James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Phillips. Non-fiction. Julie Phillips has taken an enormous wealth of material (letters to and from Tiptree and Sheldon, Sheldon's journals, friends' and colleagues' reminiscences, and photographs) and used it to present an image of the pseudonymous author and his creator. It's a fairly heart-breaking image, and I can't help wondering what she might have been like born fifty—or even forty—years later, into a society with a somewhat better attitude toward gayfolk, and with access to serotonin reuptake inhibitors. We might have lost a great deal of excellent (though almost uniformly draining) fiction; but a lovely, talented woman might not have spent quite so much of her life miserable. As it was, between her mother's shadow, her frustration with the powerlessness of women, and the absence of a relationship that was emotionally and sexually satisfying to her, she doesn't seem to have enjoyed what was to outside appearances an extremely successful life.
Soon I Will Be Invincible, Grossman. Yes. I expect I'm not familiar enough with the field to have noticed everything Grossman did here, but it was clearly a labor of love, and I did catch a few things here and there. I saw the seams only a couple times, as Grossman really did a remarkable job of sustaining good writing with what is fundamentally a stunt premise.
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.
Through a set of coïncidences, I read three Hispaniola-connected works in rapid succession (the middle work overlapped, I think, both of the others). I chose Oscar Wao from a list of starred Publishers Weekly reviews. While I was reading it, the folks at my house watched Muppet Treasure Island, which caused me to wonder yet again how close it hews to the Stevenson story. This time, I wondered long enough to go check on Project Gutenberg, and it was (of course) there, so I started reading it online. About that same time, my hold on Pirate Freedom got to the top of the list, completing the weird Hispaniola trifecta. Given the common connection, I'm opting to combine the reviews in one entry.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz. Yes. Memory has faded somewhat, but I do recall enjoying the story, and the writing, greatly. Very character-driven, with many shout-outs to the nerd community. Much of the action takes place on Hispaniola.
Treasure Island, Stevenson. Yes. YA fiction used to be a great deal bloodier than it is now. According to Cecil, Stevenson became the standard for pirate depictions, and I have to believe that it's due to the strength and durability of his narrative. The Muppet version is admirably close, differing mostly for comic effect or brevity. The Hispaniola is, of course, the treasure ship.
Pirate Freedom, Wolfe. Yes. Reading Wolfe makes me wonder why I don't read more Wolfe. I expect it may be, as with Davies, that he's so good I have to pay a lot of attention. This was a much lighter work than his multi-volume epics, but nonetheless great for that. Not all that much of the action takes place on Hispaniola, but between the action there and the piracy, it clearly fits in this fortuitous group.
The Lyre of Orpheus, Davies. Yes. Davies is extremely good, and I suspect it's mostly because of the large amount of attention I have to pay that I haven't read much more. I read the Deptford Trilogy some time ago (before I started reviewing everything I read), and also enjoyed it despite Davies's habit of including extensive background information (Jungian psychology in Deptford, opera in Orpheus—KCLS refers to the former work as “didactic fiction”). I was surprised to see in the KCLS listing that Orpheus was a sequel. I'll likely have to get to What's Bred in the Bone one of these days.
Davies correctly uses “whoever”, bless him, which is only to be expected from Canada's prose laureate. He does not, however, seem to have an ear for American speech: “That'll do to be going on with” is not something I would expect to hear from a Californian grad student.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, LeGuin. Yes. There's not a whole lot more to say about LeGuin than “yes.” This collection includes some relatively early works, and it shows to the extent that there is less subtlety than in her later works. We're not talking Tepper-blatant, natch, but she was clearly refining her craft. Sometimes my attention span isn't sufficient to the task, but Ms LeGuin is always worthy of my effort.
Have Mercy on Us All, Vargas. Yes. This was an enjoyable, briskly moving read. The only item I found truly remarkable was the perfect use of the objective case:
Up and walked with my little boy (whom because of my wife's making him idle, I dare not leave at home) ... to excuse my not being at home at dinner to Mrs T; who I perceive is vexed because I do not serve her in something against the great feasting for her husband's reading in helping her to some good penn'orths, but I care not.Turns out it was not Vargas (or her translator), but Pepys who understood the language (though I don't think Vargas or her translator got it wrong anywhere, either). I haven't chosen to read any more Vargas, but I have nothing against the idea in principle.
