Doug Lewars's Blog, page 62

Single, Carefree, Mellow

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

I selected this book entirely at random. I sometimes do that. When I'm in the library and don't know what I want to check out, I'll grab any book, open it at a random page, place my finder somewhere on the page and look to see what word - or more likely part of a word - I'm pointing to and then use those letters as the first part of an author name. I then select a book written by an author whose name is closest to those characters.

Single, Carefree, Mellow consists of 11 short stories. By page two I had pretty much concluded that I hated the book and that I probably wouldn't finish it - or even the first story. But I did and of the eleven stories, I thoroughly enjoyed nine, thought one was mediocre and hated one which happened to be the first in the book. Nine out of eleven is pretty good so I awarded the author four stars.

One of the stories, 'Thoughts of a Bridesmaid' caused me to laugh out loud in places and I think that was my favorite.

A common theme running through this book was adultery. The protagonists were all female and most were having affairs. Some reviewers have objected to that but I found it merely a way of choosing a common theme around which to write. I did find it a little surprising that the characters were so blase about what they were doing. I guess that's one slice of modern life.

For the most part, all the stories were well crafted. The reason I disliked the first story was that the protagonist was exceedingly unpleasant - shallow, pretentious and vapid - but that wasn't a reflection on the writing itself - merely the story.

I think many readers - and particularly younger female readers - might quite enjoy this book.



View all my reviews

Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Reading this book resulted in a feeling of daja vu. I think I probably read it in novella form so the basic story was familiar but, having been filled out into a novel I wasn't so familiar with the contents that I could feel that I was rereading it.

The basic story is classic science fiction. Aliens have attacked Earth, were beaten back through the heroic efforts of a hero, and now rebuilding is taking place with a view towards defending the planet against a further attack. The powers that be elect to create a new hero by examining children until they find one of sufficient intelligence that he or she can be groomed to command the fleet and eliminate the threat once and for all.

Of interest is the means by which they manipulate the chosen individual, have him engage in battle while thinking that he's working in a complex simulation device and then eventually deal with the political fall-out of victory. There are a number of complex sub-plots involving the heroes siblings and the relationships he has with them and then there's his difficulty with handling the realization that he's committed genocide or at least was tricked into doing so.

One thing I did find a little confusing was that while the aliens communicated telepathically with one another, and while humans didn't, somehow the aliens were able to read Ender's brain, alter a computer so as to display the information he would need at the end of the story, but be totally unable to simply communicate their existence to him - or anything else for that matter. In any event I think that's a quibble. The author needed such communication to take place and therefore it did.

For anyone who likes science fiction I highly recommend this book. It's exciting, never fails to be interesting, and raises some interesting questions regarding expediency in times of crises. In addition, it positions the reader to explore the author's other books. I haven't read them yet although I do plan to, but it appears that he'd done quite a bit of world-building by starting with the society we know and then extrapolating it while the characters work out their various destinies.




View all my reviews

Mythology

Men and Gods: Myths and Legends of the Ancient Greeks‎ by Rex Warner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

I didn't read these stories so much for pleasure but I wanted to obtain an understanding of how mythology related to the society of the time and to people's thought patterns. As a result, I skipped over those stories I knew - Theseus and the Minotaur for example - and focused on ones that were new to me. As a result I read probably 60% of the book. Each myth was well written and presented and, as an author, I found them to be fascinating. Much larger than life, they describe the world in terms of gods, monsters and heroes. Emotions such as love, jealousy and hate become larger, more dominating, take on personas and step forward to convey their story.

For those who are familiar with mythology, I think this book is pretty much old-hat, but for anyone who may have learned a bit in high-school and hasn't bothered with the subject since, this book is a good one to read because quite a few of the stories are seldom told and certainly worth reading.



View all my reviews

Rasputin: A Short Life

Rasputin: A Short Life by Frances Welch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

In the 1978 song by Boney M, there is a line, 'Ra Ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen'. Frances Welch seems to suggest that while the Tsarina admired and possibly loved Rasputin, that love was purely platonic. She was devoted to her husband and, whatever could be said about Rasputin, he wasn't so stupid as to do something that would threaten the relationship between himself and his meal ticket. Certainly Rasputin was a womanizer and didn't much care about obtaining consent. He took what was given and he took what wasn't given in equal measures. In addition, he liked to pretend that his lusts were inspired by God and that he was taking such sin as might exist in the liaison upon himself. He drank to excess, he fornicated with anyone who might be considered female, he ate like a pig and it is doubtful that he ever heard of hygiene as either a word or a concept. The author goes to considerable lengths to explain how such an disagreeable individual could hold sway over much of the politics of Russia at the time. It is fascinating reading.

