Since his New York adventure from the last book was wrapped up, Lucas Davenport is again bored and at loose ends. With nothing better to do, Lucas is...moreSince his New York adventure from the last book was wrapped up, Lucas Davenport is again bored and at loose ends. With nothing better to do, Lucas is riding out a long winter in his cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. Once again it’s the murder of innocent people that will give Davenport something to occupy his time. The guy really needs a hobby…
A vicious killer who thinks of himself as the Iceman is desperate to stop a compromising photograph becoming public so he butchers a family and burns their house down to try and destroy it. With the town’s priest implicated in the crime and the small community terrified, the overwhelmed sheriff asks Davenport for help. As Lucas tries to track him down the Iceman grows ever more desperate and violent.
The Prey series has such a generally consistent level of quality that it’s hard to pick a high point for the series, but I’d name this one as my favorite. Having Lucas work with a bunch of small town cops was a new wrinkle to the formula, especially since the last book had Davenport in New York so it really felt like a change of pace.
The Iceman was one of the nastier and more memorable killers in the long list of villains the series has had, and Sandford did a great job of showing us his point of view while disguising his identity so that when he’s finally revealed, it’s a very satisfying answer. This one is also a turning point for the series with the introduction of Weather Karkinnen, the doctor who’d become a very important figure in Lucas’s life.
Another aspect that sets this one apart is the backdrop of an absolutely brutal winter. Blizzards and temperatures well below freezing have made simply going outside incredibly dangerous. Sandford has a talent for making you feel the wind chill, and the way he describes a frozen wasteland creates a bleak mood that perfectly matches the crimes that drive the story. This one is Sandford at his best.(less)
It’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service me...moreIt’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service men and women in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will finally snap after seeing the people they’ve pledged to defend are less interested in what they’re doing than TV reality shows and celebrity gossip. If the military ever decides that the pack of assholes back in America isn’t worth fighting and dying for, we could find all that hardware aiming back at us someday. I really wouldn’t blame them.
Billy Lynn is a young soldier who was serving in Iraq with Bravo squad. After Bravo got into a hellacious firefight with a band of insurgents that was captured on camera by an embedded Fox News crew, the members of Bravo become national heroes. To capitalize on their popularity, the Bush administration has Bravo brought back to the US and sent them on a ‘Victory Tour’ (Which just so happens to run through critical electoral states for the next election.) to drum up support for the war.
The Victory Tour culminates at a Thanksgiving Day pro football game at Texas Stadium in which Bravo is supposed to play a part in the half-time show. While Billy and the other Bravo members have been enjoying some of the perks of being heroes on tour, it also means putting up with the people who want to prove their support of the troops by fawning over them as well as being used as PR props by anyone with an agenda like the owner of the Cowboys.* Bravo would also like to sign a film deal before they have to deploy back to Iraq in a few days so they can at least get a nice payday for their efforts, but the producer they’re working with is having problems getting Hollywood interested in a war movie set in Iraq.
(*Ben Fountain avoids a lawsuit by creating a fictional asshole owner of the Cowboys instead of naming Jerry Jones, the actual asshole owner of the Cowboys.)
I started noting passages I wanted to quote in this review, but I hit a point where I was finding something on every page so I gave up on that plan. There was so much about this one that I loved, that I don’t really know where to start.
Young Billy Lynn is one of the best and most sympathetic characters I’ve read in a long while. He’s a 19-year-old virgin who can’t legally drink, but he’s gone to war and had more experience with death than most would have in a lifetime. Billy is nervous when dealing with the older wealthier good old boys who want to glad hand Bravo at the game, and he has a somewhat naive belief that there is someone wiser than him that can explain all the feelings that combat and the aftermath have stirred in him. However, he also has a grunt's hyper-awareness of hypocrisy and bullshit.
As Bravo endures a long day of being used as props for photo ops and a half-time show, Billy’s musings and observations about the people and events in the stadium showcase a society that will spend billions on sports but pays it’s soldiers a pittance while patting themselves on the back for the way they support the troops by offering them applause and trinkets before sending them back to war.
That’s a powerful point, but what makes this so great is that the message is delivered so deftly and without the heavy handed political left or right wing political manifesto that is part of almost any writing done about these kinds of subjects. It’s also funny and absolutely nails many things that are great and ridiculous about America.
It’s only March, but I think I may have an early winner for Best Book I Read This Year.(less)
I started this book at bed time thinking that I’d read a couple of chapters before shutting off the light. I ended up reading almost a 100 pages befor...moreI started this book at bed time thinking that I’d read a couple of chapters before shutting off the light. I ended up reading almost a 100 pages before reluctantly putting it down to get some sleep. So I’m gonna go ahead and put this one in in my personal Page Turner Hall of Fame.
Elvis Cole is babysitting his girlfriend Lucy’s son, Ben, but the kid gets snatched when Elvis takes his eyes off him for like 17 seconds. Then comes a phone call in which the kidnapper tells Elvis that Ben was taken as revenge for something he did during his time as a US Army Ranger in Vietnam. While the mission the kidnapper references was a clusterfuck of the highest order that left Elvis as the sole survivor, it wasn’t his fault, and Elvis can not think of anyone who could possibly hold some kind of grudge over it. Adding to the fun, Lucy’s rich asshole of an ex-husband shows up and makes a bad situation worse.
Crais has a background as a TV writer and often starts with a story that sounds like it could have been the set-up for an episode of Magnum P.I., but he’s got this great ability to take those initial plots into surprising and exciting new directions. So while this one begins with the idea of old war history coming back to bite someone in the ass, Crais then twists that concept into a story you haven’t read before.
Aside from a terrific main plot with a relentless momentum, this one has many bonus features. We get some of Cole’s history, including the origin of why he’s named Elvis. Carol Starkey, the great lead character from Demolition Angel, shows up in an exceptionally strong supporting role. There’s also a top notch sub-plot with Joe Pike being less than his usual bad ass self thanks to injuries sustained in the previous book. I loved that Pike’s idea of physical therapy is going into the Alaskan wilderness and tracking a rabid grizzly bear.
