Survive! is not exactly the type of book you read for fun ... but it was a fun read, if that makes any sense. It outlines a lot of good, no-nonsense t...moreSurvive! is not exactly the type of book you read for fun ... but it was a fun read, if that makes any sense. It outlines a lot of good, no-nonsense tactics for surviving if you become trapped in a variety of harsh wilderness environments. I'm a fan of Les Stroud's television shows, and I think he and his editor did a good job of translating some of his sense of humor and easy-going persona to the book. I doubt that I'll ever have to use any of the information found in Survive! ... but I'm glad to have read it just in case.(less)
Justin Cronin's "The Passage" is a complex novel that at, over the course of its reading, left me at times enthralled and at other times enr...moreJustin Cronin's "The Passage" is a complex novel that at, over the course of its reading, left me at times enthralled and at other times enraged. I think that's a good thing, but if you ask me tomorrow, I may have changed my mind again.
What I can say about the book is that it's a sweeping sci-fi/fantasy epic that fits very nicely into a long and proud tradition of novels in which their author gleefully destroys most of humanity and then sets about telling us what happens in the aftermath. I've seen it compared to Stephen King's The Stand, and the comparisons are warranted. There is a long and utterly engrossing set-up to the end of the world, which eventually happens with remarkable speed. King spent more time dealing with the actual apocalypse part of his post-apocalyptic world than Cronin does, but considering the heft of the book as it is, it's perhaps for the best that Cronin literally skips over the 90 years or so between "when the bad stuff happens" and when the story picks back up.
The similarities continue throughout. There's a group of traveling friends, and not one but two old, black ladies who like to talk about God. There's a pregnancy and a divorce of sorts. There's a bad guy who is drawing others to him. There's a big showdown at the end and a pronounced denoument. Throught the book, people die. Most of them die badly. There's a lot of The Stand in here, yes. But to call the book a copy or even highly derivative would be an outright lie. It stands as its own work, one with is intriguing and exciting, pulse-pounding at times, sad or uplifting at others. There are characters to hate and love, although I never found myself hating and loving them quite so much as I have with some other books.
As a fellow author of "vampire books" (though my vampires are apples to Cronin's oranges), I love what he's done with the myth. In fact, the first 300 pages of the book, give or take, are nearly flawless. Cronin paints a portrait of a near-future United States that is hyper realistic, bound up in protocol inspired by fear over continued terrorist attacks, with states mistrusting each other and the federal government operating in many clandestine ways to get what it wants. You can SEE this world, you can feel it, because it's not so improbable. You become caught up in the story and the characters immediately, and you spend much of the time waiting for The Virals (as they become known) to break lose. You know it's coming and that it's going to be bad. Cronin doesn't disappoint here.
To say that the story shifts gears at this point is an understatement. It's something more akin to parking the car, getting out, and switching to an entirely different vehicle. Yes, it still takes place in the same world, with the same problems and even a few of the same characters, but in the 90-year shift the story also moves more out of the realm of Science Fiction and into that of Fantasy. I don't have an inherent problem with this, but I did find the shift jarring. I also found the sudden introduction of more than a dozen new characters a bit overwhelming at first, though in the end you figure out who's who, and you are properly outraged at the times you're supposed to be, when the heroes are being held up by people who don't understand that, damn it, they're the heroes and they're right.
The problems I had with the book, the things that threw me out of reading mode and made me frustrated, all happened in the second half and were mostly small issues. For one thing, Cronin is guilty of the extremely modern belief that all human beings immediately lose whoever they were before, at the moment they hear they are having a baby (or in extreme cases, at the moment of the baby's birth), and instead become dedicated only to the existence of that child. For another, I'm tired of old women who love God. I don't find any comfort in the idea of predestination or "God's Will" and I don't find characters who do to be particularly sympathetic.
