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Readerman's Book List
I have begun to catch up my "Books Read" blog at a new location. I am back working with blogger again, and the new site is at http://librarybooks.blogspot.com/. As you will see, I'm about a month behind with entering my books, but I'm working on it!
It appears that Dan has successfully made his move to California and set up the server on which www.danchan.com resides (see his Daypop blog for further information). This is a great relief to me, as I've been mourning the loss of this site for nearly a month now! Welcome back, Dan, and I hope you hang on for a good long time.
Just in case he doesn't, however, I'm planning to try to migrate my blog to another location soon, if for no other reason than to have a backup!
Library Science
Editor: Robin Kinder
Details: Bound periodical, 410 pages, Haworth1994, 1-56024-672-3.
Interlibrary loan from the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University.
No remarks at this time.
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies [L]
by CS Forester
Lord Hornblower [L]
by CS Forester
Commodore Hornblower [L]
by CS Forester
Horror Fiction
Author: Stephen King
Details: TCCL Hardback, 356 pages, Scribner 2002, -07432-1137-5.
Begun: Wednesday, October 9, 2002 1:50pm
Completed: Sunday, October 13, 2002 11:25pm
No remarks at this time.
Children's Fiction
Author: Gordon Korman
Details: Hardback, 184 pages, Apple 1984, 0-590-43709-7.
Interlibrary loan from Casa Grande Public Library in Casa Grande, AZ
Begun: Saturday, October 12, 2002 10:35pm
Completed: Monday, October 14, 2002 12:55pm
No remarks at this time.
Fiction
Author: Mark Dunn
Details: TCCL Hardback, 205 pages, MacAdam/Cage 2001, 0-9673701-6-7
Begun: Tuesday, October 8, 2002 10:45pm
Completed: Thursday, October 10, 2002 11:25pm
No remarks at this time.
Library Science
Author: Grant Burns
Details: TCCL trade paperback, 185 pages, McFarland 1998, 0-7864-0499-X
Begun: Friday, October 4, 2002 5:10pm
Completed: Saturday, October 5, 2002 11:10pm
No remarks at this time.
Graphic Novel
Author: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Details: TCCL Large-format paperback, various pagings, Eddie Campbell Comics 1999, 0-9585783-4-6
Begun: Thursday, October 3, 2002 10:15am
Completed: Tuesday, October 8, 2002 10:40pm
No remarks at this time.
Young Adult Fiction
Author: Eoin Colfer
Details: TCCL Hardback, 277 pages, Talk Miramax 2002, 0-7868-0855-1
Begun: Sunday, October 6, 2002 3:40pm
Completed: Tuesday, October 8, 2002 9:45am
This is a sequel to one of the most original young adult books I've read in awhile. It's a little unfortunate that, in this time of Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket, it seems to be easy to pass this series off as an imitator, when it has its own very unique mythology.
Artemis Fowl is a young criminal genius. Imagine James Bond at twelve without the scruples. He is heir to an enormous fortune amassed by his father, a criminal mastermind in his own right who was missing, presumed dead, throughout the first novel. He disappeared in the middle of his biggest deal ever, the one that was going to make him the money he needed to go straight.
In The Arctic Incident, it is revealed that he is alive, and Artemis must work to save him from his kidnappers. This alone would make for a great, fast-paced story, but there is another wrinkle. It seems that there is a secret world of fairies, trolls, pixies, and gnomes existing beneath the surface of the earth. They have superior technology coupled with magic, but they have been content to stay away from humans for most of our existence because of the damage we do to the environment. The elite of the Lower Elements Police force of this subterranean demimonde is known as LEPRecon (I know, I know.). In the first book, Artemis stole gold from them, making him their sworn enemy. Now, though, there is a war brewing belowground that threatens to erupt into the human realm, and Artemis and the LEPRecon must work together to solve both of their problems.
Okay, I just read through all that, and it really does sound pretty cheesy. Just trust me. The books are a lot of fun. You might also want to check out the Artemis Fowl website.