And best of all, (view spoiler)[ it looks like we’re finally rid of Lucy. Which is a great relief because she was in danger of turning into a Susan level of annoyance, and I’m glad to see that Crais apparently learned from Robert B. Parker’s mistakes. (hide spoiler)]
Maybe the best feature of this book is that between it and the previous one, L.A. Requiem, Crais has added a lot of depth to Elvis and Joe Pike so that they no longer seem like just the cliché of the wise ass detective and his bad ass friend. Now they’re damaged characters, and readers have a better understanding of why they are who they are.
Not only is this my favorite of the series, it’s a new addition to my favorite novels of the private detective genre.(less)
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 17: Marvel At Marvel’s Marvelous ‘Marvels’!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubb...moreTreasure of the Rubbermaids 17: Marvel At Marvel’s Marvelous ‘Marvels’!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
I would hate to be a New Yorker in the Marvel universe because it seems like the city is constantly being threatened by super villains, invaded by aliens, flooded by pissed of Atlanteans or beset by some other form of comic book mayhem. I’ll bet it’s impossible to get property insurance at all.
Comic book readers get a ring side seat and full explanations for everything that’s happening, but what would your average man on the street think about all this insanity? That’s what Marvels explores beautifully.
Phil Sheldon is a young newspaper photographer during the Great Depression who witnesses the public unveiling of the original Human Torch followed shortly after by the appearance of Namor the Sub-Mariner. Like most people, Sheldon is initially shocked and disturbed by these new super beings he thinks of as Marvels who routinely turn New York into a battleground. With the coming of WWII and the introduction of Captain America, Phil embraces the costumed heroes who fight the Nazis.
Years later in the early ‘60s, an explosion of superheroes creates an odd mix of emotions in Phil and the general public. The Fantastic Four and The Avengers are celebrities who get put on magazine covers while some don’t know whether Spider-Man is a good guy or a criminal, and the mutant X-Men are feared and persecuted. Phil’s work as a photojournalist puts him in the middle of almost every big event Marvel did during the Silver Age, and he frequently finds himself conflicted about how he feels about them.
This does a great job of exploring that idea of how the public responds to larger than life characters and events that make them feel scared and insignificant, and one of the things I’ve always liked about Marvel’s comics is how they've always portrayed the public's attitudes towards the superheroes as being full of contradictions. People cheer the heroes like Iron Man and Captain America, but some blame them for the fights that cause so much destruction. The mutants are the target of hatred and bigotry while stores sell clothing lines based on the many costumes of Wasp. ]New Yorkers will cheer on the Fantastic Four as they battle Galactus to save the entire world, but just days later their landlord will try to evict them from the Baxter Building.
Phil’s a great character to use in the midst of this because he’s a decent, ordinary guy who is still fully capable of giving into his worst instincts at times. He makes a career out of documenting the craziness that comes with the superheroes and thinks deeply about what the heroes mean to all of them. At times he almost worships them but can easily swing to resentment and jealously. Phil’s attitude towards them mirror how the superheroes have always been portrayed with a mixture of admiration and fear in the Marvel comics.
The stunning artwork has a retro realism to it that really makes you feel like you’re looking at people wearing tights in the 1960s, yet still conveys all the wonder of seeing someone otherworldly like the Silver Surfer.
By showing us how one regular person reacted to some of Marvel’s greatest hits, this moving tribute to the past gives a fresh perspective on how fans relate to the characters in these wild and amazing stories. (less)
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a dough...moreTalk about truth in advertising….
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a doughnut shop. Who was this kid and what happened? Well, that’s what the rest of the book is for.
Skippy was Daniel Juster, a shy and nerdy boy at a Catholic boy’s school in Ireland. In the time before his death, we meet a variety of characters that are unknowingly part of the chain of events that lead to his untimely demise. There’s Skippy’s roommate, an overweight student named Ruprecht who is fascinated by the promise of multiple dimensions hypothesized in M-theory and who makes bizarre inventions that never work. Lorelai is a girl from a neighboring school that Skippy has developed a crush on, but she’s also the object of a creepy obsession of one of his fellow students who is also a pyschopath and novice drug dealer. Howard ‘The Coward’ Fallon is Skippy’s history teacher with his own complicated history at the school and who hopes to cure his dissatisfaction with his life by sleeping with a beautiful substitute geography teacher. Greg Costigan is the acting principal who cares so much about the school that looking out for its students has slipped far down his priority list.
What becomes apparent before Skippy’s death is that something is seriously troubling him, but all the characters are so wrapped up in the details of their own lives that no one takes the time to really help the young man. The resulting guilt causes a wave of bizarre repercussions.
I’ve seen this book compared to Infinite Jest and Jonathan Franzen. Those are apt, and I’d also say that it reminded me a bit of the film Donnie Darko. However, this is also a unique and moving book that had me at times laughing, angry, sad wistful, depressed and hopeful. The characters are incredibly well drawn and believable. Greg Costigan in particular is such a son-of-a-bitch that I wished he was real so I could get on a plane to Ireland just so I could kick him in the junk.
The teen characters are also very well done, and Murray absolutely nailed that weird contradiction where kids that age have well-honed instincts about some things like the hypocrisy of adults but are still naive enough to think that you can get pregnant from oral sex.
Also, I listened to the audio version of this and it was done with a full cast doing all the different dialogue. It was one of the best listening experiences I’ve had yet with an audible book. (less)
If Quentin Coldwater stumbled on a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, he’d constantly complain about how heavy it was and how the coins didn’t fit i...moreIf Quentin Coldwater stumbled on a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, he’d constantly complain about how heavy it was and how the coins didn’t fit in any vending machines and why couldn‘t they have just put the money into a nice cashier‘s check that he could have fit neatly in his wallet and then deposited in the bank?
In the first book, Quentin was a brilliant but disillusioned teenager who found life a boring slog and desperately wished that things were more like his favorite fantasy series set in a magical land called Fillory. (Think Narnia.) Quentin seemingly hit the fantasy geek jackpot when he learned that magic was real, and he was admitted to an exclusive school called Brakebills that trained magicians. Yet he constantly found himself disappointed that he never achieved his idea of true happiness even after graduating. When a classmate discovered that Fillory was real and a path to it, Quentin seized on the notion that going to Fillory was the only way he’d ever finally be complete. Unfortunately, Quentin learned the hard way that there‘s a big difference between reading about adventures and actually finding yourself in magical battle where various beasties are trying to kill you.
