More books? Yes, I don't sleep and I just started a little vacation.
Bidness?
"The World is Flat" - A short history of the 21st century (just buy the damn book and read it, its fast and has real case studies into why the 21st century is going to be a wild ride)...
"Freakonomics"... fun collision of statistical analysis and politically incorrect questions (does naming your kid a funny name change his life? did Roe V Wade make the crime spree of the 90's plummet? why do crack dealers live with their moms?) ... the world's leading young economist collaborates with a number of researchers to ask how the world really works (versus how we'd like it to work).
Recreation?
I probably mentioned this somewhere else but if you haven't read Neil Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" or "Cryptonomicon" you're missing out (this is only for those people who actually enjoy reading, alot...) he likes to write and digresses and cross cuts and does all sorts of flourishes along the way. Learn about where the word assassin comes from, how money became money, the dangers of being a woman in 15th and 16th century europe, the birth life and death and rebirth of Isaac Newton, the beginnings of computing and various wars carnage and wordplay.
Speaking of assassins... "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" and "Assassination Vacation" both by Sarah Vowel were just plain fun ramblings about our own sordid american history. Who knew that if abraham lincoln's son showed up in town, a president would die (3 did including lincoln himself). Or that the people who brought us fine cookware today started as a sex cult in the northeast devoted to town-wide sex (a sacrament of God) but sadly not love.
"Middlesex" by the guy who wrote the Virgin Suicides is absorbing and quixotic. About a couple coming to America from Greece at the turn of the last century (and doing not so smart things with their homegrown genetic laboratory of a family) and the outcome of such tinkering in a small suburb of life called middlesex.
"Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem is a bittersweet (oops sounds like a book review) snapshot of growing up in NYC in the 70's. Any of Jon's books are delectable (he does absurd ones too). Damaged and broken characters (I just described us all) try hard to grow up amidst the "brickhouses" and gangland hijinks of the inner city. I note "brickhouse" a classic song from the times because the main character has an ear and a love for music. The main character is also a superhero after a drunk falls from the sky and gives him his ring (did I mention that part yet?)
"Motherless Brooklyn" also by JL is a detective thriller with a twist. The main character has tourette's syndrome and he and his brothers (all homeless boys who grew up in a home for unwanted children) are on a quest to solve a murder. Funny and sad and beautiful.
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson (the guy who wrote the most prescient and comically tragic book about extremists... pre 9/11... and who they think are after them... called "Them: Adventures with Extremists"). This time he looks into the true story of a covert part of the government that stare at goats (trying to burst their hearts), walk into walls, dress like flower power commandos and generally try to do things telekinetic and odd for their country.
Speaking of Jons, "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" is a pretty impressive tale of almost true history about magicians in the early times (maybe 1600s or 1700s?) of england. I don't generally like fantasy but this one is compelling.
"The Dante Club"... a fun "who done it" based on dante's inferno and the real life characters that tried to bring it to america back in the early 1900s... murder mystery for people who like litter ahh chew uh.
"Never Let Me Go"... by the guy who wrote "Remains of the Day".... about kids raised in a private academy for some sort of shadowy purpose. I didn't really get into this one too much and kept waiting for something more to happen... but you with your smaller brain and prehensile tail may find it compelling.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" was good. Autistic sleuth tries to figure out who killed a neighborhood dog. Really well done with an intriguing taste of what its like to be autistic in a world where everyone else can filter out the noise.
Sci-Fi Fluff (obviously this list is drifting that way by this point so...)?
Charles Stross has some pretty hard sci-fi stuff going on (kinda ian banks english dry wit)... "Iron Sunrise" and "Singularity Sky." Good read if you're looking for escape.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s "Flash" is also pretty good fluff, its set in a world where product placement is king and politicians have figured out how to manipulate minds with it (no surprises) and there is the requisite exmarine do gooder caught in the middle of a conspiracy, modified by a shadowy "Q" like AI and on the run...
Just got Kim Stanley Robinson's "Forty Signs of Rain" but haven't started it yet...
(I'd say "stay tuned" but I just don't post stuff very often.... so go grab a snack).
1 comment:
Hmm, 40 Signs of Rain is unfortunately pretty topical these days, though as fiction it felt like more like a lead-in to another Robinson trilogy than something solid in its own right.
Charlie Stross sure has some wonderful ideas—Accelerando, which you can download for free, wowed me with craziness like uploaded lobster brains hacking into Russian websites in order to escape from scientists, though it offered a depressing vision of the eventual fate of the solar system.
My fiction reading this summer hasn't been that rewarding, except maybe for Cloud Atlas, which is an enjoyable structural exercise with 6 loosely connected story lines in different time periods.
If you haven't read them, I'd recommend The Collapsium, which is built around the implications of "programmable matter" and ubiquitous teleporters/replicators, and Super Flat Times, which is a book that fills me with joy every time I open it. Its sentences and concepts are wonderfully absurd, but all in the service of very real pathos.
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