature.

Meredith doesn't pretend to have answers, but the book at least offers a clearer understanding. A must-read for anyone who cares about the lives of people outside their own borders.

The Gun Seller

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:21:00 +0000

After he had become a comedic staple in Britain, but before he became US TV phenom Dr. Gregory House, Hugh Laurie took some time out to write this novel, a sort of spy noir piece, in 1996.

This is often referred to as a comic novel, and I suppose it is comic in the sense that Christopher Moore is comic-- there's a lot to laugh at, but at its base, the book is not simply fluff.

Most of the comic touch comes from the voice of the narrator a down-on-his-bad-choices sometimes-soldier-of-fortune who gets wrapped up with international arms dealers, the CIA, two beautiful women, and terrorists. He thinks faster than he talks, and has a level of self-awareness that lends itself to constant running self-commentary that brings endless wry observation about manners, morals and language. If you've seen Hugh Laurie the sketch comedian, you know the kind of territory he mines well.

The bonus is the plot, which is considerably more solid, engaging, intricate and believable than the plots of many more allegedly serious works. And Laurie's sense of pace is impeccable-- when he needs to turn down the antics and kick up the action, he manages the balance perfectly. He's handling well-developed plot, action, and character without short-changing any of them.

What you get is a funny, engaging, exciting read that would be lots of fun even if you had no idea who wrote it. Highly recommended.

Cheesy Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:05:00 +0000

When I gave up cable television, one of the big challenges to emerge was that of mental down time. There are times when I would like to just set the grey matter on idle, and heaven only knows that television can always fill that bill.

But without it, how does one settle one's brain into neutral? Turns out that one handy solution is that time-honored literary genre, cheesy, pulpy adventure novels.

There are, of course, the classic pulps. I think I have a bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs lying about somewhere, and I spent many fine hours in my youth working my way through a relative's Doc Savage books (Savage deserves a whole entry some day-- Robeson's trick of making his hero a supporting character in a series that bore his name but really featured his band of side-kicks-- well, it was a brilliant way to make the series sustainable over sixty gazillion books).

But what of modern cheese? What contemporary greats are there out there? This is no easy choice. Cheese that is too well-written rises above the level of cheese, and before you know it, your brain is fully engaged and unrelaxed again. But cheese that is too badly written comes become painful, like biting down on a twinkie and hitting a shred of aluminum foil hidden within (yes, Dan Brown, I'm looking at you).

For two fisted adventure cheese, here are three of the big names.

Clive Cussler:

Cussler is one of the few such authors to fit comfortably as a character in his own books. Like each of these authors, he writes particularly well about the parts that he knows; in his case, that's all the underwater stuff.

Cussler works with hero Dirk Pitt, nominally an underwater search, salvage and research guy. Women can't resist him (his main squeeze through many of the books is a hot Congresswoman) and men want to be him. The movie Sahara stars Matthew McConaughy as Pitt, which pretty well gives you the character.

Cussler is good at stringing intriguing plot elements together, and he keeps things moving. His writing chops are, well, limited. He's very helpful about telling us when a character has just made a clever quip, but the elbow-in-the-ribs school of writing isn't as disorienting as his habit of repeatedly and rapidly shifting point-of-view, sometimes several times in just one paragraph.

The Pitt novels don't involve any particular chronology, so you can grab them in any order. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to read them somewhere where you have a good view of an American flag.

Cheesy, adventurous, fast-moving, and technically plausible-- start with either of these:

James Rollins

What Rollins knows is spelunking, and most of his earlier adventures involve going somewhere underneath.

Rollins likes large casts, with lots of characters to develop (a little) and bump up against each other. He's pretty good at filling these folks in with broad strokes so that we know enough to care, but not so much that the characters distract from story.

And when it comes to story, Rollins is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink guy. You can get lost civilizations, alien visitors, mystically imbued gold, traitors, spies, and the key to immortality all in one novel. Rollins wrote the novelization for the latest Indiana Jones flick, and he was the perfect man for the job, even though that plot was less busy than what he usually handles. And with the exception of Deep Fathom, he plays fair about wrapping things up.

