bragan's 2009 reading, part 2

My previous topic thread was up over 150 posts, many of them with images, and was starting to get a little slow to load, so I figured I'd start a new one. You can find the old one with the my previous reading for the year here.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Book #109 for the year...

109. Alien Hand Syndrome and Other Too-Weird-Not-to-Be-True Stories by Alan Bellows and the editors of Damn Interesting.



This was my Early Reviewer book from the July batch, so here's the review I wrote of it:

A collection of strange and interesting stuff: medical oddities, freakish disasters (natural and man-made), historical curiosities, etc. The entries range from mildly intriguing to utterly fascinating, and are written in a clear, pleasant, not overly sensational style with just enough depth and a nice sprinkling of humor. I'm very impressed by the fact that some real care and critical thinking seems to have gone into selecting and presenting these stories. As it happens I was already familiar with a number of the subjects included here, and I know that those are quite well-documented and real, which makes me feel reasonably confident about the validity of the ones I hadn't heard of. And when the evidence for something is circumstantial or incomplete, that fact is carefully and cheerfully acknowledged. You don't always see that kind of care being taken with collections like this, and I appreciated it.

My favorite pieces? Well, there's the story of the pilot who safely landed a 767 that had run completely out of gas on a tiny, middle-of-nowhere airstrip he remembered from several years previously... not realizing that it had been converted into a racetrack in the meantime and that he was landing on race day. Or there's the one about the oil rig crew who drilled in the wrong spot and ended up draining an entire lake into the (up to that point, fully functioning) salt mines underneath. Oops! Or there's... Well, I could go on.

There are a ton of these strange-but-true books in existence, and a megaton of websites, but this is easily one of the best examples I've encountered. I enjoyed it enough that if these guys happen to put out a follow-up volume, I'll happily pick up a copy of that, too.

Rating: 4.5/5

110. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro



It's difficult to know exactly what to say about this one, because I think it may well be one of those books that benefits from coming into it with as little foreknowledge as possible, and I can easily imagine there being a very wide divergence of opinion as to exactly what might count as a spoiler for it. I will say that I thought it was very good, not because I thought the premise itself was anything particularly brilliant or original, but because the execution was so perfect. Much of the book consists of the narrator looking back on her life, especially her school days and the relationships that have carried through from her childhood, and these reminiscences feel so real, so believable and normal, that it makes the disturbing framework in which they take place all that much more disturbing. The result is a very emotionally effective story with all kinds of wider resonances. I'd... kind of like to say more about that. But I think I'll leave it there.

Rating: 4.5/5

Bragan,

Read The Unit by Swedish author Ninni Holmqvist

It is, in fact, already on the wishlist! I know I saw someone around here recommending it, which eventually led to me looking it up on Amazon... Was that you?

Who knows? I had a concussion and no longer take responsibility for what I say. It's those post TBI blues.

111. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks



Neurologist Oliver Sacks, writing in his usual humane and readable style, offers up various tales of strange and sometimes wonderful interactions between music and brains, both damaged and healthy. He introduces us to people with musical hallucinations, people with perfect pitch, people who go into seizures upon hearing a certain tune, people who have lost the ability to talk but not the ability to sing... It's all fascinating stuff, both on a scientific and a human level. Also fascinating is the fact that music, which exists in every culture on Earth, seems to be embedded in deep, highly complex ways in our brains, and to have deep, highly complex effects on our minds. And yet, for all the recent developments in brain imaging and neuroscience, we still have only the faintest glimmer of understanding about the hows and the whys.

By the way, I was glancing over the LT reviews of this book, and I notice that someone mentioned that they were "getting a little lost in the brain terminology." I can kind of see where someone might have that issue, although the book is certainly not aimed at brain experts, and I personally didn't think it was at all inaccessible. Mind you, I've read a fair number of books about the human brain -- it's such an interesting organ! -- so an author casually throwing around medical terms for structures in the brain doesn't bother me. In my case, it was the musical terminology that occasionally left me behind. I honestly have only the vaguest notion of what even really basic musical terms like "key" mean, and while I certainly didn't feel I needed to know more about music to appreciate most of what Sacks was talking about, I was left feeling more than a little regretful about my complete lack of a musical vocabulary, if only because it means I have no words to describe my own brain's experience of music.

Rating: 4/5

Nice review! I'd add it to my wish list, but I already have it.

Thanks! I like Sacks' books a lot.

kidzdoc,

What books don't you have? Where do you keep all of them? Are you one of those people who owns a separate house to house the books? :-)

Wait a minute...look who's talking! You have over 3000 books, whereas I only have a measly 1600! I do have another couple of hundred books that I haven't entered into my LT library yet. Please ignore the rumor that the next Atlanta Borders store will be in my condo. ;-)

Heh. You know, I can personally verify that one can have over 3,000 books and still be missing so, so many. I think my wishlist is almost as big as my To-Read list now.

Kidzdoc,

Yeah, yeah. But I only have room for that many books because every closet in the house (except for one) has been rebuilt and opened to the public as a book case. The same thing has happened to most of what used to be called cabinet space in the house. I keep Beloved busy with building projects - it keeps him occupied and out of trouble. I also purchased a Kindle, which currently contains quite a few books. I am mad at the Evil A, but I'm all for minimalism.

P.S.

Kidzdoc, you can drop the disguise. We all know you are not a doctor. You are the Atlanta Borders stores.

Rats! I knew that someone would uncover my clever disguise.

112. Finity's End by C.J. Cherryh



This book takes place in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe. It's a follow-on of sorts to her Hugo-winning Downbelow Station, set about 18 years later. Which worried me a little, as it's been twenty years plus since I read that book, and I remember pretty much none of the details. Fortunately, Cherryh's put some real effort into ensuring that the volumes in this series stand on their own, and it turned out not to be a problem. Regardless, I definitely think Downbelow should be read before this one, rather than vice versa.

The story centers on seventeen-year-old Fletcher Neihart, who has been the subject of a contentious interstellar custody dispute for most of his life. Finally, only a year from his legal majority and just as he's beginning to make a life for himself, he's handed over to his space-going merchant relatives. He's not happy about this, and much of the story focuses on his difficulties in fitting in with shipboard life. To make matters more complicated, said family is currently involved in negotiations that could change the shape of trade and politics throughout human space.

Cherryh sort of amazes me. The truth is, her novels are full of dense exposition and wordy introspection, interspersed with conversations that are often so elliptical and multi-layered that they leave readers and characters alike wondering whether they've missed something. And yet, in general, she manages to make this work. I think part of that success is due to the extreme psychological reality of her characters. And part of it is due to her intricate, well-crafted plots, in which politics both interstellar and interpersonal weave together in an elaborate but always coherent web.

That having been said, I don't think this is necessarily one of her best. The main character is sympathetic, but it wasn't until near the end of the book that I felt quite as invested in him as I might like. And the larger political plot is largely lacking in tension and holds very few real surprises. Despite which, I still found it entirely worth reading, and nearly talked myself into giving it a full four stars. Again, Cherryh is kind of amazing that way.