The Magician King picks up several years after that. Quentin is now one of the kings of Fillory and lives a life of ease and luxury with his friends. Of course, Quentin is never satisfied with a bird in the hand even when he’s relatively content, and he volunteers to go on a diplomatic mission to an island so he can seek the two birds he just knows are out there in the bush. His desire for a ’real’ adventure leads to him returning to Earth and finding that his wish for a high stakes quest have just come true. It’s much more than he bargained for and the consequences are enormous.
I loved The Magicians with it’s unique twist of what it’d be like if there were magic in the real world, but it seemed like a love-it or hate-it book with my friends here on Goodreads. And I totally understood why some readers could not stand Quentin at all. Here’s a guy who catches the biggest break in nerd history and yet he’s never satisfied and grateful for the opportunity he has.
In all honesty, I was starting to hate him pretty good through the first half of this book myself. It seemed like Quentin had forgotten everything he’d suffered and learned in the first book, and he was once again an obsessed nerd who is convinced that he’d be happy if he could live like he’s in a fantasy novel. However, that changes about halfway through with several big plot developments that I won’t spoil, but by the end of this one, I completely dropped my earlier reservations.
It also helped that Grossman is obviously writing Quentin to be an obsessed pain in the ass early on, and that he has several characters call him out on it. There’s a particularly nice bit where Quentin has traveled to Europe on Earth, and he has a moment of clarity where he realizes that he wrote off the real world when he’d seen almost none of it.
One of the things I also loved about this one in is the backstory of Julia, a former high school classmate’s of Quentin’s who had failed the Brakebills entrance exam, but went on to find another way to learn magic. If they were musicians, it’d be like Quentin went to study at Juilliard, but Julia learned in garage bands and punk clubs.
I can’t mention the stuff that occurs towards the end that made this book so cool to me and left me stunned by it’s conclusion. If you didn’t like The Magicians, this probably won’t change your mind. However, if you did like the first one, you’ll probably enjoy this book, especially it’s moving and incredibly dark third act.(less)
“Uh..Mr. Kemper. He’s the one in the vegetative state.”
“Oh, that’s a very sad...more"Nurse, this patient’s chart is very confusing.”
“Which patient, Doctor?”
“Uh..Mr. Kemper. He’s the one in the vegetative state.”
“Oh, that’s a very sad and odd case.”
“According to the patient history, he was admitted a few weeks ago with cerebrospinal fluid leaking from his nose and ears, but it seemed like he should recover. But yesterday he was brought in again, barely conscious and then he lapsed into a coma. The really odd thing is that I see no signs of injury or disease.”
“That’s right, Doctor. It was a book that did this to Mr. Kemper.”
“A book? How is that possible?”
“From what we can figure out, the first incident occured after he read Hyperion by a writer named Dan Simmons. I guess it’s one of those sci-fi books and apparently the story is quite elaborate. Anyhow, Mr. Kemper had read Simmons before and knew he likes to put a lot of big ideas in his books. But this time, apparently Simmons broke into his house and managed to directly implant much of the book directly into Mr. Kemper’s brain via some kind of crude funnel device.”
“I find that highly unlikely, Nurse.”
“Most of us did, Doctor. But Mr. Kemper kept insisting that Simmons had some kind of grudge against him. He even had a note he said Simmons had left that said something like ‘Don’t you ever learn? If you keep reading my books, I’ll end you someday.’”
“Assuming that I believed this story, I guess that Kemper’s current state tells us that he didn’t heed the warning?”
“Apparently not, Doctor. His wife said she found him having convulsions and leaking brain matter out his nose and ears again. A copy of the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion was on the floor nearby.”
“I can’t believe that reading a silly sci-fi book could turn an healthy man into a turnip, Nurse.”
“Well, when they brought Kemper in, he was semiconscious and muttering. Someone wrote it down. Let see, he kept repeating words and phrases like: Shrike, Time Tombs, the Core, God, uh…no, two gods actually, farcasters, Ousters, religion, pope, death wand, space battles, interplanetary trees, old Earth, AI, mega sphere, data sphere, The Canterbury Tales, poetry, John Keats, Tree of Thorns, and Lord of Pain.”
“Jesus! What does all that mean?”
“Someone looked it up on the web and all of that is actually in the book.”
“That poor bastard. No wonder his gray matter is fried. No one could absorb all that without permanent damage.”
“Yes, I’d think that book should have some kind of warning sticker or something on it.”
“One thing I still don’t understand, Nurse. If Kemper knew that this book would probably do this to him, why did he still read it?”
“I guess he had told several people that Hyperion was just so good that he had to know how it ended, even if it killed him.”
***************************************
I think the word ‘epic’ was invented to describe this book.
What Simmons began in Hyperion finishes here with a story so sprawling and massive that it defies description. In the far future, humanity has spread to the stars, and maintains a web of worlds via ‘farcasters’. (Think Stargates.) On the planet Hyperion, mysterious tombs have been moving backwards in time and are guarded by the deadly Shrike.
Seven people were sent to Hyperion on a ‘pilgrimage’ that was almost certainly a suicide mission, but the Ousters, a segment of humanity evolving differently after centuries spent in deep space, are about to invade. The artificial intelligences of the Core that humanity depends on for predictions of future events and management of the farcaster system can’t tell what’s coming with an unknown like the Shrike and Hyperion in play.
Battles rage across space and time and the virtual reality of the data sphere as varying interests with competing agendas maneuver and betray each other as the pilgrims on Hyperion struggle to survive and finally uncover the secrets of the Shrike. But the real reasons behind the war and it’s ultimate goal are bigger and more sinister than anyone involved can imagine.
