The Air Loom gang: the strange and true story of James Tilly Matthews and his visionary madness, Jay
I was expecting a more basic story of the delusions of Mr Matthews, the first documented case of an influencing machine playing a part in someone's delusions, a sort of marker of the influence of the shift from religion to science in the mind. Instead (not that it's bad, just not what I expected) it is a story of how international politics and the politics of the treatment of the insane shifted dramatically around the time of this particular case. Very well done, though not totally my cup of tea. Three stars.
Taken, Bloor (Y)
Overall, a bit annoying, but good premise. In the near future, Charity (13) lives in a super-high security neighborhood in Florida, complete with glock toting butlers. Outside, grinding poverty after the Credit Crunch. The biggest threat is kidnapping to get at the rich's cache of hard currency. Charity is taken, but knows from her kidnappee training that she has 24 hours until she's rescued, mutilated, or dead. Strange technique of introducing relatively advanced vocab and concepts and then explaining them. Hm. One star.
Rethinking thin: the new science of weight loss and the myths and realities of dieting, Kolata
I enjoy Kolata's science writing: accessible and well-structured. She reveals a stubborn blindness on the part of the general public and obesity professionals to study results that don't mesh with their desired outcomes on a background of regular people struggling with weight and the history of the weight loss industry. Four stars.
Teen, Inc., Petrucha (Y)
Good premise, good execution. Light touch to a present day corporate dystopia (with some winks to his predecessors in literature). Teen is being raised by a corporation (he lives in a former VP's office) after his parents die due to corporate negligence when he is a baby. Hilarity and digs at corporate culture ensue. Four stars.
The compound, Bodeen (Y)
Sort of sorry that I had read what it was about before I started it, that aboutness doesn't kick in until past 60 or so pages. Just know that it's edge of your seat creepy once it gets going. Wooo! Four stars.
No regrets: the best, worst, and most #$%* ing ridiculous tattoos ever
The tattoos are wonderfully hard to believe, and almost all new and proudly displayed. The funny comments beneath each photo, however, are not so funny. A book that would have been better as an online slideshow. Two stars.
The trouble with Tom: the strange afterlife and times of Thomas Paine, Collins
The story of both the path taken by Tom Paine's remains after his death (surprisingly mobile) and the influence of his ideas on subsequent generations of progressives and progressive movements in the US and UK. Meshed interestingly with the ideas and people in the Air Loom Gang. I hadn't known about the early progressive tending history of phrenology, or the many early writers on women's rights. Well written, entertaining, and informative. Four stars.
Far out: 101 strange tales from science's outer edge, Pilkington
Each tale was only 2-3 paragraphs, without enough juicy details, so I gave up.
Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations, Virga
I dipped in to the text only from time to time while enjoying the fantastic assortment of maps from the Library of Congress. Neat. Three stars.
Spanking Shakespeare, Wizner
Originally picked it up as a teen book, finished it as an adult book. Funny, but maybe not an award winner, as the book itself implies at the end. Three stars.
The entertainer and the dybbuk, Fleischman (Y)
Sid Fleischman is a great writer. This could have been a terrible book, but it ended up being pitch-perfect and never became treacly or reliant on old tropes. Premise: American making a living in Europe as a (bad) ventriloquist is possessed by the dybbuk of a kid killed in the Holocaust. And it's done well. Wow. (I realized later that the review sounds like "it could have sucked, but it didn't" but it isn't just that. I really enjoyed it.) Four stars.
Diamonds in the Shadow, Cooney (Y)
High Low (but not super low) thriller with blood diamonds. Two stars.
My swordhand is singing, Sedgwick (Y)
Atmospheric eastern European style vampire story. Three stars.
Gym Candy, Deuker (Y)
Didn't finish. Good for what it is (story about striving and football and parental expectation and resorting to steroids), but in the end (or 2/3 through) I can't really sell it. Someone else could, I'm sure.
Encyclopedia horrifica: the terrifying truth! about vampires, ghosts, monsters, and more, Gee (Y)
An excellent Fortean (though it doesn't call itself that) primer for the young and curious, with emphasis on the spooky and grisly. Four stars.
The Arrival, Tan (Y)
I can see why this got all kinds of awards and recognition. A wordless book, a man travels to a new land, some sort of mixture of 1930s New York and beautiful surrealness. I love how the strangeness makes it foreign to anyone. Four stars.
Cecil's take on the second amendment largely holds up, even after the recent Supreme Court ruling. I have long been in accord with his last sentence:
[W]e should concede that the Second Amendment means what it seems to mean and that if we want to control guns to the point of prohibition, amending the amendment is the honest thing to do.