Crooked Little Vein, Ellis. Yes. It's been a bit too long since I read this to remember what I liked and didn't like about it, but it was, overall, entertaining. I am given to understand that virtually all of the bizarre practices referred to in the book actually occur with some regularity.
The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt, Ray. Non-fiction. This was a book club recommendation, and it was extremely informative. Pathetic fallacy (the stone having a sense of humor, the stone having made up its mind to be deciphered by a Frenchman) distracts badly when it appears. Fortunately, it does not appear all that frequently. The work naturally goes into far more detail than the corresponding section of The Codebreakers, and gives a substantially different view of the early work of the two folks who were key in arriving at a translation.
There is a section in which the author offers some awfully tortured rationalizations why keeping artifacts away from their countries of origin is okay (“where would it end?” “who's to say where its home really is?” like that), and while I'm not passionate about returning the marbles or the stone to where they were fashioned, that's mostly because I'm likely to get to London before Athens or Egypt, and I can't pretend I have any justification for my selfish preference.
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, Kahn. Non-fiction. This is one of the standards of the field, and it touches on a surprising array of subjects, including the Rosetta Stone (which was, after all, a code-breaking challenge). Even if you're not of the class of geek that must read this, it does have plenty of goodness, but do mind the caveats after the jump.
While it is a must-read, it is also a bit of a slog in spots. I understand there was an abridged version issued some years ago, and I can empathize with the impulse, though I also understand that they excised the details of the codes and the methods for breaking them, which is not what slows this thing down. It is, rather, the org charts, to say nothing of the biographical details of virtually every person introduced that bring things to a crawl. If the details provided insight into why the people went into the field, or committed their treason, it would make sense; but it just seems like Kahn, in the spirit of Christopher Tolkien, doesn't want any scrap of material to go to waste.
When he's not boring the reader to tears, Kahn provides some brain grist; for instance:
The objective is self-preservation. This is the first law of life, as imperative for a body politic as for an individual organism. And if biological evolution demonstrates anything, it is that intelligence best secures that goal.I could not help contrasting this sentiment with the Bruce Sterling story that asserts (somewhat convincingly, to me) that intelligence is generally not a survival trait (and, really, check out the cockroach and the shark; brains of a thermostat, and they're surviving just fine).
A man can always sustain his convictions in the face of apparently hostile evidence if he is prepared to make the necessary ad hoc assumptions. But although any particular instance in which a cherished hypothesis appears to be refuted can always be explained away, there must still remain the possibility that that hypothesis will ultimately be abandoned. Otherwise it is not a genuine hypothesis. For a proposition whose validity we are resolved to maintain in the face of any experience is not a hypothesis at all, but a definition.That would be the difference between science and faith.
The decipherment of cunieform showed that what the West had regarded for centuries as God-given truths had come merely from the human minds of a pagan civilization and, by undermining the divine authority of the moral law, helped pave the way for the ethical and philosophical revolution of today.I think that's the inherent danger of requiring some sort of Divine enforcement as the heart of your morality: if the only reason you can think of to behave is that Santa is watching you all the time, once you get the idea that Santa might not know when you're awake, the behavior is liable to slip some. Despite the song's exhortation, being good for goodness's sake doesn't seem to be an option.
I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter. Non-fiction. I am (it turns out, several months later) not going to be able to say in this review everything that I want to. IAaSL is at a first approximation a deeper exploration of some of the recurring themes in Hofstadter’s work: most notably, consciousness (which he asserts is equivalent to a “soul”, and I don't see a lot of reason to differ on that point), how it arises, and what it means.
Hofstadter spends a lot of time in the book asserting that my model of you is an extension of your consciousness. For a number of reasons, I am unable to buy it: I'm fully prepared to accept that my consciousness is more or less an accident of the way my senses work, and, especially, how my sensory/processing system feeds back into itself. My model of me, though, is based on observations of my actions, not the same direct feedback that brought me to consciousness. Similarly, my model of you doesn't have any direct feedback relationship with your senses. Yes, you can tell me what you know about why you do things, but 1) no one has perfect knowledge of why one does things, and 2) your reports are delayed by time and filtered by both your senses and your model of you. My model of you is never going to surprise me with some insight into itself.