His earlier books are stand-alones, but more recently he's started a series of books centered around a super-secret global trouble-shooting association. There's some book-to-book continuity there, but not enough to swamp anyone who encounters the books out of order.

Rollins is a pretty good craftsman and can string together a good tale. Try either of these:

Preston and Child

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child broke into the biz with Relic, a good little creepy monster adventure thriller set in a museum.

Museums and archaeology is what these guys know, and their scientists and science are very believable. Their cops and reporters, on the other hand, seem to have leapt straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. But, as with the best adventure cheese, they can string together a good plot.

They can also balance a good-sized cast in a way that maintains some suspense about the good guys and the bad guys motives and identities (despite the above-mentioned weaknesses). They use a good heap of mystery in their plotting, often hinting at the supernatural but landing on a scientific explanation. And they've usually done some interesting research about something to give each book a little quirky educational value.

They pull off the interesting trick of shuffling and reshuffling characters from book to book, creating some interlocking narratives. You don't have to read their books in order (at least not the early ones) to enjoy them, but doing so does make it more interesting. The character who eventually emerges as their heavy hitter is Pendergast, a southern, rich FBI agent whose back story becomes increasingly bizarre.

NB: Pendergast appears as the main hero of Relic, but when the book was filmized, some genius wrote him out of it. Think Hound of the Baskervilles without Sherlock Holmes. So if you've seen the movie, put it out of your head and start with the book.

A long post, I know, but I owed you.

Assassination Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:03:00 +0000

All right-- so Sarah Vowell's book is a NYT bestseller and therefor unlikely to need a recommendation from me. But it gets one anyway.

Vowell is often given the tag "humorous historian," and that's a disservice (I blame it on all the people who think history is inherently dull and must be buffed up with an unexpected adjective in order to sell).

Vowell is an astute observer, the best kind of combined scholar and journalist. More simply, she's a smart woman who finds everything interesting, and so sees not just the thing itself, but also the may ways in which it connects and parallels and echoes a dozen other slices of human experience. Presidential tombs are cool, and so are the insights of her three-year-old nephew, and so are the ways in which the two intersect. She is emotive but not sentimental, smart and still grounded. (She is, simply, the next woman I want to marry).

Assassination Vacation is a series of road trips, explorations of the deaths of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. It's filled with the kinds of observations that can only come from visiting the actual places, and the kind of connections and details that only come from possessing curiosity, brainpower and interest that are all-consuming. The chapter on Lincoln in particular is loaded with details and extra stories that are both fascinating and surprising.

Once we've settled all that, I can return to saying that Vowell is also funny. Not funny as in "let's make fun of this ancient old stuff" or "let me use this exhibit as a prop for my own hilarious shtick" or "let me stir up some shocked laughter with my zany irreverence." This is the friend you take to the museum who first looks at the exhibit with open admiration and then talks the curator into letting you in the back room to peak under the crates.

My daughter was kind enough to get me this book as a gift; it's my first by Vowell, but she now tops the list of authors whose work I would buy without concern for the subject matter.
This is a great book-- informative, enlightening, witty, smart, fun and, yes, funny. As highly recommended as anything I've ever read.

The World Is Flat

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:03:00 +0000

I rarely pick up trendy books while they're still trendy. Given even a few months to age, so many of them turn into paper-based remaindered vaporware. Sometimes, once the sparkle has worn off, they even turn out to be crap (yes, DaVinci Code, I'm looking at you). I am not a trendy guy, nor do I like to feel rushed by events and publishing trends.

But sometimes when you let these trendy books sit, they turn out to be pretty smart, pretty useful, pretty worth a read. Future Shock was trendy as hell, but still has some useful things to say even a few decades later.

Thomas L. Friedman's book about the impact of technology and globalization is a thorough and intelligent piece of work. He pays attention to scale, explaining the impact of these trends on the world, nations, communities and individuals. He provides both big-picture data and sharp specific anecdotal illustrations. And he organizes it all in a way that makes it accessible and digestible.

He examines the ten forces that flatten the world, and looks at how they converge and influence each other. This is the book that explains why the guy on the other end of your phone talks funny, and why cooperative work skills are at a premium.