I can’t say enough good things about the story told in these first two Hyperion books. This is sci-fi at it’s best with a massive story crammed with big unique ideas and believable characters you care about. Any one of the pieces could have made a helluva book, but it takes a talent like Simmons to pull all of it together into one coherent story.(less)
Somehow I’ve managed to read a dozen books by Dan Simmons without getting around to Hyperion, one of his most acclaimed works. Frankly, I’ve been scar...moreSomehow I’ve managed to read a dozen books by Dan Simmons without getting around to Hyperion, one of his most acclaimed works. Frankly, I’ve been scared of it. Simmons has been mashing up horror, sci-fi, hard boiled crime novels, thrillers, and historical fiction while often stuffing his books with so many ideas that it was all I could do to keep up so this seemed like it could be a bit more than I could comfortably chew.
Just as I feared, while I was reading and nearing the end, Simmons crept into my house like a ninja and rammed a funnel into my skull. Then he poured his wild sci-fi ideas and concepts into my brain pan like a frat boy pouring the suds in a beer bong. My mind overloaded, and I gibbered like a monkey on meth for fifteen seconds before passing out. When I woke up an hour later with a wicked headache and cerebrospinal fluid leaking out my ears and nose, Simmons was gone, but he’d left a note saying “Don’t you ever learn? Keep reading and one of these days, I will END you!”
So now I’m typing this with cotton balls stuck in my nostrils and ears while I’m waiting to get my MRI scan, and I’m once again left in awe of just how many wildly original ideas Simmons can cram into one story.
Simmons borrows the structure of The Canterbury Tales here. In the distant future, humanity has spread out among the stars, and one of the planets they’ve inhabited is Hyperion which has the mysterious Time Tombs and a deadly entity known as the Shrike which protects the area around them. A powerful religion has grown around the Shrike and many make pilgrimages to try and see him from which almost no one ever returns.
A former Consul of Hyperion is contacted by the Hegemony government and told that he must join a pilgrimage to see the Shrike with six others. The Ousters, a faction of humanity mutated by centuries of living in deep space, has been making aggressive moves against Hegemony worlds and now they’re targeting Hyperion just as there are signs that the empty Time Tombs are about to stop moving backwards in time and finally reveal their secrets.
The Consul meets the other pilgrims which include a priest, a soldier, a poet, a scholar, a detective and the captain of a rare giant tree capable of space travel. (Yes, a giant tree moving through space. Ask Simmons. I’m just reporting the news here, folks.) Realizing that they must have been chosen to make the journey for a reason, they take turns telling the stories of their connections to Hyperion and the Shrike as they make their way towards the Time Tombs.
I struggled with this book at first because Simmons throws the readers into the deep end of the pool with little explanation of the universe he’s created, and I don’t do well with books that start like: “Captain Manly Squarejaw woke up on his Confederated star potato and drank a glass of strained purplepiss juice while checking his com unit thingie to get the lastest news on the crisis involving the Whogivesashitsus.“
Fortunately, Simmons gets the plot up and moving quickly, and then uses the stories of each of the pilgrims to fill us in on the history and setting. By using the different story tellers, Simmons gives different perspectives for tales as diverse as an interstellar war to a future detective story with big sci-fi action to quieter personal tragedies like a father losing his daughter to a horrible fate. All of these stories eventually come back around to Hyperion and the Shrike.
I was also impressed how Simmons writing this in 1989 foresaw a computer network linking people, but also turning them into information overloaded cyber junkies who confuse accumulating news with taking action. There’s so many different big sci-fi ideas in here that many writers probably would have been content to make an entire career out them, but Simmons uses them all deftly to create one unified story. Oh, and memo to George Lucas: the next time you want to make a sci-fi movie with interplanetary politics being a primary driver to your plot, read this first. Or just hire Simmons to write the damn thing for you .
My only gripe is that while I knew there were sequels to this, I thought I was getting a complete story, and it definitely leaves a lot hanging for the next book. And there’s a Wizard of Oz thing near the end, and I hate the goddamn Wizard of Oz. It’s a Kansas thing. (less)
Treasure of the Rubbermaids: The Dude Vs. The Duke
Sometimes you get very clear signs that you should read or re-read a specific book. Earlier this yea...moreTreasure of the Rubbermaids: The Dude Vs. The Duke
Sometimes you get very clear signs that you should read or re-read a specific book. Earlier this year, my friend Nancy had read True Grit and recommended it to me. I’d seen the John Wayne movie version a couple of times, and I had a hazy memory that I’d read it at some point. The more I thought about it, I was pretty sure that I’d even owned a very old copy of the book once upon a time.
Months later, I heard that the Coen brothers were doing a new movie version with Jeff Bridges taking John Wayne’s place as Rooster. I’m not a fan of the recent wave of remakes Hollywood has produced since the movie studios are too gutless to risk money on new concepts anymore, but with the Coen brothers saying that they were doing another adaptation of the book, not a remake of the original film, I thought it had potential. Hell, you’ve got The Dude replacing The Duke. I thought it’d be worth seeing just for that alone.
Meanwhile, my father made good on a threat he’d been making since the wife and I bought our first house last year and brought down 14 large plastic containers filled with books and comics that I’d kept at my parents due to lack of storage during my apartment dwelling years.
So the new movie version of True Grit came out and was getting rave reviews, and I wanted to see it. I also wanted to re-read the book at some point. The other day, I started going through the boxes and in the first one I popped open, there sat a battered old hardback of True Grit.
Verily, the Reading Gods had delivered unto me a sign.
After going and seeing the movie yesterday and enjoying it immensely, I cracked open the book last night and rediscovered a story written in what certainly feels like authentic Old West speech. The tale of young Maddie Ross hiring a drunken, one-eyed U.S. Marshal to track and arrest her father’s killer is one of those books told in a such a simple style that it can trick you into missing how much there is between the lines.
Told in first person from the whip-smart but extremely headstrong, stubborn and uptight Maddie, the portrait of the time and people like Rooster and the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf and Lucky Ned Pepper feel like you’re reading a story written back then and not in 1969. It’s funny, bittersweet and loaded with all the action on horseback that any western fan could ask for.
