bragan's eclectic mishmash, part 4

No books finished in October yet -- although hopefully I'll finish the current one in the next couple of days -- but I figured I'd get started on setting up my thread for the last quarter of 2012. Here's hoping for some terrific reading to round out the year! Or at least some interestingly eclectic reading.

Am I too early?

Never too early! Welcome to the party! :)

OK, here we go! Let's see how much more of an eclectic mishmash I can manage before the end of the year. Starting with:

112. The Heart of Valor by Tanya Huff



Military SF, while I'm willing to read it occasionally, isn't exactly my favorite subgenre, so when I got a copy of A Confederation of Valor (an omnibus volume containing the first two novels in the Confederation series) through SantaThing a few years back, I was a little bit dubious, even though I'd enjoyed some of Tanya Huff's other books. I was very pleasantly surprised by it, though, as it turned out to be exactly the kind of military SF I didn't even know I wanted to read, thanks to its strong focus on characters rather than hardware.

This third volume didn't grab me quite as well as the first two. A lot of that is probably my fault. It took me way too long to get to it after finishing the first two novels, which was a little problematic, since it turned out to be more strongly tied into previous events than I expected. Also, I kept trying to read it while seriously sleep-deprived, which never helps. Some of it, though, has to do with the fact that the plot, which involves a training exercise gone badly wrong, was pretty contrived, and not quite as well-paced as it might have been. But it was fun, nevertheless. I love the dry space marine corps sense of humor, and the protagonist, Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, is a great character, definitely the person I'd want with me if, god forbid, I ever somehow found myself in combat.

Rating: What the heck. Let's call it a slightly generous 4/5.

113. The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us To Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Others by Annie Murphy Paul



This book looks at various supposedly scientific tests used to describe and categorize human personalities, from phrenology (which was taken quite seriously in its day), to inkblots, to the 504-question MMPI, to Meyers-Briggs, and beyond.

From the title, you might expect this to be one long, heated anti-personality-test rant, but it's not. Most of the book is spent looking at the history of the various tests, the philosophy behind them, and the often quite colorful people who created them. All of which is interesting in its own right, but it does become very clear from those histories that none of these approaches is exactly resting on a rock-solid scientific foundation, and that even the ones with some empirical basis are of rather limited value. Which is a problem, because these tests are often used by courts and corporations, and their results can have profound impacts on people's lives, from losing a job to losing custody of a child. Paul is particularly critical of the corporate use of personality tests (which are often not even the already dubious tests developed by psychologists, but produced-for-profit knockoffs with even less scientific credibility), which she sees as tools for companies to pigeonhole and manipulate their employees. We're much better off, she contends, not trying to reduce something as complex as human personality to neatly labeled and over-simplified types. And it seems very hard to disagree.

Rating: 4/5

The Cult of Personality Testing sounds like a very interesting book (I love the paper doll cover!). Years ago I had to take the Meyers-Briggs test for an old job I had & I thought it described me pretty accurately and helped me understand myself a little better, but I certainly didn't take it as the "gospel truth." I used to transcribe the results of inkblot tests for a psychologist & I could tell from their answers whether the patients were victims of violence and/or sexual abuse by what they saw. That's amazing that these tests can lead to people losing jobs and parents losing custody of children, etc., though. That's scary stuff!

Part of the reason why I read this one is that several years ago I got into a conversation with a friend where the topic of Meyers-Briggs came up and she went into a bit of a rant about it, which really took me aback. I'd always thought of this sort of thing as a bit of a harmless diversion, really, one that might help provide a bit of insight, perhaps, but not to be taken too seriously, particularly not the rather too pat personality category descriptions. Yeah, she said, that would be fine, if people didn't hire and fire or decide who gets custody of kids based on this stuff! And, look, she was right. Frighteningly enough.

Me, I never had to take one for work, which I am now very grateful for, but I took a bunch of online versions back in the day, and it always seemed to have trouble with me in a couple of categories. It always seemed to me that whether I behaved or felt more like a "P" or a "J" depends entirely on the circumstances. The philosophy of M-B says that's nonsense, you are what you are, and it doesn't change with circumstances. Even many psychologists reject that idea these days, though, and tend not to approve of M-B much. Paul points out that a lot of academic departments use M-B, but psychology departments don't.

Personality tests should never be used in isolation or as decision makers, but of course they are because they are easy to use and they seem to have validity. Their wide usage beggars the question as to what you could replace them with? Now that is a difficult question

The Cult of Personality Testing sounds like a book I would have been interested in, if I was still working.

They're very easy to use, and there's something rather compelling about their simplicity, but that's not necessarily a good thing. As for what to replace them with, well, that rather depends on what you're using them for. In some cases, I suspect the best answer might be "nothing." Paul does quote one guy who suggests that, for therapeutic insight into someone's personality, it's more helpful to listen to them tell you their life story, and as far as workplace evaluations go, she suggests the somewhat radical idea that if you want to know how suited someone is for a particular job, the thing to do is to test them on skills related to the job.

114. Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner



A collection of ten short stories, all set in or around Vancouver, and all featuring at least a touch of the strange -- usually much more than a touch. The writing is very good, in its own almost out-of-control way, and tended to really capture me and drag me along, even when I wasn't at all sure where it was taking me. I also found most of these stories rather thought-provoking, even if the thoughts they provoked mainly had to do with, well, trying to figure out where they'd taken me. To be honest, I'm not remotely sure exactly what the author intends us to take away from this crazy satirical stew, other than that modern life is difficult and often annoying and extremely surreal, especially in Vancouver. I think there may be a certain thread of judgmental cynicism behind some of them that I don't find entirely congenial, but, honestly, it's hard to tell. Maybe she's most just trying to capture the bizarre spirit of her own time and place, with all its pretentiousness and shallowness and hippiness and multicultural confusion and human joys and frustrations. I don't know. What I do know is that I enjoyed reading them.

Rating: Hard to know how to rate this one, but I'm going to go with a slightly generous 4/5.

(Note: This was an Early Reviewers book from the August batch.)

>5 bragan: - Interesting but kind of worrisome, I never knew personality tests were used in that way. What personalities cause you to lose a job or your kids?

She doesn't go into too much detail on the use of the tests in custody cases, but if they make you take an inkblot test and the psychiatrist testifies that the results indicate you have a tendency towards excessive anger or irresponsibility, or some such undesirable trait, it can make a difference between keeping and losing custody. As for jobs, she mentions one example of a company that gave its executives a Meyers-Briggs test and cheerfully announced that they all had six months to change themselves to fit the profile of the company's "designated management type." Or else, presumably. More commonly, you just won't be hired if the preliminary test suggests that you're too introverted, or not organized enough, or whatever the company has decided will be a "bad fit."

Some great titles! On the personality tests, I very much agree it's about how they are used. Unfortunately there are many people who want to believe in simple/short-cut solutions, which I think should always be treated with great caution (not just talking about personality tests here).

But where I have found the process very useful is to help you understand why co-workers might approach things in different ways.

I particularly remember doing Myers-Briggs as part of a training course once, and to explain the planning/non-planning spectrum, the trainers picked out two groups of four-five people, and asked each group to discuss the following question: you are a bank manager - what are you going to do next Monday?

My group looked at each other and said, essentially, what a dumb question - how can we possibly know what we are going to do next Monday, we don't know what sort of things are going to be happening!? So we stood and chatted until the discussion time was over, at which point the trainers asked the other group to answer the question first.

"Well, we thought we'd probably start off with a team meeting, then we might have some time to follow up any issues arising from that, then we'd walk around the bank to see how things were going in terms of customers..." They broke off at this point because my group were staring at them, aghast.

They were equally astounded to hear our answer.

It may be an obvious point, but up until then I wouldn't have believed that there were many people who wouldn't have responded to the question the same way I did. So it's remained vividly with me to this day.

PS - but I have also had terrible experiences with trainers who take the line that this is immutable, if you don't think the results you've got are a good description of you then you are lying to yourself, etc. Idiots.

>13 wandering_star: You'll get no argument at all from me -- and I suspect none from the author of the book -- that recognizing that different people have different personalities and can approach things in different ways is a good and important thing. It is, as you say, a question of how you apply it, but also a question of whether the tools used to evaluate this stuff are accurate enough to be taken seriously. The way I see it, there undoubtedly is a difference between people who like to plan ahead vs. people who just wing things, but it's likely rather more complicated than what Meyers-Briggs captures, and the combination of that and other factors into neat little personality profiles -- "He's the artist, and you're the nurturer!" -- is probably completely unjustified and kind of a bad idea. Such is my take-away from the book, anyway.

