Category: books (Page 9 of 10)

Books I read:

The Anthol­o­gist — Nichol­son Baker.
I loved it. You won’t like it. Yeah, that does­n’t make any sense does it? It’s a short nov­el about a poet who is try­ing, and fail­ing, to write the intro­duc­tion to an anthol­o­gy of rhyming poet­ry. He pro­cras­ti­nates, cleans his office, moons over his ex-girlfriend, helps a neigh­bor install a new floor, cuts his fin­gers (repeat­ed­ly), and dis­cuss­es at length the mis­con­cep­tions foist­ed on the English-speaking poet­ry world about the worth of rhyme (lots accord­ing to our nar­ra­tor) and iambic pen­tame­ter (very lit­tle,) along with a lot of oth­er poet­ry geek­i­ness. So if gos­sip about poets and dis­course on the val­ue of struc­ture in poet­ry do it for you. You’ll enjoy this. Oth­er­wise… you’ll be bored.

Girl on the Train — Paula Hawkins.
Meh. All three pro­tag­o­nists are alter­nate­ly bor­ing and unlik­able. There’s an odd lack of descrip­tions of the peo­ple, the places, or even the weath­er… that leaves the whole thing feels very unground­ed. It has a pre­dictable out­come for a thriller. Though, if you ever need to give some­one a clear exam­ple of gas light­ing hand them this book.

I seem to be hav­ing a run of so-so books hav­ing turned down an alley of rec­om­men­da­tions that just aren’t doing it for me. I keep look­ing at the rec­om­men­da­tions based on lik­ing All the Light We Can­not See and being mis­guid­ed into slight nov­els with flat char­ac­ters and only fair to mid­dling language.

The Lit­tle Paris Book Shop — Nina George.
The premise is adorable. A book­shop on barge in the Seine. The book­seller is more of a book apothe­cary than a push­er of mod­ern nov­els. He believes that there is a book for every­one — a book that will cure their ills.
Poor Jean Per­du (yeah, John Lost — not actu­al­ly that clever) His one great love left him 20 years ago and he’s nev­er even tried to recov­er. Then one day he donates an old kitchen table to a new neigh­bor and she finds a let­ter writ­ten by his long-lost love that he refused to open when it arrived 19 years ago. In addi­tion to the lady dumped by her hus­band with­out so much as a kitchen table, oth­er char­ac­ters include a wun­derkind author suf­fer­ing from the sopho­more jinx, a cou­ple of cats, and a lovelorn Ital­ian cook. They jour­ney both through the canals of France and their bruised souls. But the book isn’t dark, it’s warm and sun­ny and full of the scenery of France. Kind of nice for a gloomy day. (Ignore all the two stars reviews. They come from peo­ple who con­sid­er open rela­tion­ships to be evil. A rather dull sort of peo­ple.) Any­way, I liked it but it’s not one that I am going pros­e­ly­tize for.

Bet­ter than Before — Gretchen Rubin.
The lady who wrote the Hap­pi­ness Project writes about habits. She starts by divid­ing the world into four kinds of peo­ple and then pre­scribes for­mu­las and strate­gies for each type to devel­op habits. It’s a trite rehash­ing of all the pre­vi­ous advice you’ve ever heard, with pre­dictable anec­dotes from the writer — who’s a real weirdo. May be use­ful for some peo­ple but I fall into her Rebel cat­e­go­ry and the clear sub­text of this book is Rebels are screwed. They sim­ply lack the basic account­abil­i­ty to oth­ers and will pow­er to devel­op habits.

Audio books this month:

Sta­tion Eleven — Emi­ly St John Man­del — nar­ra­tor Kirsten Potter
I liked this one when I read it. It’s equal­ly good as a lis­ten. The nar­ra­tor makes sense as a lot of the book is told from the point of view of a female character.

Farewell My Love­ly — Ray­mond Chan­dler — nar­ra­tor Ray Porter.
A clas­sic hard-boiled detec­tive nov­el. Chan­dler sounds like a par­o­dy of him­self at this point but I still revis­it him on a irreg­u­lar basis for the crash­ing, brash sen­tences. They read bet­ter than they lis­ten. Not the nar­ra­tor’s fault.

Snow Crash — Neal Stephen­son — nar­ra­tor Jonathan Davis.
Not my favorite Stephen­son but a nice com­par­i­son to Sev­en­Eves which I lis­tened to last month. There’s a huge growth curve between the two. Nice to see even my favorite pros learn as they go. Nar­ra­tor — decent enough.

I have a huge list queued up for next month which includes two weeks of away from home vaca­tion. Includ­ing more Tim O’Brien, Umber­to Eco, Christo­pher Moore, Ernest Cline, and Karen Russel.

What are you reading?

Lara

Tony Hiller­man writes a pre­dictably sol­id mys­tery. With a world that lives and breathes and is very dif­fer­ent from the green, moist Pacif­ic North­west that I con­sid­er home. A month or so ago I start­ed at the begin­ning of the Nava­jo series with The Bless­ing Way and am now up to Coy­ote Waits a lit­tle more than half way through. These are my choco­late chip cook­ies of the moment. I read an hour or so in the evening. (Sad­ly these are not avail­able as audiobooks.) 

Speak­ing of audio­books. Neal Stephen­son’s Dia­mond Age is accom­pa­ny­ing me and the dog on our morn­ing walks. Not my favorite Stephen­son. It moves too slow­ly. Which is an odd thing to say about a Stephen­son, con­sid­er­ing that he is the mas­ter of the extend­ed expos­i­to­ry aside. But here we’re not talk­ing about asides we’re talk­ing about pieces of the nar­ra­tive that bog along with­out much hap­pen­ing. I don’t feel much for the lit­tle girl Nell which isn’t help­ing the sto­ry hold my atten­tion. I find Miran­da and the oth­er adults much more inter­est­ing. Nonethe­less a fine bit of a sto­ry to accom­pa­ny me on the dai­ly ram­ble as the weath­er grows increas­ing­ly crisp (or late­ly foggy.)