The time-sensitivity in feedback is, I think, a vital element that I'm not sure Hofstadter sufficiently respects. I'm fascinated by the study that showed our inability to tickle ourselves is very tightly time-limited (if you delay the result of my action enough (and it doesn't take much), I will find it more tickling than if you don't).
One thought that keeps coming up for me goes something like this: I am (i.e., my consciousness is) the total of my memories and my sensory input. So, who am I when I'm amnesiac? And variations on that theme. I find that a much more interesting rat hole to climb down than debating whether a loved one lives on (in anything more than a metaphorical sense) in the memories of others.
Thought-provoking, as Hofstadter always is, but not his best-directed effort.
an abundance of katherines, Green. Yes. Differently annoying from looking for alaska, particularly in having to wait most of the book to find out why presented-as-smart kids are misusing a perfectly fine word. Green (or his editor) is docked points for “anyone except whom he'd already been.” Also, the misuse of “theorem” and the misspelling “discreet particle.”
looking for alaska, Green. Yes. I'm made suspicious when a character in a book is presented as a smart kid but doesn't behave the way smart kids in my experience have behaved. Even if a person's particular talent seems very limited in scope, part of being smart is to be curious about the things one runs across, so it strikes me as unrealistic when someone who is presented as knowing a specific thing about a vast array of people is simultaneously presented as being completely ignorant of geography. People come from places, and many people have references to those places in their names. A smart kid will have wondered “where is that?” The only conclusion I can reach, having finished the book after writing the rest of this paragraph, is that the character in question is not intended to be a smart kid. That and a couple other bits make me suspect that the author was not a smart kid, but it is at best perilous to infer much about the author from his work.
That nagging bit aside, the book did not make me wish I hadn't read it. It's very much a YA novel, with Consequences and Lessons, and Green does a reasonable job of it.
Spook Country, Gibson. Yes. It's a little disappointing that Gibson has gone from being the prophet of cyberspace to being Tom Clancy, but his writing is still enjoyable enough. He has the mechanical good grace to use “whoever” when it's called for (and when people who don't understand the rules of the language would use “whomever”), and if his plots are adolescent fantasies (and therefore a bit masturbatory), the books themselves at least lack the technoporn quality of the actual Clancy.
Innocents Aboard, Wolfe. Yes. It's Gene Wolfe, which is enough reason to read it. As with all collections of stories I've ever read, the quality is variable, but it's all Wolfe. The best writer I personally know once said something like “Gene Wolfe scares me.” What I would mean if I were to say that is that much of the time, I'm sure he's doing things that I'm not even aware of. Fortunately, comprehension is not a prerequisite for appreciation.
The Companions and The Margarets, Tepper. Yes. I read these two books in rapid succession, the first Tepper I had read in a long time, and there's a reassuring consistency to her preaching. Since I am largely the choir, it doesn't grate as much as it might, and her writing is solid enough. I was interested to note that her craft is not entirely without seam, though the primary reason I first noted the most memorable seam was that she hung a lamp on it (and a somewhat humorous lamp, at that; due credit), and exposition is always tricky. I have opted to combine the reviews, because I have trouble keeping the books separate in my head. I was thinking maybe I'd say something like, “If you only want to read one, then choose—” but, really, I expect if you enjoy Tepper, you'll enjoy both. If you don't, you won't enjoy either.
The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation; v.1, The Pox Party, Anderson. No. While the writing is not painful, it never really raises itself to the level of true goodness. The most interesting aspects of the book are historical, and, as the author points out in an afterword, you should read history if you're interested in the history.
The Rules for Hearts: a Family Drama, Ryan. Yes. While this book did not irritate me in any of the myriad ways possible, I did not find it especially moving. Maybe “family drama” is less moving than first love, maybe a whole bunch of things. The writing is solid; the story did nothing for me.