I will say, that even while I'm taking all this stuff with a great big grain of salt, that I've personally found it very, very useful to keep in mind the apparent differences between introverts and extraverts in dealing with people on both ends of that spectrum. (I have the impression, for what it's worth, that that particular personality scale is the one with the best scientific footing, too.) I still remember the light bulb going on over my head the first time I heard introversion vs. extroversion described as a question of whether social contact "charges" or "drains" your "emotional batteries." All my life, I'd boggled at the idea that so many people, when they get off work after a horrible day, immediately want to go out drinking and socializing, when all I want to do in a situation like that is to slip into a hot bath with a good book and not have to talk to anybody. The idea that anybody could actually feel more energized and relaxed in a boisterous social setting was completely alien to me.

The Cult of Personality Testing looks like it has terrific information. Something to consider. (just added it to the wishlist). Interesting response to Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. It seems like the book really worked for you.

>16 dchaikin:: She doesn't get into as many specifics as she might have about the way the personality tests are (mis)used, but the discussions of their histories and what they're supposedly measuring are really interesting, and, again, I can't really disagree with her conclusions.

I went back and forth a bit on how well Better Living Through Plastic Explosives worked for me, but it's one of those books where even the slightly mixed feelings I had about it were thought-provoking, so reading it was ultimately an interesting and generally positive experience.

115. Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker



Space freighter captain Nathan Brazil, who is older than he looks and more important than he realizes, receives a distress call from an archeological expedition on a dead planet that was once inhabited by a powerful alien race. He arrives to find the expedition murdered, whereupon he and his passengers are sucked through an ancient alien portal. They arrive on a bizarre artificial world made up of a patchwork of environments, each inhabited by a different intelligent species. Those who enter this world find themselves awakening in random environments, transformed into whatever species lives there. And somewhere on this planet is the murderer, who seeks the ultimate power that this godlike technology can provide.

I really should not have liked this book as much as I did. The plot is easy to find fault with, if you're inclined, what science it uses is terrible, and it glosses over a lot of practical and psychological issues that really should have been problematic. Worse, practically the whole novel consists of lecturing: characters lecturing each other, the author lecturing the reader, examples of the dreaded "As you know, Bob..." dialog. Stuff that really annoys me. And yet, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. It was wonderfully imaginative, and as soon as I opened it, it was as if I'd somehow regressed to my teenage years, when I had more capacity for sense of wonder than I did for reading critically. I have absolutely no idea how this book managed to do that for me, but it was fun.

Rating: I suspect I've been handing out too many not-quite-fully-deserved four-star ratings lately, and objectively, this probably belongs in the 3.5-star category ("not bad"), rather than the 4-star range ("hey, that was good!"). Fortunately, I don't have to be objective. And I liked it. So, 4/5.

Enjoyed reading your review of your latest sci-fi. Sometimes the most enjoyable books (or movies) are those where you check your brain at the door and just go along for the ride. I have a few of those .... Those who enter this world find themselves awakening in random environments, transformed into whatever species lives there. Reminds me of Quantum Leap. (I loved that show as a kid).

Yes, and I'm actually really quite impressed by books that successfully encourage me to check my brain at the door, hang on, and enjoy the ride. So many just don't quite manage to enable the necessary suspension of disbelief.

I liked Quantum Leap a lot, too. Still do, really, or at least did a year or so ago when I re-watched some of it on DVD. Actually, it's a good TV example of something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and that objectively you know is kind of cheesy, but which manages to be fun, anyway. Of course, it didn't hurt that I had kind of a crush on Scott Bakula, either. :)

Sci-fi from the 1970's, don't know how I missed this one because it sounds great. Part of a series I gather. Enjoying your reviews bragan

Yes, it's the first book in a series. (For the record, it's very much a complete story on its own, so continuing with the rest of the series is not exactly necessary, although I'm thinking I'll probably do so eventually, anyway.) I suspect whether it's great or not is likely to be an extremely subjective thing, but for me it held up much better than a lot of SF from that era, for reasons I don't entirely understand but am nevertheless pleased about.

116. Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer



Paul is basically a good guy. Which is why, when he encounters a man abusing his dog in an otherwise deserted state park, he tries to stop it. A fight ensues, and in the scuffle, Paul accidentally kills the man. Then he does something that's probably not so good: he leaves the body there and tells no one what happened. But while it seems likely that he'll never be arrested for the crime, living with what he's done may be another matter.

I liked this a lot. It's very well-written, with believable characters and a nice sense of emotional realism. And while I'm not normally a fan of the head-hopping style of omniscient narration, I think Scott Spenser uses it to very good effect here. There are some interesting themes about love, about the gaining and losing of faith, and the human capacity for violence and remorse, but it's all very grounded in the characters, with the author never explicitly preaching his own point of view. And while it is very much a character-based novel, more about relationships and emotions and psychology than anything strongly plot-driven, it still somehow manages to have some of the feel of a good suspense novel.

Rating: 4.5/5

Really sounds like you've been enjoying your reading. Fun reviews.

I have! It's been a pretty entertaining month of reading so far.

I've had Man in the Woods on my radar for some time as I like Spencer's writing style quite a bit. Looks like I'd better find a copy, soon.

It was the first thing I'd read by Spencer, but I liked his style a lot, myself. Anything else by him you'd recommend?

I really enjoyed A Ship Made of Paper.

I think that actually has one of the same characters as Man in the Woods. Right, onto the wislist it goes!

117. Drama: An Actor's Education by John Lithgow



John Lithgow's autobiography focuses mainly on his youth (including life with his father, who had an interesting but uneven career bringing Shakespeare to the public) and his stage work up through the 70s, rather than on the TV and movie career most people are more likely to know him from. But even though I'm one of those "most people," that was just fine by me. This is a warm, thoughtful, intelligently written memoir that offers up some real insight into what the life of an actor is like. It's interesting that one of the points that Lithgow repeatedly makes is that, despite the fact that he started acting literally before he could remember, it took him a ridiculously long time to realize it's what he wanted to do professionally, because his love of the profession, and his love of storytelling, come through very clearly here. And he writes without either egomania or cloying false modesty, instead displaying sincere pride in his accomplishments and rueful honestly about his flaws. It's a surprisingly good read.

Rating: 4/5

Not sure what to make of Lithgow from what I've come across, including some children's books. The autobiography sounds interesting.

I'll keep Lithgow's autobio. in mind. I like him but every time I think of him I think of Lord Fourquaad.

I haven't read his kids' books, but I do like him as an actor. I've been watching old episodes of Third Rock from the Sun off and on over the last few years, and every time I do, I'm impressed all over again by what great comic timing he has.

118. Ape House by Sara Gruen



Dr. Isabel Duncan loves the bonobos she works with at the Great Ape Language Lab as if they were her family. But when a bomb goes off in the lab, injuring Isabel, the apes are suddenly sold off, only to reappear again as the stars of a new reality TV show. With the help of John Thigpen, a reporter who keeps getting pulled back into the apes' story, she sets about doing everything she can to get them back.

I very much liked Gruen's Water for Elephants, but this one just didn't do anywhere near as much for me. It's not a bad book -- in fact, it's perfectly readable -- but I just never really bought into the plot or fully engaged with the characters, and I think it's trying to take a slightly satirical tone that just doesn't quite come off completely. I'm afraid it also really doesn't help that I happened to read it not too long after Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, which strongly questions the scientific believability of the kind of primate linguistic skills depicted here.

Rating: 3.5/5

119. The Diary of a Dr Who Addict by Paul Magrs



As the title indicates, this YA novel takes the form of a diary written by a Doctor Who fan: twelve-year-old David, who lives in northern England in the 80s. It's definitely a book aimed at youngsters, and not really the kind with prose that's equally engaging for adults, but I found it reasonably appealing, anyway. It certainly captures the feeling of adolescence very well, and David is a character I can relate to. I didn't really discover Doctor Who until I was a few years older than him (although when I did, it quickly developed into a love that has lasted into my 40s with no signs of abating). But at twelve, I had that same kind of obsession over Star Trek, and I was the same kind of awkward introvert. I'd like to think think that geeky kids of today might find it worth reading; after all, it's always good to know someone understands.

Rating: 3.5/5

So, I started to get into Dr. Who... Partially from your thread and partially because of my wife. But now through a parenting oddity, I don't watch them. My daughter has discovered and loves them, but my son can't handle them, too scary. So, I have to distract my son while my wife and daughter watch...

Anyway, interesting reviews and Ape House is NOT going on my TBR.

>36 dchaikin:: Now, that is extremely unfair! Well, with luck, maybe your son will grow out of his fear eventually and you can give it another shot. (Although he might not ever get over being afraid of the Weeping Angels. Those things have been known to give adults nightmares. :))

120. 100 Diagrams That Changed the World by Scott Christianson



This really would be better described as "100 diagrams of varying significance, nifty graphical things from history, and random pictures we dug up to illustrate some important ideas." But I guess that is a little too unweildy to use as a title.

Anyway, there are 100 pictures here. Each one is accompanied by just a few paragraphs of text, which really isn't enough to be a satisfying exploration or explanation of anything, but is just enough to make this reasonably interesting to browse through. (And I suspect that is likely to be especially true for people who are very visually-oriented, which I confess I am not.) Generally, it looks pretty good, but the text is much smaller than it needs to be, and the introduction to each section -- which is mercifully only a sentence or two -- is written in light gray on a white page, making the whole thing something of an invitation to eyestrain.