Of course the author is limited to the historical material that is available and while he made the best of it, it would have been nicer had he been able to dig a little deeper. Rasputin was probably an incredible con artist. He created the illusion of having vast psychic powers and, certainly, it is difficult to say how he carried it off although I'm pretty certain that modern stage magicians would be able to emulate his tricks. In addition, the author had to work with what was written and there is no guarantee that every detail was present or, that the reporters even knew all the details. Still this is an interesting book and the author does make the case that without Rasputin, there is a good chance that Lenin would never have risen to power - that in fact it was a backlash against Rasputin and his excesses that provided a large amount of fuel for the revolution.



View all my reviews

Care and Feeding Your Brain While Aging

Use Your Brain to Change Your Age: Secrets to Look, Feel, and Think Younger Every Day by Daniel G. Amen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This isn't a bad book but it's a bit of overkill. Basically, brain health boils down to the obvious.

Eat well-balanced nutritious means. Stay away from sugar and cut back on the fats. Get plenty of protein through lean red meats, fish and chicken.
Drink lots of water.
Get a good night's sleep.
Stay away from alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
Get plenty of exercise. If some of it can be aerobic so much the better.
Stimulate your brain through continuous learning. Avoid too much routine. Be curious and try mental challenges.
As much as possible eliminate elements of stress from your life and deal with what can't be eliminated by deep breathing, self hypnosis, or meditation.
Avoid being trapped by negative thoughts and emotions. Turn them around. Focus on the positive.

That's pretty much the entire book. You don't actually need to read this book. You can skim it quite effectively. Keep in mind however that this author has an agenda. He wants you to have brain imaging and one may surmise he makes a wee profit when people do. He wants you to go to his website and probably pay a suitable fee for suggestions and games that you could almost certainly find on the web without paying. He wants you to have extensive blood work so that you will know precisely where you stand on any number of variables. Presumably this work will also come at a cost to you and a profit for him.

This author has been criticized by the medical community. Nevertheless, his basic mantra of diet, exercise, sleep, etc. is sound. However if you just go to his first set of bullet points you've pretty much got everything of value. And if you miss them at first he tends to repeat much the same things over and over and over. I believe that he could have reduced the entire book to about ten pages but then his publisher would have most certainly reacted poorly.

In summary, much of what this author says makes sense. It is not necessary to read the book word for word to obtain value and skimming is more than adequate. He has an agenda and he includes things that are overkill but it's easy to ignore them.



View all my reviews

Critical Thinking

A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age by Daniel J. Levitin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was okay but far from spectacular. If you took statistics in university then the entire first section is just a reminder of what you already know. The second part is a little more interesting dealing as it does with logical fallacies but while the specific names might be unfamiliar, the logic is pretty well known. One thing that is useful is the inclusion of quite a number of fact-checking URLs.

Basically this book is a good reminder of what you probably already know but may have forgotten. Ultimately, however, there is no easy route. Critical thinking is difficult, time consuming and easy to overlook in a fast-paced world. Unfortunately its absence creates all sorts of problems many of which we are observing in the world today.



View all my reviews

Waste of Time

We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night by Joel Thomas Hynes

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

They say that the first five pages of a book are the most important. I don't entirely agree with that but this book was 247 pages; so say 20% - which in this case would be 49 pages should be sufficient to obtain a pretty fair assessment. I should have stopped reading then. Frankly, I should have stopped at page one because in this case, the very first page defines the story nicely. Nevertheless, I read the reviews and they suggested that if one keeps reading, the book gets better. There's some truth to that. It did get better - marginally. The thing is, the protagonist was so unlikable that there was no way the author could make him - and by extension, the story - appealing.

The concept of the rebellious young person finding some sort of redemption - in this case through a road trip - has been done to death. In the nineteen-fifties there was the movie 'Rebel Without a Cause'. In the late sixties it was 'Easy Rider'. Now we have this novel by Joel Hynes. At least in Easy Rider the protagonists got shot in the end - and they were fairly sympathetic characters. In this case Johnny is probably more dead than alive but there still seems to be a pulse. Frankly, by the time I was approaching page 100, the best ending would have been for Johnny to have had a fatal accident and the remaining 147 pages left blank but such was not to be.