You Suck, Moore. No. I didn’t hate this so much that I stopped reading it, but I would have if I had had anything else to read. The dedication reads “For my readers, by request,” which may be why the whole thing feels rushed or forced or otherwise off-putting. Here's a passage that struck me as particularly egregious on first reading, though it doesn’t grate so badly now (maybe I've just been beaten into submission):
She was enjoying teaching Tommy about the particulars of vampirism, just as she enjoyed teaching him how to do grown-up human things like how to get the power and phone turned on in the loft—it made her feel sophisticated and in charge, and after a series of boyfriends for whom she had been little more than an accoutrement, whose lifestyles she had affected, from heavy-metal anarchists to financial-district yuppies, she liked being the pacesetter for a change.Really? There was no better way to get that information to the reader than just laying it out there all at once? And do we really care? I suspect that it’s tempting to indulge in this sort of acceleration in a sequel, where you might want to bring the new readers up to speed without boring the readers who remember the character from the previous work, but I remain unconvinced that it’s a good idea: first, it’s easier to care care about the character’s motivations if we have to tease them out of the narrative than when they’re vomited in our laps; second, if the character already has that level of self-knowledge at page 30, how much development can we expect? The story was mostly harmless, though there was a weird bit of gratuitous backstory ex machina, and I found the playing of non-consensual sex for laughs to be rather distasteful.
Lord of Light, Zelazny. Yes. Upon re-reading, I do believe the protagonist in this work is qualitatively different from those I mentioned before, if not so much in himself (and I do believe there are substantial differences in the character, but my argument doesn't have to rest there) as in having peers, rather than just rivals and perhaps a mentor (and I'm simplifying, but I think not over-). There was some homophobia and misogyny, though an argument could be made that they were posturing by the character to evoke a response. I don't think Zelazny wrote many gay characters, sympathetic or otherwise. Smokers, yes, even if they have to roll their own cigarettes. I imagine he quit about the time his protagonists did, but it doesn't seem to have been soon enough for him.
Probably not the most reliable introduction to the Hindu or Buddhist religions.
The Brief History of the Dead, Brockmeier. No. The only thing I found wrong with this book was that it failed to fulfill its promise, and its promise was so great that failure is a disqualifying defect. The first chapter was lovely (Nebula-nominated, O. Henry anthology-appearing), and the writing was lovely throughout (if a bit masturbatory in spots), but ultimately, however lovely it was, it took what should have been a big idea and did nothing with it.
The Killing of Worlds, Westerfeld. Yes. The conclusion of The Risen Empire, it's largely indistinguishable in quality from the prior work. The overall work is somewhat disappointing in plot-related ways. Not Books of Lost Swords disappointing, but it perhaps underscores the difficulty of constructing a plot that justifies the sweep of space opera.
The Risen Empire, Westerfeld. Yes. Better story than writing, in the space opera tradition. Very sloppy editing and/or proofing, almost certainly due to Tor (fine spelling bee word, so-so publisher of sometimes-excellent work). Separate from that, a number of technical details are again mis-stated (sorry, I did not keep careful track this time), which I find troubling insofar as I find it difficult to reconcile that sort of ignorance or carelessness with good writing. And yet I have almost nothing bad to say about the writing.
Midnighters, Vol. 3: Blue Noon, Westerfeld. Yes. A fitting conclusion to the Midnighters series, very exciting in spots. If you've read it, we can compare notes on whether you, too, were reminded of a thing at a spot in the book.
The Complete Stories, O'Connor. Yes. This took me quite a while to get through. The writing was just good enough to keep me going despite my inability to enjoy the stories themselves very much. On reflection, though, perhaps I should have enjoyed them more, as they were very Seinfeld-like: Awful things happened to awful and non-awful alike, and there was no hugging and certainly no learning.
Midnighters, Vol. 2: Touching Darkness, Westerfeld. Yes. Given the amount of research that Westerfeld apparently did for Peeps, I'm disappointed that he didn't bother to check what the GPS constellation looks like. It's not entirely clear he knows what the mailbox flag means, either, though maybe the character merely phrased something oddly. There's mention made of the Scrabble® dictionary, but what he describes sounds more like the wordlist, except that he would have to be talking about the long word list, and he gets that wrong, too. Also, fingerprints, anybody? And finally, there's an issue that I'm not willing to go back and look at The Secret Hour to verify, but it's a fairly serious flaw, or cheat, whichever way he handled it (or didn't) in that book. He hangs a bit of a lantern on it in this volume, which doesn't soothe my somewhat ripped-off feelings much. Withal, though, the book kept me turning pages. I like what he's done with the world and the characters, and only wish he had bothered to deal better with a few things.
