Ok, this is part one of me trying to catch up with my reviews of books. I've been reading a ton over the summer and haven't had the time or inclination to jot down any notes. More to come...
Fiction...
"The City and the City" by China Mieville is classic Mieville but this time he spins the story as a detective novel. Two cities are occupying the same space (and maybe a third one is there too?) and the cop on the beat trying to solve a murder has to navigate the differences, the blindnesses, the seen and unseen while crisscrossing the borders. Kind of slight, but I enjoyed it.
"Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri is a collection of short stories about growing up as the first generation of indians in a new land, and the family expectations and realities that go along with the challenge. Good writing by the author of "The Namesake."
"Sandman Slim" by Richard Kadrey is just a playful take on going to hell and coming back (because you're just too much of a badass to be left in hell) to clear things up (particularly around the murder of your girl).
"My friend Leonard" by James Frey is a follow up to his story about being put in a rehab center. In this case it's about the friend he made in there that helped him after he left. Leonard is a character that is rich from dubious means, forceful, connected, loves a fine wine and a good meal, and tries hard to get James back on track. I don't think it hit me with the power of "A million little pieces" but James is a good writer so I'll read anything he makes (though I liked it better when I thought all his stories were true).
"Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a story about lovers of books, writers of words, Barcelona, the Devil, star crossed lovers, and a haunted house on a hill. A good book by a very good writer.
"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman is the first book I've read by this author and overall it was enjoyable and engaging. I wasn't entirely happy with the ending (in fact the latter half of the book seems to wallow a bit in things). It is the coming of age story of a teen who practices magic and stumbles into a secret world of real magicians, schools for budding sorcerers, and all of the usual troubles of becoming an adult (heightened by the fact that these particular young adults can kinda do anything). Feels like its trying to have its cake and eat it too in a sense because it wants to be another Harry Potter, but wants to do it in a sort of knowing, adult, referentially cool way too. On balance worth reading if you like a flight of fantasy in the streets of New York.
Non-Fiction...
"Eiffel's Tower" by Jill Jonnes is a history lesson in world fairs, building the impossible, learning about the unknown world of a newly discovered and robust new country, cowboys and indians, and the art and politics of engineering. Fun read if you're interested in Eiffel, his tower, Buffalo Bill, or Annie Oakley (who was the most surprising part of the story). Kinda reminds me of "The Devil and the White City," minus the serial killer, but plus the occasional nubian king offering to buy the pretty lady with the straight shooting style.
"My Life in France" by Julia Child is a wonderful snapshot of the rigor and science of french cooking (and the social dynamics and vibrant lives of Julia and her husband and all of her friends). She was a pioneer. It is also a quiet story of a lifetime of love. Worth reading even if you don't cook.
"The Age of Wonder" by Richard Holmes is a bit long and drawn out (with many asides to poets and parallels between poetry, writing, and the romantic age of science) but worth the read. It basically covers the next generation of scientists (the first to call themselves scientists rather than natural philosophers in fact) after Isaac Newton. It follows a brother and sister who literally mapped most of the night sky throughout their lives (discovering Uranus and too many other celestial bodies to count) all via telescopes that they hand made in the basements and workshops of their home. It also touches on the discovery of Tahiti by the western world, the first aeronauts who took to the sky in balloons made of silk, and the general period of time where any mildly wealthy lay about could discover something fundamental about the world.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Books, etc. May 2009
Ok, lots of books, proly not a complete list of what I've consumed in the last few months but close... So speed reviews so I can catch up...
Fiction...
"Domino Men" by Jonathan Barnes was a fun Queen Victoria era meets present day alternate reality house of Winsor maybe sold out the populace of London to some sort of evil entity and now a hapless civil servant has to fix it all kinda book. By the guy who did Somnambulist.
"The Dark Volume" by Gordon Dahlquist was a little more convoluted sequel to a kinda victorian alternate reality dark version of something that reminds me of the Golden Compass with a tear in reality where all the good/bad things bleed through sorta book. Not bad if you need a diversion but proly worth reading the Glass Eaters first.
"Drood" by Dan Simmons was an exploration into a possible Dicken's era explanation for Dicken's last book based on history and a bit of playfulness. Kinda long (like he's just filling pages sometimes) but overall enjoyable read with a dark twist.
"The Last Dickens" by Matthew Pearl was oddly also about Dicken's last unfinished novel but this time not so much fantasy as unexplored mystery by the writer who brought us The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. Both of these books together give you a pretty good sense of Charles Dickens and his spellbinding ability to perform in public as well as captivate his readers. Also a nice exploration of piracy and copyright (America was like Napster or China back then).