Historical Fiction
Author: Jamie O'Neill
Details: TCCL Hardback, 572 pages, Scribner 2001, 0-7432-2294-6
Begun: Sunday, September 22, 2002 10:20am
Completed: Thursday, October 3, 2002 8:45pm
This selection was spurred on by an author interview with O'Neill on NPR. [Weekend Edition, Saturday June 15] I was fascinated by the discussion and put myself on the reserve list for it right away. Once I got it, though, I held onto it quite awhile before starting to read it. It's not a skinny book.
The interview drew me in with its talk of James Joyce, the Irish Easter Uprising (a history I did not know anything about), O'Neill's untutored decision to write a novel (he hadn't read a book until he was twenty) and the privations he endured while writing it. More than any of those things, though, I was interested in the relationship of the two main characters, young gay men in 1915 Ireland.
I have a fascination with gay culture. I think it probably started in college, but when I reached graduate school it really blossomed into curiosity about the lifestyle, support for gay issues, and interest in gay literature and film. A part of it, I'm sure, is the experience of being mistaken for gay, something that's been a part of my life since I was very young. At any rate, I selected At Swim, Two Boys in part for that reason. The book is incredible. I was put off at first by the length and a bit by the dialect of the characters, but I soon slipped smoothly into the world of Jim, Doyler, and their families, watching the interplay of class, religion, and politics in the lives of the large ensemble of characters. I think I identified most strongly with MacMurrough, an older man recently released from a prison term for "Gross Indecency", the same crime for which Oscar Wilde was jailed. His soul-searching, presented as discourses with a spectral cellmate, and his self-sacrifice for the sake of the two boys' love and friendship was heart-wrenching. I recommend this book highly to anyone with an interest in an emotional story that requires some commitment from the reader.
The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked [L]
by David Benjamin
I'm passing on this one. I checked it out because the title sounded familiar and it intrigued me (I was often the last kid picked, as you might have guessed). But I read the cover blurb, and it's set in the 1950s. I was hoping for something more contemporary, and since I have a lot on my list right now, I'll save it for some other time.
Humor/Pets
Author: Terry Pratchett
Illustrator: Gray Jolliffe
Details: Mass Market Paperback, 126 pages, Gollancz 1995, 0-575-06104-9.
Interlibrary loan from Williamsburg Regional Library.
Begun: Wednesday, October 2, 2002 1:50pm
Completed: Wednesday, October 2, 2002 9:15pm
In my ongoing quest to read ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING THAT TERRY PRATCHETT HAS EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT WRITING, I requested this nonfiction book about cat ownership. It's pretty good. I would probably be more amused if I had ever owned a cat, and I'd probably be pretty upset if I was a dog person, 'cause he bags heavily on the canines, but mostly I just had fun. It's an interesting bit of fluff, but I'm not going to rush out and buy a copy.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I actually own anything written by Terry Pratchett. Everything I've read of his has been borrowed, either from a friend or from a library. This is a little weird. He is, after all, a writer I am completely crazy about. And you know, I don't own any Wodehouse or Forester either. That's really a huge change for me. I've spent years collecting titles by Stephen King, Terri Windling and her Scribblies writing group, and Robert Heinlein. It's interesting that, once I committed to going to library school, all the authors I discovered I read only from libraries. In addition to the ones already mentioned, the same is true of Dorothy Gilman, Tony Hillerman, and Carl Hiaasen.
Of course, there are financial considerations to keep in mind as well. During the same time period, I've had a lot less disposable income. This bears thinking about.
Fantasy
Author: Terry Pratchett
Details: Map and Guidebook, Unnumbered pages, Corgi 1998, 0-552-14608-0.
Interlibrary loan from East Baton Rouge Parish Library
Begun: Wednesday, October 2, 2002 1:10pm
Completed: Wednesday, October 2, 2002 1:40pm
There's not a whole lot to say about this item, which really isn't a book at all. It's the third in a series of "Michelin guide" overviews of locales in Pratchett's Discworld. The map folds out from the back cover of a slim pamphlet. It's a beautiful aerial painting of the Lancre area, which is a kind of combination of Appalachia and Transylvania. The booklet itself has descriptions of walking tours and some "local color" information from the incredibly earthy local witch, Nanny Ogg. It's certainly fun, but It seems a little too much like someone cashing in on Discworld's fame with an expensive item that will appeal to the rabid fan. I'm glad I was only addicted enough to ILL it from two states away instead of buying it online from Amazon UK.
