Bragan reads everything in 2015, part 3

Here we are, halfway through the year already! I guess that means it's time for my new post for the third quarter of 2015, as I continue with my modest goal of Reading Everything.

Without further ado, the most recent bit of Everything I've read:

72. Bag of Bones by Stephen King



After bestselling author Mike Noonan's wife dies, he suffers the world's worst case of writer's block, learns that there are some things that his wife never told him about, discovers that his summer house is haunted, and gets drawn into a custody battle between a nice young woman and her nasty old father-in-law.

It's a decent read, although far from perfect. The narrative cheats a little here and there (although maybe mostly in excusable ways), and it ends with an unfortunately clunky, exposition-laden epilog. There's a small child who's only occasionally believable as being the age she's supposed to be, and a bad guy so cartoonishly evil that during the (mercifully short) time that he's actually, so to speak, on-screen, my suspension of disbelief snapped like a twig. And there's a plot point near the end that's such an unpleasant cliche that even the main character explicitly acknowledges how bad it is. (I can't quite make up my mind whether that makes it more palatable or not.) I suppose I should also add that this definitely isn't a book for those who aren't okay with reading about a lot of ugly topics, as it features everything from small-town racism to sexual violence to murdered children. Although maybe that kind of warning goes without saying when you're talking about a horror novel.

Anyway. Definitely a flawed book, but the story itself is good enough. The main character is well-drawn -- perhaps unsurprisingly, since if there's one thing King knows, it's what the inside of a writer's mind is like. The ghost story elements aren't quite as creepy as King can be at his best -- possibly deliberately, as if they were too hair-raising, it would be impossible to believe the guy would ever stay in that house, no matter what excuses the author comes up with to keep him there -- but they're interesting nonetheless. As are the bits of history that King slowly reveals.

Like many later Stephen King novels, though, it does suffer from being way, way longer than it really ought to be. It's not that it's tediously slow; the individual pages turn fast enough, for the most part. It's just that it's so easy to see that it'd be immensely to the book's benefit if it were trimmed down and tightened up by at least a couple hundred pages. As it was, by the time I was two-thirds of the way through, the main question in my mind wasn't, "Gosh, I wonder what's going to happen next?", but "How is it that I haven't finished this thing yet?" King did manage to recapture my flagging interest well enough before the end, but, of course, he'd have done better not to lose it in the first place.

Rating: Let's call it 3.5/5.

Had a lot of fun reading your review. Got me to thinking that maybe Stephen King books are sold by weight? That would explain the extra pages ....

I thought you might get a kick out of this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv7LwFPp3SY

Well, you can charge more for a really big book, and since any book King writes is guaranteed to sell, I don't see anybody ever telling him to cut it down.

And that video definitely made me laugh! (Hmm, maybe if we held Stephen King prisoner and made him edit his books down... :))

73. Don't Sleep: There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett



American Daniel Everett spent many years, off and on, living among the Pirahã people of the Amazon jungle. Initially he came as a missionary, with the goal of learning their language and culture in order to translate the Bible for them, but became deeply interested in that language and culture for their own sake, and eventually came to regard much about their attitude towards life and belief as superior to his own, ultimately de-converting himself rather than converting the Pirahã.

In this book, he describes his own experiences living with and learning about the Pirahã and adjusting to life on the Amazon. He also describes, in depth and with considerable analysis, some of the unique and interesting features of Pirahã society and language. The language, in particular, potentially challenges a lot of conventional wisdom about how human languages work, and, Everett believes, suggests a much more complex interplay between language and culture than linguists usually allow for.

The linguistic discussion sometimes gets very technical, and I am in no way expert enough to evaluate whether Everett's take on things is completely right or not, but it is thought-provoking, and there's no question that the language itself is fascinating. As are Everett's observations of the Pirahã culture, although it seemed pretty clear to me that he must be overgeneralizing a bit in places. For instance, he states quite emphatically that the Pirahã are extremely peaceful and non-aggressive among themselves (if not necessarily always with foreigners), but then mentions in passing a couple of details that perhaps call that into question. Although that's probably understandable, really; I don't think there's a society on Earth that's entirely consistent and free of contradiction.

In any case, if you can handle the sometimes hard-to-follow linguistic discussions, it's well worth reading, if only for the example it provides of just how diverse human languages and societies can be, and for its look at thought and speech patterns that can be very different from the ones most of us take for granted.

Rating: 4/5

The Everett book looks interesting. I loved At Play in the Fields of the Lord and I wouldn't mind reading more about that part of the world.

>5 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read that one. Not sure if I should or not... I confess, I have a real antipathy towards the whole idea of missionaries. Everett managed not to trip that hostility switch for me, mostly because he eventually came to agree that his original goals were wrong-headed, but it also helped a bit that his was at least the least intrusive form of missionary practice, based on the belief that native groups should not be preached to, but simply given translations of the Bible to read for themselves. But I suspect other books dealing with the subject might just piss me off. The reviews do make it sound potentially interesting, though...

I like the idea of a missionary de-converting himself. Enjoyed your review of Don't sleep

Being msg. #8 I can't say I'm catching up here but at least I've gotten my foot in the door while I go back to your previous thread...

I used to love Nelson DeMille's political thrillers despite them consistently being hundreds of pages too long. I passed on his new release but saw it's 320 pages total, I wonder what's going on.

>7 baswood: I rather liked that idea, too.

>8 detailmuse: Welcome to you and your foot in the door!

I haven't read Nelson DeMille, but my experiences with King and others have convinced me it's perfectly possible to really like an author even while you kind of want to hack most of their books down to size with a machete.

Even King still at least occasionally releases shorter stuff, though, maybe just to prove that he can.

74. Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh



Spademan (not his real name) used to be a garbage man. That was back before New York City was devastated by a dirty bomb and abandoned by half its population, while most of the other half retreated from reality into VR dreams. These days, he's a hit man. Usually he doesn't ask questions and doesn't hesitate, but when he's hired to kill a young woman, he finds a reason not to follow through and instead ends up taking her side against her father, who turns out to be up to some ugly, ugly stuff.

I could quibble with a few aspects of the plot, and I suspect it may be entirely too dark for a lot of people, but overall, I really liked it. Spademan's a very well-drawn character, dangerous and damaged, whose personality comes through strongly and immediately. The writing style consists of lots of terse little sentences, often no more than one to a paragraph, almost like a parody of a hardboiled noir story. This looks like it should be annoying, or at least get annoying very quickly, but instead it works surprisingly smoothly and effectively. The setting and the premise reminded me a lot of The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson, but I enjoyed this one much better. I'll definitely be checking out the next book in the series.

As a bonus, the volume I have also includes a short essay about anti-heroes by Sternbergh, and a thought-provoking, delightfully nerdy conversation about genre and the blending of genre boundaries between Sternbergh and Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians and sequels, which was well worth reading all by itself.

Rating: 4/5

75. The Muppets Character Encyclopedia by Craig Shermin



An A-Z guide to characters from The Muppet Show and related shows, movies, and specials. Potentially useful if you have a burning need to figure out what the name of that Muppet monster you just saw is, but mostly it's just fun, and full of goofy, bad-pun-laden, classically Muppety humor. I started it thinking that, while amusing, an entire book's worth of this might quickly become tiresome. But, nope. Like the Muppets themselves, it somehow just never gets old.