I also had extreme issue with one decision a primary character makes, late in the novel, not even so much because I didn't like the decision, but because it's given barely an ounce of explanation and is a pretty clear setup for a later event. It felt like the character was only doing it because the story needed her to. If you're going to have the cavalry show up, you need a reason for why it wasn't there in the first place, and this reason seemed flimsy. The character in question supposedly has her reasons, but they're never given (or barely so), so the decision she makes seems amazingly arbitrary.
There are a few other moments like this -- Cronin kills off a character whose name might as well have been "Obvious Choice" at one point -- but I may be stressing the negative too strongly. In the end, the important thing was that whenever I put the book down, I always wanted to pick it up again, and preferably soon. This is the first in a trilogy, and I'm looking forward to the second and third books. They'll probably frustrate me too, but I bet they'll be a lot of fun to read while they're doing it.(less)
What a remarkable writer Cormac McCarthy is. This is the second of his books that I've read, and while it was more difficult to follow than The Road, ...moreWhat a remarkable writer Cormac McCarthy is. This is the second of his books that I've read, and while it was more difficult to follow than The Road, it was also a significantly better book (and I really liked The Road!). An unflinching look at the American and Mexcian old west in the pre-Civil-War era, Blood Meridian follows the exploits of a young man who finds himself embroiled in the exploits of the Glanton Gang, a real-life group of scalp-hunters turned outlaws. McCarthy describes scenes of brutal violence and quiet solitude with the same slow, deliberate, biblical prose, and it's up to the reader to make judgements upon the people who he describes. There are bad guys aplenty in the book, but no real good guys, and I appreciated that fact. There are few good guys in real life, and there were even fewer to be found in the desperate places on the edge of the country (and beyond it).
The lack of quotes and general eschewing of punctuation didn't really bother me, but I did have some trouble with the extreme run-on sentences, frequently joined together with "and" over and over ... sometimes by the time I got to the end, I had to go back to the beginning to remember where the sentence started. Still, the book was fascinating and deeply engrossing. McCarthy is a master.(less)
The story's climax is suspenseful, and the book ends in pretty much the only way it really could. Many questions are answered, many more are left open, and Inspector Borlu comes to understand the truth about the cities, and about the shadows claimed by each, by both and by neither.(less)
The word "guide" in the secondary title to this book is an unfortunate choice, as there is really very little in the way of advice or ideas ...moreThe word "guide" in the secondary title to this book is an unfortunate choice, as there is really very little in the way of advice or ideas for how to live a rich and fulfilling childfree life. My wife and I have plenty of ideas for this already, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't have been interested in reading suggestions from older couples with more experience.
I thought the first half of the book was quite interesting, as it delved into the various reasons people have for choosing (or accepting) their lack of children. I thought the second half of the book became tremendously repetitive, however. It basically goes over a lot of the same themes from the first half, and spends a bit too much time focusing on why people don't want kids, instead of what they do with their lives instead.
It's an easy read, and I think it might help people who are really struggling with family and/or friends who are pressuring them to have children, but I felt like it could have been more thorough and could definitely have explored more aspects of the childfree lifestyle.(less)
In the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling really begins to embrace the darker tone that she first begins to explore in the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the result...moreIn the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling really begins to embrace the darker tone that she first begins to explore in the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the result is a book that I found more engrossing than any of the first three. I like a little darkness, and I like that Rowling is unafraid to show that Harry exists in a dangerous world where people, both good and bad, are in possession of powers that can be extremely physically punishing to those at the receiving end.
Rowling continues to expand her compelling cast of characters, introducing new students both from within Hogwarts and from two other schools of wizarding, as well as several members of the Ministry of Magic. Two other new characters of note include the highly enjoyable "Mad-eye" Mooney, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and the highly obnoxious Rita Skeeter, an invasive journalist who's not above making up large chunks of her stories.
We also get to hear from many old favorites, not the least of which being Potters' inseparable friends Ron and Hermione, although the former proves at least semi-separable for a while as he battles with jealousy over Harry's constant position in the limelight.