Rating: 3.5/5

(Note: This was an ER book from the September batch.)

Too bad about 100 Diagrams as that sounded like it could be a fun nerd-coffee-table-book. What are some of the diagrams?

It's not bad. You could do worse for something to keep on your coffee table and flip through. But it's not really as good as it could be.

A semi-random sampling of the diagrams (and "diagrams"): a page from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a drawing comparing different kinds of Greek columns, aerial pictures of the Nazca lines of Peru, a medieval chart of Jesus' genealogy, a page from the Voynich manuscript (a bizarre medieval document nobody's ever been able to translate), Da Vinci's sketches of flying machines, a 16th-century illustration of the muscles in the human body, a schematic for a pendulum clock, one for an 18th century machine gun that never really saw much use, the earliest example of a line graph, a scrawled sketch of an evolutionary tree by Darwin, the periodic table, some Venn diagrams, a page from the patent application for the television, schematics for the V-2 rocket, the plaque from the Pioneer space probe. a map of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl.

Actually, when I look over it now, that list sounds really interesting! Probably more so than I actually found the book.

>38 bragan: I like your title idea! 100 Diagrams sounds like a great idea for a book that just didn't get executed well. Light gray print on a white page! YIKES.

I really do have to wonder how anybody thought that was a good idea, even just for a couple of sentences!

121. Let Me In (aka Let the Right One In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist



This is the story of Oskar, a twelve-year-old boy who's been bullied so bad that he's started having violent revenge fantasies. Of the strange girl who moves in next to him, who is only ever seen at night, and who won't come into a room until she's invited. And of the man who lives with her, who is very definitely not her father.

I did see the movie version of this -- the original Swedish film, with subtitles -- and my first thought when I started reading this was, "Wow, I don't remember the movie being quite this dark." Thinking back on it, though, maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe it was. Maybe the biggest difference is just that in the novel you get a few things, like scenes told from the point of view of a murderous pedophile, that aren't quite the same when translated to film.

You would think, at this point, that every possible take on vampires has not only been done, but been done to death. And yet this story, for reasons I cannot entirely put my finger on, actually does feel pretty fresh. Maybe it's partly the prose, which feels oddly low-key to me, despite the often very gory violence it describes. Probably it's at least partially due to the Scandinavian setting. But I think perhaps it's largely due to the way so much of it is told from a young boy's point of view, and to the disturbing, yet strangely innocent childhood love story that lies at the heart of it.

Rating: 4/5

122. Futurama-o-Rama by Matt Groening, et al.



The first collection of comics based on the world's best half-hour animated TV sci-fi comedy, Futurama. If you're a Futurama fan, you pretty much know what to expect here. The four stories included here look and read a lot like early episodes of the show -- not stand-out episodes, maybe, but decent ones -- and it's easy to hear the character's voices in your head. I wouldn't call it a must-read or anything, but it's a nice way to get a little fix of Futurama between episodes.

Rating: 4/5

Wow! With the DVD's, the books, and the calendars, Futurama could turn into an expensive proposition.

Robert

Doctor Who! Classic or Nu?! (Careful now, this could make or break a beautiful friendship.)

I'm a very late comer to the show, but now I'm gone far enough that I look in (mostly lurk) here on a almost daily basis: GallifreyBase

Vicious place, if the Daleks don't get you, the rabid fans of the show, now old enough to hold university chairs in Snark & Deconstruction, will.

>45 Mr.Durick:: It really could. It's worth it, though! (Although I wasn't super impressed with the last Futurama calendar I bought, as it only featured the DVD movies, so I skipped it this year.)

>46 LolaWalser:: Hee, I have great love in my heart for both Classic and New Who.

I do remember hearing that the forums at Gallifrey Base can be, um, lively. Having run screaming from some of the nastiness on rec.arts.drwho waaaay back in the day, I tend to be a bit gunshy of the more... opinionated... segments of Who fandom.

I bet it's the same people. Must be. Some of the oldsters carry on feuds from the time of the Doctor Who Appreciation Club or whatever it was called. But there's lots of good discussion and thoughtful posters too.

It's a riot after episodes screen, especially in the Rate/Review threads.

Heh, there are probably people who will still be having the same, decades-old arguments about Doctor Who on their deathbeds. :)

>44 bragan: My kids and I love Futurama! it's a nice way to get a little fix of Futurama between episodes. It is a bit of an addiction, isn't it?

Oldest kid loves Dr. Who - the one with David Tennant. He hasn't seen the "new" Who though. (We seem to be "Dr. Who" deprived out here TV-wise. I don't know why.)

Futurama is extremely addictive. I bought all the DVDs and re-watched every episode at least once while exercising on the treadmill, and never get tired of any of them.

Doctor Who used to be on the Sci Fi Channel (or whatever they're calling it these days), but t'ss only available in the US now on BBC America, or on DVD. Well, unless you download it off the internet. :)

Enjoying your reviews, bragan, and the talk about Futurama is making me nostalgic.

I always miss the first few episodes of Doctor Who that are screened on BBC Entertainment here in South Africa, and, with the amount of different Doctors and plotlines, I always feel that I'll be mightily confused if I just start watching in the middle.

I read Let the Right One In a couple of years ago, and I quite enjoyed it. Although not completely fresh, it was an interesting take on the genre.

This season of Doctor Who, from what I understand, was intended to be a bit less strong on the complicated arc stuff and a bit more focused on stand-alone episodes, and from the first half of the season, I'd say that's more or less true so far. So you might have less trouble jumping in at this point, or at least when it starts up again.

I think Let the Right One In, for me, manages to feel fresher than it objectively is, which is actually kind of cool.

Whoopee! I have just had English TV installed and the BBC are re-running the new doctor shows from the start. I am a lifelong fan. I was there in front of the TV for the very first episode.

Let The Right One in, the Swedish film version was very good indeed - well worth searching out.

>55 baswood:: Yay for Doctor Who on your TV!

I'm kind of vaguely thinking I should watch Let the Right One In again, having now read the book, especially as my memory of it has faded a lot. I'm also slightly curious about the American version, but I kind of doubt I'll bother with it.

I haven't seen either film, but I heard an interview with (I think) Lindqvist, who said that the vampires are always speaking in Smiths lyrics in the Swedish, but they didn't get the rights to use them in the English so they had to be paraphrased... wonder if a reader would be able to spot that?

That's interesting! I'm not generally familiar enough with Smiths lyrics to have spotted them even if they were there, although "let the right one in" (or, rather, "let the right one slip in") is apparently from a Morrissey song, a quote from which is used as a chapter epigraph.

123. Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman



This book offers a fairly thorough look at the history and current state of Scientology, based in large part on information from former Scientologists (many of them high-ranking), as well as at least one unmonitored interview with a still-practicing member. Reitman has, perhaps wisely, chosen not to use outspoken critics of the church as sources, believing that people who have generally been quieter about their experiences in Scientology are likely to provide a less biased account.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I offers a detailed history of Scientology, from its origin as a gleam in L. Ron Hubbard's eye in the 1950s, through a period of growth and scandal in the 1970s. Part II takes the story through the 80s and into the early 90s, including massive changes in the structure of the organization after Hubbard's death. Part III focuses on the case of Lisa McPherson, who, as "treatment" for a psychotic break, was confined to a room in a Scientology-run hotel for many days, where she eventually died. The Scientologists were accused of neglecting to provide proper care for her, despite her deteriorating physical condition, but nothing ever came to trial. Part IV takes Scientology to the present day, including its rise in popularity among Hollywood stars and its careful recruitment of Tom Cruise. It also offers the perspective of a third-generation Scientologist still in the movement, and describes the experiences of several people who left the organization in response to its leader's erratic behavior and what they describe as an "Orwellian" atmosphere.

The tone here generally feels very even and not at all sensationalistic, but the picture Reitman paints of Scientology is strange and often quite disturbing. It's also sociologically fascinating. Over the course of the book, I found myself asking all kinds of interesting questions. What is Scientology, really? A religion? A cult? A business? A self-help movement? A pseudoscience? A scam? All of the above? How similar is it to mainstream religions, really, in its origins or its techniques for controlling its parishioners? What should the limits on freedom of religion be, and does Scientology push those limits too far? Why do some people find spiritual value in what to others sounds plain old crazy? The book doesn't directly address these questions, and it certainly doesn't offer any answers, but it does provoke a great deal of thought.

I would, perhaps, have liked a little more exploration of the day-to-day experience of life as a Scientologist. I'm particularly curious about the details of what goes on in the "auditing sessions" that form the backbone of everyday Scientology, and which Reitman discusses only in very vague terms. Still, even without that, it's an interesting and eye-opening read.