Rating: 4/5

Terrific review of Don't Sleep. And, back on your other thread, i'll keep the advice for buying airline tickets on a Tuesday evening, six weeks out, in mind. Wonder if it applies for Thanksgiving week and weekend?

Had fun catching up.

>12 dchaikin: Glad you enjoyed catching up!

The book didn't say anything specific about booking on holiday weekends, so I'm not entirely sure, but following the same strategy probably doesn't hurt.

>9 bragan: Even King still at least occasionally releases shorter stuff
lol I bet they start out as short stories! Which reminds me I have Different Seasons from your recommendation, have been looking forward to those.

>14 detailmuse: Oh, I hope you like it! I still think "The Body" is probably the best thing he's written (helped, no doubt, by the fact that it's exactly the length it ought to be).

>11 bragan: Just knowing there's such a thing as a "Muppet Encyclopedia" makes me very, very happy. :)

>16 avidmom: I know, right?

76. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith



I may be the last person on Earth to start reading this series, but in case I'm not: It's about a woman in Botswana who sets up shop as a private detective, despite the fact that nobody in Botswana expects a woman to be a private detective. Or expects a private detective at all, really.

I went into this assuming it was going to be a straightforward whodunnit kind of detective story, albeit one with an unusual setting. It's not. It's more about the main character, Precious Ramotswe, her life, and the various minor, quirky little cases she investigates. (There's also one slightly more serious case, but that doesn't dominate the novel.) I think every time I've seen this book mentioned, I've heard it described as "charming," and, much as I hate to be unoriginal, I have to echo that. It is charming. And Precious Ramotswe is a marvelous character, one who immediately feels like an old friend. I'll definitely be continuing on with this series.

Rating: 4/5

>18 bragan: I don't know if you ever do audio books, but the audio versions of the No. 1 Ladies are really good.

>19 NanaCC: I don't generally do audiobooks (unless you count short stories in podcast form), but I can easily imagine the right narrator making the book a delight.

>18 bragan: Ha ha. Welcome to the club! HBO made it into a TV series. It only lasted one season, unfortunately. (I think the director died and McCall Smith didn't think anyone else could do it justice. Something like that. Major disappointment to the fans!). It was really, really good.

We sent my aunt the DVDs and a box of red tea .... now she has a "red bush tea addiction."

>21 avidmom: I hadn't even realized it was a TV series until yesterday, when I read some reviews on LT that mentioned it. But I could see how it might adapt to television well.

I think I've had red bush tea at some point in my life, although it's been long enough that I barely remember what it tasted like. And yet, while I was reading the book, I found myself repeatedly craving it.

77. Precursor by C. J. Cherryh



This is book four in Cherryh's Foreigner series, set three years after the conclusion of the original trilogy. Humans and the alien atevi -- or, more accurately, atevi and the alien humans -- have been coexisting on the atevi's homeworld for a couple of centuries, but now the balance has been disturbed by a new arrival. Bren Cameron, our protagonist from the first thee books, is sent to do some negotiating, and things seem to be going very well... until, of course, they're suddenly not. And, meanwhile, his family just keeps having personal crises he can't help with.

Like most of Cherryh's stuff, this is dense with lots of analyses of the political and security situations, and it's very slow-moving. (Although, in this case, I think it also wraps things up a little too suddenly at the end.) But, as often manages to be the case with Cherryh, while this seemed like it should be just plain tedious, it nevertheless held my attention and my interest. In fact, I think I found it the fastest-reading of the series so far.

There are a lot more books in this series, and I find I'm looking forward to seeing how this world of hers develops. But not just yet; even when I'm enjoying her writing, there's a limit to how much of it my brain can handle all at once.

Rating: 4/5

>18 bragan: I may be the last person on Earth to start reading this series

No but maybe the penultimate :) I've been browsing for a series to get interested in and eyeing this in my TBRs...

>18 bragan: And Precious Ramotswe is a marvelous character, one who immediately feels like an old friend.

A perfect description of Precious Ramotswe!

>24 detailmuse: Somebody in the ROOT group said it was still on their TBR, too, so that's at least three of us. And I say give in to the impulse!

>25 VivienneR: I have to say, I was rather proud of having come up with that description. As soon as I thought it, it felt absolutely right.

78. Godless Grace: How Non-Believers are Making the World Safer, Richer and Kinder by David Orenstein and Linda Ford Blaikie



Religious folks tend to like to think that morality comes directly (and only) from God, and many of them take that belief to its extreme conclusion, assuming that those who don't believe in God must necessarily be immoral, caring for nothing but their own selfish, or even destructive pleasures. It ain't so, of course, and non-believers who work to improve the lives of their fellow humans and for the betterment of human society in general are the main subject of this book.

The centerpiece here is a collection of stories about the lives and work of atheists from all over the world who are involved in charity work and/or political activism. This is a diverse group of interesting people doing laudable work, many of them with truly extraordinary personal stories. But I found the telling of the stories themselves disappointing. From the way the authors were talking in their introduction, and the fact that each person was interviewed individually, I expected something substantial and meaty, with each person given the chance to talk at some length about their own perspectives on non-belief and activism. Instead, each gets only a bite-sized profile, usually less than two pages, with just enough quotes from their interview to make me really wish we could hear more about them in their own words.

There is another chapter, a little later on, though, about students and ex-clergy members who are active in humanist charities or causes, that features much more of the kind of thing I was hoping for, as we get to see individual responses to various interview questions. I found that chapter by far the most interesting and readable in the book, and only wish the rest had been more like it.

Various other topics are also covered, including two pretty dry chapters about the demographics of non-believers, and some brief discussion of the history, present, and possible future of atheism and atheist/humanist activism. (It is very brief, though, and the history, in particular, is compressed and cursory enough that I think it's close to pointless. For those wanting a truly in-depth history of atheism and religious doubt, I strongly recommend Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History.) There's also an appendix with a potentially very useful list of atheist organizations and atheist or secular charities.

I have to say, this is the first time I've ever felt conflicted about writing a completely honest review of an Early Reviewers book. Because I strongly agree with what the writers are trying to do here. The world needs more understanding of the fact that the non-religious can in fact be deeply moral, and more acknowledgment of the atheists who are out there doing good work. I'm completely behind them in that, and I would be happy to see them sell lots of copies of this book. But the truth is, I think the book itself is only just OK. It may be of more interest to people who are less familiar with the topic already, and if you're an atheist looking for some bite-sized inspirational stories, maybe it's got what you want. I wouldn't want to discourage anybody from reading it, especially if it's the only book on the subject you're considering. But if what you want is a thoughtful look at who non-believers are, what their morals are, and how they can and do accomplish good in the world, I think Greg M. Epstein's Good Without God is a much better place to start.

Rating: 3/5

(Note: As mentioned above, this was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book. For the record, it looks like it'll have a more interesting cover once it's actually published.)

I couldn't possibly comment on Godless Grace without upsetting most of America, but I enjoyed your review.

>28 baswood: I sometimes think most of America could do with being challenged a bit more on the subject of religion. And thank you!

79. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin



Prickly bookseller A. J. Fikry is slipping slowly into self-destructive despair after the death of his wife, but when someone abandons a small child in his bookstore, he finds a new lease on life and new people to love. Now, this sounds like the makings of a sappy Hallmark Channel movie, and it very easily could have felt like one, or like a corny romcom, complete with Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Or both. I can imagine there might be some readers who don't agree that it completely avoided that fate, but I personally am impressed and delighted by how well it managed the difficult feat of being sentimental without being schmaltzy, and I found it thoroughly, incredibly charming. I liked the characters immensely, even if I did often want to get into loud, impassioned arguments with A. J. about his bookish opinions. I unreservedly loved the way that this is very much a book about book people for book people, by an author who is very clearly one herself. And I enjoyed the playful, slightly meta feel to it; this is a novel that understands and loves the narrative conventions of novels, just as much as its characters do. I will say that there's a development at the end that threw me for a loop at first, as, for some reason, it was really not how I was expecting things to go. But the more I kept reading, the more it worked for me, and the more I think about it, looking back, the more I feel that way. And I think it ends on exactly the right emotional note.

Rating: 4.5/5. Objectively, I'm not entirely sure it deserves the extra half-star. But this is my rating, and I loved it, so I don't care.

>30 bragan: This sounds like a fun read, and I'm adding it to the TBR, thank you!

>31 reva8: I hope you like it as much as I did!

80. Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson



There are lots of doom'n'gloom laments out there about how technology -- specifically, computers, smartphones, and the internet -- are dumbing us down, distracting us to the point where we can never concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes, alienating us from face-to-face contact, destroying our privacy, and inundating us all with relentless waves of the obnoxious and banal.

Clive Thompson, while he readily admits that these technologies have downsides that should not be ignored, also thinks it's important to consider the other side of things: the way the internet can connect us to each other and improve our lives and our societies. To this end, he considers a wide variety of topics, from the way team-ups between computer and human chess players can be better at the game than either is individually, to how recording technology can help us augment our fallible memories, to the remarkable results math tutoring programs can achieve in schools, to the use of Facebook to organize protest movements. Not to mention a thoughtful consideration of why all those tweets about what your friends had for breakfast might not actually be as useless as they look. He doesn't go to Polyanna-ish extremes on any of this, however; he is as skeptical of claims that Twitter will bring about world peace as he is about claims that Google is completely destroying our memories and leaving us with blank, empty brains.

Most of the general topics and many of the specific examples he talks about here were already familiar to me, but some were fascinatingly new, and even when he's going over ground I found highly familiar, he does so in a marvelously lucid and compulsively readable way. And I do mean the "compulsively" quite literally. I kept reaching the end of a chapter, thinking I should get up and do something else, and then turning the page and reading on, anyway.

Definitely recommended to anyone who wants a little more insight into this crazy, digital modern world of ours, or a different perspective on all that grumbling commentary about kids today ruining their minds, and possibly the future of the world, with all that semi-literate texting.

Rating: 4.5/5. (I had to give it that extra half-star, just for being so surprisingly unputdownable.)

>33 bragan: This is a fantastic review. Got me interested in the book.

>34 OscarWilde87: Thanks! Honestly, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

81. Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older



There are a lot of ghosts in New York City. Fortunately, there's the Council of the Dead to keep them all in line, including ending what's left of their existence if they bother the living too much. Or maybe that's not so fortunate, as the Council are a bunch of annoying paper pushers. At least, that's the opinion of their operative Carlos, who's very useful as an enforcer because he's only half-dead and can interact equally well with the ghostly and the living. Which he does a lot in this adventure involving an ancient sorcerer, a beautiful woman, a horde of creepy imps, and a plan to erase the boundaries between the living and the dead.

This is billed as the first book in a new series. That's not entirely true, as there was actually a previous small press book of linked short stories set in the same universe, mostly featuring the same main character: Salsa Nocturna. I read that one a couple of months ago, and my main thought about it was that it was really rough around the edges and in great need of a professional editing job, but that this Older guy definitely had a lot of promise. So I'm pleased to report that this one is a lot more polished. It's not perfect; a lot of things at the beginning feel very underdeveloped, for instance, and the key scene that launches off everything else in the novel feels weirdly skimmed-over. But the premise is great, the plot is decent, the main character is interesting, and it's littered with some good, sharp sentences. Overall, it's an imaginative and entertaining piece of urban fantasy, and I am fully intending to stay on board for the rest of the series.

Rating: 4/5

>36 bragan: I'd enjoyed your review of Salsa Nocturna as well as of this. I don't usually enjoy supernatural fiction, but I'm intrigued enough to add to this to the TBR.

>37 reva8: How well it'll work for someone who doesn't usually read this sort of thing, I don't know, but I would be really fascinated to find out, if and when you read it.

82. The Martian by Andy Weir



When what was originally meant to be a month-long Mars mission is aborted on day six due to a nasty dust storm, astronaut Mark Watney is injured, and his shipmates, believing him to be dead, reluctantly leave him behind and get out while they can. Turns out he's still very much alive, but staying that way is going to be a heck of a challenge, especially considering that he now has no way to contact Earth.

25 pages in, as Watney was telling us all the details of his plan to make water from hydrazine fuel and doing endless calculations about how much of everything he'd need and how long it would last him, I started feeling confused. "Wait, how is this book so popular?," I thought. "Why do even people who don't generally read SF seem to be into this? I'm a giant science nerd, and even I'm only mildly interested in all of this!" But then, as the novel went on, a funny thing happened. Even though it continued being more of the same -- lots of Martian MacGyvering, lots of arithmetic -- the story got really gripping.

It seems like it shouldn't have been, really. It should have felt like yet another so-so, tediously technical Tale of Hard SF Space Competence. Seriously, the writing's nothing special, the dialog (in the sections that have dialog, anyway) is stilted, and there's very little human drama at all, no powerful emotional sense of what it would be like to be stranded alone on an alien world. Watney's not a guy we learn much of anything about, beyond the fact that he's a) amazingly resourceful, and b) a total smartass, and his troubles are all physical, not psychological. He ought to seem like an impossible-to-care-about cardboard cutout of a space hero, like a million hard SF characters before him. (And I use the word the word "characters" loosely.) And yet... I wasn't just interested in the science-y problem-solving here, although that was pretty cool if you're into science-y problem solving. I actually cared about this guy, and I felt genuine suspense every time he faced an even-more-dangerous-than-usual situation.

I'm not entirely sure how Weir pulls that off, but it involves a good sense of humor and a surprising ability to summarize a lot of technical details in an accessible way. I'm still a little surprised that this has become something of a genre-transcending hit but, hey, maybe I shouldn't be. After all, Apollo 13 was a highly successful movie, and I think this novel is all about capturing that exact "failure is not an option"/"figuring out how to put the square peg in the round hole" spirit.

Rating: 4/5

>39 bragan: The Martian sounds like something I might enjoy even though I am not a SF fan. I am a fan of humor, however, so I might give this one a try. Nice review.

>40 NanaCC: The book definitely isn't a comedy, but the main character's irreverent, smartass sense of humor really does add a sense of fun to the whole thing.