Mystery
Author: Philip Kerr
Details: Pre-Publication Galley, 347 pages, Crown 2002, 0-609-60981-5
Begun: Monday, September 30, 2002 7:30pm
Completed: Tuesday, October 1, 2002 11:50pm
To be honest, I was quite disappointed in Kerr's novel. His idea of using Newton's tenure at the Mint to frame a detective story is good, and he has obviously researched that character meticulously, as he explains in the back matter of the book. However, his portrayal of Newton's "sidekick" character, Christopher Ellis, is much less apt. He appears boorish, dissipated, and crude, and one wonders why Newton spends any time with him at all. There are similar problems with the language. Newton's speeches often read like quotes from his works, and it seems likely that at least a few of them are, while Ellis' phraseology appeared anachronistic. It's not just the difference between high- and low-class tone. Kerr's Newton sounds like an educated 17th century Englishman. His Ellis sounds like a 20th century American.
Fiction
Author: Ray Bradbury
Details: TCCL Hardcover, 190 pages, Simon & Schuster 1993, 0-671-87036-X
Begun: Monday, September 24, 2002 9:15am
Completed: Saturday, September 28, 2002 10:00pm
I chose to re-read this classic novel initially because it was a selection of the Librarian's Book Club. By the time I got my reserve copy, the discussion was over, having moved on to the two other reads for that month, but I went ahead and read it anyway. It seems to be in the library zeitgeist a lot right now, with the provisions of the USA-PATRIOT act allowing the federal government to seize library computers and force staff to keep silent about it. I found it more disturbing and also more touching than I remember it from high school, but then I was but a callow youth at that time. I was particularly inspired by Bradbury's introductions, where he speaks passionately about writing the manuscript on a rental typewriter in a library basement. It was also interesting that Fahrenheit 451 includes a concept (memorizing entire books to keep them safe) that was also important in A Canticle for Leibowitz.
YA SF
Author: Terry and Lyn Pratchett
Details: Hardback, 408 pages, SFBC 1996, 1-56865-620-3.
Interlibrary loan from Kilgore Memorial Library in Dumas, TX
Begun: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 12:30pm
Completed:
Only You Can Save Mankind - 10:44pm We 9/25
Johnny and the Dead - 12:12am Th 9/26
Johnny and the Bomb - 10:35pm Th 9/26
Terry Pratchett is a pacifist. I suppose I could have figured that out from the way he talks about war in the Discworld books, but it's much more obvious in this set of three young adult novels. Each centers on Johnny Maxwell, a typical British teenager with an interestingly multicultural set of friends who seem to attract weirdness in some way. I'll address the books individually.
Only You Can Save Mankind - Johnny is playing the latest "war in space" video game when the enemy tries to contact him. At first bewildered, he soon becomes the aliens' champion, defending them from other players and helping them escape.
Johnny and the Dead - Johnny and his pals take a shortcut through the graveyard and he realizes that he can see the dead. He helps them overcome their attachment to the past and free themselves.
Johnny and the Bomb - Johnny discovers that a local homeless woman has a time machine. He uses it to go back and prevent a disaster during the Blitz, and in the process saves the life of his best friend's grandfather.
These are pretty glib thumbnail sketches that don't do justice to the depth of the stories. Johnny stands out as a young man with a strong moral compass and a need to help people, even if they aren't strictly human beings. His friends can be a bit one-dimensional, but there is some development of those characters as well. It makes me wonder if there are more titles on the way, though there have been none published since 1996.
Science Fiction
Author: Terry Pratchett
Details: Hardback, 158 pages, Colin Smythe 1976, 0-901072-20-6.
Interlibrary loan from Fort Worth Public Library
Begun: Monday September 23, 2002 2:55pm
Completed: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 11:25pm
There are several parallels between this book and Strata, the one I read just before. So much so, in fact, that I have to be careful not to confuse the two. In both, three individuals from three different species travel through space looking for a hidden planet and a secret that lies behind the universe.