Rating: 4/5

Inside Scientology sounds very, very interesting. Golden Era Productions, their International Base, is very near to where I live.

The book talks a lot about that place. It's... kind of scary.

(I was a little shocked to discover that the current leader of Scientology grew up very near to where I did and attended his early Scientology courses in same the town where I went to high school. Truly, it is a very small world!)

It is a small world! Yikes! Golden Era is pretty though. There's a big fake boat (the Star of California), a castle, a golf course..... It's pretty and strange. And pretty strange! What always made me cringe is when I'd drive by it I'd KNOW there were people there but it always seemed deserted.

This one is definitely going on my wishlist!

124. The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt



Genius Loci is a coffeeshop in Santa Cruz, California, a favorite hangout for oddball art students. It also happens to be the secret entrance to a prison that holds a powerful destructive entity, a god of earthquakes and mudslides and wildfires. Marzi, an employee at the coffeeshop, is the designated warden for this prison and its inhabitant, a job that's made a little more problematic by the fact that she thinks he's a fictional character she made up as part of the fantasy/western comic book she's writing... at least until people start showing up trying to set him free.

This isn't the best-written of Tim Pratt's works -- although that's a pretty high standard, as some of his short fiction is amazing -- and it feels to me as if it could and probably should have been a much more epic story than it was. But it was still fun, and wonderfully imaginative, and I do love the premise. I can't help thinking that it's got an oddly cinematic feel to it; I kept imagining it as a movie as I was reading. And I think it could make a surprisingly good one, too, if produced with a quirky indie film sensibility, a decent special effects budget, and some really strong art direction.

Rating: a slightly generous 4/5

Excellent review of Inside Scientology. I'd like to read an evenhanded account of its origins as a lot of my knowledge comes from various sensationalistic articles and, well, South Park. Looks like the library has it as an ebook - hopefully I can get to it soon.

Mind you, I'm sure the Scientologists wouldn't describe it as evenhanded, as they still don't come off looking very good. But it's definitely not South Park. :)

>65 bragan: - Heh heh. Well, I suppose when Tom Cruise is your spokesperson and your religion was started by L. Ron Hubbard, there's only so much an author can do. That South Park was pretty hilarious though. I also enjoyed their retelling of the Mormon origin story. Maybe the SP creators can do a Scientology musical next?

>66 DieFledermaus:: Yeah, I think it's rather difficult to make a lot of that stuff look good, unless you've drunk the proverbial kool ade. I will say, though, that the book actually made me feel a little sorry for Tom Cruise, who seems to have been reeled in like a big old celebrity fish. Hubbard, on the other hand, turns out to be even nuttier than I thought, although often in a very colorful and interesting sort of way.

And you know, I think the story of Scientology could totally work as a musical. :)

Scientology could totally work as a musical. :)
Tickets to that please! LOL!

Some years ago a friend had a play about Hubbard performed off-off-Broadway: Moonchild. Not a musical, but coincidentally, she's writing musicals. Only they seem more difficult to sell than plays.

Interesting book on Scientology. I've only ever seen those BBC Docs on the subject, still pretty scare stuff a lot of people fall for. The one documentary I saw took one of the more fervent ex-believers and they went through the aduitting process. It seemed like a basic therapy session with a gizmo that picked up peoples pulse rates, indicating they might be hiding something. Lots of peer pressure to tell your secrets and give the higher ups a bit material to blackmail you if you step out of line. Either way not a pleasant experience I imagine.

A musical is a must!

Also, ashamed to say I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who ever. I'll hand in my nerd creds at the door.

>69 LolaWalser:: A non-musical play is close enough! That sounds really interesting.

>70 stretch:: I wonder if those documentaries are available anywhere? I think I'd be interested in seeing them. (ETA: Ah, turns out they're available on YouTube.) The book does talk about the gizmo and about the intense pressure to tell all your secrets. Oddly enough, though, apparently some people do seem to think it's a pleasant experience, or at least a good experience. At least some of the time.

And, indeed, your nerd cred is falling! If you ever do want to check out Doctor Who, the beginning of the new version of the series is a good place to start. It's a continuation of the original, rather than a reboot, but it's very new-viewer friendly.

#59 - Very interesting. Is there any reason to view Scientology as anything other than a cult?

#66 maus - loved South Parks take on Mormonism. Haven't seen the Scientology episode...haven't seen South Park in over a decade...

>72 dchaikin:: Well, they insist they're not, and, in the US, at least, are legally recognized as a religion. Which doesn't necessarily mean anything other than that they have great lawyers and are really good at political persuasion, of course. But arguably the line between religion and cult is kind of fuzzy, anyway.

125. Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor



An account of several expeditions that set out to explore some truly massive cave systems, and their attempts to set a new record for the deepest known cave. It's an absolutely fascinating topic, but I found the book itself only just OK, in large part because it often seems far more interested in the cavers than in the caves. Early on, Tabor quotes one of the expedition leaders as taking exception when a reporter asks him about his "adventure," insisting instead that what he does is exploration with the goal of bringing back new data. But Tabor himself largely disregards this point, focusing mostly on the adventure aspects and the personalities involved. There's very little here about cave science, and, surprisingly, very little in the way of real description of these caves until very late in the book, except for their record-setting dimensions and the obstacles they present. Some of the stories here are kind of exciting, but I can't help but think that the whole thing would have been a lot more effective with more context and less gossip. And possibly less of a sensationalistic emphasis on the (very real) deaths and injuries that occurred on these expeditions. Tabor makes a habit of starting each section with a description of the worst accident(s) on each expedition, only then going back to fill in the story from the beginning. I know this is a very common technique in non-fiction these days, but if not handled well, it can come across as manipulative, even exploitative, and I think it does a little bit here. Mind you, I have to admit to a degree of bias against Tabor's writing, as he managed to get off on the wrong foot with me from the very first sentence on the very first page. The sentence in question being, "As the fifteenth century began, we believed, absolutely, that the earth was flat." Now, OK, he's really just trying to make some rhetorical point about exploration there, but the incredible historical ignorance of that statement inevitably makes me wonder what else he's ignorant about and hasn't bothered to fact-check, and that made the rest of the book far less engaging for me than it should have been.

Rating: 3/5

126. I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano



This is exactly what it sounds like: a short collection of short poems supposedly written by cats. it's not hilarious or anything, but it is cute and amusing and made me chuckle a bit.

A sample:

CLOSED DOOR

LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN
LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN
LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN
LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN
LET ME IN LET ME I--
Oh, uh, hello
I did not expect an answer
I did not expect an entrance
I did not expect this room to be
so unbelievably dull
So, uh, goodbye

Rating: 3.5/5

Great poem

It does reflect a fundamental understanding of the feline mind, I feel. :)

Ha! I was rushing to a meeting once, on a rainy day, when I saw this beautiful purple cat getting pitifully soaked while it cried in front of a closed street door. Instant heartbreak. So what the hell, I stopped and knocked... and knocked... and again... and the cat kept crying... so then I gave a ring... and another... and another... and finally a woman in leotards opened it, looking rather cross (it was a yoga school, I must have interrupted a lesson), I explained, the cat whizzed inside past her legs, shuffled around a bit... and went back out in the rain. "Oh don't mind him", she said, "he trains people to do that! Every morning someone rings for him!"

Damn cat overlord.

>78 LolaWalser:: LOL! Yes, clearly they do not need opposable thumbs in order to rule the world.

>71 bragan:: Sorry about that meant to reply with links, but never found the time this week.

>80 stretch:: No worries, I found it with no problem, anyway!

127. Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis



The blurb on the front cover describes this as "a detective novel in ancient Rome," which I think pretty much sums it up. It takes some familiar gumshoe tropes -- including a cynical, somewhat smart-alecky, but doggedly persistent P.I. with a weakness for beautiful women and a chronic inability to pay his rent -- and combines them with the ancient Roman setting in a fun way. I did have a little trouble getting into the plot, although I'll freely admit that might be more my fault than the book's, as I was a bit too tired and distracted while reading most of it. Still, it was a fairly enjoyable read. Not quite enough so that I feel a burning need to rush out and buy the next book in the series, but enough that if I happen to stumble across it at a library sale, as I did for this one, I'll definitely pick it up.

Rating: A slightly stingy 3.5/5

>72 dchaikin: - dchaikin - The SP Scientology episode is a classic, it has Stan taking the test and diagnosed as depressed, then giving all his money to the Scientologists to be cured. They believe he's the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, which leads Tom Cruise to camp out in his room and to multiple characters yelling about how Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet. At the end, they admit their religion is a fraud to get money and say that they're going to sue Stan, so the episode ends with him yelling back, Go ahead and sue me! Then all the credits say "John Smith" or "Jane Smith" due to the Scientologists's penchant for suing people.

A Scientology musical by the SP creators could have all the critical acclaim and popular appeal of The Book of Mormon and all the attention-grabbing legal troubles of the Spiderman musical - it would make piles of money.