If all you know of this story is the cheesy memories of the old John Wayne version, then check this book out and go see the new version. You won’t be disappointed. (less)
*Update 9/23 - Jonathan Franzen was in town doing a reading & signing last night, and after listening to him talk, I’m officially backing off of t...more*Update 9/23 - Jonathan Franzen was in town doing a reading & signing last night, and after listening to him talk, I’m officially backing off of theory #1 below. He does not seem like a douche bag, at all. In fact, despite all the Oprah hoopla (Which he described as a fiasco, not because of anything that he or Oprah did, but because the whole thing got blown out of proportion.) and the backlash after the early raves for Freedom, Franzen came across as remarkably down-to-earth and funny. He seems like a very smart guy who doesn’t take the media hype too seriously, but is clearly having a lot of fun with all the recent attention.*
I picked up Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections earlier this summer, and it was one of the oddest reading experiences of my life because while I despised nearly every character in it, I still enjoyed the book. So when I started Freedom, I was hoping that I’d find some more likeable people in this one. After fifty pages, I was horrified to realize that it was looking like this book would be another collection of self-absorbed asshats.
At that point, I thought there were two possibilities: 1) That Jonathan Franzen is a complete douche bag himself and that he actually thought he was creating sympathetic characters. 2) That Franzen has an even lower opinion of people than I do and uses his skill to convey an utter contempt for mankind by creating these pathetic excuses for human beings.
However, as I got deeper into Freedom, and we started getting the history and alternate view points, I started to sympathize with most of the characters. (Except for Joey. I hated that smug little bastard through the entire thing and was really hoping that he‘d get set on fire at some point.)
The Berglunds seem like a prime example of family-first socially conscious living. They bought a house in a run down St. Paul neighborhood and became the first wave of gentrification for that area. Walter is a lawyer who works on environmental causes. Patty was a talented college basketball player who channels all her old competitive instincts into being the best mother and neighbor possible. The two kids, Jessica and Joey, are intelligent and seem destined for big things. And just to give them a touch of cool in their suburban existence, Patty and Walter are old friends with Richard Katz, a womanizing musician who has just gained mainstream popularity.
But the Berglunds quickly fall apart in spectacular fashion. Joey moves in with a neighbor after rebelling against Patty’s overwhelming love, and he and Walter can’t have a conversation without it turning into a screaming match. Patty has turned into a lost and bitter shadow of her former self. Walter has left his old environmental job to work with a rich man with ties to the coal industry, and as the kids leave for college, the parents are off to D.C.
The novel covers a tremendous amount of ground, not just with the elaborate characterizations, but in terms of the backdrops. From Minnesota to New York to DC to West Virginia to South America, Franzen touches on 9/11, the Iraq war, environmentalism, overpopulation, rampant consumerism and the political fracturing of America, but by keeping it in terms of a family disintegration, he keeps the story relatable.
One of the key things that comes up repeatedly is the idea that Americans have about freedom. It’s a word tossed around easily, and as Franzen explores here, many take it as their God given right to engage in mass consumption and lead completely unexamined lives with no regard for the consequences. Those who ask for more social responsibility are derided as ‘liberals’ and ‘intellectuals’ and ’elitists’. (I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin would hate this book. Assuming she could find someone to read it to her and explain the big words.)
But this isn’t about idealizing liberal policies. Franzen makes a lot of valid points about how American politics has become a constant screaming match more concerned with beating the other guy than accomplishing anything. He makes good use of the character of Walter to illustrate how all the pent up rage and frustration, even for a ‘good’ cause, can make for a pretty miserable life. What good is trying to save the world if you can’t stand any of the people in it?
Terrific book that’s almost a pitch perfect statement about what American life has been like since 2000 as seen through the eyes of some flawed, but decent people. (Except for Joey. That kid is a prick.) While freedom and happiness are usually considered to go hand-in-hand, these characters show that poorly used freedom can make you supremely unhappy.
Random thoughts:
-There’s several similarities to The Corrections: Everyone hates their family. There’s a very odd love triangle. A mother/son relationship is pushed to creepy extremes to irritate a father. A character gets caught up in an elaborate overseas get-rich-quick scheme. The daughter of the family is probably the most adult and sensible character. And there’s a really nasty scene involving human turds. Eww. What’s with all the poop, Franzen?
- One of my favorite parts was Richard Katz’s interview where he makes several hilarious comments about the music industry.
-The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality, also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage. That’s just about my entire existence summed up in one sentence.
- There’s a plot point involving cats attacking song birds late in the book. Just as I was reading this section, a stray cat came up on our deck and tried to attack one of our two house kitties through the door screen. It was very startling to be reading about feral cats and then hear godawful yowling, hissing, screeching and general mayhem in the next room. For a second, I thought Franzen was so good that he caused me to have audio hallucinations. (less)
I have no idea if the movie version of Cloud Atlas will be any good, but it was worth making just so we could get that excellent trailer. In fact, the...moreI have no idea if the movie version of Cloud Atlas will be any good, but it was worth making just so we could get that excellent trailer. In fact, they probably shouldn’t even release the movie. Just use the trailer to promote the book. It worked on me because once I saw that thing I couldn’t get this read fast enough.
An American notary crosses the Pacific and encounters many unsavory characters in the mid-1800s. In 1931 a young man fleeing his creditors cons his way into the home of a respected composer. A female journalists tries to expose a dangerous conspiracy involving a nuclear reactor back in 1975. In the early 21st century an aging publisher finds himself in hot water after his biggest professional success. The near future has an Asian society based on corporations using genetically modified fabricants as slave labor, and the far future finds a young man in Hawaii living a primitive tribal lifestyle playing tour guide to a woman from a place that still has technology.
These are the six stories that David Mitchell links together. They’re nested one within another and also mirrored in the first and second half of the book. If that’s all that he accomplished here, then it’d just be a really clever way to structure a novel, but it’s the way that Mitchell hit six completely different tones yet uses the same themes in each that the book really shines.
I’m beyond impressed with the way he made each story feel like it’s own separate tale. If someone had told me that this was a book written by six different authors, I would have believed it, and each is intriguing in it’s own right. Themes of slavery and people being controlled in one way or another along with depictions of misused or corrupted power come up again and again, but whether it feels like serious dystopian sci-fi or a beach read thriller, Mitchell makes it all hang together until it really does feel like one epic tale. And the thoughts at the conclusion lead to one of the greatest ending lines I’ve ever read.