There are a few points here and there where time already has shown some holes in his thinking. But if you are looking at the world, trying to understand what the heck happened, this book will give you plenty to think about and digest. Nobody has yet written a better book about the techno-socio-economic upheaval of the new millennium.

The Killer Angels

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:08:00 +0000

Michael Shaara's novel won a Pullizer, inspired Ken Burns to get interested in the Civil War, and spawned the movie Gettysburg. It is a literary recreation of the four days of the battle of Gettysburg, and now that it's thirty-four years old, it is perhaps a bit too easily lost in the shuffle of Civil War writing.

Shaara tells the story primarily from the viewpoint of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet. He takes some liberties with specific language, choosing to preserve tone in ways that will read well to the modern ear. And he bases his account on the accounts of the men themselves, without leaning on any of the scholarship done since.

What he ends up with is a stirring, human portrait, a picture not only of what happened, but how it felt to be there, and what the events meant to the men involved. He also manages the feat of conveying the feel of how events played out without letting the outcome overshadow them.

I don't know that we can ever feel what these men experienced, but this book certainly seems to come as close as anything could. Stirring, heartbreaking, moving, vivid-- this is a must-read for anyone at all interested in the war or the battle or simply what soldiers and their leaders experience in the midst of the chaos and fog of war.

LORD DARCY

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:57:00 +0000

TOO MANY MAGICIANS and MURDER AND MAGIC. Randall Garrett. Ace Books, 1966.

There are times when I just have to tell you about a book or two that you probably won’t be able to find. Perhaps you’ll stumble over a used copy, or maybe a groundswell of interest will bring the work back into print.

These books collect the bulk of Randall Garrett’s sixties-era Lord Darcy stories, works that represent a completely original niche that’s part fantasy, part science fiction, part detective tale. They are the fantasy mirror of Isaac Asimov's robot detective novels-- completely faithful to both detective fiction and the conventions of its genre.

Garrett presumes a world in which Richard the Lion-Hearted lives, conquers France, and encourages investigation and study of magic. Instead of an enlightenment era rebirth of sciences, this world has rational, codified magic in a somewhat medievalish social structure.

In this world we meet Lord Darcy, a detective who uses the classic principles of deduction and observation, plus the classic sidekick to whom he can explain it all. He just happens to do it all in a world where the rules are somewhat different from our own.

Garrett plays surprisingly fair; the rules of magic are consistent and logical and clear. Mysteries are not solved by any surprise bursts of legerdemain. His world allows for interesting twists on classic detective shtick such as a locked room murder, but displays all the logic and internal consistency of a science fiction work.

I can't give you a link, though I have seen used versions of a three-book-in-one that throws in Lord Darcy Investigates on top of these two.

The Many-Colored Land

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:00:00 +0000

This might be one of my favorite SF works of all time.

In the not-too-distant future, the earth is peaceful and society has assimilated all the problem elements. But for those who are not well-behaved or happy in this brave new world, there is an alternative. Technology has opened up a one-way time portal to the Pliocene Epoch, a time when Earth was forest and field, a natural wonderland without large or dangerous animals.

The novel follows eight characters—lovesick, sociopathic, grieving, adventurous—who choose to make that trip. But, surprise, the past is not empty—Earth is occupied by an alien race, refugees stranded on earth and locked in fierce struggle with each other.

For them, the humans are tools that they snap up and test for mental powers. Those without latent powers are made into slaves, while those with powers become valued servants. The eight travelers find themselves in a world of uneasy political alliances where some humans seek power, some seek freedom, and some seek a way to close the time portal.

All of this, mind you, is just the set up, the first 100 pages of the first of four novels. May creates a work with epic scope, joining myth and philosophy and religion with pure action and adventure with a large cast of characters that cover the full range of human heart and spirit. There are echoes of everything from fairy tales to Norse mythology here.

May beautifully balances the human scale drama of characters who must make choices of love, honor, and loyalty against grand battles for the fate of an entire civilization. May has a gift for creating a large cast of fully-realized, fleshed out, grown-up characters. It is the same sort of trick that Peter Jackson pulled off in his Lord of the Rings movies, only May’s work could never be squeezed onto the screen.