I've seen I Could Pee on This at the store and am thinking about getting it for a friend of mine who's not a big reader but likes adorable cat pictures, videos, and books. Good review.

>83 DieFledermaus:: That episode was indeed a classic! But, man, the way they wrote Chef out of the show when Isaac Hayes went and quit over it was pretty brutal. Funny, in that South Park line-crossing kind of way, but brutal.

And I'd say that I Could Pee on This would make a great gift for someone like that. (Um, your friend, I mean, not Isaac Hayes. :)) It also has lots of cute photos, as well as the cute poems.

My favorite poem "written" by a dog goes like this:

Gonna eat that?
Gonna eat that?
Gonna eat that?

I'll eat that.

>85 RidgewayGirl:: Heh, yeah, that sounds like every dog I've ever known!

#83/84 - well, I was slow to get here... Thanks maus, maybe I can hunt the episode down. bragan, not sure what was done to Hayes, but sounds like he might have earned it.

ps - way back at #74 - it's so much easier to write about the personal dramas then to actually go through the effort of researching the science... You need to read John McPhee.

>87 dchaikin:: I did read McPhee's The Pine Barrens, ages and ages ago. I probably ought to check out some more of his work sometime.

128. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen



The Berglunds are a family of well-off middle-class liberals whose apparently comfortable life conceals a lot of complicated unhappiness. There's the depressive Patty, who married an unexciting nice guy despite secretly preferring his rock-and-roller best friend; the idealistic Walter, who wants to save the Earth, but has compromised his own principles so much that he may be doing more harm than good; and the ambitiously capitalistic Joey, who is used to things coming easily to him, until the complex realities of adulthood finally hit.

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I can see why it's gotten so much positive buzz. Franzen's writing is very good, his characters well-drawn and believable, and his take on relationships often quite insightful. Some of the political elements of the novel feel a little awkward, as if he's trying a little too hard to be politically relevant, but that's not really a big problem for me. What is kind of a problem is that fact that the book is just too darned long. Not that I have a problem with long books per se, but this one feels like it overstays its welcome. The characters may be well-drawn and believable, but they're just not quite interesting enough to carry 562 pages, and by the end, I was getting tired of their company.

Rating: A reluctant 3.5/5. If it were about 150 pages shorter, I think it would have easily earned a 4.

89 - I've been wondering about this one. I really hated The Corrections so I've not been inclined, but it gets so much praise.

I think it would have been difficult for it to fully live up to the hype, really, even though I tried not to go into it with artificially raised expectations. Despite its flaws, it did leave me interested in reading more of Franzen's stuff, as I really did generally like his writing. I have a copy of The Corrections I just picked up recently at a library sale. Hopefully I will like it better than you did.

Well, it's been twelve years or so, but I remember liking The corrections very much. I picked it up after reading some of Franzen's essays (the piece on Yaddo--Reader in exile?) and admiring his opinions, style, everything. He's a fantastic observer AND he has something to say. I was extremely impressed by the satirical section on Lithuania (I think)--the portion of the novel where the hero reports about the post-Communist shenanigans of Western financiers and assorted disasters in "new Europe".

The story of his father losing himself to Alzheimer's, the unravelling of connections such a thing brings on, was tremendous as well.

>92 LolaWalser:: I'll be looking forward to seeing what I think of The Corrections when I get to it!

I also seem to have accidentally ordered Franzen's latest collection of essays, so I'm glad to hear a favorable opinion of those, too.

I think that The Corrections is a much better book than Freedom, although I enjoyed Freedom well enough. Despite also being fairly long, The Corrections doesn't feel bloated.

I have a book of his essays, How to be Alone, which I will have to get to soon.

>94 RidgewayGirl:: "Bloated" is, unfortunately, a word I might use to describe Freedom, even though I did enjoy a lot about it, myself. Glad to know you wouldn't say the same thing about The Corrections. I really must get to that sometime in the not-too-horribly-distant future.

Freedom has to be one of the most overhyped and mediocre books I've ever read. It was a decent read, but it certainly didn't deserve its anointment as one of the "Great American Novels".

I have The Corrections, but it's near the bottom of my TBR list, so I probably won't read it.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it "mediocre," but the whole idea of people asking "Is this the new Great American Novel?" about it completely baffles me.

129. Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space by Michael Collins



Astronaut Michael Collins' 1988 followup to his excellent Carrying the Fire. The first half of this book covers a lot of the same general ground as the earlier one -- the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs -- but does so more succinctly, and with less focus on Collins' personal story and more on the development and the workings of the technology involved. Like Carrying the Fire it's surprisingly well-written. Collins is very good at relating technological details clearly and well, and at odd moments he can become downright eloquent. I read this book for the first time many, many years ago, not long after it first came out, and there's one line that has stuck with me ever since. Collins is talking about watching the lunar lander approach him on its way back from the moon: "I can't see Neil or Buzz, or the 3 billion people on the small blue blob just behind them, but I know they are there -- and that's all there are in the entire universe, framed in my window." Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a sense of perspective.

Once finished with Apollo, Collins goes on to devote most of a chapter to Skylab, an interesting but often forgotten piece of America's space history. Then he tackles the space shuttle, from its early planning stages up through the Challenger accident in 1986. This chapter is particularly interesting, I think, for the way it offers us a pilot's perspective on the shuttle. Finally, the last chapter looks towards the future, including plans for what would eventually become the International Space Station, a brief survey of possible destinations in the solar system, and some speculative discussion about manned missions to Mars. While Collins is ultimately optimistic about humanity's future in space, the unsettledness and uncertainty that marked the US space program in the wake of Challenger is very evident here, and I found it more than a little depressing to contemplate how little things have really changed since.

While this book is a bit dated -- it's odd to hear Collins talking about the future of the Soviet Union's space program, knowing that very soon the Soviet Union would cease to exist -- it's still very much worth reading, and I recommend it to anyone who is truly interested in space.

Rating: 4/5. And that's being a bit stingy.

Great review. It makes you wonder what would be going on now if Challenger hadn't have happened.

Hard to say how much difference it would have made in the long run, but, yeah, you do have to wonder.

Really happy to read your review of Liftoff, an interesting book that is probably too dated for me to read myself.

Except for the final chapter, I don't think the datedness is really much of a problem, as it's mostly on this history of the space program, anyway. It's just not a complete history.

Ok, good to know. First i want to get to Carrying the Fire, which sounds really rewarding.

Yes, I do very much recommend that one.

130. The Magicians by Lev Grossman



High school student Quentin Coldwater is brilliant, but miserable. He dreams of somehow being able to run away to the magical land of Fillory -- the setting of a series of children's books that are pretty clearly modeled on the Chronicles of Narnia -- or to somewhere equally enchanted. When he follows a windblown scrap of paper into a vacant lot and ends up on the campus of Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, it seems that all his fondest wishes have come true. But it turns out that life in the world of magic, while it has its appeal, isn't fundamentally any better than life in the mundane world.

I have incredibly mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it's well-written, the characters are believable, the premise is cool, and there are some great imaginative touches. And yet, it somehow fails to be entirely satisfying. The concept and the tone inevitably led me to expect some kind of clever deconstruction or subversive commentary on traditional fantasy stories, but while there are elements of that, especially towards the end, it never quite comes together into anything that feels truly coherent and insightful. The main theme seems simply to be that constitutionally unhappy people will be unhappy no matter what their circumstances, and nothing can magically change that, not even literal magic. The first half of the novel feels a lot like the author looked at Harry Potter and thought, hey, what if you did this same sort of thing, but took out all the children's adventure stuff, the world-threatening evil wizardry, the whimsy, and the orphan-turned-hero character arc, and instead just focused on the magical eduction. I actually think that's a perfectly good idea; I always found the general silliness and non-existent logic of magic in Harry Potter slightly frustrating, at least once the story started getting more serious, and wished for some better world-building on the subject. So in principle, I'm perfectly happy to read about how one studies to be a wizard. But eventually, I started longing for some sort of plot. One does eventually show up, and it's fairly interesting when it does, but it takes a lot longer than it really should.

All that having been said, I did find it an interesting and often enjoyable read. I'll probably pick up the sequel eventually, out of curiosity, if nothing else.

Rating: This one is extremely difficult to rate, but I think I'm going to call it 3.5/5, after applying a penalty for not fully living up to its potential. Or perhaps just for not being quite the book I wanted it to be. I'm honestly not sure which.

There were some CR reviews on this a few years ago which also had mixed reactions - very-interesting-but - which leaves someone like me very curious. From your review, it at least sounds like it was worth the time and effort.

I read some very, very negative reactions to it which just made me much more interested in reading it. It's that kind of a book, somehow. And, yeah, I did find it worthwhile, if not exactly satisfying. If nothing else, it got me thinking a lot about what there is to say about that particular kind of fantasy story and how it relates to reality, whether or not Grossman did a good job of saying it.