I don’t even think I need to see the movie now. (less)
While his previous book was a tongue-in-cheek zombie survival guide, Brooks turns deadly serious here. Written as a series of survivors' stories in a...moreWhile his previous book was a tongue-in-cheek zombie survival guide, Brooks turns deadly serious here. Written as a series of survivors' stories in a UN report following a world wide war with the undead, Brooks crafted a classic horror novel that reads like history. Inventive, scary and a must read for anyone who ever enjoyed a George Romero zombie movie.(less)
One of the most challenging books I've read, and one that I got a lot of satisfaction out finishing. Stephenson's got a wildly inventive mind and read...moreOne of the most challenging books I've read, and one that I got a lot of satisfaction out finishing. Stephenson's got a wildly inventive mind and reading him is like jumping onto a high speed bullet train at full speed.
It took about 70 pages to get used to the new 'language' that he invented for this story, and I had to refer to the glossary repeatedly, but suddenly it just clicked, and I was completly caught up in the world Stephenson created.
Not for casual reading, but fans of sci fi, physics or alternate world plots should give it a try.(less)
I used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that th...moreI used to wonder how Phillip K. Dick came up with all the trippy concepts in his stories until I read A Scanner Darkly. That’s when I realized that the drugs probably had a lot to do with it.
Originally published in 1977 and set in the mid ‘90s, the book tells the story of Bob Arctor. Arctor appears to be just another burned out druggie who lives with a couple of other dopers, and they spend most of their time getting high on Substance D and assorted other drugs. Bob is actually an undercover narc for the Orange County CA sheriff’s department, and in the future, the cops undercover are in so deep that even their bosses don’t know who they really are. Arctor wears a special scramble suit that blurs his features and voice when reporting to his boss Hank, who also wears a scramble suit to conceal his identity.
Bob has been trying to buy bigger quantities of Substance D from Donna, a spacey hash addict, so that he can work his way to the source, but he’s actually fallen in love with her even though she refuses to sleep with him. He gets a tricky new assignment when Hank orders him to start keeping tabs on a new target; Bob Arctor.
Since he can’t reveal his identity, Arctor has to play out the fiction that he’s investigating himself, but his brains have gotten so slushed from Substance D that he’s having a hard time keeping track of who he actually is.
Bob’s increasing confusion about identity and reality is the kind of theme that Dick specialized in, and Bob’s progressive meltdown is some of my favorite writing he did regarding that. However, while this has a thin veneer of sci-fi over it with the story being set in what was the near future, it‘s actually a chillingly realistic look at drug abuse. Dick spent a couple of years in the early ’70s where he ran with the Just Say Yes! crowd, and this book is a semi-autobiographical account of that time.
Where it really shines is in its portrayal of the drug culture with long sections dedicated to things like an addict who begins seeing bugs everywhere or a botched suicide attempt that turns into a psychedelic eternity of recrimination for past sins. The long rambling conversations with Bob and his fellow druggies are darkly hilarious in that they show a kind of weird creativity while also being completely devoid of logic and apt to go in paranoid directions. For example, a problem with a car eventually leads to their certainty that the cops have planted drugs in the house and that the only solution is to sell the place.
Dick does a masterful job of showing how people could end up living in a perpetual haze while ignoring the long term damage being done even as they see their own friends die or get turned into little more than vegetables by their own behavior. As he puts it, their sin was in wanting to play all the time but the penalty was far harsher than they deserved.
On a side note, I also loved the movie version of this done by Richard Linklater that featured a hand drawn rotoscope process over filmed scenes to give it a feeling of realistic unreality. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson give great performances as Bob’s druggie housemates, and Keanu Reeves was born to play the brain fried Arctor. (less)
Despite being a big crime/mystery fan, I’m not really into the scores of police procedural novels or dozens of TV shows that litter the networks these...moreDespite being a big crime/mystery fan, I’m not really into the scores of police procedural novels or dozens of TV shows that litter the networks these days. For me, all of these stories try to portray the various kinds of cops as politically correct robots who go about their jobs with a kind of determined detachment except for maybe the occasional bit of angst to add a little faux drama to the mix.
To get me interested in a cop story these days, it has to be some kind of ultra-realistic look at the bureaucratic nightmare of real police work like The Wire. Or be an epic tragedy with corrupt characters like The Shield. Or have some kind of offbeat protagonist that interests me like Raylan Givens on Justified. But show me those soulless pretty people tracking serial killers by getting their DNA tests done in three minutes on a CSI show and my eyes glaze over.
Joseph Wambaugh worked the LAPD in the 1960s-70s, and during an era when cops were almost invariably portrayed as square jawed heroes, he wrote novels that dared to show the police as very flawed, damaged and relatable human beings. For my money, probably his best work along those lines was The Choirboys.
The book begins with the LAPD brass in an uproar about a potential scandal involving a killing during a ‘choir practice’. As they try to figure out a way to spin the story and minimize the damage, we get the impression that a bunch of police officers went on a drunken rampage and somebody died as a result.
Wambaugh then shifts through the events leading up to the death by following 5 pairs of uniformed police officers working out of LA’s Wilshire division. There’s the tough veteran ‘Spermwhale’ Whalen about to get his 20 years in. Baxter Slate is a former classics student haunted by a disastrous tour working Juveniles. ‘Roscoe’ Rules is a racist moron with knack for taking the most routine calls and turning them into riots. Sam Niles has been stuck with his annoying partner and supposed best friend, Harold, since they were in Vietnam together. Spencer is a clothes horse who works his ‘police discount’ to buy high end retail stuff at wholesale prices. The rest of the so-called choir boys are also a collection of misfits with disastrous personal lives.
The cops engage in what they call choir practice where they go to MacArthur Park with cases of booze they’ve mooched from liquor store owners, and then they proceed to get totally pants-shitting howl-at-the-moon drunk while gang banging a pair of police groupies.