Rating: 3.5/5

113. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell



Sarah Vowell cheerfully tells us all about the assassinations of US presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, and about her own extensive travels to sites associated with their deaths. Vowell's obsession with murdered presidents, as she readily admits, is strange and perhaps even a little creepy. And she does ramble a lot. But despite these facts -- or, very likely, because of them -- this is an incredibly engaging book. It's full of fascinating information, from the world-altering to the utterly trivial, which, like The Wordy Shipmates before it, make me wonder how on Earth my high school teachers ever managed to so thoroughly convince me that American history is dry-as-dust boring. (It's also somehow oddly reassuring, in times like these, to realize that history has always been messy, contentious, and full of violent lunatics.) And I'm not sure which is more surprising to me: that a book about assassinations made me laugh out loud more than once, or that it also succeeded in making me feel kind of choked up more than once, considering that I'm really not at all given to fits of patriotic sentimentality.

Whatever the case, the people who told me that this one was even better than The Wordy Shipmates turned out to be quite right. I will definitely be seeking out more of Vowell's stuff.

Rating: 4.5/5

114. The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott



Jamie's life might not exactly be great to begin with, but it takes a decided turn for the worse after an accidental run-in with some evil clowns. Very evil clowns. Who, disturbingly, take a liking to him and decide to recruit him for their freakish supernatural circus.

One might want to call this a dark comedy or a comedic horror story, but I really don't think either description quite captures the feel of the book. It's not really a combination of horror and comedy so much as it seems to sit at the exact spot on the continuum of absurdity where horror and humor overlap. It didn't generally provoke anything as strong as gooseflesh or guffaws from me. But for much of the time it gave me the truly surreal feeling of reading something simultaneously funnybone-tickling and creepily appalling... or perhaps alternatingly so, in much the same fashion as an optical illusion switching back and forth between looking like faces and a vase. The story is fairly entertaining, too, in a weird, brutal sort of way, even though I did have an issue or two with the ending.

I usually hesitate to say things like this, but I think I might really enjoy seeing this adapted into movie form, if it were done with the right sensibility. It's already got a certain odd cult-film feel to it, and I'd love to see what a cast of talented actors could do with the clowns.

Rating: 4/5

115. Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea



As the title suggests, author Ammon Shea spent a year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover. Although Shea makes a decent attempt at being thoughtful and witty, it turns out -- surprise, surprise -- that someone sitting around reading a dictionary isn't actually all that interesting. And I kind of hate to admit this, but Shea's extreme obsession with dictionaries occasionally had me feeling an irrational desire to back away from him slowly... And that's despite the fact that I've known to browse through dictionaries for fun, myself, and have read more than a few reference books cover-to-cover. It isn't that I don't appreciate eccentricity, or dedication, or a love of words. And goodness knows enough people have had that kind of a reaction to some of my own perfectly sane and sensible interests. But, still...

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the book at all, just that I didn't enjoy it, or relate to its author, quite as much as I'd expected to. I did, however, appreciate the often rather charming lists of strange, obscure, and interesting words that Shea has chosen to bring back from his lexicographical odyssey, which are presented with short definitions and amusing tongue-in-cheek commentary.

And I will say that it has kind of made me wish for my own copy of the OED.

Rating: 3/5

The OED is wonderful. Unless, you have the microscopically reduced set, you'll have a twenty-volume set to get through.

The 20-volume set kind of appeals, although it's not as if I don't have enough space in my house taken up by books already.

It's actually a desire I've had fleetingly now and again for years, which the book just reminded me of. But I kind of doubt I'll ever quite be able to justify the expense.

When I lived outside of Oxford, I had a neighbor whose job it was to work on the OED. I heard many, many stories of boredom (getting a word like "do" or "go" was to spend weeks toiling over a single word) and challenge (how to define semifreddo without using the oxymoron "semi frozen). And then there was the time he spent updating the naughty words in terms acceptable to the OED. It's such an ever changing thing that I think having the paper version is as obsolete as owning an encyclopedia.

I have trouble imagining having a job like that. Part of me thinks it would be fascinating, but I imagine in reality it would probably quickly drive me crazy.

As for the fact that the paper dictionary is a frozen snapshot of an ever-changing language, Shea's position -- which I admit I have a certain amount of sympathy for -- is that that's actually part of the appeal. There's not much practical reason to choose a paper copy over an online copy, and a lot of practical reasons not to, but there is just something sort of cool about being able to say: here is a hefty physical artifact which documents the entire English language to the best of human ability, as of one particular moment in time. Plus, paper is fun to browse through! (Of course, I'll admit that it took me a very long time to admit that there was no point in having an encyclopedia, so it's entirely possible I'm just a bit backwards-thinking in this regard. :))

Anyway, at nearly $1000 a set, it's kind of an academic question for me. Sigh.

116. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.



A YA novel about a dirt-poor kid from an Indian reservation who transfers to an affluent white school in the hopes of bettering his life. A couple of chapters into this, I was thinking, OK, this isn't bad, but it's not exactly the kind of YA book that's calibrated to appeal equally to both adults and kids: the writing style is a bit choppy and simplistic and the messages and emotions aren't very subtle. A couple of chapters later, I hadn't really changed my mind about the style, but I no longer cared. I'd become far too caught up in Junior's story and his not-at-all-simplistic troubles with prejudice, identity issues, poverty, grief, and plain old adolescence.

Hmm, I've just realized that that last sentences makes this book sound awfully Serious and Grim. It's not, though, despite its often depressing subject matter. It's sardonic, angry, and hopeful. Also, it has cartoons.

Rating: 4/5.

>23 bragan:,

Have you seen the movie Smoke signals based, in part on Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven? It's a good movie.

I haven't, but maybe I should check it out.

And I've been thinking that I kind of want to read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven just based on the title alone.

117. Halley & His Comet by Peter Lancaster-Brown



This was one of probably about a zillion books on the subject that came out just before the 1986 return of Halley's Comet. Which, looked at from one perspective, is a bit silly... Wouldn't it make much more sense to write about the comet after its return, instead of putting out a bunch of books all but guaranteed to be out of date almost immediately after they're published? But, of course, you've got to cash in on public interest while it still exists. Nobody wants to read about last year's comet. Except me, I guess.

Anyway, for all that, this book isn't actually very dated because it's mostly about the history of attempts to compute the orbits of comets and spends much more time talking about 1682 (when Halley observed the comet) then about 1986. This is actually a lot more interesting than it sounds. At least, it is if you're me.

Rating: 3.5/5

(And, man, touchstones just really don't like ampersands, huh? I had to link to the title the old-fashioned way.)

118. The Ladies of Mandrigyn by Barbara Hambly



After an evil wizard conquers Mandrigyn and kills or enslaves most of the men, the women of the city attempt to hire mercenaries to fight back. The mercenary captain refuses, so they kidnap him and force him to teach them how to fight so they can go and rescue the surviving men themselves. Meanwhile, the captain's second-in-command is out looking for him, but she experiences unforeseen delays...

I like Barbara Hambly's fantasy, generally speaking. At her best, she provides solidly entertaining storytelling and characters who feel like people rather than archetypes. She's also capable of writing a romance subplot that doesn't make me want to roll my eyes with annoyance, which is more than most fantasy writers ever manage. (Or most Hollywood writers. Or pretty much anybody for that matter.)

I'd say this particular volume is neither her best nor her worst. On the negative side, the pacing seems to me to be off, with events alternately passing too slowly or too quickly. The action isn't really terribly exciting. And the plot relies on a few awfully convenient coincidental circumstances. On the other hand, Hambly somehow manages to make the whole fighting-the-evil-wizard plot feel much less cliche than it really is. The characters develop in interesting ways. And there's a nice hint of a progressive sensibility to it that I think is usually lacking in this kind of fantasy. More often than not, what you end up with is the restoration of a status quo in a triumph of old-fashioned military values, and this story, I think, does something subtly and pleasantly different from that.