"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks follows an ancient illustrated holy jewish book from lebanon backwards in time across continents. Not bad, sorta soft.
"A Fraction of a Whole" by Steve Toltz kinda reminds me of something written by Chuck P if he were less of a minimalist. The story of a very disfunctional Australian father and son and the destruction of many things and the living of life inside and outside the lines. I liked it.
"Pygmy" by Chuck Palahniuk was a short little riff on super smart chinese children agents that are bred to be adopted by hapless American christians to deploy a plot to destroy the US, love ensues. Fun, fast.
"My French Whore" by Gene Wilder is a short little book (really more like a novella) that finds Gene's protagonist in World War One France, behind enemy lines and ultimately fooling the Germans and finding love. Nicely done.
"The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet" by Reif Larsen really kills me. The story of a 12 year old Montana boy who draws and maps everything (from real world places to ways things work) in the margins of his travelogue as he runs away from home to find his fame as the invited guest of the Smithsonian. Buy it.
Non-Fiction...
"A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson is a sometimes funny walking trip along the Appalachian Trails. Bears seem to predominate Bill's thoughts. Great history of the trail and the times that made it and the kinds of people who walk it.
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson isn't always completely factually accurate (at least not based on current theories) but is a pretty nicely pulled together history of the universe all the way up to people. Mostly a rumination on scientists who are thought crazy, dismissed, discovered to be correct (or more correct), probably after their death, and who end up having someone else take the credit for their discovery. And lots of scary bad ways of imagining the scale of things (like the energy under Yellowstone is akin to taking the state of Rhode Island and piling it six miles high with TNT). If you like the history of science it's worth a read.
"1434" by Gavin Menzies is one of those books that you hope is like "The Man Who Loved China" but instead is painful after the first few chapters (mostly because he can't stop trying to prove he's right and that he and his wife had a delightful vacation finding out all they did). Ok, I get it. China's emperor back in the 1400's wants the world to know that China rules and invented everything, sends out an armada to bring the good news (and get tributes) to the uncivilized (like those people in the dark ages of Europe), they leave maps and slave girls along the way, in places like Venice and the Vatican... maps of the entire world including details of North and South America, Australia, etc. hundreds of years before they were all discovered. Leave drawings of all the things Leonardo later "invented" but maybe just did a better job illustrating, and then they all returned to China and were maybe mostly destroyed by a huge comet that left actual evidence of Chinese junkets in Oregon, California, South America, and New Zealand.
"How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer is the second book in his exploration of how we think (the last one was about how artists probably discovered much of what we now are starting to understand about our brains decades or centuries ago). It reads a bit more like a Gladwell book than I'd like but it is full of fun examples and experiments. Worth reading.
Music...
Passion Pit, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear... all good...
Fiction...
"Domino Men" by Jonathan Barnes was a fun Queen Victoria era meets present day alternate reality house of Winsor maybe sold out the populace of London to some sort of evil entity and now a hapless civil servant has to fix it all kinda book. By the guy who did Somnambulist.
"The Dark Volume" by Gordon Dahlquist was a little more convoluted sequel to a kinda victorian alternate reality dark version of something that reminds me of the Golden Compass with a tear in reality where all the good/bad things bleed through sorta book. Not bad if you need a diversion but proly worth reading the Glass Eaters first.
"Drood" by Dan Simmons was an exploration into a possible Dicken's era explanation for Dicken's last book based on history and a bit of playfulness. Kinda long (like he's just filling pages sometimes) but overall enjoyable read with a dark twist.
"The Last Dickens" by Matthew Pearl was oddly also about Dicken's last unfinished novel but this time not so much fantasy as unexplored mystery by the writer who brought us The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. Both of these books together give you a pretty good sense of Charles Dickens and his spellbinding ability to perform in public as well as captivate his readers. Also a nice exploration of piracy and copyright (America was like Napster or China back then).
"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks follows an ancient illustrated holy jewish book from lebanon backwards in time across continents. Not bad, sorta soft.
"A Fraction of a Whole" by Steve Toltz kinda reminds me of something written by Chuck P if he were less of a minimalist. The story of a very disfunctional Australian father and son and the destruction of many things and the living of life inside and outside the lines. I liked it.
"Pygmy" by Chuck Palahniuk was a short little riff on super smart chinese children agents that are bred to be adopted by hapless American christians to deploy a plot to destroy the US, love ensues. Fun, fast.
"My French Whore" by Gene Wilder is a short little book (really more like a novella) that finds Gene's protagonist in World War One France, behind enemy lines and ultimately fooling the Germans and finding love. Nicely done.