Update: per his words elsewhere, he got the mailbox flag wrong (“finds bill for [name]”).
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, Brooks. Non-fiction. Again, billed as humor. I mean, sure, it's ironic and po-mo and all, but I still didn't find it a laugher. I was interested that it creeped me out in a way no fiction has in a long time. I think this was mostly because so much of the survival advice is applicable to a wide variety of unpleasant-to-contemplate situations. I wonder if broader exposure to the zombie and survival genres would have enhanced my enjoyment. Brooks seems like a pretty nice guy in his Suicide Girls interview. I'm somewhat relieved to see this exchange in his World War Z interview:
[SG]: Survival Guide wasn’t exactly humorous and World War Z is definitely not that humorous.But maybe they're being ironic.
Max: Anyone who thinks this World War Z is funny has severe emotional problems.
Midnighters Vol. 1: The Secret Hour, Westerfeld. Yes. Written for a younger audience than Peeps and The Last Days, but I found it no less compelling. I was disappointed in the mathematical error made by the master trigonometrician, and I imagine I should be troubled by the implication that there's something magical about Greenwich, if only on principle, but these defects did not diminish my pleasure in any serious way.
The Campfire Collection: Thrilling, Chilling Tales of Alien Encounters, ed. Hyams. Yes. The final section disappoints (other than the Tiptree story, of course, which I optimistically fancy to be dated), but the rest of the stories are solid—in many cases classic—SF. I do need to check the credits to They Live, or Google for lawsuits.
Update: The acknowledgment is right there in They Live's credits.
Dzur, Brust. Yes. Brust uses a couple devices in this installment near the limits of what they'll tolerate, aggravated by my belief that the parallel construction (device one) seems to exist only to help justify the weak tie of the action to the title (device two). That (minor, really) distraction aside, this is a Vlad Taltos novel, in more of the classic mold than we've seen in several books. As cranky as I've become of late, I still enjoy Brust's writing.
I remembered his ties to the so-called "Pre-Joycean Fellowship" and dug around to find out what that's about (when I last considered the question, rec.arts.sf (pre-split) was my sole source of info; things have changed somewhat). Finding this old post of Brust's has yet again brought home the realization that I'm not looking for straight-forward storytelling so much as I am looking for writing in service of the story and the characters. If your story needs trickery (and you're good enough to pull it off), you must get tricky. Zelazny is, after all, a hero of mine, too.
Ask the Dust, Fante. Yes. Another Dan Bern suggestion, and another well-written work. I deferred the Charles Bukowski introduction until I had finished the book, as so many introductions say too much about what follows. If an author wants to spill what's going on in an introduction to his own work, that's one thing, but nobody else ought to presume. Turns out Bukowski did a very good job of talking about why he loved Fante without saying anything damagingly revealing about the book itself. Both Fante and Ring Lardner write very well about—well, people—and that so frequently means that there's an undertone (or sometimes fundamental tone) of despair that reminds me why I can't read too much Theodore Sturgeon at a time. It also means, sometimes, that my attention span isn't long enough, so I every so often long for something to happen, already. I will pretend this is the same thing a colleague of mine means when he says he prefers books with a "big idea". Y'know, like Zombies.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Brooks. Yes. The various editing (and, I hope, proofing) problems (some typos, two unrelated occurrences of "a millenia", on ne passé pas for on ne passe pas (again, at least twice)) and occasional lapses into preaching were not enough to discourage me from deeply enjoying this book. I was surprised that Brooks (the son of Mel) was not more hampered by the structure he chose in weaving a coherent and compelling narrative. Some of the jargon struck me as unlikely, but predicting slang is fraught with peril.
I was perplexed to find that the Cataloging-in-Publishing puts the book in "War—Humor": the absurdity of its premise notwithstanding, WWZ is straight drama. Not to say there is no humor—I daresay humor is a vital component of any drama—but the book is not, and does not want to be, a laff riot.