All of this is nice, but kind of expected by now. What's impressive though is the deft way in which Rowling wraps many of these characters' stories together and ties them into the central Goblet of Fire storyline. In this storyline, we learn that (as is par for the course), someone is trying to kill Harry. The assumption of course is that his premature entry into the extremely dangerous Tri-Wizard competition was orchestrated to accomplish this goal, and in a way it was ... but not how Harry or anyone around him expects.
The book culminates with a confrontation that results in the first "on-screen" death of a character in Rowling's universe and sets up some extremely important threads that will carry through the rest of the titles. It's also the first book in the series to end with no indication of who won the house cup (or if it was even given out given the tragic circumstances of the Tri-Wizard competition), and no indication of who won the quiddich cup. I thought it was nice and realistic that these issues - so seemingly important in the earlier books - have taken a back seat to the life and death concerns that Rowling is introducing into the books.
I think this is the best of the Harry Potter books that I've read so far, and I'm looking forward to Order of the Phoenix.(less)
While not quite as brimming with homoerotic undertones as the first in the series, Throne of Jade nonetheless presents the reader with plenty of repre...moreWhile not quite as brimming with homoerotic undertones as the first in the series, Throne of Jade nonetheless presents the reader with plenty of repressed man-dragon love to go along with a few aerial battles, a murder plot, and an interesting encounter with a sea serpent. Also, there are some Chinese people.
Ok, that's a bit of a glib summary, but I've never been a huge fan of spending my entire review giving plot details. It's worth noting, however, that the book is somewhat less action-oriented than the first. It spends a good deal of time focusing on the infuriating nature of diplomatic relations with wildly disparate cultures, and does some interesting and applicable pontificating on the treatment of dragons and its comparison to the slave trade. Some of the latter is spelled out a little too obviously, especially near the end, but one doesn't typically read fantasy series for their subtle political metaphor.
Novik seems to have done her research on the era she's set her books in, and the story is peppered with references to the actual politics of the time, including England's struggle to establish strong diplomatic ties with China, and to prevent the French from doing the same. The slavery comparison is also tied nicely into the book as the dragon Temeraire and his captain Will Laurence travel to China and witness the level of freedom given to Chinese dragons, comparing it against the treatment of European breeds.
I enjoyed the book enough to give it three stars, although I thought the first one was better. I found the sea voyage section of Throne of Jade a bit interminable, and I was surprised by how little of the book was actually set in China (well less than one third). I did enjoy the further revelations about dragon breeding and the interesting ways in which Novik interweaves dragons into every-day Chinese life. I found myself wishing that more of the book had been set in China, not so much because of the foreign setting as because I'm interested in the back-story and breed specifics of Novik's dragons, and it's in China that the most information about them is known.
Overall the book is an interesting, if somewhat less action-oriented, successor to the first novel. It's a good "airplane novel" with a unique setting, solid plotting, and enjoyable dialog. I look forward to picking up the third installment in the series.(less)
I really didn't expect that it'd be so easy to find a book that's even more depressing, startling, and at times outright uncomfortable than Requiem fo...moreI really didn't expect that it'd be so easy to find a book that's even more depressing, startling, and at times outright uncomfortable than Requiem for a Dream, but all one really has to do is look to Selby's earlier work, Last Exit to Brooklyn. Selby's novel - itself more a series of novellas featuring related characters - is populated with drug-addled drag queens, prostitutes, thugs, and a particular union organizer who is an awful man in nearly every respect. That you end up feeling sympathy for nearly all of these characters, even said union organizer, is a testament to Selby's remarkable ability to invest his characters with realism and humanity. These are deeply flawed people, all, but they're still people, each with their own set of wants, needs, and dreams.
As in Requiem for a Dream, Selby's writing style is light on punctuation and grammar, near stream-of-consciousness, and at times extremely difficult to read (the scenes near the end of one drag queen's night out with "the girls" are borderline incoherent ... an intentional effect). This makes it a bit tough to get into the book at first, but once your brain adapts, reading becomes pretty easy.