Is there anyone who might enjoy this book? Possibly. I think it might appeal to individuals under the age of twenty-five who are convinced that society is stacked against them and that laws were made exclusively to oppress whatever underclass they identify with. I would recommend that if anyone is thinking about reading this book, read page one and then decide. If you like the first page there's a good chance you'll like the book. If you don't, then despite other reviews, such improvement as may be detected is so small that you might as well save your time and go onto something else.



View all my reviews

Hack (F.X. Sheperd #1)

Hack by Kieran Crowley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

I thought this was a great book. Fast and exciting, the plot moved forward at a fine pace. Normally I'm not keen on mysteries but over the years the genre has opened up to include plenty of crime fiction in addition to Whodunits and now I find myself reading them with increasing frequency. The hero is working as a pet columnist for a newspaper and, due to having a name similar to one of their top reporters who happens to be on vacation, gets sent in error to cover a celebrity murder. As much by luck as good reporting he get a sensational item and finds himself pursuing both the story and the murder to its final conclusion.

Although not a whodunit per se, this is more of a how-was-this-done followed by a why-was-this-done and only late in the story do we get around to identifying the culprit.

The plot was exciting. The characters were interesting and once started it was difficult to put down. Plus the author has a wry sense of humor that I quite enjoyed. In addition, this is one author who chooses not to stint on the murders. By the time the book ends it is starting to become difficult to keep track of the deceased there are so many of them.

If you like a fast-paced mystery novel - more thriller than whodunit - then I think I can definitely recommend this one.



View all my reviews

Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory

Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory by Nick Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

It has to be remembered that this book is targeted for a teenage audience. As such, don't look for highly subtle nuances of social relevance. This is a fine adventure story. Extremely unusual universes start collapsing in on one another with a high-school as a focal point. Very few students are even aware what is happening but the protagonists certainly are and they don't like it. Two students, Scott and Davey are the first to notice the unusual phenomena and both initially conclude that they are hallucinating. This pair, incidentally are polar opposites. Scott is highly introverted. His chief objective is to get through life unnoticed. If he had access to the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter series he would put it on and never take it off. Davey, on the other hand is highly extroverted. She is head of the cheerleader squad. She is - or is trying to be - most popular girl. She is a type-A personality and ambitious to the point of being driven. Convinced that the title of Homecoming Queen would look good on a resume she is determined to allow nothing to get in her way. She regards Scott as the lowest of the low. Scott regards her as a pretentious ... unpleasant person.

Over time some students known to both Scott and Davey become aware of what is happening and they pool their resources and talents such as they are. A large portion of the book consists of running from one threat after another. Eventually they determine the person responsible for the chaos but even when they eliminate him the collapse continue. To stop this process they must find and eliminate the one thing that remains constant as the multiverse collapses. Not surprisingly they do and become friends - more or less - in the process or, if not exactly friends, they develop a certain level of respect for one another.

Fast paced, exciting, and with plenty of strange images, the authors carry the readers along on the adventure. I think most individuals can figure out the ending by possibly the two-thirds mark in the book but that doesn't detract from the story.
There was really only one thing I found jarring. In any fantasy story the reader has to be prepared to accept the unbelievable - flying saucers, elves, fairies, ghosts, what-have-you. But in those parts of the story that are mundane, regular rules apply. So near the beginning of the book, Scott sees a teacher transform into a hideous monster. Not surprisingly he reacts with terror - screams, tries to climb backward over a number of desks, loses control of his bowels and eventually passes out and winds up in the nurse's office. That part was fine. Then the nurse asks him about stress in his life that might account for his apparent hallucination. At no time does she, or anyone else, suggest that he might be taking drugs. Frankly I think that is the first thing that would be asked. However outside of that one thing I have no complaints.

If you like a good, fast-paced adventure with not too much beyond that then this is an excellent book to wile away some time.



View all my reviews

The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

If you happen to command an army of 100,000 men with heavy and light cavalry then this is the book for you. It possibly even has some relevance to modern warfare but of course could only be applied in the most general sense seeing as modern armies are highly technical and much more mobile than when travel was by foot and by horse. For someone reading it to obtain advice as to how best secure an advantage in modern office politics it's not so helpful. Certainly there are some valid suggestions - know your enemy, know yourself and maybe build fortifications around the office copier but it's not likely to help you survive an attack by a cost-slashing red-pen-wielding executive on the rampage. Still, I found it interesting and if I ever decide to raise an army and march on, say, Elmira then this is the book I'll turn to for advice.



View all my reviews