The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner, Lardner. Yes. On Dan Bern's recommendation, I gave Mr Lardner a try. His frequent use of heavy dialect (I think it was one of his trademarks) was occasionally distracting and sometimes historically revealing (several not-especially-literate speakers said "w'ile", implying that at least some folks in the early 20th century distinguished between "w" and "wh"). The stories overall were well-written, and by and large held my interest.
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Hofstadter. Non-fiction.
Hofstadter, of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame, here collects his Scientific American columns, along with other writings. He explores the nature of intelligence, the meaning of "I" (the pronoun), what it means to recognize "i" (the letter), and generally the nature of cognition. He is (or was, as of 1985, when this was published) an unrepentant believer in strong AI, and is sometimes harshly critical of the direction of AI research. I share many of his objections to the AI establishment that gave us "Expert Systems" (really "novice systems"), and am happy to have such a cogent voice articulating what is right and wrong with how we think about thinking.
A recurring theme in the work is the madness represented by the nuclear arms race, and I can't help but wonder whether he continues to see nuclear conflict as the most pressing danger that we're ignoring, or if (as I'd like to imagine) he's more troubled by the attack on our civil rights that began in earnest just over five years ago.
I first started this book when it was new, and it took me a good few months to get through it this time (though it was not my bus reading), but I'm glad to have taken the time.
A digression on "novice systems": I attended a talk given by Hubert Dreyfus sometime probably in 1985 or 1986. He was billed as an AI critic, but he primarily criticized the same dead-end (if your goal is to create a thinking machine) research avenues that Hofstadter criticizes in MT, implying they were the best that AI researchers had to offer. Dreyfus didn't address in his talk the approach advocated by Hofstadter (I will summarize this as saying that you don't necessarily need to model every synapse, but you do need to allow/force the cognitive functions to emerge from lower-level, largely deterministic (Hofstadter says non-deterministic, but I don't know whether we disagree or are talking about different things or different aspects of the same thing), interactions that you do model—Dreyfus seems to believe that you would also need your machine to have a body and culture like ours, but I don't buy that), but I was interested to find myself agreeing so frequently with someone whose fundamental premise was diametrically opposed to my own, at least nominally. One point Dreyfus made that I found particularly compelling was that expert systems (really just rule-based decision engines, however elaborate) have more in common with the way novices perform tasks than the way experts perform them. Experts don't consult a set of rules to determine what to do next: they have completely incorporated any rules that they started with, and have expanded them with the experience they gained as they were becoming experts. Even when an expert gives you a rule for why she did something, it is almost always derived a posteriori, rather than truly representing the decision factor. Hence "novice systems".
The Last Days, Westerfeld. Yes. This is nominally a sequel to Peeps, but I found it interesting to imagine reading it without having read Peeps. Each gives what could be premature insight into the events of the other, though, so perhaps the ideal situation would be to read each with no memory of the other.
Fragile Things, Gaiman. Yes. Not all of the stories collected here are gems, but most of them are very good, and only one or two write checks that the effort Gaiman put into them does not cover.
The Book Thief, Zusak. No. I didn't hate I Am the Messenger, but I hated this. I gave up after the first chapter or so, and the chapters were very brief. It made me long for Mandy Patinkin. I think the lesson here may be that if you have a stunt premise, you need to go easy on the stunt writing style. Of course, easy on the stunt writing style is almost always the way to go, irrespective of your premise.
The Historian, Kostova. Yes. I found very little to dislike about this book. I hear that lots of folks disliked it, and my librarian speculates that there may have been a reflexive "I don't like genre fiction" effect. It's enough to make me sympathize with Harlan Ellison's quest to get his works out of the SF ghetto. Whatever aspects others may have disliked, my complaints are minor: there are multiple narrative time lines, some presented in epistolary form, and others related differently, but there is so comparatively little action on what one might think of as the main narrative line that I couldn't help wondering whether some other structure might have been less jarring (and, yes, there are fine reasons for going with the epistolary tradition, and I surely can't advocate the book being any longer, so maybe it was the best way to go). I was also distracted by "a historian" vs "an historian". I'm quite sure Kostova was consistent as to which characters said which, but I think she may have just made the Americans say "a" and the non-Americans "an". Given how long ago some of the action takes place, I would have expected even the Americans of the time to use "an". There's also at least one section where Kostova renders dialect via non-standard spellings of words, and that pulled my head right out of the book every time. Complaints notwithstanding, I think Kostova did an admirable job with the material.