It's easy to understand why this book caused so much controversy when it was released in the sixties. It contains enough sex, drugs, and profanity to ruffle many feathers today. That said, it never felt to me like Selby was trying to be exploitative. Rather, he was trying to paint an accurate picture of the kind of underworld that forms in cities, and was particularly prevalent in New York through much of the second half of the twentieth century. He brings you into these peoples lives and, without sentiment or sensationalism, shows you the world that they live in.
In all, I found the book engrossing and at times moving. These are not people you want to spend time with, and often not people you can identify with, but they are nonetheless human, each with their own tragedies, big and small. Like no other author I've ever read, Selby is able to express this without ever stating it outright, and for that his work demands respect and attention, no matter how vile its subject matter sometimes becomes.(less)
I don't mean the fact that he's of Indian descent and I'm of Anglo-Saxon descent, though that's true. I also don...moreAnkur Shah is not like me.
I don't mean the fact that he's of Indian descent and I'm of Anglo-Saxon descent, though that's true. I also don't mean that he's studied the teachings of Gandhi and I haven't, though that is also true. I'm sure there are many other ways in which we are not alike, and many ways in which we are, but the specific difference that I am choosing to focus on lies more in our spiritual and philosophical approaches to life, because it best illustrates the dichotomous nature of my experience reading his book.
Ankur Shah is vegan (when he can be), deeply spiritual though as far as I can tell not dedicated to any one religion, and deeply fascinated by the interconnections between all life, especially those between his fellow human beings. I am a dedicated omnivore, nearly devoid of spirituality of any kind, and not particularly inclined to revel in oneness with my fellow man.
So it was somewhat perplexing to me that I enjoyed reading this book quite a bit, considering that a good portion of it was dedicated toward contemplating the spiritual and emotional connections to other people that Shah values so highly. But then, one thing we do have quite in common seems to be a fascination with the workings of society, an interest in both history, modern times, and the contrast between the two. It was this aspect of the book that I most enjoyed.
Initially, the text was hard for me to get into. I had to adapt somewhat to the writing style which, while not difficult to read, was fairly dense and mildly rambling. I also had to resign myself to the fact that many, many Indian names would be mentioned, some in rapid succession, and I would not be able to remember all of the "characters" being introduced. This is not a fiction novel ... we're not going to spend any more time with these people than Shah did, and for the most part that means a matter of hours, or a few days at the most. We are seeing a foreign land through the eyes of someone only partially versed in the cultures and languages of that land, and many things will be mildly incomprehensible.
Once you get past this fact, the rest of the book presents a fascinating look into modern Indian society. Shah is American, though better-traveled than most, and is thus able to contrast what he is seeing as he follows Gandhi's famous march to the salt flats with what he has seen during his life in the US. The differences between Indian and American society run much deeper than simple ideas like rich vs. poor, or vegetarian vs. meat-eater, or Hindu/Sikh/Muslim vs. Christian/Jewish. Shah spends a great deal of time chronicling Indian culture, in between his philosophical reflections, it was this part of the book which I enjoyed the most.
I don't mean to sound like the rest of it was an unenjoyable slog ... I found the book as a whole compelling even if I don't share all of Shah's beliefs and opinions. While it is not flawlessly written or edited, it is engaging, the prose relatively skilled, and the author's observations valuable.
I can't say whether I believe in the one Love that Shah espouses, but I can say that the glimpse into India and its culture was fascinating, and I recommend it highly to those who enjoy such studies.(less)
I'm going to go ahead and guess that my review of Twilight is going to sway neither the book's legion of fans, nor its serious detractors. In all hone...moreI'm going to go ahead and guess that my review of Twilight is going to sway neither the book's legion of fans, nor its serious detractors. In all honesty, I'm kind of torn about reviewing the book at all. Its first-person protagonist is a seventeen year-old girl, and the book is very clearly angled at girls in their early-to-mid teens. I am a thirty-two year-old man, and thus am not exactly what one would call the target demographic.
