Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Review: The Plot

Saturday, July 1st, 2023

A friend recommended this mystery to me out of admiration for its premise and execution. I’m the sort of person who rarely reads a mystery for the mystery, but I gave it a look.

Overall, I did like it, but more because I enjoyed watching the clockwork run than that I was swept away. That said, I don’t think I was the intended audience. It’s very much a book about best selling writers. I recognize names on the shelves at the airport, but I don’t follow that world. As a result, I think some of the Easter eggs that were designed to distract readers for whom that’s their bread and butter went by me.

I guess I also don’t buy the McGuffin of the book, either. It’s kind of a riff on Deathtrap. A plot so good that it’s a guaranteed best-seller. Is I mentioned, plot isn’t always what draws me to a book, so the idea that there was one that great didn’t resonate with me. That said, McGuffins are McGuffins for a reason: to get the plot moving. And it does that.

I don’t want to undersell the quality of the plot or the writing. It is a solid mystery, with twists and turns and blind alleys. The writing makes it all whir and chime pleasantly. And I admire that Korelitz doesn’t chicken out at the end and go for the Hollywood ending. It all makes for a fun read.

Review: High Weirdness

Saturday, June 24th, 2023

I heard the author, Erik Davis, interviewed on Desert Oracle Radio and realized I’d want to read this if I ever saw a copy. The Los Angeles Public Library eventually acquired an electronic copy, and away we go.

Now the question becomes, “does anyone else need to read this?” That’s seems like a thornier proposition. High Weirdness is a scholarly look at some of the writings and experiences of the McKenna brothers, Robert Anton Wilson, and Phillip K. Dick. Davis is approaching these from a position somewhere between curious skeptic, literary critic, and biographer. To me it looks like he’s trying to explore the way these outsiders expressed themselves in the middle of turbulent lives. There’s a lot of mysticism, black humor, and recreational chemistry involved that leads the subjects of Weirdness to produce the kind of off kilter writing that seems to hint at a universe run by divinities with unknowable senses of humor. I’m consistently amazed by the sorts of belief systems people use to navigate the world and enjoy thinking too hard about trivialities, so I quite enjoyed this.

But back to the question of anyone else enjoying it. If you’d plow through a well-footnoted tome and get a chuckle out of discovering that the author cited work that seems to constrain the founding of Discordianism to one of two bowling alleys in Whittier, I’d have a look at this. That’s a small set of people.

Review: Interior States

Saturday, June 24th, 2023

I generally enjoy this sort of collection of short contemporary essays. They can give you a snapshot of a time and a writer. The writer of these, Meghan O’Gieblyn, tries to give a sense of place as well, but I feel like she’s hampered by these being published in mostly larger East Coast publications.

When she is taking her readers to a place, it’s generally the upper midwest, a place I have some experience with and affection for. I liked her views of the places and found her perspective as a person returning to them interesting.

Other essays are primarily about issues of the day. She wisely selected essays about the kinds of issues where the details change but the themes are constant across times. She approached these with a good mix of heart and head that I generally liked. I lead toward the head myself, but some of these felt a bit removed.

Her writing is always clear and often evocative, but I was never knocked back in my chair. Again, a reasonable tone for essays about Internal States.

Review: Holy Fire

Sunday, April 16th, 2023

I’m charmed by the idea of a reader coming to Holy Fire and experiencing the reverse of my encounter with Portrait of a Thief. You could imagine coming on Holy Fire expecting a SF actioner and being surprised to have hit a more literary meditation on art and immortality.

That’s too tight a box to fit the work into, though. Bruce Sterling has a way of shifting tone easily. He’s also never only looking at the surface of an idea, even when he’s cracking wise. He’s got “ha-ha only serious” down to an art form.

Holy Fire‘s plot centers on an old woman in a near-future world where life extension has become a societal priority and success. For some. Our protagonist has a couple moments that shake her perception of her place in the world and throws herself onto a new path.

Her old path was that of a conventional professional who has played by the rules and is having a long life. Her new path is a young person trying to find her place in the world. How that’s possible does the job of getting the reader into the world Sterling’s built.