Where Strata borrows from Niven, however, The Dark Side of the Sun owes more to Isaac Asimov and his epic Foundation series. In this universe, a discipline called "probability math" (analogous to Asimov's "psychohistory") allows those with sufficient psychic ability and mental discipline to predict the future with startling accuracy. The main character's father predicted that he would be assassinated and would later go on to discover the planet of the godlike Jokers who have left their artifacts sprinkled across the universe. This seeming contradiction leads him on his quest, and to an ending that seemed similar to that of Strata, but less satisfying.
Science Fiction
Author: Terry Pratchett
Details: Hardback, 183 pages, St. Martins 1981, no ISBN.
Interlibrary loan from the Southern Oaks library in Oklahoma City's Metropolitan Library System.
Begun: Saturday, September 21, 2002 1:15am
Completed: Monday, September 23, 2002 8:50am
As I've been reading some of Terry Pratchett's non-Discworld works, I'm discovering that he has a fondness for comparisons of scale. His early book The Carpet People features the epic struggles of very human beings who are microscopic in size. The so-called "Bromeliad" (Truckers, Diggers, and Wings) observes a somewhat larger people, approximately 1/10 scale, and has them interact with humans. This science fiction title takes humans as the microcosm and asks what would happen if there was something bigger out there.
In the future setting of Strata, humans have developed terraforming technologies that allow them to build planets using very basic raw materials. They are creating these worlds as colonies for small populations, and they include entire prehistories in the strata of the surface, reasoning that the people will forget their extraterrestrial origins relatively quickly (on a geologic timescale), and someday they will re-invent archaelogy and paleontology and need something to find.
Pratchett takes three individuals from three very different species and sends them on a quest to find a lost world, which turns out to be a flat disc. There is, of course, a broad wink here at his most successful franchise, but the story also has interesting parallels with Larry Niven's hard-science fiction Ringworld series, where the world in question is (re)discovered by a similar team of three. In the process of surviving on this flat "earth" the adventurers find out some very interesting things about the underpinnings of their own universe and their true place in it.
The more I read Pratchett, the more impressed I am by his social commentary and musings on the state of humanity.
YA Fiction
Author: Neil Gaiman
Details: TCCL Hardback, 162 pages, HarperCollins 2002, 0-380-97778-8
Begun: Saturday, September 21, 2002 11:45pm
Completed: Sunday, September 22, 2002 1:10am
Neil Gaiman is deeply cool.
I've been a fan of the Sandman graphic novels for many years. I've also enjoyed his fiction, including short pieces in anthologies, his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the hilarious Good Omens, and particularly his incredible dark fantasy novel American Gods. Now he has written his first book for children, Coraline.
The author quotes compare it to Alice in Wonderland, but I see more parallels with Clive Barker's turn at children's fantasy, The Thief of Always. Coraline is a young girl dissatisfied with the banality of her life. When she discovers a looking-glass world behind a locked door in her family's new flat, she is intrigued, but soon she realizes that she has touched a very dark place, and she must use her wits to rescue herself, her parents, and the other children who have been trapped there.
Fiction
Author: CS Forester
Details: TCCL Trade Paperback, 244 pages, Little Brown 1966, 0-316-28939-6
Begun: Friday, September 20, 2002 9:05am
Completed: Saturday, September 21, 2002 1:10am
Since I began reading the series back in August with Captain Hornblower, RN, a collection of novels from the middle of the pack, this book is quite a jump from the previous one. This is the least typical of the Hornblower books, as almost none of it takes place on the sea.
Flying Colurs begins with Hornblower imprisoned by the French after surrendering to four heavily armed vessels. He soon learns that he is to be transported to Paris, where he will die before a firing squad. As he travels to this doom, he helps Lieutenant Bush to recover from the amputation of his lower leg. With the help of Seaman Brown, they manage an escape on a winter night and travel downriver to refuge in the home of a French nobleman. After half a year of recuperation, the three travel boldly down the Loire to the sea and make good their final escape and return to heroes' welcomes in England
There's another interesting item awaiting Horatio back in England. Everything I've read about Forester and the series talks about the problem of Maria, Horatio's wife. Because the first thing he wrote about Hornblower had him traveling with his wife, he had to include her in the other novels he wrote. It's clear from his descriptions of Horatio's feelings about her that he was very unhappy about this, and when later he has Hornblower fall in love with another woman, it's impossible for him to consummate the affair because of his rigid sense of honor. At the end of Flying Colours, this problem is solved. When he returns home, Maria has died in childbirth with his son, who has been taken in by Barbara, the woman he fell in love with in the Pacific. Conveniently, her husband has also died of wounds he suffered in the same action that saw Hornblower imprisoned. In one stroke, Forester removes all impediments to Horatio's happiness, making him revered, wealthy, a father, and soon to be a husband to the woman he truly loves.
