shiny things in messy little piles

Category: reviews (Page 9 of 10)

Books of June

A writer’s notes about books. 

Here are the books I read and lis­tened to in June.

Read:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sev­en Killings — Mar­lon James

In which there are a damned sight more than sev­en killings. Some of the nar­ra­tive is true in a broad sense. The pol­i­tics of Jamaica, the US efforts to direct Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean activ­i­ties, the CIA fetish of Cuba, and the involve­ment of the Columbian car­tels in every­thing — all most­ly true. But beyond that? It’s pret­ty much up in the air, I can’t tell you what’s true and what’s fic­tion. The attempt­ed assig­na­tion of a char­ac­ter known as The Singer (a thin­ly dis­guised Bob Mar­ley) anchors the book. All the oth­er actions and actors spin into and out of that one act. 

It’s a tough read because of the wild num­ber of POV char­ac­ters that you have to track (each chap­ter is help­ful­ly labeled) and the heavy use of patois. You get used to the patois and you spend a cer­tain amount of time flip­ping back to see where you left that cur­rent POV char­ac­ter. It took a lot longer to read than most things and it’s real­ly long to start with. Still, I found the whole thing worth the trou­ble for the trip to times and places that are utter­ly unknown to me and the intro­duc­tion to Mar­lon James. I have his The Book of Night Women in the To Read pile. 

The Book of Phoenix — Nne­di Okorafor

Pre­quel to her well-known Who Fears Death which I liked a good deal. The term spec­i­Men jarred me every damned time I came across it. It’s a haz­ard, try­ing to fig­ure out names for future things. Good, read­able early-disaster sci-fi. Oko­rafor’s writ­ing is reli­able and occa­sion­al­ly spe­cial. A sto­ry of gen-tech gone wrong — which is noth­ing new. A giant tree in the mid­dle of NYC — new. Two things that looks like angels but aren’t — only sort of new. A phoenix-human hybrid would kind of look like an angel, no? Oh, and those spi­der things from the oth­er book (Who Fears Death) and that alien seed/nut thing. That’s nev­er real­ly explained. Set up for anoth­er book?

Lis­tened to:

Bossy Pants — Tina Fey
Yes, Please — Amy Pohler

Go lis­ten to Bossy Pants. Not read it, lis­ten to it. Real­ly, it’s so much bet­ter if you lis­ten to it. Tina Fey play­ing Tina Fey. It’s all here. Sec­ond City, SNL, 30 Rock, the Sarah Palin sketch­es, and the real­i­ty of being female over 40 in com­e­dy. She might be my new idol. Amy Pohler was (and still is on occa­sion) Tina Fey’s part­ner in crime. Amy’s book is in some ways fun­nier. It’s got a lot more gags. Fey’s book is about being fun­ny. Pohler’s book is fun­ny. You know what I mean?

I Shall Wear Mid­night — Ter­ry Pratchett 

The last of the four Tiffany Aching sto­ries pub­lished while Ter­ry Pratch­ett was alive. (There is one more com­ing in August.) I picked it to lis­ten to on my dai­ly walk to remind myself where the sto­ry had end­ed and because I remem­ber lik­ing it a lot. Maybe my favorite of the series? Until I remem­bered Win­ter­smith which has the bet­ter plot, and per­haps the most human Tiffany of the bunch. It cer­tain­ly has the best of the oth­er witch­es in it. Okay — I should have lis­tened to Win­ter­smith

Ink­heart — Cor­nelia Funke 

Why did­n’t I like this? Pre­co­cious 12 year-old. Okay, that’s enough for me to not like some­thing as much as I might. And yes, I under­stand that I am about to admit to lik­ing a book about a young boy. Go read the com­ments on Ocean, the part that I don’t like is when we end up inside the head of the boy with­out the man. 

The rest is okay. A lit­tle juve­nile — but hey, mid­dle grade book. One of those door-stopper books that mid­dle graders and tweens like. Think Har­ry Pot­ter but not so good for adults because the adults are one-dimensional. If you have an avid young read­er of your own hang­ing around some­where they just might love it. 

Ocean at the End of the Lane — Neil Gaiman 

Thor­ough­ly reviewed a dozen times in a dozen places. Either you like Gaiman’s lush brand of fan­ta­sy prose or you don’t. If you do, you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed. Either you like grown up sto­ries that real­ly con­cern chil­dren and vv or you don’t. If you don’t, I sug­gest Nev­er­land instead. 

Some­times the blend­ed adult/boy voice of the main char­ac­ter leans a lit­tle too far to the boy. Yes, it’s a sto­ry about a boy, but the sto­ry is the expla­na­tion of the man and it’s the man’s reac­tion to it that we’re watch­ing in the meta-view. SO the times when the nar­ra­tor’s voice total­ly aban­dons his adult per­sona I feel a lit­tle cheated. 

I start­ed and aban­doned The Girl with All Gifts — M.R. Carey. 

The set up and the two main char­ac­ters in the first hand­ful of chap­ters were inter­est­ing. But then it turned into a zom­bie infec­tion sto­ry. There’s just not much you can do with a zom­bie sto­ry that’s going to keep me inter­est­ed once you’ve hit me with the sci­en­tist, the griz­zled old mil­i­tary guy, the green mil­i­tary kid, and an ide­al­is­tic young woman, in an escape vehi­cle bro­ken down in the mid­dle of nowhere and oh, by the way, there’s a zom­bie with them. Nope, not even a child zom­bie that seems to have retained all her human fac­ul­ties. I stopped lis­ten­ing to it at the end of my walk one day and the next day sim­ply did­n’t care what hap­pened to the char­ac­ters, so I picked up some­thing else.