That world is plausible enough that I bought it, but I suspect there are places where hard SF folks will question the math. I kept my eye on the characters and quite enjoyed how they lit up themes. I suspect this is a book that folks at least in their 40s will directly resonate with, but who can tell? I can only see from where I am.

There were twists and turns, interesting characters, intrigue and thoughts on immortality in here. And I quite like Sterling’s prose as a rule.

Strongly Recommended.

Review: California Crackup

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

This is kind of a bad book review; I get wrapped around the axle of the authors’ political suggestions, so don’t expect a lot of writing discussion.

I forget how this came to my attention, but I know I was looking for a history of how California’s ballot propositions evolved. I should have paid more attention to Matthews’s and Paul’s subtitle: “How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It.” I saw it, but somehow was hoping I could focus on the history and keep an open mind for the fix. I didn’t do a very good job.

I did learn some history and some detail of how the current state of California state government. There are clear details and valid criticisms in the “How Reform Broke the Golden State” part. I did come back knowing more, but I still could use some more context.

The fix isn’t anything special to me. Even to a non-expert it seems kind of academically reasonable. Modify the voting system to produce a more balanced unicameral legislature that focuses on governing. And I grok the game theoretical benefits of the voting scheme that Matthews and Paul like. It’s a sound scheme and I understand it’s in use.

My skepticism comes from two fronts. First, any systemic solution is just a new set of rules to be gamed. It will work until someone does the work to exploit its attack surface. Secondly, a wholesale change like a new voting system seems like a non-starter to me. You’ve got to convince the folks who have secured power under the old system that they can do better under the new one. Since the selling point is to change that balance, it’s a tough sell. We can’t even seem agree on how to redistrict.

I would like to see a bunch more voting districts. It stuns me that the most populous county in the nation has 5 legislators. To me, the possibility that we’ve elected 5 people who can each balance the concerns of nearly 2 million constituents apiece is ludicrous on its face. So I’m even sympathetic to the idea. But if you’re one of the 5 people controlling 30 billion dollars, it’s tough to imagine letting go. Imaging a whole house of the state legislature going quietly into that good night is similarly unconvincing.

As a book, it’s a good description of what they think. I just disagree.

Review: Portrait of a Thief

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

Grace Li fooled me. Looking at the book jacket and hearing the basic plot, I thought this was a literary debut novel about young first generation children of immigrants. That’s what it’s about, but it’s a heist story. And a pretty good one.

When I say it’s not literary, I mean that the characters are less deep than I imagine when I hear that description. Even that’s a not quite right. It’s not Melville literature that needs to be rediscovered years later. It’s Dumas or Dickens literature where people line up for the next installment.

There’s meat in here, but if the choice is between flashy writing, psychological development, or commentary and a zippy thriller, Li picks the second.

Once I got on board, I warmed to the novel pretty well. I can pick nits with the best of them and this isn’t immune. But in the end it was a fun heist movie with a lot of blockbuster vibes that features a lot of engaging protagonists. They represent a lot of folks who don’t get a lot of attention in blockbusters and they’re front and center here.

It’s a fun read.

Strongly Recommended.

Review: The Indomitable Florence Finch

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

This is a pretty straightforward history of war from a ground level. Specifically it is mostly a history of Florence Finch’s extraordinary efforts to support American POWs when the Philippines were overrun in World War II. Robert Mrazak does a great job bringing in other people’s histories and general context that makes the scope very clear.

War is always terrible for people caught up in it and the events in the Philippines that Mrazak centers on bring that into focus. Americans know that the loss of Pearl Harbor basically destroyed the US Pacific Fleet. This book turns that academic statement into real events and effects. And they’re horrible events.

The US presence in the Philippines lost any support it had. The Philippines were basically a US colony at the time and the loss of the fleet meant that there was no way to supply the islands externally. The Philippines have resources of their own, of course, but they didn’t include things like arms production or reinforcements. Removing the access those was Japan’s point and they took control of the islands.