Fiction
Author: CS Forester
Details: TCCL Hardback, 344 pages, Little Brown 1962, LCCN 62-13907
Begun: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 8:50am
Completed: Thursday, September 19, 2002 9:40pm
In this book, Hornblower takes on his first full command. His exploits along the French coast at the south end of the English Channel are full of daring and glory, tinged by his constant self-doubt. It is in this book that the legend of the great Horiatio Hornblower is established, setting the stage for his rise in later volumes.
Children's Literature
Author: E. L. Konigsburg
Details: TCCL Unabridged Audiobook, 2 cassettes - 3:40, Listening Library 1995, 0-8072-7556-5
Reader: Jan Miner
Begun: Monday, September 16, 2002 7:50am
Completed: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 5:30pm
One of the unexpected issues of parenthood is the necessity of censoring my audiobook choices. I love Carl Hiaasen's stuff, and it's particularly good drive-time listening, but I don't want to have it on with a 2-year-old in the backseat! So when we got ready to go out of town last weekend, I went to the kids' section for my selections. Even there I had some trouble. I started with Lemony Snicket's A Bad Beginning, read wonderfully by Tim Curry, but I discovered that it's much more disturbing and less amusing on tape than on paper, and I turned it off after baby Sunny was kidnapped, because I could tell that Xander was getting upset. This book was a whole different story.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is a Newbery-award-winning story about a brother and sister who run away from home and live in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. There they are entranced by the mystery of a statue that may or may not have been carved by Michelangelo, and the statue leads them eventually to the narrator, Mrs. Frankweiler herself, from whom they learn a great deal. This is one of those books I read a long time ago, and now that I've read it again as an adult, it affects me much more profoundly. Claudia, the sister, is the real central character, and the insights she gains at the end of the book had me near tears, whereas I probably never noticed them when I read it in my youth.
Mystery
Author: Benjamin Hoff
Details: Pre-publication Galley, XX pages, Minotaur October 2002 release, 0-312-30108-1
Begun: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 11:25pm
Completed: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 12:00am
Benjamin Hoff, iconoclastic author of The Tao of Pooh.
Frank and Joe Hardy, teenaged heroes of one of the most successful children's book series' of all time.
Put them together, and you get The House on the Point. Hoff, like countless others (myself included) was a voracious reader of the Franklin W. Dixon Hardy Boys books as a child. When he later came back to them in a fit of nostalgia, he found his enjoyment blocked by the poor writing, weak plot, and unrealistic detective techniques (Hoff was an investigative employer at one time in his career). His reaction was to combine the bare bones of the original Hardy Boys book The House on the Cliff with his reminiscences of a favorite childhood vacation spot and produce this pastiche.
It works well. The Hardys and their pals zip around Bayport and its environs in an effort to track down a gang of smugglers. The story is set in the 1940s, and Hoff is careful to sprinkle vintage slang terms and vehicles throughout the text. The mystery is mysterious, the tension is tense, and everything works out okay in the end. Secondary characters glossed over in the series are rounded out and interesting. I quite simply had a great time reading this book.
True to his deconstructionist roots, Hoff begins with a lengthy explanation of his motives and methods, and ends with further description of the changes he made from the original, followed by an essay on the importance of mystery in children's lives and a postscript about his difficulties in getting the book published. This material takes up a fair chunk of space, but can easily be skipped, and I found it interesting to look inside his thinking and writing processes.
One interesting note. There are three words in my vocabulary that I owe entirely to the Hardy Boys books. They are chum (friend, not bait), jalopy, and quip. I read this book with one ear cocked to hear those words, and all three appeared. For this reason alone, I credit Hoff with a well-tuned ear. I hope he does it again.