>39 bragan: You described it perfectly. I loathe hard sci-fi - I actually don't like any kind of sci-fi much, but particularly that kind. I firmly do not care the details of how things work; give me a good wave of the hand and "I just put the whatchamacallit in with the thingy, and everything works!" I don't care about space travel. So yeah, that book should not have worked for me on any level. But I read it over the course of a few days and handed it off to my husband (who does like that stuff) and told him to read it. We both enjoyed it immensely. Some kind of strange alchemy going on with that book, for sure.

>42 ursula: I really am deeply curious, myself, as to just what it is about this particular book that makes that strange alchemy happen.

For me, it was Watney's total smart-assedness that got me hooked. The scientific/mathematical calculations bored me ('cause I got confused) but his sense of humor always yanked me back in right away. So many funny moments in the book - I hope they manage to translate them onto film.

I did think that maybe this book would be a great thing to place in the hands of any snarky high school kid who says, "When am I ever going to use this science and/or math stuff?" Well, junior, one day you just might be stranded on Mars..... and that chemistry lesson junior year may just save your life. HA!

>44 avidmom: It did occur to me that the book could potentially be a wonderful way to actually get people interested in science, or at least to demonstrate how it can be useful in a real-world type of way (even if that real world is Mars).

I'm very curious now to see what the movie does with the story. It strikes me as potentially tricky to film. I'm guessing it's going to involve a lot of voiceovers.

83. Half Empty by David Rakoff



A collection of articles and essays by David Rakoff on subjects including a visit to a porn expo, the complicated relationship between Jews and pork, and the way people seem to regard him as a safe receptacle for their secrets and confessions.

I have such mixed feelings about Rakoff's writing. My first impression was that it was intelligent and fairly clever, but also annoyingly pretentious. As I read on, though, my feelings softened a bit, and I began to appreciate the glimpses of human vulnerability visible underneath all that determinedly witty cynicism and gosh-aren't-I-so-neurotic self-deprecation. The final essay, about his diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, had an especially moving and honest feel about it, made all the more painful by the fact that I went into it knowing that the cancer had eventually taken his life. That piece was, for me, by far the best in the collection, in its own sad way. But as for the rest of it... I don't know. Rakoff, despite the fact that he's originally from Toronto, writes with this sort of uber-Manhattanite sensibility that I have trouble connecting to. He's sort of like a gay Woody Allen. (Y'know, minus the skeevy aspects.) And, just like Woody Allen, I can sort of see how many people might think he's hilarious and brilliant, but for me personally, his stuff is probably best encountered in small doses.

Rating: an extremely subjective and slightly apologetic 3.5/5

84. Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson



Christine does not remember most of her life. Every morning she wakes up next to a stranger who tells her he is her husband, Ben. Every day he explains to he that she has amnesia. And every night, when she sleeps, she forgets everything that happened that day, too. But then, at the urging of a doctor, she begins to keep a secret journal that provides her with an artificial memory of recent days. And sometime during those days, she's scrawled "Don't trust Ben" in the front of the journal.

It's a fantastic setup for novel, the kind that promises creepy, slowly revealed secrets and deep emotional tension. Plus, the cover is plastered with blurbs praising how heart-stopping and nerve-jangling and page-turning it is. So I went into it looking to have my heart stopped and my nerves jangled, and such, and... it kind of didn't happen.

The writing isn't great, but that wasn't really the problem. None of the big, surprising twists felt all that surprising, but I don't think that's the problem, either. The problem is that none of it felt real to me. And I don't mean the fact that amnesia just doesn't work that way. I was actually OK with that, after a line from a doctor about Christine's condition not fitting our current understanding of memory convinced me that the author wasn't proceeding from ignorance, but instead knowingly fudging the medical facts for the sake of the story. I was willing to go with that. It was everything else that bugged me. Stuff like the fact that Christine's doctor seems to have no patients but her to worry about and is free to spend big chunks of his work day dropping by her house and taking her on memory-jogging field trips.

But the biggest problem was Christine herself. She just never felt emotionally believable to me as someone going through the things she's going through. She talks a lot about her thoughts and feelings, but it all feels sort of... hollow. I'm not sure I ever really believed there was a person in there. And without any deep sense of empathy for her, I was more irritated by her than concerned about her. Which made it kind of hard for my nerves to get tingly for her.

Rating: 2.5/5

>47 bragan:. Oh that's too bad. The premise sounds so good.

>48 NanaCC: Looking over the reviews, though, seems to show that my unimpressed response puts me in the minority.

>47 bragan: I really hate it when a book has flaws in the idea, or the writing, but those aren't even what drags it down. I've been willing to go along with that for the sake of a good premise too, and been disappointed in the end by other things. The most recent case like that for me was The Steady Running of the Hour.

>50 ursula: I think a book with a great premise you're totally willing to suspend your disbelief for that then fails to live up to its promise is actually a lot worse -- or at least a lot more disappointing -- than one that's just kind of dull to begin with. I suspect I might have even rated Before I Go to Sleep a half-star higher, if it weren't for that effect.

85. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg



I have kind of mixed feelings about this book. It talks about a lot of things that are, in themselves, pretty interesting, from how marketers convinced people to use toothpaste and Fabreze, to how a lack of inter-departmental communication was responsible for a deadly fire in a London Underground station, to why Rosa Parks' unwillingness to give up her seat proved so pivotal to the civil rights movement when others before her had done the same thing with no results.

But I'm not sure all of these anecdotes really add up to anything coherent. Duhigg's concept of what constitutes a "habit" -- basically, a prompt leading to an action leading to some expected reward or benefit -- is so broad as to encompass practically all of human behavior, and, rather than a close examination of the concept of habits, the book feels more like a loose collection of stories drawn semi-randomly from the fields of psychology, business and sociology. Which is interesting enough, but not really very satisfying.

Rating: 3.5/5

The chief medical officer for the hospital system I work for told me earlier this week how much he was enjoying The Martian, and I've read several good reviews of it, including yours. I'll probably read it at some point.

>53 kidzdoc: I'd thought I was pretty much the last person to jump on The Martian bandwagon, but it appears to still be on lots of people's to-read lists!

Plus, the cover is plastered with blurbs praising how heart-stopping and nerve-jangling and page-turning it is. So I went into it looking to have my heart stopped and my nerves jangled, and such...

Enjoyed catching up with your reviews.

>55 dchaikin: Thanks!

And disappointment is probably what I deserve for believing cover blurbs. :)

86. The Magician King by Lev Grossman



Book two in Lev Grossman's Magicians series. I liked this better than the first one; if nothing else, it was a much faster read. But, like the first one, it never felt as if it did for me quite what it should have. I mean, this book has an awful lot going for it. It's well-written. There's some nifty, imaginative world-building. There are some very cool individual scenes. There's a snarky, nerdy sense of humor. And there's a sort of self-reflective, meta-fictional sensibility to it. All that stuff is basically marks a straight line right down the middle of my alley. And yet, for most of the book, it just wasn't grabbing me all that much. It wasn't off-putting or anything. But it wasn't exactly compelling, either.

I think a lot of it is just that the characters are difficult to care much about. (Although this book does have an edge over the first one, there, as half the chapters are about Julia, who is at least somewhat more interesting than our usual protagonist, Quentin.) And part of it is that the plot feels unfocused; we aren't told what the stakes are for any of it until very near the end, meaning that the opportunity to give the whole thing a sense of urgency is almost completely squandered. The ending itself is pretty good, which did help my overall opinion. And I am interested enough to want to finish off the trilogy. But I just keep wishing that most of it had been a little more... something.