I already have the other two books in this series. I'll probably be reading them sometime soon.

Rating: 3.5/5

119. The Good, the Bad, and the Difference: How to Tell Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations by Randy Cohen



A collection of Randy Cohen's New York Times column, "The Ethicist," in which he analyzes and offers opinions on ethical questions and dilemmas sent in by readers. Cohen is a writer with no professional training in ethics, so he's basically writing an advice column, no more and no less, but his responses are sensible, carefully thought out, and articulately expressed. Even when I disagreed with him, I found his answers thought-provoking. It was also kind of fun to ponder the questions and try to come up with my own opinions before reading his. It is, however, possible that this sort of thing is better enjoyed as a newspaper column than a book; after a hundred pages or so, my interest was starting to wane. Also, Cohen's sense of humor is a bit hit-and-miss. He's often very funny in his introductions to each section of the book, but frequently feels as if he's trying a little too hard to be amusing in the answers themselves.

I'll also note that Cohen's particular ethics are secular, liberal, and unabashedly political. I don't always completely agree with his more politicized statements, but I do share his general worldview. Those coming at the subject from a vastly different perspective might well find his answers much more annoying, although perhaps no less thought-provoking.

Rating: 3.5/5

120. The Witches of Wenshar by Barbara Hambly



I couldn't decide what to read next, so I went for the default option and grabbed the first sequel to The Ladies of Mandrigyn.

The evil wizard from the first book refused to allow any competition, but now that he's gone, people who were born with magical abilities are beginning to admit to them and work on developing them. But they're hampered by suspicion, prejudice, and the fact that there are no master wizards around anymore to teach them, all of which proves especially problematic when something supernatural starts killing people.

I've given them the same rating -- basically the equivalent of a "not bad" -- but I did like this a bit more than Mandrigyn. I could probably make the same complaint about pacing, since almost nothing seems to happen in the first 100 pages or so, but in this case I didn't really mind. I think it's because I found the character dynamics and the setup slightly more interesting in this one, although it might also be that I was in a somewhat better mood while reading it.

Rating: 3.5/5

121. xkcd: volume 0 by Randall Munroe



The first print collection of the stick-figure webcomic xkcd. I love this comic to pieces. It's deeply geeky, frequently hilarious, often surprisingly thought-provoking or poignant, and has been known to capture aspects of my own life so accurately it's downright scary. Admittedly, some of the nerdier math- or computer science-oriented installments go a bit over my head, but that's okay; I wouldn't have it dumbed down for anything.

Some of my all-time favorites are represented in this collection and some aren't, but I'm just delighted to have some subset of them available in book form, and am hoping for more to come.

Rating: 5/5

>121, awesome. I love that comic, although I confess I only understand about half of the episodes. Like you, the uber-math ones are totally lost on me.

I feel quite proud anytime I do get one of the math ones. And my (admittedly very rusty) physics background occasionally comes in useful. :)

re 26> Smoke Signals is a wonderful film if you are at all into Alexie.

Part-Time Indian is the first book of Alexie's I've read, actually, but I'm definitely interested in more.

Echoing the compliments of Smoke Signals. iirc, that is one of those mid-to-late 1990's lower budget indie-ish films. Low key, minimal special effects, some actual dialogue... I hadn't realized it was based on a book.

Well, thanks to all these recommendations, I have added Smoke Signals to my Netflix queue! Which is even longer than my book wishlist, if that can be believed...

122. The National Parks: America's Best Idea by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns



This is a companion book to the TV series, which I haven't seen but probably ought to.

First off, this book is gorgeous. It's absolutely chock-full of photographs, both historical and contemporary, and they are utterly amazing. It may be true that no photograph can adequately capture the feeling of a sight like the Grand Canyon, but these come as close as it's possible to get. These are pictures that you want to linger over; I probably spent as much time on them as I did on the text.

The text tells the history of America's national parks, both individually and as a system, in a fair amount of detail. That history tends to feel a bit repetitive, being largely an endless struggle of development vs. conservation, fought by a series of passionate individuals. But, having a great personal affection for the national parks, I did find it worthwhile and interesting.

The recurring message of the book -- repeated in one form or another on almost every page -- is that these parks are special, even sacred places, places that have a profound effect on the human spirit, and that as such, it is incredibly important for them to be both accessible to everyone and carefully preserved for future generations. Often this is couched in terms that I might ordinarily regard this as a bit over-sentimental, a bit overblown... except that I've been to a great many of these places, and personal experience has convinced me that all of it is absolutely true. And so, instead, I found it genuinely moving.

Rating: 4.5/5, which it earns just for the illustrations alone.

37 - The series was very good (as are most things done by Ken Burns IMO). I made me appreciate Teddy Roosevelt's imense contributions to the parks more than ever.

How has Munroe coped with the mouseover texts which just make XKCD one of the funniest webocomics ever?

38: You know, I don't think I've ever actually seen any of Burns' documentaries, although I've certainly heard his praises sung often enough. Possibly I should correct that!

And between reading this and Assassination Vacation last month, which also talked a bit about Teddy Roosevelt, I feel like I'm beginning to get a feel for him as an odd and interesting person. Maybe I need to read more about him, too.

39: The mouseover text is in small print somewhere on outer edge of the comic (usually, but not always, along the bottom). It's unobtrusive enough that the eye isn't immediately drawn to it, but it's large enough to be readable if you have reasonable eyesight. The result is that you don't see it until you look for it, but it's always there. So I think it replicates the mouseover text experience about as well as it's possible to do it in print. :)

123. Picnic on Nearside (aka The Barbie Murders) by John Varley



This is a collection of science fiction stories, almost all of which take place in Varley's Eight Worlds universe, the setting of his Steel Beach and other novels. I like that particular series a lot, because it gives Varley the opportunity to do what he's best at: exploring a world that's fascinatingly strange -- often shockingly so -- both technologically and culturally, and peopling it with characters that, for all their difference from us, are still very human. Admittedly, because he tends to focus more on world-building, characterization, and nifty science-fictional ideas, his plots are often pretty thin, and there were a couple of stories in this collection where that led to unsatisfying results. Most of them, though, were interesting enough, in grand Varley tradition, that I didn't remotely care whether there was anything in the way of a plot or not. Overall, it's good stuff.

Rating: 4/5

Oh, if at all possible, you MUST go to the Grand Canyon. It is unlike any other experience I have ever had. And pictures, no matter how wonderful they are, cannot do it justice.

I have been to the Grand Canyon several times, which still isn't often enough. And I absolutely agree with you. If there's any sight that everybody should see at least once, that is most definitely it.

124. Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu by Philip Alcabes



Alcabes looks at the meanings society has ascribed to epidemics throughout history, and at the interplay between disease and morality, religion, public health policy, xenophobia, and our perception of risk. This seemed to me like an incredibly interesting topic, and the book does have some worthwhile and interesting things to say. But, for reasons it's difficult to put my finger on, I generally found it much more more irritating than insightful. I think part of it is that the author makes a lot of sweeping, abstract assertions about attitudes towards disease and their meanings and interpretations, but often fails to justify them in any really satisfactory way. So, frustratingly, even when I was pretty sure he was right, I didn't feel like he'd given me much of a reason to believe him. And, to be honest, the book doesn't quite seem to know whether it wants to be a work of "history/science," as my copy says on the cover, or a political statement about such issues as the injustice of society's tendency to blame the victims of disease, especially when those victims are poor or foreign. No doubt both of those things are worth writing, but the result here seems to be an uneasy hybrid of the two, and, for me at least, it's not very successful as either one. I also have to admit that I was more than a little put off by what I perceived as a distinct whiff of postmodernist rhetoric, something I instinctively distrust, especially in scientific contexts. I think that for much of the book, I was distracted by a vague, uneasy suspicion that at any moment I could turn the page and suddenly find the author asserting that the germ theory of disease is really just a social construct. (As it happens, he does acknowledge the objective reality of germs, although I can't help getting the impression that he'd be happier if he could regard them as a social construct. Which is probably entirely unfair of me, but there it is.)