"The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet" by Reif Larsen really kills me. The story of a 12 year old Montana boy who draws and maps everything (from real world places to ways things work) in the margins of his travelogue as he runs away from home to find his fame as the invited guest of the Smithsonian. Buy it.
Non-Fiction...
"A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson is a sometimes funny walking trip along the Appalachian Trails. Bears seem to predominate Bill's thoughts. Great history of the trail and the times that made it and the kinds of people who walk it.
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson isn't always completely factually accurate (at least not based on current theories) but is a pretty nicely pulled together history of the universe all the way up to people. Mostly a rumination on scientists who are thought crazy, dismissed, discovered to be correct (or more correct), probably after their death, and who end up having someone else take the credit for their discovery. And lots of scary bad ways of imagining the scale of things (like the energy under Yellowstone is akin to taking the state of Rhode Island and piling it six miles high with TNT). If you like the history of science it's worth a read.
"1434" by Gavin Menzies is one of those books that you hope is like "The Man Who Loved China" but instead is painful after the first few chapters (mostly because he can't stop trying to prove he's right and that he and his wife had a delightful vacation finding out all they did). Ok, I get it. China's emperor back in the 1400's wants the world to know that China rules and invented everything, sends out an armada to bring the good news (and get tributes) to the uncivilized (like those people in the dark ages of Europe), they leave maps and slave girls along the way, in places like Venice and the Vatican... maps of the entire world including details of North and South America, Australia, etc. hundreds of years before they were all discovered. Leave drawings of all the things Leonardo later "invented" but maybe just did a better job illustrating, and then they all returned to China and were maybe mostly destroyed by a huge comet that left actual evidence of Chinese junkets in Oregon, California, South America, and New Zealand.
"How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer is the second book in his exploration of how we think (the last one was about how artists probably discovered much of what we now are starting to understand about our brains decades or centuries ago). It reads a bit more like a Gladwell book than I'd like but it is full of fun examples and experiments. Worth reading.
Music...
Passion Pit, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear... all good...
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Books, etc. February 2009
Books...
"The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Disai was a painful story about a group of people and their experiences (mostly of helplessness, slow decline and resignation). Not an uplifting book at all but very well written. A slow downward spiral.
"The Invention of Air" by Stephen Johnson was an enjoyable journey through the biography of Joseph Priestley (the man who discovered oxygen and figured out a way to make soda water). It gives you a glimpse into the early days of America, how the founders thought about science, and how amateur experimenters could uncover entire new fields. Stephen is kinda hung up on "long zoom" history telling and hobbyist innovators (see "Ghost Map"). Worth reading if you like science and history. Not as fun for some reason as his last book.
"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is all about people not exactly in the center of the bell curve and how they got there. From the best hockey players (they all happen to be born around the first few months of the year in Canada because of the cut-off date for junior competition... so kids born just after the cutoff date tend to be bigger and more experienced by the time they get to play), to the Beatles (they played about 10,000 hours worth of time together in brothels in Germany before becoming an overnight success in the US), to airline pilots (beware flight crews that are from cultures where there is a large gap between superiors and subordinates). Seems fluffy and light as a book without the feel of any real direction or heft but cotton candy is nice sometimes so it made me think for a day or two.
"The Monsters of Templeton" by Lauren Goff is a first novel that does a nice job of exploring life in a small town, with monsters. The primary monster is something that lives in the lake but there are plenty of other monsters along the way. Of course the monsters aren't quite what you expect when the book begins but over time it becomes apparent. An author worth watching.
"Shame" by Salman Rushdie came out soon after his masterful exploration of India. This time its about a fantasy land that might (obviously) just be Pakistan. Not quite as playful as Midnight's Children but it has its moments. If you like SR you'll like this book. If you're interested in history many of the characters will seem oddly similar to real people from the history of Pakistan. It is a rough book though with a girl who's blush burns and who soon turns into a fury, a boy raised by three moms in a vast house, family feuds that span generations, the shamed and the shameless. I just love SR so I'm not going to be able to say anything but read it.
"The Man Who Loved China" by Simon Winchester is a deep exploration of Joseph Needham's life and masterwork. Needham was an eccentric scientist who fell in love with China (although it started with falling in love with his mistress/coworker-scientist from China). He wrote the canonical history of science and technology in the middle kingdom. I little rough going at the beginning of the book as he sets the stage but it fast becomes apparent that Joseph was an extrordinary researcher. He planned on publishing a book about Chinese technology and science and being done in 10 years and when he died decades later he was still writing. All told there turned out to be volumes and volumes of the work that completely changed western perceptions of China. A few examples? up until Needham discovered and popularized the inventions, few knew that China had printing presses with movable type centuries before the west, or that it had developed crossbows in the 5th century BC or gunpowder or multistage rockets, or even lowly simple things like stirrups. Examples of their mastery of engineering include waterways and dams that have been in operation up to the present day for thousands of years that would stun modern day engineers. At the end of the day the book as a popularization of Needham's life and a love story across time and culture. Nicely done. Worth the read.