I read the book because my wife advised me to, because I am author who is trying to get his vampire novel published, and she rightly figured that it couldn't hurt to check out the book, and see what it does well. There ARE things that it does well, despite what some negative reviews might say. There are also many things that didn't work for me, but may be right for the target audience. Then there are a few things that I think it does legitimately poorly ... we'll get to those.
So. What I liked:
I think -- and again, I was never a girl, so I can't be sure -- that it does a good job of expressing the all-consuming strength of a young woman's first love. Bella's absolute obsession with Edward is driven home over and over (to the point of tedium for me). Less well-explained is why Edward feels so strongly for her, other than that she smells good, but you still at least get a strong sense of his desire both to love her and to chomp down on her neck, which creates some fun dramatic tension.
I also liked that each vampire had a special little power of their own, something they brought with them from their human lives. I thought the book got stronger as it went along, with the last sixty pages or so of the book, not counting the epilogue, being legitimately exciting and fun to read.
What I didn't like:
The first 350 pages of the book are nearly a straight teen romance novel, and the first 100 pages or so are brutal even accepting that fact. There's absolutely nothing happening, action-wise. Bella comes off as bitchy and unlikable. The writing is stilted and hasn't yet found any sort of voice other than said bitchiness (few sentences have anything resembling stylistic flair). Again, this improves as the book goes on, almost as if Meyer is becoming more comfortable with her characters and the world she's creating.
I also felt that Edward was too perfect. I realize the novel is more a romance than it is anything else, and this is a common approach to romance novels, but it makes him a less-likable character because basically his only flaw is that he can't accept that he's in love and just deal with it. I don't mind him being gorgeous, or powerful, or intelligent, or charming, or witty, or sensual, or telepathic, or even some combination of these things, but all of them together create a character so flawless he's hard to relate to.
The epilogue is hard to believe. I find it midly improbable that Bella's dad would be easily forgiving of either She or Edward after what he had to go through. Also, Bella returns right back to being oblivious and kind of bitchy, as if she's learned essentially nothing from her experience. I was hoping for a bit of character growth for both of the leads, but there's little to be seen.
Overall, I think the book does a decent if unspectacular job of conveying a fairly typical first love story with a rather important twist. The last sixty pages or so, where the real meat of the action is, are better than the rest of the book. I have no plans to read the other three in the series, so I went ahead and read their synopses on the internet, and doing so basically reconfirmed that I'm not interested enough to read more. It seems, though, like Meyer understands her audience and has put together a series which they clearly enjoy.
If you're old enough to drink -- and not an aspiring author of vampire novels who likes to keep abreast of what's happening in that genre -- Twilight's not terrible ... but it's probably not the right book for you.(less)
Like many Americans, I saw the movie version of Let the Right One In before reading the book, and enjoyed it quite a bit. This led me to pursue the bo...moreLike many Americans, I saw the movie version of Let the Right One In before reading the book, and enjoyed it quite a bit. This led me to pursue the book and, as is almost always the case for me, I liked it even more than the film. For the most part, I think the film made good cuts, and it retains the overall plot/theme very well, but it's hard to put as much depth into a two hour movie as one can put into a five-hundred page book.
Many of the more minor characters (and one central one - Hakan) are much more fleshed out than they were in the film. There are more sub-plots and we learn a great deal more about Eli's past, though great chunks of it are still left in the dark. We also learn the full truth about Eli's sexuality and some rather disturbing information about the vampire mechanism works (turns out there's good reason to destroy the heart).
I've read a great many vampire novels and short stories in my life, and this is one of the better ones. It finds interesting twists on old legends and presents us with believable, morally ambiguous characters. No one in this book is exactly good, or exactly evil. They're all flawed, like real humans, and like real humans, they're all trying to survive.