Rating: a very unobjective 2.5/5

125. The Dark Hand of Magic by Barbara Hambly



The third and final book in the "Unschooled Wizard" series, after The Ladies of Mandrigyn and The Witches of Wenshar. I'm not sure I have too much more to say about it. It's a decent fantasy story, decently written, although a bit slow in places and not quite as absorbing, overall, as I might hope. I do like Hambly's realistic portrayal of war and soldiers... Most of the characters in this one are mercenaries or ex-mercenaries, people who make their living besieging and sacking cities, and Hambly makes a real point of showing the brutality and ugliness of it all, particularly the terrible treatment of women, but she does it without denying the humanity of the perpetrators. And her main characters, who have become much more enlightened and empathic in the course of their adventures, still don't come across as mouthpieces for the author's late 20th-century point of view, thus avoiding a very annoying pitfall that a lot of writers succumb to.

Rating: 3.5/5

126. Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book by Shel Silverstein



A parody of children's books, in which lovable old Uncle Shelby offers his tender young readers spectacularly bad advice, deeply upsetting information, and instructions to do marvelously horrible things. (E.g.: "Ernie is the genie who lives in the ceiling. Ernie loves eggs. Take a nice fresh egg and throw it as high as you can and yell 'Catch, Ernie! Catch the egg!' and Ernie will reach down and catch the egg.")

Needless to say, it's not actually for kids. Unless you hate them. But it is the single most absolutely freaking hilarious thing I've read in ages. I love Shel Silverstein so much. He's exactly the right kind of evil.

Rating: 5/5

127. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann



The story of Percy Harrison Fawcett, "the last of the great Victorian explorers," who vanished in the Amazon jungle in 1925 while searching for a fabled lost city, prompting many other folks of varying sanity levels to go off in search of him over the next 80 years. Many of those people were never heard from again, either. It's a pretty cool book, full of interesting information, intriguing mysteries, and harrowing adventures that are nice to read about from the comfort of one's cool, dry, mercifully bug-free living room.

Rating: 4/5

128. Ghost by Alan Lightman



David, an employee at a mortuary, sees something out of the corner of his eye one day, something inexplicable, something that causes him to question the logical reality he's always taken for granted. And while he tries to keep it to himself, soon it seems as if the whole world is looking to him for answers that he doesn't have.

I picked this book off the To-Read Pile because it seemed like something appropriate for this time of year, but it's really not a spooky Halloween kind of book at all. Instead, it's a quiet meditation on life and death, belief and uncertainty, and the question of how we can possibly know anything at all. It's an odd novel, and having just finished it, I'm still not at all sure quite how I feel about it, but I do think it was worth reading.

Rating: 3.5/5

129. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby



The author, a famous French magazine editor, suffered a massive stroke that left him with "locked-in syndrome", which is essentially a complete paralysis of the entire body. He dictated this memoir using a system of eye blinks that were his only means of communication. And that, honestly, is a statement you just have to stare at for a while and boggle over.

Considering the means by which it was produced, not to mention the fact that it's translated from French, it's a very well-written book. It's also a very sad book -- all the more so given the fact that Bauby died a few days after it was published -- but it demonstrates a good-natured spirit, a vivid imagination, and an undiminished sense of humor. No doubt that's why the book has been described as "inspirational." I have to say, though, that I am personally inspired less by the impressive example of strength of character in adversity than by the simple reminder that the smallest and most taken-for-granted things, like being able to walk and talk, ought to be appreciated while we have them.

Rating: 4/5

He dictated this memoir using a system of eye blinks that were his only means of communication. And that, honestly, is a statement you just have to stare at for a while and boggle over.

I'm still boggling...

People would recite the alphabet in order from most to least commonly used letters, and he'd blink when they got to the right one. Apparently he'd compose a chapter or something in his head, and then spend a good chunk of his day dictating it.

Yeah. I'm still boggling, too.

130. Swine Not?: A Novel Pig Tale by Jimmy Buffett



After reading a couple of thoughtful, introspective books in very short order, I figured it was time for a change of pace. And what could fit the bill better than a silly story about a family and their pet pig, written by someone with a world-wide reputation as a laid-back, fun-loving guy? I find a lot of Jimmy Buffett's songwriting catchy and amusing, and I remember enjoying his autobiography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, so I was expecting this to be decently entertaining and good for a few laughs. Alas, though, it's not particularly funny. At most, it manages to be vaguely cute, and not even all that consistently.

Buffett says in the introduction that this book started out as a short story written by a friend of his based on her own experiences hiding her pet pig in a swanky Manhattan hotel, which he got her permission to embellish with his own ideas and turn into a novel. I can't help thinking that I probably would have enjoyed the friend's story a lot more, especially if it lacked the ridiculously over-anthropomorphized pig.

Although, for some inexplicable reason, this wasn't marketed as a YA novel, I do think kids might be much more likely to enjoy it than adults. But I'd advise anybody over the age of about ten to give it a miss.

Rating: 2.5/5

131. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold



This is another installment in the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, an excellent science fiction series that I have been reading far too slowly. There's not a great deal of adventure in this one, actually; it's not until something like two-thirds of the way through the book that Miles discovers a mystery to investigate and the story develops much in the way of a plot. It says a great deal, though, about the strength of the characters and setting of what is on the surface an action/adventure series that it doesn't need much in the way of a plot to be interesting. This volume sees Miles making a career-shattering mistake, dealing with medical problems (his own and others') and affairs of the heart (ditto), wrestling with his identity issues, and ultimately growing up in some very surprising ways. Even the mystery plot was more interesting for what it meant to the characters than for the whodunnit aspects. My one complaint might be that it took the normally frighteningly sharp Miles a terribly long time to twig to a few things that were obvious to me almost immediately, but probably even that can be viewed as a characterization plus, rather than a plot minus.

I believe there are three more books in this series. I'll be very interested to see where it goes from here.

Rating: 4/5

132. The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson



I am something of a compulsive walker, even if these days my walking consists less of long desert or forest hikes and more of short trips back and forth to work, the grocery store and the post office. I find that it doesn't much matter where I walk, really; I just need a certain amount of walking to stay healthy and sane. So I could hardly resist reading a book by someone who clearly gets it, someone who wouldn't feel compelled to stop and ask me whether there was something wrong with my car if he passed me walking along the road.

The book itself has very much the feeling of a casual, relaxed amble through its subject matter, as Nicholson meanders through discussions about his own experiences walking in London, New York, Los Angeles and less urban places, and along the way introduces us to competitive walkers, eccentric walkers, artistic walkers, literary walkers, and all manner of other folks who've made some kind of big deal out of putting one foot in front of the other.

This honestly did leave me feeling very much as if I'd just had a nice stroll through the countryside with a pleasant companion. Of course, the fact that I actually was walking at least some of the time while reading it doubtless helped.

Rating: 4/5

54 - This went right on the wishlist. And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who walks and reads.