131. When Science Goes Wrong by Simon Levay



Twelve stories of spectacular mistakes (or, in one case, a particularly bizarre and egregious bit of fraud) in various fields of applied science, most of which resulted in lost lives. Specifically, the stories of: a experimental treatment for Parkinson's disease that had a truly grotesque effect on the patient's brain, a devastating hurricane about which meteorologists failed to warn the public, a group of vulcanologists killed on a field trip to an active volcano they should have had reason to be suspicious of, a study "proving" harmful effects of the drug ecstasy on the brain that turned out to be testing the wrong drug, a dam built in a geologically unsuitable area, a gene therapy trial that resulted in a young man's death, a nuclear reactor explosion that may or may not have been accidental, a release of anthrax spores from a Soviet biological research facility, an innocent teenager convicted of rape by sloppy DNA analysis, the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter due to a failure to convert to metric units, an unethical study from the 1930s designed to see if speech disorders could be induced in children, and the announcement by a group of prestigious nuclear chemists that they'd discovered a new element that turned out not to exist.

I found these stories fascinating, if often horrifying, and in most of them there's some interesting element of scientific mystery as people try to figure out afterwards exactly what went wrong. LeVay's prose is not fancy, but it gets the job done, and he's very good about remaining objective, providing everyone's point of view, and making it clear when there are disagreements about what really happened. In each case, he personally interviewed as many of the people involved as possible, to let them tell their side of things. I also like the fact that he didn't necessarily go for the most obvious and familiar examples. The only incidents I'd heard of before were the nuclear meltdown, which I just read about for the first time a few years ago and immediately exclaimed, "Why the hell haven't I heard about this before?!", and the Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco, which I think most people have heard about but few know the details of.

It should be noted that this book definitely isn't an attempt to slam science or scientists. The author himself is a neuroscientist and has great respect for science as a human endeavor. I don't think that there really is any great moral here, other than that all humans are fallible and scientists are no exception. Which is probably something that's worth pointing out occasionally.

Rating: 4/5

You're having a great run of reviews! And despite your mixed feelings, I now want to read The Magicians much more than I did before I read your review.

I've just ordered a copy of When Science Goes Wrong for my SO.

Again, The Magicians really is one of those odd. odd books where reading negative things about it just makes it seem more interesting. I had the exact same experience, myself. (A friend of mine loathed it, for reasons that I just thought sounded intriguing.)

I hope your SO enjoys When Science Goes Wrong as much as I did! If "enjoy" is quite the right word for a book filled with so much failure and death...

132. Bottomfeeder by B.H. Fingerman



Phil Merman is an ordinary guy from Queens, well-educated, but not exactly what you'd call classy. Oh, and he's a vampire. He didn't ask for that particular lifestyle and isn't happy about it, or about much of anything else, but he gets by OK. Mostly he preys on criminals and derelicts and manages to morally justify it to himself. Not necessarily all that convincingly, but, hey, a guy's gotta eat.

This novel plays around with a few familiar vampire tropes in some interesting ways. The ludicrous contrast between the effete, decadent, aristocratic, Anne Rice-y vampires Phil meets and his own seedy existence, for example, is rather amusing. Bottomfeeder isn't completely reinventing the vampire genre or anything, but it does come at it from a slightly unusual angle and offers a lot of dark humor with its violence and gore, and the result is entertaining enough. The plot is far too slight, though, with nothing much happening up until the end, when we get a sudden twist that's somehow simultaneously both unsurprising and far-fetched. On the whole, it felt to me more like a good setup for a story than an actual good story.

Rating: 3.5/5

133. The Miniature Wife and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales



A hijacked airplane circles Dallas for twenty years while its passengers grow and age and die. A scientist accidentally miniaturizes his wife and finds himself precipitated into a particularly bizarre kind of marital warfare. A gifted composer suffers from a mysterious ailment that causes acts of creativity to physically paralyze him, but eventually learns to speak through his ears. A zombie office drone fantasizes about eating his co-workers' faces. A random loser keeps a unicorn captive in a shed in the suburbs. And so on, and so on.

The stories in this collection are odd, surreal even, and it's not always obvious what, if anything, they're intended to mean. Some are written in the style of feature magazine articles. Others are short biographies of people who never existed. Some work better than others, but taken all together, they have an incredibly compelling quality to them, a fascinating blend of the impossible and the mundane. I enjoyed it lot, although I'm not entirely sure I could tell you exactly why. But whatever the reason, I want more by this writer, and I want it soon.

Rating: 4.5/5

(Note: This was an ER book from the October batch.)

Interesting! Looks like some of his stories are available online here: http://whatstheworth.tumblr.com/

Ooh, very cool! I ask for more of his stuff, and, lo, it is delivered. Thank you! Now I just need to find the time to read them...

The Miniature Wife and Other Stories sounds like something I'd love. That definitely goes on my wish list!

>115 kidzdoc:: If and when you get to it, I hope you like it as much as I did. It is a very strange little collection. :)

Certain sounds strange, but in an interesting way. Just the idea of twenty years on a plane gives me claustrophobia.

>117 dchaikin:: Yeah, no kidding. After 16 hours on a plane coming back from Australia, I was teetering on the edge of claustrophobia-induced insanity. I think the scenario in that particular story may rank very high on the list of my worst nightmares.

134. The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks



Oliver Sacks takes on the topic of vision, specifically the ways in which the brain deals with and compensates for problems with the eyes, and the ways it can create visual problems for people whose eyes are perfectly fine.

The first five chapters introduce us to people with various issues of visual perception, including stories of people slowly losing the ability to read or to recognize objects, people (including the author) with an inability to recognize faces, and one woman who is learning to see in 3D after living her entire life without the benefit of binocular vision. These little medical tales of Sacks' are always interesting in the way they illustrate the wonderful complexity of our brains and the bizarre things that can happen when they malfunction, and, as always, I appreciate the way he focuses on each of these folks as human beings, rather than reducing them to "case studies." But these chapters feel like they cover a lot of familiar ground if you've read his previous books; in fact, he often refers back to material from those earlier books, especially The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. (I did learn one interesting and personally relevant new thing from the chapter on face-blindness, though, which is that it's very often accompanied by difficulty recognizing places. I don't have either problem in the full-blown form Sacks suffers from -- he has great trouble recognizing both his good friends and his own house -- but I do have some difficulty with faces, and I have a truly terrible sense of direction. It had never occurred to me before that those two things might be related.)

Chapter six consists of a journal Sacks kept after being diagnosed with a tumor in his eye, which caused all kinds of strange visual effects. This was, I think, the most interesting section of the book, both because offers a first-hand account of some fascinating perceptional weirdness, and because of its frank and personal nature.

The final chapter discusses blindness and to what extent blind people have a visual memory or imagination. The answer seems to be that it varies, and that nobody seems to really understand exactly how visualization even works in the brain, anyway, so this chapter is mostly full of anecdotes and questions, but very few answers.

I found the book worth reading overall (if a bit hypochondria-inducing in places), but it's not nearly as compelling as some of his other works.

Rating: 3.5/5

135. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson



Major Pettigrew is an old-fashioned sort of man: stuffy, stiff-upper-lip, and very, very English. He might almost come across as a bit of a comical stereotype, except for the fact that, from the very beginning, he feels incredibly real and individual and human. This novel follows the good Major as he deals with the death of his brother, some messy business about a family heirloom the brother failed to account for in his will, mixed feelings about his social-climber son and his often embarrassingly tasteless neighbors, and, most especially, his friendship with Mrs. Ali, a widowed Pakistani shopkeeper, which is slowly developing into something deeper. Although both his own natural reticence and the painfully clueless racism of their small English village make that last thing a little problematic.

I find it hard to put into words just how delightful I found this book. It's warm and perceptive and thoughtful and filled with a wonderfully dry sense of humor, and it made me feel completely and unabashedly romantic, which for me is almost unheard if. It's just lovely. Wholly, utterly lovely. I still have a nice warm glow from reading it.

Rating: Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to give this one the coveted 5/5.

it's a lovely book then. Added to my to buy list as it sounds like a nice change of pace.

I loved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand too! Good review.

>121 baswood:: Indeed, "lovely" is just the one word that kept coming to mind the entire time I was reading it. And it was a very nice change of pace for me, too.

>122 japaul22:: Thanks! Nice to know I'm not the only one who loves it. :)

Sounds great! A nice warm fuzzy read is sometimes just what the doctor ordered - and also you just helped me find a Christmas present for my aunt! :)

A nice, warm, fuzzy read was exactly what I needed this week, too. Sometimes, the right book comes along at the right time!

I hope your aunt likes it as much as I did!

I'll keep this one in mind when I'm looking for this kind of book. Enjoyed the review.

136. Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre



Eddie Chapman was a rather rakish thief whose specialty was breaking into safes using explosives. He happened to be serving time in a prison on the island of Jersey when the Nazis invaded it, got stuck there in occupied territory after his release, and only managed to avoid spending the rest of the war in yet another prison by offering to go back to Britain as a spy for the Germans. Assuming they paid him, of course. They took him up on it, trained him in espionage, and parachuted him into England, where he promptly contacted the authorities and offered to work as a double agent, despite the fact that he was still wanted for numerous crimes there. They took him up on it, too, and so back and forth he went...

This is a fascinating story. Kind of a crazy story, even, full of larger-than-life characters and improbable situations and odd coincidences. If it were presented as fiction, I'd probably find it entertaining but too far-fetched, which I guess just goes to show you that the truth really is stranger.

Rating: 4/5

137. The Android's Dream by John Scalzi



An SF novel that's half a complicated tale of action and interstellar intrigue, with various factions either trying to prevent or provoke a diplomatic incident and/or interfere with an alien species' political succession, and half a work of absurd humor. I don't think this works quite as well as it could: the plotty stuff is a bit long on exposition, variable on world-building, and high on ridiculousness, while the humor varies randomly from embarrassing fart jokes to some really clever and intelligent satire. But it's reasonably fun, and probably worth reading just for the three or four funniest bits alone.

Rating: 3.5/5

I've never read anything outside of some excellent internet posts by John Scalzi, but this makes me love him:

http://www.jimchines.com/2012/12/pose-off-with-john-scalzi/

And I'm finally putting Major Pettigrew's Last Stand on my wishlist. Thanks a lot!

Scalzi does seem like an awesome guy, and that is a rather stunning illustration of this fact. :) I do sporadically read and generally quite enjoy his blog, too.

138. SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable by Bruce M. Hood



Why do people find it so easy to believe in supernatural things, from gods to ghosts to lucky socks to ESP? Some think that we're taught these things as children and simply fail to question them, but Bruce Hood contends that it has a lot more to do with the way our brains naturally experience and categorize the world, from the time we're very young. For instance, he argues that we have an intuitive sense that everything -- and particularly every living thing -- has a fundamental, invisible essence that defines it, and which can rub off on the world around it. This explains, among other things, why people are so keen to touch things that used to to belong to celebrities, and why we instinctively recoil from the thought of wearing a serial killer's sweater, no matter how thoroughly it may have been washed.

There are a lot of deeply interesting ideas in this book, many of which are bound to be quite eye-opening if you've never encountered them before, and are still fairly thought-provoking even if you have. Hood also provides lots of fascinating (if often quite disturbing) examples of this "SuperSense" at work. Unfortunately, though, the structure isn't quite as good as the content: there's a lot of rambling and repetition here, and Hood sometimes seems to circle around the points he wants to make for a long time, rather than getting at them directly.

Rating: 3.5/5

139. The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid by Rebecca Ore



Simon Boyle has a job creating genetic duplicates of people for the CIA, but he also has a lucrative and illegal sideline in recreating historical figures, including Billy the Kid. For a fee, rich clients can have a tryst with the famous outlaw (or at least something strongly resembling him, right down to programmed memories), and then watch a temporary, but far too real, recreation of his death. Until, that is, a client helps Billy to escape. Which doesn't end his troubles, as the future is a weird place for him, even if he is programmed to see everything around him as if it belonged to the 19th century. Not to mention the fact that the CIA is looking for him...

It's a good concept, and I like some of what it does with the character of Billy. But, after giving her writing two or three tries over the years, I have come to the conclusion that I just do not get along well with Rebecca Ore's prose. There's something about it that feels a little too disjointed, a little too compressed, in an odd, hard-to-pin-down way. No doubt it's a deliberately cultivated literary style, but it never quite works for me the way it ought to.

Rating: 3/5

#131 - I want to read that...no, wait, I don't...can't decide....

Too bad about Ore, great concept.

>133 dchaikin:: I'd say it's probably worth reading if it sounds interesting, even if I did have some problems with it, structurally.

And I believe I've seen other people praising Ore's style, so that one may be just me.

Interesting topics in SuperSense. Along the lines of the serial killer's sweater, I remember during a marketing project reading quite a bit about the "law of contagion" and the transfer of properties (mostly negative onto positive) among items placed in promixity -- that sweater might "contaminate" the whole rack or whole building it's in, in some people's minds.

eta: er, proximity

>135 detailmuse:: Yep. This stuff is definitely magical thinking, and yet it really does seem to come very naturally. There are probably good reasons for that, of course. After all, some things really are contagious, and in terms of evolutionary survival, it's probably better to over-apply that idea than under-apply it.

140. Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times by Geoffrey Nunberg



A collection of short essays about how we use language, and how changes in language use reflect changes in our culture, particularly in the realm of politics. (Since this book was published in 2004, it should be pointed out, the politics in question are mainly Bush-era politics.) Some example topics: the subtle distinction in meaning between "liberty" and "freedom" and the fact that the latter has become much more popular in US political rhetoric than the former, the ways in which names for military operations have gone from meaningless secret code words to deliberate PR branding, and the tendency of companies these days to offer "solutions" rather than "products," no matter what they're actually producing.

These pieces were originally written as newspaper columns or brief spots for NPR's Fresh Air, so they're all pretty bite-sized, which is occasionally a little frustrating; there are quite a few topics I would have happily listened to Nunberg going on about at much greater length. That's really my only complaint, though, because in general I enjoyed these a lot. Nunberg has some really interesting things to say about language, culture and politics, and he writes about them with intelligence and zip. He's also capable of expressing an opinion without resorting to the kind of extremist ranting that seems to be the hallmark of most political discourse these days, which is always a welcome relief. I'm definitely going to have to seek out more of his books.

Rating: 4/5

141. How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal



Cat-based humor from the twisted mind behind the website The Oatmeal, including cartoons originally published there, some new ones produced specifically for this book, and a foldout "How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you" poster that I fully intend to hang up somewhere in my house. As well as a guide to telling if your cat is plotting to kill you, this volume also includes such things as helpful hints on "how to pet a kitty," a guide to "having a baby vs having a cat" (the cat wins), and a five-part comic strip about two jerkass cats named Bob who, for some reason, have jobs at what appears to be some kind of software company. The humor ranges from only very vaguely amusing to utterly brilliant. I think the most brilliant stuff is what's recycled from the web, unfortunately, but it's fun to have it in book form, anyway.

Rating: 4/5, mostly just because the funniest bits are really funny.

142. The Annotated Peter Pan: The Centennial Edition by J. M. Barrie, edited and annotated by Maria Tatar



The annotations mostly consist of bits of the editor's analysis of J. M. Barrie's writing style and themes, and are generally pretty skippable, but there's plenty of other supplementary material in this volume, including a short but illuminating biography of Barrie, a (slightly pretentious) essay on the text, a very detailed outline Barrie wrote for a silent film version that was never produced, some beautiful illustrations from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (an earlier work that introduced Peter Pan as an infant), a brief overview of various theatrical treatments of Peter Pan and of Barrie's life, and a fair amount of other stuff.

As for the novel itself, I hadn't read it since I was a kid, and it's actually much better than I remember it being. It's also stranger than I remember, with a few elements that sit on the borderline between the whimsical and the just plain weird. (Oddly enough, it's the super-intelligent nursemaid dog that breaks my suspension of disbelief, not the flying, or the children who never grow up, or any of the more obviously fantastical elements.) It does have a lot of charm, though, and some of the adventures are genuinely pretty exciting. And it doesn't take the editor's analytical notes to make it clear that there's also something a little deeper and subtler going on, too, that this book actually contains some rather perceptive observations about the nature of children and adults and imagination. If nothing else, Peter really is the archetypal little boy, embodying not just the innocence and playfulness of children, but all their self-centeredness and fickleness and irresponsibility, too. And his refusal to grow up and lose any of that while everyone else around him does is unexpectedly poignant; I swear, I got a little choked up on the last chapter.

Unfortunately, though, like everything else, the novel is very much a product of its time. And while I can just about get past my vague discomfort at the idea that boys are allowed to be Lost Boys, while girls have to be their mothers and look after them, it's kind of impossible not to cringe a little at the portrayal of the "redskins." They're not, of course, meant to be a realistic portrayal of Native Americans any more than the pirates are meant to be realistic pirates, but that's a lot less problematic with pirates. It's not, I suppose, remotely as bad as it could be, but still, I don't know that I'd be willing to give a modern child a copy of this story without at least a short explanation about how "pickaninny" is really not an acceptable word. Which is kind of a shame, because there is a definite "timeless classic" quality to it, otherwise, and I can certainly see why it's worked its way so thoroughly into the popular imagination.

Rating: 4/5

A lot of good stuff lately.

A coworker recommended Agent Zigzag and you make it sound pretty addictive as well.

Also liked reading about How to tell if you cat is plotting to kill you. Cat-based humor books that originally started on the internet must be one of the fastest growing sectors in the publishing industry.

Really interesting review of Peter Pan. What with all the cultural filtration, I'm not sure if I've actually read the real thing.