Rating: 3.5/5

Thanks for reviewing Smarter than You Think -- maybe my next audio.

>52 bragan: interesting enough, but not really very satisfying
I thought exactly the same about The Power of Habit. Which then bums me out that your comments resonate about Before I Go to Sleep. I'd added that to the wishlist from CR reviews so I'll keep it there to try ... someday.

>58 detailmuse: I definitely recommend Smarter Than You Think. I bet it'll be good in audio, too.

As I said above, a lot of people seemed to like Before I Go to Sleep a lot more than I did, so it's entirely possible you'll disagree with me on that one, anyway. I suspect having lower expectations than I did may help...

That was pretty much my reaction to The Magician King, too. The concept is just so much more clever than the execution. But it was better than the first and I'm interested enough to plan to someday read the third book.

>60 RidgewayGirl: It's a little frustrating, because it seems like it should be something that I'd love. I've already ordered book three, though. I might read it soonish, if only to see it through to the end and be done with it.

87. The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle



This novel is set in Battle Creek, Michigan, the breakfast-food capital of the world, in the early days on the 20th century. It features a slick, unscrupulous businessman trying to make it in the cereal biz; patients at John Harvey Kellog's Sanitarium, home to daily enemas and bizarre health foods; and the great health quack Kellog himself. (The still-extant cereal company, by the way, was actually not his, but his brother's, and was a source of great conflict between them.)

It's a fairly entertaining look at a quirky little corner of history -- and one that highlights how depressingly little pseudoscientific health fads have changed since then. The back cover blurbs on my copy bill it as a hilarious satire, but while it is somewhat satirical, it's not really laugh-out-loud funny. Mostly, it just lets the (often tragic) absurdity of the whole thing speak for itself.

Unfortunately, the characters and the story, such as it is, aren't nearly as interesting as the setting, and while quirkiness and historical interest carry the novel pretty far, they're not quite enough to sustain 475 pages , and by the end I was beginning to lose interest a bit. It does at least pull off a dramatic (indeed, perhaps somewhat over-the-top) climax, but that doesn't change the fact that it was still maybe about 100 pages too long.

Rating: An admittedly ungenerous 3.5/5.

88. String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones, with Daniel Robbins, PhD



This book, in the "...for Dummies" tradition, attempts to explain string theory in a way that's simple, clear, easily accessible to someone coming into it with minimal knowledge, and constructed in such a way that readers can dip in and out, rather than necessarily reading straight through. Needless to say, this attempt is doomed to failure. Even with the 100 pages of (highly compressed) Newton-to-Hawking physics lessons that are provided as necessary background, it's still doomed to failure. Theoretical physics of this kind doesn't just involve math -- the kind of math you pretty much have to have a PhD to understand -- it's made of math. And most of it is just not going to make much sense if you try to take the math out.

Still, that having been said, the book does at least provide a little taste of what string theory is, how scientists approach it, and what kind of questions it's trying to answer. It also spends a couple of chapters looking at the possible implications of fun little ideas like parallel universes and time travel. More importantly, it gets into the actual doing of science, rather than just reporting the (in this case, still pretty iffy) results of scientific explorations. There's a lot of even-handed discussion of both the strengths of string theory and the criticisms of its opponents, along with some important context about what it means for an idea to be scientific and why there's room for debate about whether string theory does or doesn't qualify.

Rating: 3.5/5, with the note that it's actually kind of impressive that it succeeds that well, given the restrictions of the format.

89. White Trash Zombie Apocalypse by Diana Rowland



Book three of the "White Trash Zombie" series, featuring Angel Crawford. Angel used to be a pill-popping loser, but now that she's undead, she's working on turning her life around. Fortunately, although she is technically a zombie, she doesn't get that shambling, rotting, dumb-as-a-post thing happening unless she doesn't eat enough brains. And since she works at the morgue, that isn't usually a problem.

I quite enjoyed the first two books in this series, in a fun, brain candy sort of way, but I just wasn't into this one in the same way. It was still a very quick, not-unpleasant read, but... Well, the first two weren't exactly Shakespeare, but I don't remember the writing being quite this... clunky. And at some point, my willing suspension of disbelief for the whole ridiculous scenario just kind of broke. I'm not sure if that's because the story this time wasn't good enough to carry me along without thinking about it too much, or if there's just a limit on how long this conceit continues to be entertaining for, and I finally hit it.

Rating: a possibly slightly unfair 2.5/5

>64 bragan:

I like Diana Rowland's other series quite a lot (and need to get around and read the new ones there). This one I am still eying suspiciously. Sounds like I am not missing much.

>65 AnnieMod: I really did like the first two, way more than I ever would have expected to. But maybe it's just not something that works indefinitely. Or maybe it's that the places she's taking the plot at this point in the series aren't remotely as interesting as she thinks they are. Kind of a pity, though. It seemed like an ideal series for when I wanted some fun, goofy escapism, but I think I may be done with it now.

90. The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout



The Burgess siblings come from a small town in Maine. Brothers Jim and Bob both moved away to New York City, but their sister Susan stayed behind. Recently, the town has become a home for a community of Somali refugees, and everyone's lives are disrupted when Susan's son commits a strange and horrible act: tossing a bloody, severed pig's head into the Somalis' mosque, with, apparently, little concept of the implications and even less idea why he did it.

It's a good dysfunctional-family story, with delicately observed characterization and lots of complex themes about secrets, guilt, the alienation of feeling out of place, the connections and distances between people in small towns and big cities, and the ties people maintain to the places they're from, whether they like it or not. I don't think it was quite as great as the previous Strout novel I read, Olive Kitteridge, and it I think it makes a bit of a misstep with its framing-story prologue. But Olive Kitteridge was, admittedly, a tough act to follow, and this one was not disappointing.

Rating: 4/5

91. Who-ology by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright



This book bills itself as a Doctor Who "miscellany." That's a marvelous word for it, as it contains a weird, eclectic mix of lists and trivia, including both in-universe and behind-the-scenes information. And while it primarily focuses on the TV series (in both its classic and current incarnations), it often also includes references to various books, comics, audio dramas, stage plays, webisodes, charity specials, and probably several other sources I'm forgetting at the moment. The content includes some obvious and expected stuff, such as the mini-bios of each of the Doctor's companions and the actors who played them. Then there's some stuff that's just insane levels of trivial, such as the list of every actor who ever stuffed himself into a Dalek casing. Some of it's scary/impressive in its obsessiveness, like the complete list of every planet the Daleks ever attacked, in any medium, or of everything we've ever seen a sonic screwdriver used for. (Those are long lists.) Some of it is just entertaining, like the list of all the times Rory Williams has died, or interesting, like the complete, chronological-from-her-point-of-view timeline of River Song. In a few cases, the authors seems to be having way too much fun, such as when they list all the Master's evil schemes and rate each one by how nuts they were.

Yeah, OK, it's all the sort of thing that you have to be a crazy Who nerd to enjoy, but, crazy Who nerd that I am, I enjoyed it a lot. It's clearly a labor of crazy Who nerd love, and it's different enough from similar books I've read in the past that it's definitely worth adding to the already crowded Whovian bookshelf. It's got some very nice, stylized black-and-white drawings, too.