Flights, ed. Sarrantonio. No. It's perhaps not entirely fair to dismiss the entire collection, but the first half convinced me that I would be better off skipping the second half. I had a bad feeling about the collection from the word "Extreme" in the subtitle, and this feeling was reinforced by the presence of a story written by the editor (I didn't make it to Sarrantonio's story, but his introductions did not inspire me to persevere). The "Extreme Visions" in the subtitle invites comparison with Dangerous Visions, a nearly 40-year-old collection. Flights is not worthy of the invitation.
The Demolished Man, Bester. Yes (classic). I was disappointed with some aspects of the work as a whole, but the writing was just fine. I do enjoy reading The Future As Imagined in the Fifties, and this was as charming in its presentation as any.
U.S.!, Bachelder. Yes. It's possible I'm not bright or attentive enough to have caught everything Mr Bachelder was doing in this meta-polemic, but there was enough on the surface to entertain me and keep me reading, and anything additional he was doing did not distract me.
Isle of the Dead, Zelazny. Yes. I've been afraid lately to re-read some of the favorites of my youth, fearing my increasing crankiness will render them unreadable. Isle of the Dead is one of the most idiosyncratic works Zelazny published, but I don't hate it. It was written in 1969, and it shows its age, but the man was a great writer, and his penchant for writing works such as this one, This Immortal, and He Who Shapes does not obscure his gift. Now I'm wondering why I don't want to put Lord of Light in the same category. Maybe I'll read it again and find out.
The Books of Lost Swords, Saberhagen. No. Prompted by recent reading, I re-read all eight of the Lost Swords books. I get the feeling Fred gave up about mid-way through (probably around the Sherlock Holmes hommage), and by the last couple wanted to kill the series so badly that he ignored the previous rules by which the Swords had operated. My disappointment with the tying up of loose ends in this series was similar to my disappointment with Ardneh's Sword, though this one didn't so much end up contradicting existing canon (Sword rules notwithstanding) as leaving me thinking "Really? That's the best you can do with an abiding enigma?" Quite unsatisfying.
Self-Made Man, Vincent. No. This was a book-club obligation, a book I would not likely have read voluntarily (and I ended up reading only one of the sections). Between the author's assumptions, generalizations, and overall unwillingness to maintain a coherent position, the only conclusion I can reach is that people are complicated and don't communicate very well.
I Am the Messenger, Zusak. Yes. I have a couple issues with the book. First, it assumes (or perhaps implies) a characteristic of human nature that I am firmly convinced does not exist; second, the writer does a thing that I ordinarily disapprove of. He executes it competently, but it is not necessary to the story and I believe it does a disservice to the characters. Your assignment: compare and contrast IAtM and Zero Effect.
Walking in Circles before Lying Down, Markoe. Yes. I laughed more reading this book than I have laughed at a book in a long, long time. Ms Markoe is a gifted humorist.
Visionary in Residence, Sterling. No. This was quite a struggle for me to finish. I usually enjoy Sterling's work, and I did enjoy the final two stories in this collection, but the rest, by and large, made me think that he was taking the title of the collection (which is also, I believe, his job title where he's a visiting professor of design or some such) far too seriously. I really don't care how smart you are, or how smart you think I am, just use the right words in the right order. Almost no one is good enough to show off and get it right.
The Psycho Ex Game, Markoe and Prieboy. Yes. Not flawless, but enjoyable. It was impossible for me not to speculate on which stories had been pulled completely from experience, and which had been given writers' embellishments (or just plain invented). Further fueling that impulse is the fact that Recipe Cards have been posted by (or at least on behalf of) the authors. Also available: the song that started it all. I've been a fan of Ms Markoe's work for more than twenty years, and while I don't think this is the best book she's been involved with creating, it does have a unique voyeuristic appeal.