Fiction
Author: Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Details: Used Mass-market paperback, 278 pages, Bantam 1959, No ISBN
Begun: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 9:35pm
Completed: Monday, September 16, 2002 8:20pm
This is one of those books with a terribly familiar title. I've heard it repeated many times over the years, but really had no idea what it was about. I found it at a used book store in paperback and bought it, with the woman behind the counter telling me it was wonderful, one of her favorite books ever.
It didn't do much for me.
If I had more than about 3 readers (Hi, Mom!) I'm sure somebody would be terribly offended right now. He or she would be leaping up out of the computer chair shouting, "How can you say that? This is the greatest book ever! This book changed my life. You just can't appreciate it, you cretinous louse!" or words to that effect. In fact, that's probably pretty accurate. I can't appreciate it, and there are several reasons why.
- I'm not Catholic
- I don't know much Latin
- I was born in 1971
Much of the story seems to hinge on these shared experiences. The action of the book spans several centuries after a nuclear holocaust, centered on a monastery dedicated to Saint Leibowitz. The book is liberally spattered with Latin quotations, many of which I might recognize if I regularly attended Mass in Latin, but I'm a Lutheran. Even the headings of the sections are a mystery to me. Fiat Homo. Fiat Lux. Fiat Voluntas Tua. I know that homo is man and lux is light, but the rest loses me, unless they are really talking about Italian sports cars.
I am tempted to contrast this book with another classic of similar vintage, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Both have similar sensibilities and themes, but to my mind, the Heinlein has a staying power that Miller's book lacks.
One of the things I did like was that there's a clear librarian angle. In fact, I should have suggested it for the Librarian's Book Club and saved myself some reading this month. The monks, led by the example of Saint Leibowitz, have the task of collecting and preserving as much human knowledge as they can. Ironically, it is this that allows man to destroy himself a second time, as the rediscovery of the scientific information in the vaults leads directly to the Neo-Renaissance that produces nuclear weapons again, and the book ends with monks carrying them out to extraterrestrial human colonies as the Earth becomes a smoking cinder behind them. In fact, now that I've reflected a bit, the book is not only dense and anachronistic from the point of view of 2002, it's also pretty depressing.
It may be that, once I've spent more time mulling it over, A Canticle for Leibowitz will look better to me, but I doubt it.
Carnegie Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy[L] [lbc]
by Theodore Jones
War in the Neigborhood [L]
by Seth Tobocman
The Blue Notebook [L]
by Andre Juillard
Good-bye Chunky Rice [L]
by Craig Thompson
In an earlier post (Friday, August 23), I noted that there are times when I have to be brutally honest about my ability to read everything I have set aside. Today the catalyst for this decision was checking out a book and getting a notice from the system that I am within 3 items of my checkout limit. The limit, according to TCCL policy, is 50 items. I printed out a list and chose the ones to pull. I know that there are only 4 books here, but I also have some children's books at home for Xander that I have to track down, and I'm returning several CDs that I've borrowed as well.
I do want to comment briefly on what I've pulled and why. The first item, Carnegie Libraries Across America: A Public Legacy, was a selection for the September Librarian's Book Club, and since we're now choosing books for October and the discussion is winding down, I'm going to take it down from the shelf and send its accusatory "you haven't read me yet" glare back to the Central library.
The other three titles are graphic novels I picked out on a trip downtown a few weeks ago. They seemed interesting at the time, but there are other demands on my reading time right now, so I'm putting them back in circulation as well.
Fiction
Author: Tim Dorsey
Details: TCCL Hardback, 273 pages, William Morrow 1999, 0-688-16782-9
Begun: Thursday, September 12, 2002 9:20pm
Completed: Saturday, September 14, 2002 11:11am
One of the first readers to e-mail me about this blog, Amy A. from Florida, wrote to tell me how much she liked my (very brief) review of Carl Hiaasen's Lucky You. She recommended this Tim Dorsey novel as something else I might like. Thanks for the suggestion, Amy!
Anyone who has read Carl Hiaasen knows his style. He writes what I would call "caper" novels, usually featuring inept criminals foiled by good guys whose own morals are rarely unsullied. All of this is described with the kind of creepy goofiness that characterizes most of what outsiders see of Florida. Most of his stories would fit in cozily as entries in Chuck Shepherd's weekly "News of the Weird". Once you have a feel for Hiaasen, picture that as about a 7.5 on the Florida novels volume knob. Tim Dorsey takes that knob, twists it up to 11, breaks it off and shoves it down your throat.