Again, that sounds very academic. Mrazak brings that all to life. The fears of the people – military and civilian – in the line of fire. Personal losses as the fighting commences. The loss of control as well: soldiers fought bravely, but their backs were to the wall. They couldn’t get out of harm’s way if they wanted to. Occupation includes both general privations and the horrors of POW camps. The risks that Florence runs to help fellow civilians and soldiers are remarkable here.

As the tide turns, the conditions for all concerned get worse and Mrazak doesn’t look away. It can be a harrowing read, but it illuminates the horror of war and the valor of people in the middle of it.

It’s well researched, but I didn’t find the writing extraordinary. Actually, though, in the best parts, the spare prose gets out of the way and lets the peoples’ stories speak.

Recommended.

Review: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

Sunday, October 30th, 2022

I’m a big Hunter Thompson fan from long before I was putting these posts up on the Internet. I somehow never got around to reading Campaign Trail 72 though I’ve certainly seen excerpts in various collections. I caught up on it recently and it reminds me that people – especially powerful ones – don’t change much. You can pick nearly any political trope that pundits are currently wringing their hands about now and see it in Campaign Trail.

I get the impression that many folks think of Thompson as strictly a hedonist and maybe a nihilist. I think he’s both those things, I think he’s also got a core of hope that people will use the influence they have to make a better world. Any of his writing on The Sixties characterizes much of it as a tragically missed opportunity. Even that’s a bit simplistic – and I think his later writings show he knows that – but I do think he never lost that bit of hope. I see the nihilism and misplaced hope both in Campaign Trail.

That may be projection on my part, of course. Thompson makes that kind of thing easy in his gonzo style. There are incidents and facts in here that are easily confirmed. There are incidents in here that are clearly fabricated. But most of what he writes can’t be confirmed, but is or isn’t plausible depending on your own beliefs. It’s a powerful reminder about how subjective all political writing and punditry is.

It is Hunter at the peak of his powers, so the best of the prose crackles with insanity that feels like prophesy. Worth dipping into just for the style of it all.

Recommended.

Review: I Fight for a Living

Sunday, September 25th, 2022

If you have an interest in the intersection of sports and civil rights, Louis Moore is a great follow on twitter. He has deeply researched the topic, continues to do so, and communicates what he finds very well. I Fight for a Living is his research about black boxers in America in the late 1880s. If you want to know about the roots of segregation, bombast, and personal branding in American sport, this is a good place to start.

Moore has a pro-equality point of view, and he does not shy from racial interpretations of this history. But the historical record doesn’t make that hard. Sports talk wasn’t shy about throwing racial cards on the table, and neither were the fighters and promoters themselves. If you think sports has been free of racial controversy and protest, this is a fine demonstration that we’ve been arguing about it since around the time the phone was invented (no correlation implied).

Recommended.

Review: Cat’s Eye

Saturday, September 24th, 2022

I love Margaret Atwood, partially because I read this book twenty years ago for the most Internet of reasons. My roommate had a bunch of quotes from it rotating in his .sig file and they were all great. I asked about it and he said it was good. So I read it. I re-read it recently.

I’ve never read a bad Atwood book, but in may ways this is still my favorite. I get the impression that most people think of her as the writer of A Handmaid’s Tale and think of her as exclusively writing books with a feminist message. I think she’s certainly written works that suit that to a tee and that she’s always writing from a woman’s perspective. Where I think A Handmaid’s Tale is focused on sounding an alarm, I think Cat’s Eye captures some of a life and the bruises one accumulates living it with compassion. No call to action, except perhaps a little understanding.

My roommate told me that after reading Cat’s Eye he thought anyone could tell her the story of their childhood and she’d understand. That’s probably the best review I’ve ever heard of it.

She’s writing about are from growing up female in rural Canada in the 50’s, but I always related with it. I understood this childhood, though I lived a different one. There are details that people of that time probably find familiar, but that I never found off-putting. One determined to find a feminist message in here won’t have any trouble, but I think a reasonable reading sees much more. No one here is exclusively a symbol.

And she’s Margaret Atwood. Practically every third sentence would make you stop short and admire its perfection if it weren’t so much a part of a stream of language telling an immersive story. A joy.

A must.