My only complaint, really, is that they published this a couple of years too soon. It came out in 2013, and thus only covers up through "The Snowmen," the 2012 Christmas special. Which, given all the developments and revelations there have been in the show since then, means a surprising amount of it is already out of date!

Rating: 4/5

92. The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon



It's sometime in the near future, and everyone is addicted to a gadget called the Meme: basically a smartphone that can, to a certain extent, read your mind. One of the Meme's most popular new apps (or "limns") is the Word Exchange, which instantly senses when you don't quite know a word you've just heard or read and provides the definition for you, for two cents a word. But things are more sinister than they appear, as the company that makes the Meme has been buying up the rights to dictionaries, potentially putting language itself under corporate control. And then there's the mysterious "word flu," which makes the speech of the people it infects increasingly unintelligible...

This is another one of those books that I feel I should have liked much more than I actually did. The premise is fun and imaginative, even if most the details are deeply ridiculous. There's a slightly technophobic vibe to it all that I don't really sympathize with, but the novel is tapping into a very worthwhile conversation about language and thought and technology, and the present and future interplay between all of those things. There's also some nerdy language, philosophy, and literary references, which is something that generally appeals to me.

And yet, I could never quite get into the story and stay there. All kinds of things, large and small, kept irritating me and interfering with my ability to suspend my disbelief. The biggest of these is the coy "little-did-I-know-then!"-style narration, which annoyed me to a surprising extent, turning what might have been a suspenseful eagerness to find out what's going on into a frustrated desire for the narrator/main character to just knock it off and tell me, already. And then, when she finally does start explaining things, she tends to do so by means of giant chunks of exposition. Actually, a lot of things about the main character bugged me, if only because too much of her behavior -- e.g. when she tells the truth and when she lies, who she presses for information and who she passively accepts cryptic remarks from -- seems dictated more by the needs of the plot than by actual characterization.

But I honestly cannot tell for sure how much of what bugged me or failed to satisfy me here stems from real, serious problems with the writing, and how much of it is me just being in an especially nitpicky mood and failing to be able to make the leap to "just go with it" that stories if this nature -- that is, full of improbable technology and crazy conspiracies -- require.

Rating: I don't know. But I guess I'll split the difference between being too unforgiving and being too generous, and call it 3/5.

93. Already Dead by Charlie Huston



Joe Pitt is a vampire. Excuse me, a Vampyre. He doesn't really strike me as the sort to insist on spelling it with a "y," but that seems to be their cultural norm. Anyway, Joe lives a semi-independent existence, doing dirty jobs for two of the rival vampire clans of Manhattan, but belonging to neither. As the novel starts, he's engaged in a zombie hunt that goes rather badly, and before he can finish dealing with that, he's tasked with finding a missing girl. Of course, the girl and the zombies turn out to be connected, but maybe not quite the way you'd think.

Despite a few imaginative details, mostly in terms of how the vampire and zombie infections work, the basic setup here is nothing new. The hostile vampire factions and acceptance of the importance of keeping the supernatural secret from the world at large reminded me a lot my days playing Vampire: The Masquerade back in college. But the writing is entertaining, and the breezily hard-boiled style hooked me right from the first paragraph. I think the story does fall apart a bit at the end... Among other things, there's a point where it pretty much leaves noir behind, sinks all the way through sordidness, and finally ends up just pointing and staring as a two-dimensional bad guy gets ridiculously awful and depraved (and not in a fun way).

Still, it did a good job of scratching the urban fantasy itch I've apparently had lately, and I'll no doubt give the second volume in the series a shot at some point.

Rating: I thought, for much of the book, that it was going to rate 4 stars, easy. But I think I'm just dissatisfied enough with the ending to bump it down to 3.5/5.

Too bad about The Word Exchange - it sounds like a fun premise, but a so-so execution.

>71 DieFledermaus: Yeah, that's more or less my take on it.

94. Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance by Linda K. Wertheimer



Teaching religion in public schools in the US is a clear violation of the principle of the separation of church and state (although it does sometimes still happen, anyway). Teaching about religion -- the history, practices, and tenets of the world's faiths -- is another matter entirely, and, like author Linda Wertheimer, I agree that it can be an extremely useful and positive thing, both because religions play such an important part in the world's history and its current political situation, and because American children are increasingly growing up in a religiously pluralistic environment, and understanding the culture and belief systems of people around you is infinitely better than relying on ill-informed stereotypes.

It's an extremely touchy subject, though, and one that's met with a lot of resistance. Werthheimer explores this by interviewing teachers, students, parents, and school administrators that have been involved with public school classes addressing the subject of religion, as well as people who have protested or raised concerns about such classes. In many cases, such protests have featured levels of ignorance and Islamophobia that by themselves clearly demonstrate how desperately needed such education is. But there are also more nuanced, less extremist concerns and questions. What safeguards and guidelines should schools have in place to make sure they stay on the right side of the line between education and proselytization? How carefully should classroom speakers representing religious groups be vetted, and what should they be allowed to talk about? Are field trips to places of worship OK? Should kids on those field trips be allowed to participate in services? At what age should kids start learning about other religions -- should it start in early elementary school, in hopes of heading off some of the bullying kids often inflict on those whose religions they regard as strange or threatening, or is that too young, and only likely to confuse them?

Wertheimer's exploration of these issues is more anecdote than analysis. She doesn't produce many statistics about what kind of effect classes on world religions have -- no doubt because they don't actually exist -- and she doesn't provide an in-depth blueprint for what she thinks schools should do. But her interviews, her case studies of classes and controversies, and her personal stories about growing up as the only Jew in Christian-dominated school are all interesting and presented with openness and clarity. Ultimately, this book feels like a small first step in opening a conversation, but it's a conversation that's very much worth having, and it seems like a pretty good opening.

Rating: 4/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book. Lately, I seem to keep winning books with religious subject matter, which now kind of has me wondering just what the algorithm thinks about me.)

Algorithms are definitely untrustworthy. Before heading off for a day's driving I put my iPod on shuffle. Somewhere along the way it decided that every fifth song should be Patsy Cline's 'Crying'. My iPod has over a week's worth of continuous listening music encompassing a wide range of styles and country and western is not strongly represented. I do not understand how or why shuffle locked on this song, which I rarely listen to, but darting along a six lane motorway at 80mph there seemed no way to stop the torture.

When those tv boxes designed to select and store programmes likely to be of interest based on analysis of what your viewing habits first came out I read about a man who watched a lot of programmes about military history. His television concluded that he was interested in men in uniform, went on to make assumptions about why he might be interested in men in uniform, and stored some rather surprising programmes for his future viewing. Possibly apocryphal, but seems to me a likely gauge of the way these things work. Perhaps LibraryThing looked at titles like White Trash Zombie Apocalypse and decided you were interested in matters spiritual.

>74 Oandthegang: Perhaps LibraryThing looked at titles like White Trash Zombie Apocalypse and decided you were interested in matters spiritual.

I like that theory! But seriously I think the algorithm is based on what other people who read/liked the same books you read/liked have also read/liked. What an ugly sentence, I hope you see what I mean anyway.