To use a measure coined by one of my library school instructors, if you weren't able to watch the wood-chipper scene in Fargo and laugh, you should not pick up this book. People are murdered all over the place, with an astonishingly casual disregard. Drugs are everywhere, along with some deeply strange sex. The ending resembles Hamlet, in that nothing much is really resolved, except that nearly everyone involved is dead. This could easily be a very bad book, but it's not. Dorsey's creativity and pacing make it all fun. As an example, three of the stranger murder weapons in Florida Roadkill are a can of Fix-a-Flat, a rum enema, and a pair of women's Levi's 501 jeans.
Science Fiction
Author: David Weber
Details: Pre-publication galley, 856 pages, Baen 2002, 0-7434-3545-1
Begun: Wednesday, September 4, 2002 9:20pm
Abandoned: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 11:20pm
Okay, I gave up on it. I tried really hard, but I just couldn't take it any more! Here's why:
I'm a science fiction reader. I have been for a very long time, and I enjoy a lot of different subgenres: Hard SF, space opera, sociological stuff like Orson Scott Card and Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. This book was part of a stack of galleys that I was given for possible review. At first, I wasn't sure about it. War of Honor is the tenth book in the Honor Harrington series, and I'm cautious about entering that late into a set. But once I read in the "About the Author" blurb that these books are often compared to CS Forester's Hornblower series, I decided to go for it. As you can see from what I've posted here, I'm a huge Hornblower fan. Bad idea.
I can see where the comparisons come from. Weber is a historian, and he has obviously patterned the far-future war of these books on the Napoleonic conflicts, with different spacefaring societies playing the parts of the British, Spanish, French, and German states. However, whereas Forester wrote a series of sea battles interspersed with interpersonal conflicts on board ship, this book would be more properly called Politics of Honor. It began with what I thought was a series of lengthy expository scenes, laying out the relative positions of the great Empires and the states of war and peace among them. After that, Weber took me deeper into the internal politics of each, and it wasn't until last night that I glanced up and realized I'd gotten almost 90 pages in and nothing of significance had happened yet! All I was getting was rehashed backstory with a few hints of political intrigue. I flipped further back in the book, and all I was seeing was meetings, conversations, and meaningful glances.
I can't take it. I didn't pick up a book with spaceships on the cover to read 800+ pages about politicians jockeying for position. I'll leave that for somebody else. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get to 1633, an alternate history by Weber and Eric Flint that's in the "Galley Slaves" section. So far, I've loved a book co-written by Flint, and hated a book written solely by Weber. I wonder what they'll be like together.
Language
Author: Howard Rheingold
Details: TCCL Hardback, 224 pages, Jeremy P. Tarcher 1998, 0-87477-464-0
Begun: Monday, September 9, 2002 11:45pm
Completed: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 10:50pm
I pulled this book off the shelf as I was running paging slips awhile back, because it looked interesting. It certainly was! Several years ago, I borrowed a stack of books from Kim's uncle David. They were all about language in some way or another, and they included Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue and Robert Reed's An Exaltation of Larks. My first reaction on reading this book was that it belongs on Uncle David's bookshelf.
The book is a collection of words from languages other than English that can't be easily translated. It gained points with me right away by including my favorite German word, Schadenfreude (SHOD-en-froyd-uh) which comedian Dennis Miller introduced me to. It's approximate meaning is, "The guilty happiness one feels at observing the misfortune of others". Wonderful! The rest of the book is filled with these kinds of things. Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head that you couldn't get rid of? The Germans call that an Ohrwurm (literally meaning "ear worm"). Do you know the incredible feeling of relief that follows waking up from a nightmare? In Indonesia, that's called kekau. Rheingold even includes a note at the end about the multiplicity of Inuit words for ice and snow.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in language and the way that words shape our perceptions. The author's background in psychology leads him to a list that is heavy on mental and spiritual concepts, and he tends to have a somewhat inflated opinion of the importance of his work for society, but these are forgiveable traits. Read and enjoy!
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