Two things kept this from being a five-star book for me. First, while I thought it was enjoyable and extremely readable (I tore through it over the course of two days), I found it in some ways less moving than the film. This was probably due in part to the film's two child leads, who were incredible, but also partly because of the other reason I knocked off a star: the book seems to fizzle at the end just a bit. Things are wrapped up a little too quickly, especially amongst some of the minor characters. Additionally, there seems to be less of a sense of love between Oskar and Eli than there was in the film, which I felt was important in establishing why the story ends as it does.
Overall, though, a very enjoyable book. Lindqvist's book is more interesting, more atmospheric, and more original than the vast majority of commercial vampire fiction. Give it a read.(less)
Hubert Selbey Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream is a hard book to read ... not due so much to its sensitive subject matter, which is frankly riveting, as to S...moreHubert Selbey Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream is a hard book to read ... not due so much to its sensitive subject matter, which is frankly riveting, as to Selby's unconventional, stream-of-consciousness prose. The guy barely believes in basic punctuation marks, let alone quotes, paragraph breaks, or dialog attribution. It takes a while to get into it.
Once you do, however, you're rewarded with one of the more honest (and bleak) looks at addiction and the downward spiral it causes in people's lives. This is not simply a book about junkies, or about people who have no options in life and thus turn to drugs. Selby's characters are young, enterprising ... some are well-educated, cultured, experienced. By no means do they all fit into the stereotypical expectations one might have of a heavy drug user. Yet all of them find themselves inevitably pulled into similar situations.
I'd seen the movie version before reading the novel, which certainly reduces the suspense while reading the book. However, my main complaint with the film was that I didn't feel like it spent enough time letting us get to know and like the characters, which in turn made the downward spiral less powerful than it could've been. This is much less a problem with the book -- Selby spends a good deal of time on characterization, and it helps keep the novel interesting and compelling throughout.
I strongly recommend Requiem for a Dream. It may be disturbing to some, but you're not going to find a better depiction of dangers of substance abuse and addiction.(less)
Ray Kurzweil has been accused by some as being incredibly optimistic in his vision for the future of humanity and the computer's that we've created. H...moreRay Kurzweil has been accused by some as being incredibly optimistic in his vision for the future of humanity and the computer's that we've created. His predictions, however, have an uncanny way of coming to pass, at least in large part. Spiritual Machines was written in 1999 and speaks of the advances that computers will make in the twenty-first century.
Now, a decade later, it is possible to look at the first of Kurzweil's predictions, helpfully listed out in a chapter labeled "2009" and evaluate them. He missed the mark, badly, on a few things -- we've not yet reached a point where most books are consumed electronically, nor do we interface with out computers mostly through voice -- but he is more often right than wrong, and even when the predictions fall short, it's usually in a way that leaves the reader saying "well, not YET" ... these things will come, they've just been a little slower in getting here than predicted.
Kurzweil is an unapologetic transhumanist - a person who believes that mankind can and should continue the evolutionary process through voluntarily seeking to "upgrade" his own body via technology. Whether this is done by re-engineering cells, creating remedies to sickness at the DNA level, inventing nanobots, or digitizing the human conscience and moving it to a machine reality seems to matter less to Kurzweil than that we continue to pursue all evolutionary options. Indeed, he would likely argue that we not only must force this self-evolution, but that we are incapable of NOT doing it. Even should our machines rise up, Terminator-like, and destroy us all, Kurzweil would still view this only as another evolutionary process. After all, was it not Homo Sapiens' superior intelligence and technology which allowed us to beat out the other human variants, such as the neanderthal?
The Age of Spiritual Machines is an absolutely fascinating book even if you think Kurzweil's a crackpot. I don't. I share the belief that he's an optimist, and that some of the predictions he makes won't come fully to pass, or happen as quickly. Still, I feel that he is able to look at the future with an unflinching eye and, drawing from a wide variety of reputable sources (the footnotes in the book are so voluminous that they take up an entire chapter unto themselves), make many compelling statements about what humankind's ever-advancing technological capabilities may bring.
This was by a wide margin the best book I've read so far this year, and one of the best of the last several years.(less)
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