Always nice to meet a fellow walker-and-reader! I remember an incident a few months ago, in which I was walking down the sidewalk reading a book and passed a woman walking in the opposite direction with her own book. We both looked up, there was a brief moment of eye contact and two small smiles at encountering a kindred spirit, and then we both stuck our noses back in the book and walked on. It made my entire day.

133. Random Magic by Sasha Soren



This is a comedic fantasy adventure novel I got through the Early Reviewers program. And, man... There were moments when it struck me as very charming and funny and pleasantly eccentric. Unfortunately, the rest of the time it just seemed to be trying far too hard, and consequently missing the mark. I sort of felt as if it were jumping around, waving its metaphorical hands in my face and shouting, "Look! Look how clever and whimsical and full of madcap adventures I am! Look how many literary allusions I can manage! Look how many bad puns! Look how much cheerful nonsense I can get into one sentence! Don't you just love me? STOP NITPICKING AND LOVE ME!" At least, it does that until a little over halfway through the book, at which point it suddenly takes a turn for the much darker and more serious and emotional and philosophical for a while, and that, too, is pretty overwrought and only intermittently effective.

I admit, my response here may be somewhat biased by the realization, before I started reading, that the author is apparently also the publisher. (And, judging by the four-page letter and the extravagant "goodies" that came with the book, its overzealous marketer, as well.) I naturally tend to be leery of self-published works; I read enough amateur writing on the internet to understand all too well what the lack of a vetting process or any editorial oversight can lead to in terms of quality. But, regardless of whether the thought comes courtesy of my preconceptions or not, my strong feeling about this is that it could be a highly entertaining novel, if re-written a few years down the road by an author who'd spent the intervening time developing a more mature and less self-indulgent style.

Actually, out of curiosity, I looked up the author's bio on her webpage, and was surprised for a moment to read the assertion that she had ten years of writing experience... until I realized that that was experience with screenplays. And then suddenly it all made sense. Because many times while I was reading this book, it occurred to me that I might enjoy it a great deal more if it were translated onto a movie screen. Even the often incredibly corny dialog could be amusing if delivered with a properly light and quirky touch by a good actor, and there's a lot of scope for really interesting cinematography. It's mostly just the prose style that seems to be, well, not quite ready for prime time yet.

Rating: 2.5/5

134. Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz



Plotz is a non-observant Jew who, during a boring bat mitzvah ceremony, picked up a copy of the Bible and casually read a random, unfamiliar chapter. Surprised and intrigued by the mildly shocking story he found there, he decided he simply had to read the whole thing. (Well, the whole Jewish thing, anyway. He's understandably chosen to leave the New Testament to someone else.) In this book, he goes through the Bible chapter by chapter, briefly summarizing its contents and offering his own thoughts and reactions. The recaps are well-written, in a light, conversational style; his responses are thoughtful and often highly amusing; and, refreshingly, he has no particular theological axe to grind or agenda to push. The end result is entertaining, thought-provoking, and highly readable.

Being a non-believer myself, I admit that I often get hung up, when considering the Bible, on the ideas that it a) isn't literally and factually true, and b) isn't even a really great guide to morality. Which makes it far too easy to lose sight of what the Bible is: a fascinating work of history and mythology. And, like most such works, it's full of vivid stories, insights into ancient cultures and mindsets, and emotionally resonant moments. I really ought to read the whole thing myself, one of these days.

Rating: 4/5

135. St Anthony's Fire by Mark Gatiss



This is another of the no-longer-new Doctor Who New Adventures series. In this one, the Doctor and his companion Bernice find themselves on a planet in the midst of a genocidal war... which turns out the be the least of its problems. Meanwhile, left behind on a different planet, Ace is brainwashed by a sinister religious cult. It's a very traditional Doctor Who plot, really; I could easily see it being adapted into a script for the TV show. It starts out readable, if not terribly engaging, but unfortunately about halfway through the bad guys show up, and they are ridiculously, cartoonishly evil, even by Doctor Who's admittedly cheesetastic standards. Tip for authors: no matter what kind of story you're writing, unless it's a very broad parody, if you resort to literal kitten-torturing and baby-eating to convince readers that your villains are frighteningly nasty, you automatically fail.

And, unfortunately, it just all goes downhill from there.

Rating: 2.5/5

136. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel



The story of the 18th century quest for a means of determining longitude at sea, and the clockmaker who finally solved the problem. It's a quick, reasonably interesting read -- a bit light on technical detail, but with a nice sense of historical context. But I must confess, I don't entirely see why it was such a big bestseller. I was already familiar with the general historical facts though; it's possible it would have made a much bigger impression on me if it were all new to me. I'm sure the "self-taught craftsman vs. The Establishment" narrative helped its success, too.

Rating: 3.5/5

>59 bragan:, maybe he was trying out an idea for a future episode?? I like Gatiss as an actor but think the two Dr Who episodes he wrote were quite weak (can't remember the titles, but they were the one with Charles Dickens in Cardiff and the one with Maureen Lipman stuck in a TV).

Well, the show was off the air at the time, so any ideas anybody had for episodes had to happen in book form. Maybe he would have written it as a TV script instead if it had been possible. (Although I do imagine he enjoyed the lack of budgetary limitations. I'm pretty sure that if that story had been filmed for the original series -- or possibly even the new one -- the aliens would have been a bit more human-looking. Mind you, they pretty much acted just like humans, anyway, so it wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference.)

I thought the Charles Dickens episode ("The Unquiet Dead," for the record) was OK, but the Maureen Lipman one ("The Idiot's Lantern") is probably one of my least favorites. I think you're right; he is better as an actor than as a writer. Maybe I would have expected less going in if I'd stopped and thought about that, but I can't say my expectations were hugely high, anyway, after the last few Who novels I'd read.

Hi bragan - Before reading the bible, you might want to peak at Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits by Jack Murnighan - he tells you what to skip and why. I've put The Good Book on my wishlist as something to check out - in case I decide to actually read the bible sometime.

I'm trying to remember the buzz on Longitude - I think it was the combination of history, science writing, and a more "literary" non-fiction writing style. I'm using the word "literary" loosely. But, in any case, these kinds of books, while maybe more common now than in 14 years ago, aren't that easy to find. And there is the aspect of the quirky and fascinating 16th century British scientific intelligentsia seriously and hopelessly working a problem solved by an outsider with a well designed somewhat everyday object.

Beowulf on the Beach looks pretty cool. I may add that to my own wishlist. I don't do skipping, though. If I'm going to read something, I read all of it. Compulsively. Fortunately, I read pretty fast. :)

And, even though it resulted in me thinking I probably ought to read it, Good Book strikes me as also being something good to read instead of the Bible, if you don't feel like tackling it yourself. Plotz clearly isn't covering absolutely everything, but I certainly came away from it feeling much more familiar with its contents than I had before.

As for Longitude... You know, I think there are a lot of excellent, well-written, not-too-technical non-fiction books aimed at laypeople. I certainly don't have any trouble finding them, and don't recall having much trouble 14 years ago, either. But very few ever seem to garner much recognition among the general reading public. I half suspect it's largely random chance that a book like Longitude gets tons of attention and other, equally worthy and "literary" science/history books don't. (Which isn't to disparage Longitude, of course, because it's a perfectly decent book about an interesting bit of history. It just doesn't strike me as at all exceptional.)

137. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb



I loved Wally Lamb's second book, I Know This Much Is True so much that naturally I had to go back and read his first one as well. The two novels are really very similar in a lot of ways. Both tell the life stories of protagonists who are sympathetic without always being likable, people who've suffered abuse, trauma and just plain rotten luck in their lives, much of it fueled by emotional repression and the keeping of too many secrets, but whose stories are never entirely without the possibility of hope. I didn't find this one quite as compelling as I Know This Much Is True, but I still had to exert a real effort of will to put it down last night so I could sleep, and the ending left me with a big old lump in my throat, so I'd say it's effective enough. Lamb's writing is simply amazing in the deft, seemingly effortless way in which it sucks you into his characters' minds and lives.

Rating: 4.5/5

138. Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne



A clear, comprehensive account of the evidence for evolution by natural selection, how it all fits together, and why scientists find it completely convincing. Recommended for those who are dubious about evolution, those who believe in it without really understanding why, and those who find themselves trying to argue the subject with creationists.

Rating: 4/5

(Touchstone isn't working for some reason, so I've linked it the old-fashioned way)

139. When Mermaids Sing by Mark Zvonkovic



I won this book in the Member Giveaway program, and was rather excited about finally getting something until I belatedly realized that it was another self-published work. I really need to check these things more carefully. Unlike Random Magic, which as far as I can tell got around the ER rules on self-published books by virtue of being produced by a small press controlled by the author instead of a normal vanity press, this one was pretty obvious. I think I did a reasonable job of not pre-judging it on that, regardless, but, man... If Random Magic felt as if it were jumping around and waving its arms like a toddler on caffeine, When Mermaids Sing can't seem to even muster up enough energy to drag itself out of bed. I feel as if I've just had a tour of the bipolar extremes of literary self-indulgence.

Anyway, here's my review:

The plot, which involves two characters' attempt to deprogram family members who have supposedly been brainwashed by a cult, sounds really promising. Unfortunately, the word "plot" proves to be something of an overstatement, as very little actually happens in this book. It's only in the last twenty pages or so that we get so much as a conversation with one of the cultists, and then only after many, many pages of (in my opinion, quite oversimplified) exposition about the psychology of cults. And in the end there's very little drama in it at all, psychological or otherwise. Indeed, there's essentialy nothing dramatic or engaging in the entire book. The protagonist/narrator tells us all about his girlfriend, his family history, his opinions on various irrelevant subjects, and what he's having for breakfast, but none of it is imbued with any emotion or any particular insight. The blurb on the back cover describes this character as "self-absorbed." I believe what that actually means is that, while he seems like an okay guy, listening to him narrate his story is almost exactly like being cornered at a party by someone who won't stop droning on about the mundane details of his life, which he completely fails to realize are of no interest at all to anyone but him.

Rating: 2/5

(You know, I feel kind of bad about writing such a negative review when the author mailed me a copy of his book and everything, and is doubtless excited to see what I might have to say about it. But I don't believe there's any point in writing a review unless you're going to be honest. And, in all honesty, this is a serious contender for the title of Dullest Book I Have Ever Read in My Life.)

140-144. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 1-5:

The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon
No Future for You by Brian K. Vaughan
Wolves at the Gate by Drew Goddard
Time of Your Life by Joss Whedon
Predators and Prey by Jane Espenson et al.



I came rather late to Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it was already in its sixth season before I started watching it, and I had to catch up with it from the beginning on DVD. I've never been nearly as much of an obsessive fan about it as I have for certain other shows, but I did enjoy it a lot. So I was definitely interested in this official continuation of the show in comic form, but since I hate having to pause in the middle of a story, I initially figured I'd wait until the "season" was finished and read it all at once. I'm also impatient, though, and it was taking far too long, so I finally gave in and read the first five collections. I'll have to pick up the new ones now as they come out.

This really is very much a continuation of the show. The characters are now in extremely different circumstances, but they are still entirely, recognizably themselves. (Well, recognizable in character terms, that is. The artwork is generally good, but the characters' resemblance to their TV counterparts is somewhat variable, which I suspect is almost inevitable in any comic that uses TV or movie characters.) And these graphic novels are full of all the things that made the TV show so much fun: action, drama, witty dialog, wacky pop-culture references, three-dimensional characters, continuity and character development, an ability to blend different moods and different genres together seamlessly, and a refreshing girl-power sensibility.

Ratings:

Call it four stars, overall, but it breaks down like this:

The Long Way Home and No Future for You: 4/5. Solid storytelling. Very Buffy.

Wolves at the Gate: 4.5/5. This gets the extra half-star mainly for featuring some cleverly, wonderfully silly bits that had me laughing like crazy, although you could hardly call it a comedy overall. But I suppose it also deserves some credit for taking a controversial character development and making it work in context.

Time of Your Life: 3.5/5. It didn't engage me quite as much as the previous volumes, possibly because it suffers from comparison with the extremely engaging Fray, to which it is a sequel, in a time-travelly sort of way. It also featured a few too many loose ends to be completely satisfying. Still entertaining, though.

Predators and Prey: 3.5/5. This one's several short stories by various authors, rather than one multi-part story plus one shorter self-contained story, as in the other volumes. Which makes it a bit uneven, and I have a couple of nitpicks with the way it handles certain plot developments. Some fun ideas in it, though, and it features some decent scenes for a minor character I happen to be fond of.

I've got vols 1 and 2 and have also decided to wait until I have the whole series before getting started. Thanks for the reminder that I need to buy the others!

You're welcome! And congratulations on having more patience than I do. :)

145. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers



Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian Muslim living in New Orleans, a successful business owner, a dedicated family man, and an all-around pillar of the community. When Hurricane Katrina hit, he sent his wife and children out of the city, but stayed behind with the idea of looking after his business office and rental properties. After the levees broke, he still remained, paddling through the flooded streets in his canoe rescuing people trapped in their homes, distributing supplies to the needy, and caring for abandoned pets. Then he suddenly disappeared, spirited off to a place far more hellish than the devastated neighborhoods of the city, courtesy of the very people who'd supposedly been sent there to help. Eggars tells this all-too-true story of a decent man treated indecently in a simple, effective style that is first heartening, then harrowing, then enraging and heartbreaking.

Rating: 4.5/5

146. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett



This is the latest book in Pratchett's Discworld series, which I absolutely love. It's an astonishing example of a series that has continued for dozens of volumes with absolutely no diminution of quality, and it somehow simultaneously manages to be hilariously funny and full of surprisingly sophisticated explorations of the human experience. Not to mention well-developed characters and, often, engrossing plots.

Unfortunately, the bit of human experience this particular installment is nominally built around involves sports and sports fandom, something I find both incomprehensibly alien and mind-numbingly dull. So it took me much longer than usual to really get into it. And my personal issues with sports aside, I still wouldn't call it Pratchett's best. But even Pratchett's lesser stuff is head and shoulders over many other people's finest efforts, and this one, too, featured enough wit, insight and solid entertainment to eventually win me over. Hell, in the end it even made me feel genuinely excited to read about the progress of a soccer game, and I wouldn't have thought that was humanly possible.

Rating: 4/5

147. Geek Chic: Smart Women in Popular Culture edited by Sherrie A. Inness



A collection of essays about the portrayal of intelligent women in popular culture, primarily on American TV shows. Somehow, I was expecting this to be a fairly light, popular-level book, but it's actually quite serious and academically inclined. The essays themselves vary considerably in quality. Most contained a few worthwhile, although not profoundly insightful, points. There were a couple that I thought were extremely good: clear, thoughtful, balanced, and fully aware of the complex and nuanced ways in which the very same elements in pop culture's treatment of women can be both encouraging and problematic, depending on one's approach. I particularly liked the surprisingly engaging article on girls with glasses, and the examination of heroic female characters on animated series aimed at pre-teens. A couple of others, alas, struck me as a bit muddled, or even as dangerously close to embracing one set of harmful stereotypes about women in the attempt to avoid another. And the one on Bewitched was just badly written, which is a pity, as I think there may be quite a few interesting things to be said about TV witches in this context.