>74 Oandthegang: There is a difference between the operation of random and shuffle. Apparently shuffle will try to even out play time of the songs on your ipod, so if it feels a particular song hasn't been played as much as one of your favourites, it will play that song. My ipod thinks I should listen to the Beatles more and I disagree, never having like them particularly. You can however set your ipod to skip particular songs in shuffle, which alleviates some of that highway horror for those of us who don't have a next function on the steering wheel or dash.

Liked your military history story.

>74 Oandthegang: That Patsy Cline thing is just weird! I wonder if your iPod is having some kind of problem. Other than an unnatural fondness for Patsy Cline, I mean. I know my iPod won't play the same song twice in one shuffle session (well, not unless you've got multiple copies of it), but maybe the settings on yours are different.

Mine does seem to get in odd moods, though, where it plays large numbers of novelty songs, say, or nothing but the most classic of classic rock. Which is a little strange, because my music collection is as large and eclectic as my book collection. But you really have to expect those kinds of statistical flukes. I once casually remarked, somewhere on the internet, that I was surprised how often the thing would bring up two songs from the same album fairly close to each other, and an online acquaintance who also happens to be a statistician ran the math on it for me and demonstrated that the probability of that happening is actually quite high, in exactly the same way that, if you get enough people together, the odds of two of them sharing a birthday are high. Math and music: a fun combination!

Anyway. In this case, I don't think the algorithm is jumping to too weird a conclusion, really. I do have a shelf full of books on religion, even if half of them are about atheism, so picking another one out for me is reasonable. Why it happens so often is another question, especially when I have shelves' worth of books on lots of subjects, not just that one. Could just be random chance, but my guess, if I'm being serious about it, is that the algorithm tries to match up less-requested books first, and those aren't as popular as some of the others. So I get matched on those quickly, and don't actually get a shot at most of the rest. In any case, I think I'm going to stop requesting them now. I'm getting a bit tired of them.

>75 FlorenceArt: I think it looks for books in your catalog that also appear in the catalogs of people who have books it thinks are similar to the one you requested. Which, wow, is also a really ugly sentence.

>76 SassyLassy: If I remember right, on my iPod Classic, there's a setting that lets you change which way shuffle works. I keep mine on genuinely random, for maximum chaos.

I saw something on FB about "Netflix fails"... where Netflix makes suggestions based on your viewing history. Like since you recently watched "The Hunger Games", Netflix recommends "The Breakfast Club."

My mp3 player is a mishmosh of stuff too. Putting it on shuffle is always, um, interesting.

>78 avidmom: Netflix can come up with some very strange suggestions, for sure. The way it plays mix 'n' match with weird, oddly specific categories can yield some entertaining results, too. I just went and looked at mine, and it's recommending me "Critically-acclaimed Dark Movies based on Books" and "Mad Scientist Sci-Fi Thrillers." Which I guess isn't a bad set of suggestions for me, but it's certainly not how I'd describe stuff I like to watch.

95. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck



Tortilla Flat is the rambling, episodic story of a group of friends living in a poor Hispanic village near Monterey, California shortly after the end of WWI. Mostly they drink a lot of wine, steal or scam money to get more wine, take up with various women, fight each other, and support each other in their own idiosyncratic ways.

It's hard to know quite what to make of this one. It's certainly not what I expected after Of Mice and Men, which is the only other Steinbeck I've read so far. The tone is much lighter and more comic, and very drolly written... except when it's not, as there are moments, especially near the end, where the mood shifts and there are glimpses of odd, hard-to-make-out depths and difficult-to-pin-down emotions. It's interesting, but it's hard to know exactly what it all adds up to. And even though Steinbeck treats his characters with genuine humanity and affection, it's hard to escape the fact that they echo some really unpleasant stereotypes, and it's impossible not to feel a little uncomfortable about that. But, man, that Steinbeck guy could write. There are some marvelously crafted, insightful little turns of phrase here. Nothing flowery, nothing that calls attention to itself, just perfect little pieces of prose, gently doing their job of telling the story. Which probably makes the novel worthwhile all by itself.

Rating: This one is unbelievably hard to rate. I keep trying to give it less than a 4/5, but I just can't get myself to do it, apparently because I've fallen just that hard for the guy's writing style. So I guess 4/5 it is. But maybe with an asterisk.

>80 bragan: I'd never even heard of that Steinbeck novel before. Very interesting!!

>80 bragan: I hadn't heard of it either. Am feeling curious, but this is one of the reasons I occasionally stay away from Club Read - too much temptation.

>79 bragan: and >77 bragan: Brilliant that there are categories such as "Critically acclaimed Dark Movies based on Books" Who thinks this stuff up? I laughed when I read about your IPod deciding to play large numbers of novelty songs. Stuck on the highway listening to hours of "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight", "The Monster Mash", and "Grandad" would be so much worse than listening to Patsy Cline (whose song was of course "Crazy" rather than 'Crying", apologies for confusion all round. Obviously my mind trying to erase the memory.)

Interesting how many of us have songs on our iPods we don't really like. Why are they there?

>81 AlisonY: Tortilla Flat is one of his earlier novels, apparently. And I suppose it may be lesser-known for a reason. While they're both clearly written by an incredibly talented writer, it doesn't hold a candle to Of Mice and Men. It has the advantage of being just as short, though, which is part of the reason why I read it now. I wasn't quite ready to dive into The Grapes of Wrath just yet.

>82 Oandthegang: LT in general and CR in particular can do such terrible things to one's wishlist! And then to one's TBR shelves...

I read an article on Netflix's recommendation process once, and apparently the answer is that no one thinks up those weird hybrid categories. Some algorithm generates them on its own, via its own arcane process. Which is why you sometimes get results that seem bizarre to anyone with an actual human brain.

And I probably deserve what I get for feeding my iPod all those Dr. Demento records. At least most of it is better, and funnier, than "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor." Most of it.

>83 Oandthegang: I don't know! I swear, there are entire albums on mine that I don't actually like. I mean, Phil Collins' Greatest Hits? There is maybe one song on there I might voluntarily choose to listen to, and that probably only if there were no good alternatives. And yet, there is is. Every darned Greatest Hit, right there on my iPod. And every time one comes up, I roll my eyes, and I let it play. What really gets me is that, at some point in my life, not only did I acquire that album, probably even by playing money for it, but I went to the time and effort to digitize it from the CD and load it onto the player. Why did I do that? Because it was there, lurking in among all the CDs I actually like, and I felt I somehow had to? I don't understand myself sometimes.

(My apologies to any Phil Collins fans in the audience.)

I liked Tortilla Flat! But I read it more as short stories than as a novel.

>85 FlorenceArt: It's one of those odd works that can probably be looked at either way.

Enjoyed your review of Tortilla Flat. Reminds me I need to read more Steinbeck.

Sorry the Elizabeth Strout didn't work our for you, but, since I didn't like Olive Kitteridge (I probably shouldn't say that too loudly) I'm not entirely surprised.

>87 dchaikin: Oh, it worked pretty well. Not perfectly, and not as well as Olive Kiteridge, but, like I said in the review, I didn't find it a disappointment, despite that.

I can see how Olive Kitteridge might not be everybody's cup of tea, though. I was honestly kind of surprised I loved it the way I did.