Doesn’t make them sound very appealing, does it?
What Wambaugh shows is that these choir practices are usually the direct result of the horrible things the cops routinely have to deal with while constantly being harassed by their bosses for violations of petty rules while ignoring the emotional well-being of the officers. The worst part of it is that while the choirboys are routinely abused while dealing with parade of ignorant lowlifes and see the worst that people can do to themselves and each other, it’s all so achingly common place that they can’t muster more than slight contempt and dark humor. Until they see something so horrible that they call for a choir practice to block it out with booze and meaningless sex.
The intellectual Baxter puts Wambaugh’s theme into words while giving a drunken lecture during a choir practice:
I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it’s not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me. Rather it’s the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There’s not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that’s the most terrifying thing a policeman learns.”
What keeps this book from being just a depressing look into the abyss is that it’s black cop humor is constant. There’s almost nothing that happens that can’t be made into sick humor and there’s no asshole boss so irritating that he can’t be the victim of an ingenious prank for revenge. It’s crude and socially unacceptable, but it’s really damn funny, too.
Rereading this in 2011, I could only imagine the howls of outrage if something like the choirboys became a media scandal. A gang of drunken cops abusing their badges to score free liquor for binge drinking and pulling trains on a couple of cocktail waitresses in a public park would get a whole lot of people fired these days, but the great thing about Wambaugh is the way he convinces you that that the choirboys were usually good cops deserving of respect and sympathy.(less)
This book is a military style space opera with …..Wait! Where are you going? Get back here. I hadn’t got to the good part yet. Give me a second to exp...moreThis book is a military style space opera with …..Wait! Where are you going? Get back here. I hadn’t got to the good part yet. Give me a second to explain. Geez…
OK, so yes, there is an interstellar war with human troops in high-tech armored suits battling an alien enemy on distant planets. I know it sounds like another version of Starship Troopers or countless other bad genre sci-fi tales, but this one is different. Hell, when it was published in 1975 it won the Hugo, the Locus and the Nebula awards for best novel so you know it’s gotta be pretty decent.
William Mandella has been drafted as one of the first troops that will be sent to fight the Taurans. There are points in space called collapsers that are like wormholes that will transport your ship to a distant area in the universe instantly, and humanity is fighting the Taurans to use them. Both races like to build bases on nearby planets to establish control of the area around the collapsers.
Unfortunately, most of the planets out there aren’t anything like what we’re used to seeing in Star Wars. They’re usually cold lifeless rocks, and just training to use their suits in these environments is dangerous, let alone trying to fight an alien race they know little about. Mandella gets through training and manages to survive the first battle with the Taurans.
That’s where the book gets really interesting.
While the collapsers provide instant space travel, the ships still have to get to the nearest one and that means months of travel at near light-speed. It turns out that Einstein was right about relativity and traveling at near the speed of light makes time do some funky things. So while the troops on the ship feel like a journey only took months, years have passed for everyone else. When Mandella returns to Earth after his first battle, he’s only aged two years, but ten years have passed on Earth.
Since Mandella has to do more and more light speed journeys, centuries pass on Earth even though it’s only been a few years for him. Mandella will return from missions to find that humanity has changed so much that he has almost nothing in common with the rest of the people, and since he manages to survive several campaigns when almost everyone else dies, he’s quickly becoming one of the oldest men in the universe during his ten year (subjective) enlistment.
Another quirk of the time differences is that when the humans meet the Taurans, they can’t know if they’re battling alien troops who are centuries ahead or behind them in terms of military intelligence and weapons technology. So Mandella and his fellow soldiers may have a huge advantage or be severely outgunned. It just depends on if the Taurans they’re fighting started their light-speed journeys before or after they did.
As the war drags on for century after century, it is both sustaining and draining Earth’s economy. Mandella finds himself losing all his family, his friends and his lovers to war or age. He is increasingly out of touch with Earth and the rest of humanity. The army continues to promote him, mainly because his seniority has reached ridiculous levels after centuries of service.
One of the things that isolates Mandella is that homosexuality becomes the norm due to Earth overpopulation. In an ironic reversal of don’t ask-don’t tell, Mandella is the outcast that disgusts many of his fellow soldiers due to his unenlightened ways. Even the slang spoken by other soldiers becomes incomprehnsible to him. Increasingly lonely and out of sync with everyone around him with almost no chance of surviving his enlistment, Mandella nurses the hope that the war will someday end during the large gaps of time he skips as he travels to his assignments.
Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam vet, and this is an obvious allegory for that war with a weary soldier stuck in a seemingly endless conflict and realizing that even if he makes it home, he won’t fit in to the world he left. While Haldeman’s science and military background gives the book its detail and depth, it’s the tragedy of Mandella’s predicament that makes it a sci-fi classic. (less)
My copy of this was a paperback that I had picked up somewhere in my high school years. It was printed in the ‘50s and cost 60 cents per the cover pri...moreMy copy of this was a paperback that I had picked up somewhere in my high school years. It was printed in the ‘50s and cost 60 cents per the cover price. The pages were yellowed and an old dog of mine (dead 20 years now) chewed on a corner of it at one point, and his teeth marks are still on it. But I held onto that copy over the years through multiple changes of residence and numerous paperback dumps to used book stores and library donations. When I was trying to organize some of my stuff packed away in the basement, I found my battered old copy and felt the immediate need to read it again.
But I also decided to invest in a better edition. Frankly, I was scared the old one would fall apart, but I’ve carefully packed away that copy again. I’m thinking about putting it in my will that I should be buried with it. That gives you an idea of how highly I regard this book.
My new copy says on the cover that it’s the greatest war novel of all time. I’m not going to argue about that statement. I’ve often thought that this book should be required reading for any politician with the power to declare war. Only a madman or Dick Cheney could send troops into combat after reading this.
Paul is a 19 year old German soldier in World War I. Living though artillery shellings, gas attacks, trench warfare and seeing a generation of men blown to bits has made Paul old before his time. He has a soldier’s profound weariness and cynicism. Some of the more heartbreaking parts of this are when Paul and his fellow soldiers realize that they’ve been changed far too much to ever care about anything but survival again. Paul and the other soldiers try to find small comforts where they can since there’s almost no chance they’ll survive the war unscathed.