Speak­ing of dogs. I’ve just fin­ished Cat War­ren’s What the Dog Knows. All of the scent train­ing and nose­work peo­ple I know are read­ing this right now.
This is a clear-eyed look into the world of work­ing dogs. Not sugar-coated or fil­tered through a need to make the dog, Solo, a hero. War­ren is hon­est about the some­times dif­fi­cult nature of the high­ly dri­ven work­ing dogs and about the pos­si­bil­i­ties, lim­i­ta­tions and unknowns of the use of scent detec­tion dogs. Her account of their ear­ly train­ing ses­sions will make any­one who is hon­est enough to remem­ber their first cou­ple of ses­sions with any sort of scent­ing dog wince in empa­thy. (I still strug­gle to keep my damned hands from fidgeting.)
There are sto­ries of both their suc­cess­es and fail­ures. Solid­ly aca­d­e­m­ic — which may make you a lit­tle crazy as she fact checks some of the most cher­ished myths about dogs’ noses and their abil­i­ty to dis­crim­i­nate scents. But you’ll also learn about dogs’ roles in the death rites of ancient civ­i­liza­tions, an attempt to train vul­tures to search for cadav­ers, and some odd moments from the his­to­ry of mil­i­tary dogs. There are exten­sive notes at the end of the book if you want to dig into the back ground infor­ma­tion for yourself. 

Ordi­nary Genius Kim Addonizio who is best known per­haps for her poem What do Women Want. This book is a guide to mak­ing poet­ry. So what? There are dozens of books about mak­ing poet­ry, why should you read this book rather than one of the oth­er poet­ry books out there?
Because there are lots of sharp edges in this par­tic­u­lar knife draw­er. And not many lace doilies. Lots of exer­cis­es that explore words, phras­es, and mean­ings that are reveal­ing not just for poets but for any­one who works with words. The exer­cis­es that prompt you to dis­sect and repur­pose clichés are worth the price of entry. 

Three from much ear­li­er this year. 

In non-fiction, Charles Whee­lan’s Naked Sta­tis­tics: Strip­ping the Dread from Data. Pro­fes­sor does stats for dum­mies. Lots of base­ball. I kind of like base­ball and there are some amaz­ing things being done with num­bers in base­ball. But most­ly it’s the old stand­bys, drug research and the large scale health sur­veys with a lit­tle ter­ror­ist track­ing, some SATs and grades, and a soup­con of beer. Yeah, the beer and brew­ing stuff is inter­est­ing. All in all, dull. So I’m still look­ing for some­thing that’s inter­est­ing enough to make the basics stick in my head for more than 20 minutes.

I had much bet­ter luck with The Best Sci­ence Writ­ing Online 2012. edit­ed by Jen­nifer Ouel­lette. A curat­ed col­lec­tion of the best of a year’s worth of blogs, columns, and essays pub­lished on-line. We’re incred­i­bly lucky to have so much good writ­ing on sci­ence avail­able to us. There isn’t a field of pur­suit in which there aren’t at least two or three well writ­ten sources for the enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur to fol­low along. Open sources sci­ence is at it’s best in the new sci­ence journalism.

No mat­ter what your favorite field there’s bound to be some­thing in here for you. Maryn McKen­na talks about pub­lic health, Rob Dunn about insects, and Ann Finkbein­er about sci­ence itself. Bet­ter yet you’re prob­a­bly going to find some­thing here that you’ve nev­er seen before — like the church forests of Ethiopia described by T. Delene Bee­land. Tens of thou­sands of islands of Afromon­tane forests pro­tect­ing and pro­tect­ed by church­es. Some may be as many as 16 cen­turies old. They are a thing I’d nev­er heard of, and that I’m grate­ful to know about now. 

In fic­tion, Six-Gun Snow White. Cath­eryn Valente revis­its an old tale in a novel­la set in the wild west (and mid-west) Rewrit­ing fairy tales is dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry. It goes wrong more often than not. I can’t say that this goes wrong. It just does­n’t quite go right. Near­ly, almost, so very close that you can for­give the off notes and leaps and jud­ders but… not quite right. Not because she does­n’t have a very firm grasp on the tale in ques­tion. There’s not a fairy tale that Ms. V can’t dis­sect and rebuild, This time it’s a mat­ter of car­ing too much that the mes­sage be right. And then there’s the mat­ter of not hav­ing a grasp on the set­ting. She does­n’t want to live there, not like she has in all her oth­er retold tales. She did her research, there are sil­ver mines and enslaved min­ers; misog­y­nis­tic, slight­ly stu­pid cow­boys; des­o­late, para­noid (right­ful­ly) Indi­ans; and a per­fect­ly, moral­ly ambigu­ous rob­ber baron with a (cliche alert) down trod­den wife/step-mother to the child Snow White. Whose real name is nei­ther Snow nor White. But it fails… it falls on its white is not bet­ter, step-mothers may be vic­tims them­selves, let’s turn all the tropes on their heads sword. Sad­ly, because it has the best fairy tale mir­ror ever. One with no mag­ic, only reflec­tions. Note that this is a novel­la — but the kin­dle cov­er price was $5. The hard­cov­er, if you can find it, is fetch­ing $40. I should have such a fan base.