In non-fiction I’ve picked up the sec­ond and third Food52 cook­books. Rec­om­mend the 2nd Vol­ume. Not so enam­ored of the Genius Recipes, too many over com­pli­cat­ed preparations.

As well as iMovie: The Miss­ing Man­u­al. I urge you not to go there.

#FridayReads 25.oct.2013

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. 

Books I Read A While Ago

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. 

#fridayreads 19.oct.2012

I’ve missed a lot of read­ing time this week. We saw some awe­some music.… Knopfler and Dylan on Sat­ur­day, Andras Schiff played all of Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier on Mon­day and last night Mozart, Beethoven, Hay­den and a world pre­miere — Dai Fujikura’s
Mina, Con­cer­to for 5 Soloists and Orches­tra. That last piece was, erm, challenging.

Speak­ing of chal­leng­ing. I gave my best shot but I could­n’t get it down, Mieville’s Per­di­do Street Sta­tion. Clum­sy is the only word I can think to use for his prose. Sor­ry fans.

Foren­sics for Dum­mies — D. Lyle. Fin­ished ear­ly this week. It’s a place to start. But if this is as far as you go, your edi­tor is going to charge back all of the time she has to spend fact check­ing your crime nov­el. Also suf­fers from falls flat attempts at humor. I“ll let you know when I find the “cool” books.

The Frac­tal Prince — Rajanie­mi. Just start­ed this. So far I’m hav­ing a good time with it. 

Also picked up Lau­ren Beukes’ Zoo City. Post-something, maybe apoc­a­lypse — maybe just a real­ly bad elec­tion year. South African. She’s got a wicked voice and a bitchin’ smirk. It’s my ice cream reward for get­ting a cou­ple of not so fun tasks tak­en care of next week.

What have you been reading?

#FridayReads — 5.Oct.2012

Things I’m in the middle of:

Foren­sics for Dum­mies, Dou­glas P. Lyle — What it says on the tin. Sim­plis­tic but it does the trick as all I’m look­ing for a smat­ter­ing of back­ground and some vocab­u­lary lessons. The inter­est­ing stuff will come later. 

29th Years Best Sci­ence Fic­tion, Dozios — Dip­ping in and out. This will take weeks.

For the Love of a Dog
, Patri­cia B. McConnell — Do dogs have emo­tion­al lives? 

Poems (pub­lished in 1820), John Keats — because I’m lis­ten­ing to Dan Sim­mons’ Hype­r­i­on. Mak­ing my brain mushy. 

Catch­ing up on some old issues of Clarkesworld, Azi­mov’s, Ana­log, etc. I’ll owe you all a post on a cou­ple of short sto­ries that you should look up.

Things I finished:

Mechanique: A Tale of the Cir­cus Tre­saulti, Genevieve Valen­tine — A rust, and brown, and dark­ly stained cir­cus of half humans and half mon­sters (or are they?) trav­el­ing through an equal­ly stained world. There are love sto­ries, and war sto­ries, and a bit of a caper. But most­ly there is an odd, eerie, strange­ly hope­ful mag­ic. It’s creepy; I loved it. 

Dev­il Said Bang (Sand­man Slim), Richard Kadrey — Fourth in the series that shows clear signs of hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been intend­ed to be a tril­o­gy but now extend­ed to at least six. Stark, who is now Lucifer, escapes too eas­i­ly from Hell to L.A. Too eas­i­ly con­sid­er­ing the so much was made of the impos­si­bly of said return in the pre­vi­ous book. Also a lot of jokes about Hel­l’s bureau­cra­cy. Rote appear­ances by cast mem­bers from the pre­vi­ous books — just so you remem­ber them and the oblig­a­tory roman­tic com­pli­ca­tion that has all the heat of my break­fast. Weak enough that I may not both­er with the remain­der of the series. Not weak enough that I’ll pass on any­thing else Mr. Kadrey writes out of hand. Butch­er Bird which was, by his own admis­sion, con­sid­er­ably less com­mer­cial, remains one my favorites. BTW — there are some excerpts from a Locus inter­view with Kardey posted. 

Up next:

I also spent a lot of time sam­pling mate­r­i­al and adding to the “Read Next” pile. Most of the sam­ple are of books about foren­sics, some pop­u­lar some tech­ni­cal, that I’m look­ing over while I con­tem­plate how to divvy up foren­sics capa­bil­i­ties in a mixed tech world. I’ve also come to the con­clu­sion that one of my dream library jobs exists, that it’s local, and that I’d have to com­mit mur­der to get it. (There’s an incum­bent and mur­der­ing a ref­er­ence librar­i­an who man­ages a foren­sics library has got to be one of the stu­pid­est ideas ever. But it might make a good sto­ry plot. Hmmmm…)

Going onto the Read Next — Fic­tion pile are the newest from C. Valente The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairy­land and Led the Rev­els There. Also Han­nu Rajanie­mi brings back Jean de Flam­beur (Quan­tum Thief) in The Frac­tal Prince.

Also seek­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from any­one who has read Stew­art O’Nan. Best book to start with? 

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