139 - Great review. I loved various plays and movie versions of Peter Pan as a child and should probably get around to reading the book eventually.

Oddly enough, it's the super-intelligent nursemaid dog that breaks my suspension of disbelief - that's because you're a cat person. ;)

>410: I have been having an interesting little burst of good stuff here at the end of the year!

The writing on Agent Zigzag isn't anything special, so I don't know if "addictive" is the word I would use, but, boy, is it a fascinating story.

I admit, I can never resist cat-based humor, myself, on the internet or elsewhere.

And Peter Pan is definitely one of those stories it's entirely possible to be unclear on whether you've read the original or not, because it's seeped so thoroughly into our culture that we're all familiar with it by sheer osmosis. I always find it really interesting to go back to the source for stories like that, though. Sometimes they surprise me. (Not that the novel version of Peter Pan is quite the original, either, since it was a play first. But close enough, I guess.)

>141 janemarieprice:: I do recommend it as one of those classic children's books that's worth reading as an adult.

And you're probably right. I am a cat person. :)

And his refusal to grow up and lose any of that while everyone else around him does is unexpectedly poignant; I swear, I got a little choked up on the last chapter.

That will always strike a chord, won't it. I never read Barrie, but the same thing happens in Pippi Longstocking, the children at the end try a "spell" meant to prevent growing up. I cried over that. Probably still could.

Isn't the greatest legacy of Peter Pan the narcissistic male syndrome designation? I met a few of those...

Incidentally, if you get a chance to read Moore and Gebbie's Lost girls--note the title--one of the classic stories revisited is Peter Pan, BUT, this time read entirely through the lens of female growth, sexual and emotional maturation. Extremely interesting and well done.

>143 LolaWalser:: It really does strike a chord. Sort of the way the idea of immortality strikes a chord, but even more so. (And Pippi Longstocking is another book I read as a kid and have almost entirely forgotten. Maybe I should revisit that one sometime. too.)

Yeah, there is something called Peter Pan syndrome. It's mentioned in passing once or twice in some of the supplementary pieces in the book. I don't know much about it, but I suspect I might have met a few of those guys, myself.

I've been a bit hesitant about Lost Girls. I really like Alan Moore, but it's never been clear to me whether the focus there is more on the re-examination of the classic stories and their characters, in which case it sounds like very much my sort of thing, or more on the erotica, in which case it's probably not. Although I don't have a problem with sexual content per se, and, heck, it seems almost appropriate in the context of Peter Pan, which does have an odd and interesting undercurrent of developing sexuality to it. Maybe I will give it a look sometime.

There's lots of sexual imagery but it's not erotica. Certainly not as long as one is actually reading the words.

>145 LolaWalser:: Well, you have definitely made me more interested in reading it!

143. National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West



A collection of photographs of people and places of the American West, originally published in National Geographic over the course of the last 125 years. The text, what there is of it, often feels like it's trying a little too hard to be meaningful and profound, but the photographs are quite capable of speaking for themselves. Overall, it's a rather a striking and evocative collection of images, although in my case, that might be because there are a lot of memories to evoke. I live in New Mexico, and have been to many of the places depicted here, and it's surprising how effectively this book brought some of those experiences back to me. I'm feeling a remarkable desire now to just hop into my car and head out into the desert.

Rating: 4/5

I seem to be determined to finish as many books before the end of the year as possible!

144. The 1983 Annual World's Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim



This is a rather uneven anthology. Which, to be fair, most anthologies are, but that "world's best" in the title does lead one to expect a certain elevated standard. Then again, maybe 1983 just wasn't a banner year for science fiction.

A breakdown of the contents.

"The Scourge" by James White: A first contact story in which a couple of humans are sent to assess a planet for Galactic Federation membership. Not an auspicious start to the anthology, I'm afraid. Neither the alien society nor the humans' approach to it made any sense, except in the most contrived and simplistic kind of way, and the result mostly just annoyed me.

"A Letter from the Clearys" by Connie Willis: A low-key little post-apocalyptic vignette with a nicely poignant feel to it.

"Farmer on the Dole" by Frederik Pohl: An odd little story about robots programmed to fulfill the role of a social underclass. I'm not entirely sure how well the social commentary works, but it's amusingly written.

"Playing the Game" by Gardner Dozois & Jack Dann: Very short piece about a boy who slips between different realities. Not bad, but also not terribly original-feeling, and unfortunately the specific details managed to snap my suspension of disbelief pretty badly.

"Pawn's Gambit" by Timothy Zahn: Aliens kidnap humans and make them play board games as a way to assess our ability to think strategically, and thus whether we're a danger to them. Not a very satisfying story. The premise is silly, the characters don't react in any remotely realistic way, and if there was an actual explanation as to how the protagonist got the information he uses to get himself out of his dilemma, I missed it completely. Plus, I've never been very fond of that whole "humans are super-special!" trope. Mind you, it could still have been a fun story if the writing were clever enough, but it isn't really trying very hard.

"The Comedian" by Timothy Robert Sullivan: A weird little piece about a man forced to kidnap children by... something. I'm not sure this one really works, but at least it was a nice change of pace after the alien board games.

"Written in Water" by Tanith Lee: The story of the last woman on Earth, and the spaceship that lands in her garden. An interesting combination of some familiar SF elements that probably wouldn't really work if it weren't so well-written. But it is, so it does.

"Souls" by Joanna Russ: This story of Viking invaders confronting an abbess who is more than she seems starts out looking very much like historical fiction, but definitely ends up as SF. I think I'd read this one before, actually, but it was very much worth revisiting, featuring great dialog, a memorable main character, and a strong sense of humanity.

"Swarm" by Bruce Sterling: A couple of humans come to an alien hive to study -- or to exploit -- the creatures that make it up. There's a little too much of characters speechifying at each other, but the aliens are interesting, there's a bit of world-building that's missing from a lot of the other stories in this volume, and, although the ending isn't quite as effective as it might be, there's a very nicely creepy idea there.

"Peg-Man" by Rudy Rucker: A goofy little story about those wacky video games all the kids are into. Very silly, not necessarily in a good way, and very, very 80s.

Rating: 3.5/5, although there's enough good stuff here that I might have rated it higher if it weren't setting the goal so high.

Well, that's a scary thought! "Aliens kidnap humans and make them play board games."

I opened my FB page this morning and saw this picture and thought of you.


Please be careful ;)

You're cruising. Good stuff on Peter Pan, the second positive review in CR this year.

>149 avidmom:: Hee! Don't worry, I am constantly on my guard. Mostly because I already know my cat -- or one of my cats -- is indeed plotting to kill me. He even got as far as sending me to the emergency room once, when he knocked a rather large book off the headboard of my bed right into my eye. (That is now the one place in the house where I do not keep books.)

>150 dchaikin:: I remembered someone talking about Peter Pan here a little while back, but I've forgotten who it was! I ought to go back and look at what they had to say.

And for what should be my last book of the year:

145. God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette



I like Penn Jillette. Possibly more than I really should. The guy's an opinionated loudmouth, and I'm not generally a fan of opinionated loudmouths, even when I agree with what they're saying (and I do agree with Penn on a lot of things, though by no means all of them). Heck, it may be especially true when I agree with them, since I think being an opinionated loudmouth is more often than not counterproductive if you want to bring people around to your way of thinking.

But, somehow, Penn makes it work for him. It helps a lot that he's funny. It also helps that he's self-deprecating about his own obnoxiousness in a way that feels surprisingly genuine, cheerfully admitting that he's just some nut with a big mouth and there's no reason you should listen to him over anyone else and managing to give the impression that, far from wanting to browbeat people into submission or silence like most opinionated loudmouths, he'd be honestly delighted if you leapt into the argument and showed him that he was wrong about something. Even more than that, though, it's that he's just so full of exuberance. He comes across as a guy who is completely in love with life and thinks people are great even while he's in the middle of a full-bore, no-holds-barred, profanity-filled rant, which is honestly pretty impressive. Even when he ought to be annoying, I just find him weirdly lovable.

So, yes, I enjoyed this book. As the title suggests, there's a lot about religion (or, rather, against it) in this loose collection of essays, but he also talks about politics and showbiz and various other subjects, and shares a lot of personal stories. It is, at various points, hilarious, touching, goofy, dirty, and provocative, although whether it's provocative in a good way or a bad way probably depends a lot on the reader. I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody -- religious people will no doubt find it as offensive to their beliefs as it's meant to be -- but if you like Penn Jillette, there's a lot of him here to like.

Rating: 4/5

After all that I can't tell if I would want to read this. Enjoyed your take anyway.

I don't know that I'd recommend it to anybody out of the blue. I'd suggest watching a few episodes of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!. If you really like that, you'll probably like the book. If you hate it, I'd stay far away. :)

And that would be it for 2012! Yay for a year of interestingly eclectic reading, and here's to an exciting new one! Please come and join me on my new thread for 2013.