I have to say, the overall impression I came away from this book with is that society in general -- the portion of it that consists of academic experts not excepted -- is so conflicted in its thoughts and feelings about brainy women that any handling of them is guaranteed to be problematic from some perspective. Which, honestly, is a little depressing.

Rating: 3/5

148. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick



In 1907, a wealthy widower advertises for a mail-order bride, but the woman who arrives has a dark and secret agenda of her own.

There are, I think, a lot of flaws in this book. There's unrealistic dialog, a surprise revelation that feels like a bit of a cheat, characters whose actions are simply contemptible however extenuating their emotional circumstances, moments of pure melodrama, things told that perhaps ought to be shown, elements that I found simply disturbing when I suspect I was meant to respond positively, and the fact that ultimately the author can't resist spelling out for us exactly what he thinks the story he just wrote was all about. On the other hand, it's an excellent premise, and Goolrick's writing is often compelling and does an excellent job of evoking the loneliness, bleakness, desire, and melancholy of his characters and setting. On balance, I'd say it was definitely worth reading, but it's left me feeling unsettled and somewhat unsatisfied.

Rating: 3.5/5 (Though I can't for the life of me decide whether that's overly generous or not.)

Just stopping in for a bit. Your comments on Unseen Academicals make want to get to all those Pratchett's I haven't read yet. And another reason to read Zeitoun - sometime. I'll pass on your last two, though. :)

I definitely recommend Zeitoun, and darned near anything at all by Pratchett. :)

149. Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner.



This was published in 1968 and set in 2010, which makes reading it for the first time in almost-2010 a slightly odd experience. As is almost inevitable -- and, in this case, was undoubtedly a deliberate choice -- it's really not about 2010 at all, but about the issues and concerns of 1968, projected and magnified onto the screen of an imagined future. Needless to say, the issues and concerns of 1968 are largely not the issues of today, so that the only way I can properly appreciate this book is to try to rewind my brain back to 1968 and then spin it forward again. Which is something of a challenge, considering that I was born in 1971. But that mental exercise really is necessary, because that projection is mostly all there is; the characters and plot seem to exist mainly as scaffolding for Brunner's social commentary. It's a very carefully constructed and highly provocative projection, mind you, and I imagine it must have made quite an impact on contemporary readers, but at this point it's mainly only of historical interest. It seems to me that that alone ought to be enough to make it worthwhile reading, but I have to confess that I kind of struggled with it.

Rating: 3/5, but the fact that it's not higher may be more the 21st century's fault than the book's.

150. Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live by Ben Thompson



This was my Early Reviewer book from October. I have to say, I am constantly bemused by which of the ER books the inscrutable algorithm ends up deciding I'm the best match for. Anyway, here's my (short) review:

This is exactly what it sounds like: short biographies of various ass-kicking historical figures. It's written in an over-the-top testosterone-soaked-teenage-boy style that, for my tastes, as often as not overshoots the humorous target it's aiming at and instead hits somewhere in the vicinity of "annoying." "Badass" is actually one of the least slangy and vulgar descriptive words in the book, and while I don't have a problem with slangy and vulgar, there are some limits to its entertainment value, and I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed this more if it were toned down a notch. Maybe a notch and a half. But it did give me a few laughs, and the people and events described here are genuinely interesting. If you happen to know a testosterone-soaked teenage boy and would like to sneakily induce him to learn a little history, I think giving him a copy of this may be an ideal way to do it.

Rating: 3/5

151. Something Missing by Matthew Dicks



Martin is a thief who makes a living out of stealing only things that careful research indicates are unlikely to be missed. If you vaguely remember having an extra bottle of syrup in the back of your pantry somewhere but can't find it now, it's possible that Martin made off with it. And while he was at it, he might have taken that crystal bowl you got as a wedding present that's been sitting in a cabinet for years still in its original packaging, too. He's very successful at this unusual career, until, after many years, he finds himself being drawn into the personal lives of his "clients."

This is a terrific premise, simultaneously mildly creepy and strangely charming, with the potential for lots of quirky fun. Unfortunately, I think a nifty premise is really all there is to this book, and the writing doesn't really do it justice. We're told all about Martin and his habits and the intricate details of how he works at great length, but I never felt emotionally engaged with Martin or his world. The writing style is very flat, often repetitive, and generally feels more like exposition than storytelling. The plot's kind of thin and simplistic, too. There's really just not a novel's worth of ideas in here, and I can't help but think that I would have enjoyed it much, much more if it were condensed down to something like novella length. Livelier writing and more of a sense of humor would have helped, too.

Rating: 2.5/5, or a resounding "meh."

Man, so far this is shaping up to be a pretty unsatisfying month, book-wise.

152. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich



The genesis of this book, apparently, came when Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer and discovered, to her dismay, that her own feelings of anger and unhappiness about her disease were deemed unacceptable to the community that claimed to offer her support. Instead, she encountered scientifically unsupported ideas about the crucial importance of a "positive attitude" in dealing with cancer that, at the extreme, devolved into something distressingly like a blame-the-victim mentality.

While Ehrenreich starts off talking about her own experiences with breast cancer support groups, she quickly moves on to cover a lot of positive-thinking ground: debunking the "science" of The Secret, considering the effect of religion on the positive thinking movement and vice versa, exploring the multimillion-dollar motivational speaker industry and its apparent goal of inducing employees to accept heavier workloads and less job security with smiles on their faces, and examining the role of no-negative-thinking-allowed attitudes on the collapse of Wall Street. It's thoughtful, sensible, highly readable stuff.

It should be noted, by the way, that Ehrenreich is in no way opposed to the idea of happiness. Her contention is that positivity and happiness are not at all the same thing, and that, contrary to popular opinion, the former does not automatically lead to the latter. Instead, she argues that a realistic view of the dangers and promises of the real world -- to the maximum extent that we're capable of -- is the best bet for ensuring our success, both as individuals and as a species.

Rating: 4/5

(Hello, touchstone? Are you there? No? Sigh.)

>80 bragan: Well said about the Ehrenreich book which I read a few weeks ago (and then sent it to Nickelini...). What struck me most was how pervasive the whole philosophy was in our culture. Sometimes we look at one thing or another or another and never really step back for the larger picture. Cultural trends.

A favorite book, Where the Girls Are by Susan J. Douglas takes a look at women in television (& some movies) from the 50's through the end of the 70s. She looks at the different television shows and points out the trends. It was really fascinating because certainly I had either watched or known about the shows, but never stepped back to look at them in the context of how they represented women and how they may have expressed what was going on in the country at the time (sorry for the digression). I've always wished there would be a sequel...

Yes, indeed. The whole "culture of positivity" thing is something that I was already sort of aware of... I've known a couple of people who've lamented that their employers gave them a hard time for not being upbeat extroverts focused on selling themselves, even though they were both hired for their computer skills, not their people skills, and really just wanted to be left alone to get on with the work they were supposedly being paid to do. I also remember reading Watching the English earlier this year -- it's a sociological look at English culture -- and was struck by how well it explained some vaguely uncomfortable interactions I'd had with English people... The influence of the positive thinking movement can be found worldwide, but it's particularly ingrained in American culture, so that what the English might regard as becoming modesty or amusing self-deprecation can, past a certain point, come across to an American as willful negativity and low self-esteem -- cardinal sins in American culture!