Music, etc...
"Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" by David Bryne and Brian Eno is great if you like either of these two (though its pretty heavily Bryne oriented.)
"Rachel Getting Married" by Jonathan Demme is really well done. Made me want to go back and watch "Something Wild." Good soundtrack as well (as always).
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" directed by Julian Schnabel is ethereal and luminous. It is the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby who was the editor-in-chief of the french version of Elle magazine. He had a stroke in the prime of life and dictated his autobigraphy purely with the blink of one eye. I don't think the movie is perfect, but its pretty close. You could also freezeframe just about any moment in the film and frame it. Simple and wonderful cinematography.
"The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Disai was a painful story about a group of people and their experiences (mostly of helplessness, slow decline and resignation). Not an uplifting book at all but very well written. A slow downward spiral.
"The Invention of Air" by Stephen Johnson was an enjoyable journey through the biography of Joseph Priestley (the man who discovered oxygen and figured out a way to make soda water). It gives you a glimpse into the early days of America, how the founders thought about science, and how amateur experimenters could uncover entire new fields. Stephen is kinda hung up on "long zoom" history telling and hobbyist innovators (see "Ghost Map"). Worth reading if you like science and history. Not as fun for some reason as his last book.
"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is all about people not exactly in the center of the bell curve and how they got there. From the best hockey players (they all happen to be born around the first few months of the year in Canada because of the cut-off date for junior competition... so kids born just after the cutoff date tend to be bigger and more experienced by the time they get to play), to the Beatles (they played about 10,000 hours worth of time together in brothels in Germany before becoming an overnight success in the US), to airline pilots (beware flight crews that are from cultures where there is a large gap between superiors and subordinates). Seems fluffy and light as a book without the feel of any real direction or heft but cotton candy is nice sometimes so it made me think for a day or two.
"The Monsters of Templeton" by Lauren Goff is a first novel that does a nice job of exploring life in a small town, with monsters. The primary monster is something that lives in the lake but there are plenty of other monsters along the way. Of course the monsters aren't quite what you expect when the book begins but over time it becomes apparent. An author worth watching.
"Shame" by Salman Rushdie came out soon after his masterful exploration of India. This time its about a fantasy land that might (obviously) just be Pakistan. Not quite as playful as Midnight's Children but it has its moments. If you like SR you'll like this book. If you're interested in history many of the characters will seem oddly similar to real people from the history of Pakistan. It is a rough book though with a girl who's blush burns and who soon turns into a fury, a boy raised by three moms in a vast house, family feuds that span generations, the shamed and the shameless. I just love SR so I'm not going to be able to say anything but read it.
"The Man Who Loved China" by Simon Winchester is a deep exploration of Joseph Needham's life and masterwork. Needham was an eccentric scientist who fell in love with China (although it started with falling in love with his mistress/coworker-scientist from China). He wrote the canonical history of science and technology in the middle kingdom. I little rough going at the beginning of the book as he sets the stage but it fast becomes apparent that Joseph was an extrordinary researcher. He planned on publishing a book about Chinese technology and science and being done in 10 years and when he died decades later he was still writing. All told there turned out to be volumes and volumes of the work that completely changed western perceptions of China. A few examples? up until Needham discovered and popularized the inventions, few knew that China had printing presses with movable type centuries before the west, or that it had developed crossbows in the 5th century BC or gunpowder or multistage rockets, or even lowly simple things like stirrups. Examples of their mastery of engineering include waterways and dams that have been in operation up to the present day for thousands of years that would stun modern day engineers. At the end of the day the book as a popularization of Needham's life and a love story across time and culture. Nicely done. Worth the read.
Music, etc...
"Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" by David Bryne and Brian Eno is great if you like either of these two (though its pretty heavily Bryne oriented.)
"Rachel Getting Married" by Jonathan Demme is really well done. Made me want to go back and watch "Something Wild." Good soundtrack as well (as always).
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" directed by Julian Schnabel is ethereal and luminous. It is the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby who was the editor-in-chief of the french version of Elle magazine. He had a stroke in the prime of life and dictated his autobigraphy purely with the blink of one eye. I don't think the movie is perfect, but its pretty close. You could also freezeframe just about any moment in the film and frame it. Simple and wonderful cinematography.
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