On the very short list of books that I think everyone should read at least once.
Trivial Side Note or No, I Don’t Work for the Kansas City Tourism Board
The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial is something I recommend to anybody who likes this book, or has any interest at all in these types of things. (My wife is usually not interested in war stories or memorabilia at all, but she found this museum fascinating.) It’s got tons of actual equipment from the war, interactive multi-media displays, and some truly eye-opening exhibits.
For example, there’s one room you walk into that is a recreation of what it looked like when a large shell hit a French farm house from the basement perspective. So you walk in and it feels like you’re in a giant crater with house debris above you. There are also recreations of the trenches and one battlefield set done below a wide screen documentary playing that gives a vivid and eerie feeling of what a hellish landscape was created by the war.
Wanted: Middle management for the oversight of an assembly line in an industrial paper factory. College degree and experience a must. Homicidal maniac...moreWanted: Middle management for the oversight of an assembly line in an industrial paper factory. College degree and experience a must. Homicidal maniacs welcome to apply.
Burke Devore was a typical middle-aged guy with a steady job, a wife and two college aged kids. However, when he gets laid off, he spends two years looking for new employment and realizes that there are far too many people with more education and experience looking for similar work.
After Burke reads an article in a trade journal about a factory doing the kind of work he specialized in along with an interview of a manager there, he realizes that it’s exactly the kind of job he’s suited for. Broke and desperate, Burke comes up with a unique solution. He’ll kill the manager and apply for his job. But with so many unemployed in his industry, there’s bound to be a better candidate. So Burke places a phony ad in a trade journal, collects the resumes of the people who would apply for the job, selects the ones who would be the most competition and sets out to eliminate the six people he’s identified. Burke knows it will take a terrible toll on him, but he’s determined to get that job.
The late Donald Westlake wrote this in 1997, but his publishers really missed an opportunity during the last economic bust to reissue this book with great fanfare because it’s even more poignant now.
I’ve noted before that I’m amazed at how Westlake was always able to shift gears between his comic writing in books like his Dortmunder series and the hard boiled Parker crime novels he wrote as Richard Stark. This is another facet of his writing. The concept seems almost darkly funny at first, and this could have been played for black humor easily.
But Westlake wrote a taunt and tragic tale of an ordinary guy committing horrific crimes, and he makes the point that it’s more than just economics driving Burke. His identity is wrapped up in his job, and he has come to conclusion that he’s acting in self-defense to preserve himself and his family. I also liked how Westlake portrayed Burke going through various kinds of emotions related to his murders. Sometimes he’s overwhelmed with guilt. Sometimes he gets incredibly angry at the people in his way. Sometimes he has nothing but contempt for his victims for not being as willing as he is to do what it takes.
The whole book is pretty chilling, and Burke comes across as a character that you’ll both sympathize with and fear. (less)
When we meet Parker, we don’t know much about him. He’s just a guy with shabby clothes and a bad attitude walking across the George Washington Bridge...moreWhen we meet Parker, we don’t know much about him. He’s just a guy with shabby clothes and a bad attitude walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York without a dime to his name. Within hours of arriving in Manhattan, Parker has used an early ’60s form of identity theft to fill his wallet and set himself up quite nicely. Clearly, this is a resourceful guy. As we quickly learn in The Hunter, he’s also a guy that you do not want to double-cross.
A professional thief, Parker was betrayed, robbed and left for dead by one of his partners, Mal Resnick, who turned Parker’s wife against him. Mal used the money he took from Parker to pay off a debt he owed to the Outfit, and now he’s got good connections to the mob in New York. Parker doesn’t care who got the money or who Mal knows, he just wants to satisfy his grudges.
It’d been a while since I’d read any of the early Parker novels, and I was a little worried about how they’d hold up. Thankfully, they‘ve aged with style. With Parker, we’d get the prototype to the anti-hero professional thief, and there are countless fictional characters that owe a debt to him.
Since this initial book has Parker seeking revenge for a very personal double-cross, he’s more angry than he’d be for most of the series, but he’d always have that blunt and no-nonsense nature. On some levels, Parker seems completely amoral, but he’s a ruthless pragmatist, not a psychopath. He doesn't hurt anyone unless it's necessary, but if he needs to kill someone to get away with the loot, he doesn't hesitate for a second.
I read somewhere once that when asked why he used the Richard Stark pen name for these novels, that Westlake replied that he wrote his funny comic capers as himself on sunny days but that on rainy days he wrote as Stark. Fortunately for crime fans, Westlake must have had a lot of rainy days.
And a big Thank You to the University of Chicago press for reprinting the hard-to-find early Parker books in these gorgeous trade paperbacks. (less)
Hap returns home from working a gig on an oil rig and is promptly attacked by a rabid squirrel. Thanks to crappy insurance and a grumpy doctor, he has...moreHap returns home from working a gig on an oil rig and is promptly attacked by a rabid squirrel. Thanks to crappy insurance and a grumpy doctor, he has to stay in the hospital in order to get his rabies shots paid for. While Hap is stuck in the hospital his best friend Leonard has been having problems with his boyfriend, Raul. Raul has been two-timing him with a biker, and it’s made Leonard so angry that he’s doing crazy things like beating the biker with a broom handle and shooting up bars and motorcycles. When the biker turns up dead and Raul is missing, Leonard is naturally the prime suspect.
But it isn‘t all bad news. Hap has met a hot foul-mouthed red-headed nurse named Brett, and they’ve taken a shine to each other. Once upon a time, Brett dealt with an abusive ex-husband by hitting him in the head with a shovel and setting his hair on fire. Hap may have found true love.
This was the first book by Lansdale I ever read and with the opening chapter that details the squirrel attack on Hap, I laughed so hard that I thought I did myself permanent injury. I knew then that I was going to a Joe Lansdale fan for life, and he hasn’t let me down since. This is probably still my favorite Hap & Leonard novel. Like the others books, it’s obscene, violent, politically incorrect and one of the funniest things you’ll ever read.(less)
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