But Ehrenreich's book gave me a much wider perspective on it all, and illustrated very well just how pervasive that attitude is, and how extreme it can get.

Where the Girls Are sounds interesting, too. I'm sure there were some very signficant trends in the portrayal of women on TV in that period, but it's not something I've ever sat down and thought about in any systematic way, either. Maybe I'll check that out sometime. Perhaps it'll be more satisfying than Geek Chic.

153. The Very Slow Time Machine by Ian Watson



A collection of science fiction stories from the 1970s. It's hard to know quite what to make of these. Most of them are a bizarre combination of really clever and imaginative SF ideas, oddball mysticism, and flat-out nonsense, written in a style that I'm not at all sure how to describe. I want to use words like "oblique" and "dreamy," but I don't know that that really captures it at all. In their own way, all of the stories are interesting, but very few of them are anything remotely approaching satisfying, and by the time I got to the end I was feeling a little frustrated with the whole thing. It's possible that keeping the reader feeling unsettled and uncertain is partly the point, but if so, well, I've seen it done to much better effect. And yet, several of these stories seem to really almost have... something. I'm just not remotely sure what.

Rating: 3/5

>82 bragan: Watching the English is one of the most interesting books I've read for a long time. Being British, (Welsh rather than English though) it really made me step back and think that what I took for 'normal' behaviour and 'the obvious way of doing things' was actually the product of a particular culture and was not necessarily obvious at all!

Being an American, but something of an Anglophile, I found it highly interesting, too. I remember having at least one "aha!" moment when I suddenly understood a bit of social interaction I'd recently seen on a British TV show and found inexplicably odd.

And it really is great to get that kind of anthropological perspective on one's own culture, too. I found myself really wishing someone had done an American version. Although it's possible that that might have to be broken down by region. This is a large country, and somewhat culturally diverse.

154. The Atheist's Guide to Christmas edited by Ariane Sherine



A collection of short essays by various (mainly British) atheists. It's highly eclectic, ranging from the humorously silly to the earnestly serious. Many of these pieces are specifically Christmas-themed, featuring personal anecdotes, or how-to holiday tips, or musings on what Christmas actually means for those who don't believe in Christ. Others deal with science or philosophy or atheist activism, touching on Christmas only tangentially, if at all. They're all very short, and the overall the collection feels pretty lightweight. I did find it pleasant, though, if only because reading it at this time of year gives me a happy, warm, you-are-not-alone feeling, along with a reassuring sense that, why, yes, it is okay to be an atheist at Christmastime, and it doesn't mean you're a dirty hypocrite if you happen to enjoy carols and eggnog.

And the profits for this book go to an AIDS-related charity in the UK, so I can even feel good about myself for buying it, as opposed to feeling guilty for adding yet another volume to the To-Read Pile.

Rating: 4/5

My partner are both atheist and he finds it bizarre that I love watching the Kings College carol service at Christmas and sing along to carols in shops. It's good to know that I'm not alone!

Judging by how many of the writers in the book said they love carols, you are definitely not alone! Personally, I love some of them and hate others, but I have to admit that some of the prettiest ones are decidedly religious.

155. Society of the Mind: A Cyberthriller by Eric L. Harry



The story starts with a Harvard psychology professor being recruited by an eccentric multibillionaire genius to come to the advanced technological research base on his private island and examine his secret artificially intelligent supercomputer, which is showing signs of depression, or multiple personalities, or something. So right away, you can see that this book is not exactly free of cliche. And for something that dares to use the word "thriller" in the subtitle, it's extremely dull and talky. There is some action at the end -- which I actually found much less interesting than the talkiness -- but for most of the book, the only point seems to be, "Hey, look at this nifty technology!" Admittedly, the technology is pretty nifty. But although the practical applications depicted in the book are ridiculously implausible for the near future, the ideas are all pretty familiar, and I'm fairly sure that I would have found them just as much so in 1996, when the novel was published. Which puts me far ahead of the protagonist, who is so consistently freaked out about absolutely everything that it seems as if she's never watched a science fiction movie or read a speculative magazine article. Or learned anything from her experiences earlier in the story. Come to think of it, I don't believe there's a whole lot of evidence of her supposed expertise in psychology, either.

Despite its flaws, I actually found this surprisingly readable, in a no-real-emotional-investment-required, pick-it-up-and-put-it-down-over-a-busy-holiday way, for the first 250 pages or so. But by about halfway through, I was becoming increasingly bored with its ridiculously extended attempts to build up some supposed big, dark secret. (Which, come to think of it, was probably a good thing, because the secret, when it's finally "explained" at the end, is incredibly, incredibly lame.) By the last 100 pages or so, which is when the theoretically exciting action stuff is happening, I was so bored that I stopped paying much attention to the plot, and just spent my time thinking about how much I'd like to smack the main characters for being deeply annoying and for wasting my time.

Sigh.

Rating: 2/5

156. Love: Ten Poems by Pablo Neruda



This was a present from my LibraryThing Secret Santa. It's a slim little volume, no doubt an inexpensive choice included when there was still cash left after the other two books, and it was selected, according to my lovely Santa, "just to give you a taste of Neruda." And an excellent choice it was, too, because it's a bilingual version in Spanish and English. Now, I can read Spanish a little -- nowhere remotely well enough that I'd attempt to tackle poetry without an English translation handy, but enough to be able to appreciate the inevitably superior rhythm and language of an untranslated poem, if I have a little help in reading it. Actually, I understood more of these poems in the original than I would have expected, which is probably a testament to the wonderful poetic simplicity of Neruda's language. But mostly I went back and forth between the two versions, working out the Spanish as I could, glancing over at the English for words and phrases I didn't know, then re-reading in first one language, then the other. Somewhat to my surprise, this turns out to be a wonderful way to read poetry. It meant that I lingered over every phrase and every image, sometimes feeling an abrupt, delighted surprise as a meaning or emotional resonance or nuance suddenly popped out at me. It did mean that ten short poems took a rather long time to read, but it was well worth spending the time.

And, you know, after finishing that tedious techno-"thriller," I think that was exactly what my brain needed. I feel like I just provided it with food and exercise, at the same time.

Rating: 4/5

157. Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo



The premise of this Finnish novel is that trolls, rather than being imaginary creatures, were discovered to be real, albeit rare, animals sometime in the early 20th century. These aren't, however, the hulking, stony creatures that, form my usual idea of a troll, thanks to Tolkien and his successors, but slender human-sized creatures that are described as resembling both an ape and a cat.

The protagonist, coming home one day from a frustrating and disappointing date, discovers a juvenile troll being assaulted by some boys in the yard of his apartment building, takes it in, and nurses it back to health. What follows is an odd, subtle, deceptively simple story about sexuality, captivity, and desire. It's certainly not something that's going to be everybody's cup of tea, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it in the end, but I have to say I liked it.

Rating: 4/5

I thought I might sneak one more book in before the new year, but it didn't quite happen, so I guess that's it for me for 2009! It was a pretty great year of reading, overall, I think, and even if I didn't get the TBR Pile down quite as much as I liked, I did make some progress!

It looks like the first book of 2010 will be Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. Not too bad a note to start out on, really.

My thread for the coming year can be found here.