It doesn't have the same tactile pleasure, but it also doesn't have the Legos embedded into your heel in the middle of the night. Infinite bricks! Free digital Lego buildie thing download.
One learns several things from this article on aid to Burma:
1. There is a charity called Telecoms Sans Frontieres. Neat! A sidebar lists their usual technical kit.
2. Burma continues to behave in a way that reasonable governments don't, especially being afraid of free communication.
Crow Lake, Lawson. No. The writing was perfectly adequate, but the structure of Lawson's debut novel killed it for me. More specifically, the relentless, detailed, brutal foreshadowing killed it for me. It reminded me of nothing so much as watching a “non-fiction” tv show: “coming up after the break, you'll meet three new contestants, one of whom wears a leg brace!” Probably because there are characters named Bo and Luke, I gave the foreshadower a Dukes of Hazzard drawl: “Now don't y'all think that there porkypine's goin' t' give our boys some trouble on down the road?” Lawson settled down toward the middle (having foreshadowed everything, she at least had the decency to tell the story), but then the story itself didn't merit the elaborate scaffolding she had put around it. If your point is that people are complicated, I need the trip to be substantially more rewarding. This trip is scenic, but ultimately unsatisfying, and the destination is well-trafficked.
The Club Dumas; Perez-Reverte, tr. Soto. Yes. Translated from Spanish, rather than my more usual French; I imagined sometimes I could tell the difference. Occasionally a bit overwrought, as though it can't decide whether to be hard-boiled or romantic, but overall lively and engaging.
Lavinia, Le Guin. Yes. Yet another story you should know told from a non-traditional point of view; this one has a slightly different texture that was a little too on-the-nose for me at the beginning, but I was not put off too much or too often.
Ithaka, Geras. Yes. If you're keen to learn about the classics without the bother of reading them add this one to your list. I didn't love it so much that I immediately put a hold on Troy, but I may give it a look one of these days.
The Intuitionist, Whitehead. No. I wanted very much to like this book, and I did finish it, but it was disappointing throughout. I'm sure my mood wasn't helped by the fact that apparently random words and passages were circled, underlined, or indicated with marginal notations. It most assuredly didn't help that Whitehead used “latter” when “last” was called for, and “capitol” for “capital”. Ultimately, though, the book's downfall was that it was patently speculative fiction (straight science fiction, really—dynamo-punk, perhaps) written by a non-sf writer. Who else would take an interesting speculation and not think about how many other things would change in a world where things had turned out that way?
Gargantua; Rabelais, tr. Brown. No. I have frequently run across references to the Rabelaisian sense of humor (well, usually “humour”, in the contexts where I'm running into it), to the point that I thought I should investigate beyond inferring that it's sesquipedalian for “fart jokes”. I may try again later with a different translation, but I got the distinct impression that this translator was too in love with his own voice to let me hear Rabelais's.
A Spot of Bother, Haddon. Yes. I didn't enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the Dog in the Night-time. Haddon very nearly overdoes the bother (I recall thinking at one point that if he didn't settle down, I was going to give up on it), and it's not clear to me he knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish, but it wasn't disqualifyingly painful. Sensitive souls may wish to skip to the end of the chapter upon encountering the scissors.
The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories: A Connie Willis Compendium, Willis. Yes. Publishers Weekly calls it brilliant. While a couple of the stories may reach brilliance, most are merely good, with a few very good and some pretty good. I wish the collection included the dates of the stories, so I could tell whether I think she's getting better or if I just enjoy some of her themes more than others.
D.A., Willis. Yes. This breezy novella (possibly even a novelette) is a loving hommage to the Heinlein juveniles. Since Willis captures all the charm of those works without the eye-poking, it was quite pleasant.
Always, Griffith. Yes. I found myself wanting to recommend this book to almost everyone I know, mostly because different aspects of the book reminded me of many people I know. The only aspect of the writing that I found a bit distracting was Griffith's ruthless verbal touring. It seems as though she gives the reader every turn as her heroine navigates the city. I may have noticed this more, since I'm relatively familiar with the city, so I may find another of her books with the same heroine set somewhere else, to find whether I experience the same level of distraction.
Gifts, Voices, and Powers; Le Guin. Yes. I read these out of order, starting with Powers because I didn't notice it was part of a series (one of the hazards of avoiding knowing anything about a book before reading it). The reading didn't suffer much from the different sequencing. These are sturdy young-adult works, exploring complex themes as Le Guin can.
I can find no indication whether there will be more Annals forthcoming.