These are fully realized characters, free of clichés and hackneyed stereotypes. The plot is broad but exciting, with plenty of twists and turns and surprises. For fans of SF or adventure fantasy, this book is a must read. The series includes four books in all—two paired novels. The second pair incorporates characters from another May series, but readers need not be familiar with the Jack the Bodiless books (which May had not even published when her “sequel” to them appeared!)

Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:27:00 +0000

Susana Clarke's first novel was published wide and far; nowadays you can find it in many bargain bins, a monument to the publisher's over-estimation of how high other boats would float on the giant Harry Potter tide.

At nearly 800 pages, this novel is 200-300 pages too long. The bad news is that almost all of the extra pages are at the front of the book.

Clarke seems to be intent on creating a world that is strikingly ordinary. That's not necessarily a bad idea-- part of the charm of Harry Potter is a setting that is simply a British boarding school that just happens to teach magic rather than accounting. But Clarke takes ordinariness to a deadening extreme. The first section of the novel is no more charming nor interesting than a detailed account of a clerk going out for groceries, written in a style that deliberately avoids any intriguing turn of phrase or striking image. The setting is early 19th century, but that only matters in that Clarke inserts some Napoleonic warfare and Lord Byron, but neither they nor anything else are presented with enough specific vividness to make us think they could not easily have been replaced.

And in Mr. Norrell Clarke gives us a main character who is totally charm-free. I don't mean charmless in a charming way, like Gregory House or any number of Jack Nicholson characters. Mr. Norrell is a main character with nothing to recommend him, from his fussy self-importance to his clueless choice of sleazy associates.

Put all together, it adds up to one of the most tedious set-ups I can remember reading in a long time (and I will remind you that it has only been a few months since I read Moby Dick).

On the other hand, the book's eventual payoff is pretty good, and once things start to actually happen, Clarke delivers a fairly well-crafted tale. The closer to the end we get, the better the book becomes (which is not to say that, even with seven hundred pages to set up the finale, Clarke does not pull a pair of plot developments out of thin air).

It is possible that Clarke is Up To Something Bigger here; the novel pays a lot of attention to books and reading and it may be, as some have suggested, that Clarke is using "magic" as a stand in for letters and literature. I could believe that's the case, but that doesn't illuminate the novel in any particularly useful way and it's certainly not an interesting enough theory to make me want to try to unscramble the various individual parts of the allegory.

Mostly what we've got here is a work that would have been a very nice little fantasy adventure had some editor taken a chainsaw to it. As it is, we have a novel in which the rewards are great, but the patience required to reap them is considerable.

Rising Tide

noreply@blogger.com (Peter A. Greene) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:29:00 +0000

In Venango County, we still talk about the flood of 1926. But that flood was just the beginning of an unusually heavy load of water that became the Mississippi flood of 1927, one of the greatest natural disasters in US history.

John M. Barry’s work captures the flood in its totality, showing how the flood was tied to many threads of American life—race, class, politics, and science.

Engineers had long argued about the river, a battle of conflicting theories and clashing egos that set the stage for disaster. It’s a tremendous example of how policy by compromise and politics can set the stage for disaster. Once the river rose, politicians and engineers had to decide which of the people and homes in the river’s path would be defended, and which would be sacrificed to relieve some of the enormous pressure.

There are many echoes of our own era. Barry portrays the political battles: on one side, rural populists who railed against “non-Americans” and the privileged, and, on the other, the moneyed elite who used power and wealth to control the destiny of their communities. It was the great flood that boosted the political careers of Huey Long and Herbert Hoover, and sparked a wave of black immigration to northern cities. And choices about how to handle the big river have continued to have consequences up through the Katrina disaster.

With brutal balance, Barry brings to life historical figures who had moments of greatness and moments in which they were horribly wrong. Barry conveys the enormous scope of this event. This reads more like a novel than history, but filled with richness of detail that only comes from a historian who has done his homework. We see the rising disaster and the response from a variety of perspectives, the decisions about who and what to save, influenced by politics, money and race.

It is not a happy or heroic book. The flood was a massive challenge, and Southern leaders did not always respond successfully. Barry shows that while nature may do the grand and unexpected, it takes man to turn it into a disaster.