(I'm getting "bandwidth exceeded" errors from the links to the book's website; I'm hoping they'll get more bandwidth at the beginning of the month (i.e., tomorrow))
the accidental, Smith. Yes. This is Ali Smith, not Zadie Smith of On Beauty, though this book, too, performed well (this one took first place) in the Tournament of Books. There is much I might have disliked about this book: the narrative style is flashy, there are not-infrequent somewhat extended passages where a narrative voice becomes fascinated with words, the structure does not lend itself to inattentive reading, those sorts of things. But the only features of the novel that bothered me were the typesetting (I never before realized how much easier to read a fully justified line of text is than ragged-right) and the title (for reasons I can't possibly discover, I could not think of the title without starting to compose a song to the tune of "The Carioca" ("oh, have you read the accidental? It's really very continental..." or "It's only somewhat sentimental..."); ugh).
Update: To clarify somewhat, I'm a big fan of flashy narrative and am frequently myself fascinated with words to the point of distraction, but it's been so long since I've read an author who could do those things in service of the story and the characters, rather than as an intrusive plea for attention, that I've taken to looking for simplicity. I suspect it may be easier for attention-seeking works to get published, so I have a notion that a simply written work that made it to my library shelves is more likely to be well crafted. Ali Smith's verbal and structural games proved to be a delightful surprise.
On Beauty, Smith. No. I chose this due to its performance in the Tournament of Books. I started to hate it with the first sentence, but forced myself to give it more of a look. It finally defeated me ten pages in with its power of making me not give a rat's ass about any of the characters. Oddly (since the author is from London), I found the idiomatic English overdone, as though she is writing for an American audience of hyper-Anglophiles. Even the American character speaks like a Brit—"How am I meant to react?"—though this is not consistent, as she later says "ass", which her husband re-figures to "arse". All in all, very distracting.
The First, Second, and Third Books of Swords, Saberhagen. If you like that sort of thing. I re-read these to see whether I missed anything cool in Ardneh's Sword. The refresher did clear up the otherwise-inexplicable pointless character from AS, but, if anything, made the latter work even more of a disappointment in retrospect. There's not even the slightest hint, in the fairly explicit exegesis presented in the Swords books, of the direction Saberhagen would, twenty-odd years on, decide to retrofit into the saga. I can construct a somewhat tortuous chain of reasoning by which the two ontogenies are not outright incompatible, but the author should be shooting for a very satisfying click as all the pieces fit together, not "Well, if you interpret what Draffut said this way, I suppose it still makes sense...."
On their own, the three original Swords books are just fine, as is the Empire of the East before them. I don't have any immediate intent to re-read the eight Lost Swords books.
Ardneh's Sword, Saberhagen. If you've read Empire of the East and the Books of Swords. This was just about exactly what you'd expect it to be. Saberhagen, bless him, does not misuse "whomever". I was left wanting something more substantial; I'm re-reading at least the first three Books of Swords now, to see whether there was more to Ardneh's Sword than I saw.
Update: here's what I found.
My co-blogger recently suggested I start keeping a reading list, in case anyone else in this nutty world has tastes similar to mine and could benefit from my trials. I shudder to imagine, but love the sound of my own voice, so here goes:
Peace Like a River, Enger. Yes. Since it was recommended by the same person who recommended Piano Tuner (see below), I was not optimistic, but was pleasantly surprised to enjoy this book a great deal. The fact that Enger mis-uses "whomever" is a bothersome but not disqualifying defect (I blame the editor, anyway).
The Piano Tuner, Mason. No. I made it fifteen pages into this. I would have stopped after the first sentence had it not come highly recommended. Mason seems to be working so very hard to weave a rich tapestry of words, when he needs to just tell the story already. Almost everything about the writing annoyed me, from the "As you know" exposition to the exhausting and distracting "that's enough plot for now; let's count the buttons on this guy's coat" fits of description.
Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein. Yes, with reservations (classic). I re-read this after telling a co-worker that he couldn't consider himself literate without having read it. I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through, but the writing was mechanically just fine, and the reactionary politics and sexism struck me as more naïve than offensive.
Altered Carbon, Morgan. Yes, with reservations. My two-word review of this is "Cyberpunk Heinlein". Recommended by a co-worker who recoginzed that the writing would annoy me in spots (it did, especially the Heinleinian sexism), but believed the balance would be positive. I didn't hate it, so I guess he was right. I don't seem to be reading any more of the Takeshi Kovacs novels, though.