Sub-headline: "Rare events likely to become commonplace, climate report says"
I was thinking about taking LAT Homicide off my favorites list (I haven't visited in a while) but I stopped by today and saw this gem:
Another South LA resident, who goes by the name of Cheese, said simply, "This is LA..."
In an article about something you don't care about is hidden this gem:
In fact, bars and taverns statewide have seen a greater increase in business than before the smoking ban's passage in 2005, according to a state Department of Revenue study released Tuesday. Watering holes saw 20 percent more revenue in 2007, compared with the 0.3 percent gain it saw in 2006, the first full year with the ban.
Rick took some of his teen advisory group members (STABbies) to Emerald City Comicon. He is a good man, he is a brave man, and willing to not only drive unrelated teens to Seattle but also to be a positive influence on some very thoughtful yet embarrassed young people.
As the photographer was organizing us for the shoot, he gave me some direction. In the midst of that direction he said something that didn’t quite register. He gave us more direction, and said something to me again that didn’t quite sink in. He said it to me a third time and then, with horrible realization, I realized what he had been saying. He was referring to me as “Dad” and he must have believed that I was the father of the STABies!“Whoa! “ I said, “I’m not their dad! I’m their librarian.”
“Whatever.” He responded, “Move a little to the left.”
Hey, remember when Travelocity had dream maps, and you could see how little it would cost you to travel to various glamorous and not-so-glamorous destinations? Now they have a partner site called lastminute that has a list rather than map format that woos you to various destinations. I checked where I could go without any area or date restrictions and found quite a few appealing destinations (though they all seemed to be for only a couple days at a time, unless I was misreading the information-- if I'm flying to London, I would like to stay for longer than a weekend.) .
From our friend FOIA, a list of the books, movies, and music at the International Space Station. The reading just reinforces that astronauts will always be astronautish, but I'm intrigued by the movies. Well, intrigued by season one of Sealab 2021. Seems a little too... on the nose.
FARK takes on the READ poster.
A guy crawled under the reference desk and was poking at the power outlets. I said "can I help you?" and he said he was just looking at the outlets. Then I realized he was probably with the firm that will be remodeling the building in the fall. But it was equally likely that he was a patron looking for somewhere to plug in his laptop. Or crazy.
Ran across Brand New when Googling for discussion of Google's new favicon. It might have to go into stuff we like.
A story from the Daily Mail tells of a couple who married, divorced, and unioned (with intervening sex change). What is not explained is why "They had to divorce after the switch" though they continued living together and being in love. Seems like common law would be fine with them staying married. But it's a human interest story rather than news, I guess, despite being in a "news" paper. Also unusual is that the subject looks quite nice as both genders.
Galia Melons are super-delicious! Top Foods is having some sort of melon special, featuring many types of melons I have never heard of (including Galia). I tried the Galia for breakfast, I am very impressed! I wish the side of fruit that comes with many restaurant meals had Galia instead of rock-hard cantaloupe and honeydew. Later, I try the Persian melon.
Spook Country, Gibson
The future has caught up with Gibson, so he's no longer writing SF, he's writing contemporary techno-thrillers. But, you know, GOOD ones. I liked seeing some elements from his SF life reappear in this new genre (Afro-Cuban religion, VR visors). Four stars.
Bad Monkeys, Ruff
This book defied my expectations about 3-4 times, in a good way. I was excited, interested, and creeped out. Read the first chapter and tell me you're not hooked. Four stars.
Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century, Jay
(not at the library, but you can borrow my copy if you are my pal) A very well done tour through the discovery of the effects of and changing attitudes to drugs in the UK and US, many of which were old, but newly introduced to those areas within living memory of that era. I would recommend knocking off after the chapter on cocaine, as the last two are less solid. Four stars.
The Devil You Know, Carey
Solid noir detective yarn set in a world filled with ghosts, were things, and the risen dead. Quite gripping! I'm glad I had a day of poor health to get through it. Three stars.
Zounds!: a browser's dictionary of interjections, Dunn
I browsed this for quite a while, but decided that I finally just needed to read it all the way through. It's a very fun book, and Dunn injects a lot of humor and personality into word selection, definition, and examples. Three stars.
The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs
It turns out that the Encyclopedia Britannica (The know-it-all: one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world) is more interesting than the Bible. Didn't finish.
Mutter Museum: Historic Medical Photographs, ed. Laura Lindgren
Alternately beautiful and horrifying images from the early days of the use of photography in medical education. The very early photos are taken at photographic studios, with the same props and many of the patients dressing nicely for the occasion. The doctors did what they could (many images are before and after), though not as much as they can now (be grateful for modern medicine). Also, people used to just let things go (or had to) more than they do now (or at least in my neighborhood). Four stars.