And I cannot now understand how I got this far in life without reading Steinbeck, but I really, really need to make up for it.

I've fallen just that hard for the guy's writing style.

Yep. I hear that. As much as I love Steinbeck there are some in the mix that I didn't care that much for... and I still am crazy for Steinbeck.

Have you read Cannery Row yet?

>89 avidmom: I haven't, but it's on the TBR shelves already. And I did see the movie, a long, long time ago. I remember liking it.

96. Peter and the Sword of Mercy by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson



Book number four in Barry & Pearson's series of Peter Pan-based kids' novels. Although it's more accurate to say that this one is a sequel to the first three books, which were a tightly bound trilogy. Its set a couple of decades after that story ended, meaning most of its child protagonists have grown up (although, of course, Peter still hasn't) and features the same bad guys, back again after their apparent defeat and collecting a series of artifacts to further their evil plan.

Like the original trilogy, it's a decent kids' adventure story, with some amusing moments and some really well-done illustrations. But it's a bit overlong, and started to drag a bit about halfway through. I do suspect it would have kept my attention better if I were ten, though.

Rating: 3.5/5

Just catching up and enjoying the banter.

On second thought, when I said I liked Tortilla Flat, maybe I was thinking of Cannery Row... I don't know.

>92 Nickelini: Thanks! It's always fun when there's banter.

>93 FlorenceArt: Clearly, the only way to resolve this is for you to re-read both of them. ;)

97. Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson



Steven Johnson outlines an idea of social and political organization he refers to a the "peer progressive" philosophy. There are two main components to this concept: 1) a belief in the possibility and reality of social progress, and 2) a principle of organization based on a decentralized network through which information can flow freely and problems can be solved in a distributed way. This second point, of course, describes how the internet works on a technical basis, and also how such internet-based projects as Wikipedia function, but it need not necessarily be technological. For instance, some corporations function along these lines, to varying degrees.

Johnson believes this can also be a valuable strategy to use in government, and, indeed, views it as a new political movement. It's one that he sees as unaligned with either the traditional Left or Right, but rather as a completely different way of conceptualizing things, one that believes that neither government nor corporations should exert the powerful top-down control they are currently wrestling with each other over, but that sees an essential role for both free market competition and government oversight.

It took me a little while to really click with what Johnson is saying here. For a good chunk of the book, I found myself, somewhat paradoxically, alternating between thinking that he was talking about things that were trivially obvious and thinking that the ideas he was discussing were so nascent that there really was not very much to be said about them yet. But somewhere in there, I started to find myself nodding a lot and saying, "Hey, that's actually a really good idea!" Prizes instead of patents as a means of incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs? Damn, that's a good idea! A strategy of campaign finance reform that allows taxpayers to designate some portion of their tax money to fund the campaign of the candidate or party of their choice, and forbids candidates who accept that money from taking donations from elsewhere? Hey, that's got to be better than what we have now!

Other proposals, such as the "liquid democracy" scheme in which voters can essentially transfer their votes to people they believe know more about the issues than they do, strike me as considerably more dubious. Still. the ideas here are very much worth giving some thought to, and they're presented in Johnson's usual lucid, engaging, and extremely readable style.

Rating: 4/5

Coming to the discussion slightly late but my favorite algorithm fail that's happened to me was: "listening to Comment te dire adieu by Françoise Hardy? You might also like Bitch Better Have My Money by Rihanna".

Um... no.

>96 wandering_star: Wow. You do have to wonder how something like that happens. What goes on in those algorithms' little artificial "minds"?

98. Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer



This is an omnibus volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy: Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. And a weird and fascinating volume it is. The titular "Area X" is a small portion of coastline in what appears to be Florida (although its exact location is never given), which has become... strange. Not always in immediately obvious ways -- you can walk through it and see normal-looking plants and wildlife, but nothing about it feels normal, and those who enter are often changed in various ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes really not. And not everyone who enters leaves. That doesn't stop the organization known as the Southern Reach from sending in expeditions, though, and their methods and motives may be almost as opaque and uncaring as those of Area X itself.

I feel like that description doesn't do it justice, but probably no description will. It's a story that deliberately evokes the unknowable and the uncanny, and probably isn't a good bet for readers who need to fully understand the rules of the fictional world they're entering, or who want everything to be thoroughly explained in the end. (Although it eventually at least kinda-sorta explained a few more things that I was honestly expecting it to.) Personally, I liked it, although I think that's more due to finding it really interesting on an intellectual level, rather than being caught up in the story or finding the descriptions viscerally creepy, although there were certainly moments of both. Mostly, it's the kind of book that makes me want to go and seek out intelligent analyses of it.

I'm a little torn on whether I'm glad to have read the series straight through in the omnibus volume, though. On one hand, it's not exactly a fast read, and nearly 600 pages of this kind of thing gets to be a little bit much, taken all at once. So a break between books would not have gone amiss. On the other hand, I think the revelations and new perspectives of the second two books shed really interesting new light on the first one, in ways that probably would not have worked nearly as well for me if I'd had time to start forgetting it. In any case, I do recommend reading the whole series. You can finish Annihilation and feel like you've come to some kind of ending, but that's not going to give you anything like the complete experience.

Rating: 4/5

The titular "Area X" is a small portion of coastline in what appears to be Florida (although its exact location is never given), which has become... strange. Not always in immediately obvious ways -- you can walk through it and see normal-looking plants and wildlife, but nothing about it feels normal, and those who enter are often changed in various ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes really not. And not everyone who enters leaves.

Could be nonfiction. Just saying. Florida's a weird place.

But, on a more serious note, enjoyed your review. Wondering about books that "deliberately evoke the unknowable and uncanny" because I love that phrasing.

>99 dchaikin: Could be nonfiction. Just saying. Florida's a weird place.

Heh. Having read a lot of Dave Barry and some Carl Hiaasen, not to mention any number of weird news reports, I did have much the same thought. "Wait, are we sure you could even tell the difference?" Heck, maybe the influence of Area X has been creeping slowly in for a long time beforehand, and that's why Florida's so weird. :)

Wondering about books that "deliberately evoke the unknowable and uncanny" because I love that phrasing.

Thanks. It's certainly the best way I could think of to describe something like this. Although, interestingly, the series turned out to be less a constant parade of creepy, inexplicable weirdness than I'd expected. Which is an interesting narrative choice, I think, to try to keep things just on that border between the mundane and the alien. I did sometimes wonder if the result might have been even better if VanderMeer was a little less subtle about that, but the result is interesting, regardless.

Great to see a current review of Area X The Southern Reach Trilogy I would need to read this all in one go, but at over 600 pages I might still have trouble remembering what happened in the first novel

>101 baswood: It is at least nice that they've published the omnibus edition, to easily give you the option. Well, fairly easily, anyway. It's a rather hefty hardback, and can be a bit of a strain on the arms!

99. The Ultimate Daily Show and Philosophy: More Moments of Zen, More Indecision Theory edited by Jason Holt



This collection of essays by philosophers on The Daily Show and, to a slightly lesser extent, The Colbert Report is actually a revised, extended, and updated edition of a volume originally published in 2006, hence the rather grandiose title.

The essays mostly fit into a few particular categories. Some talk about The Daily Show's place within and commentary on the news media of today's entertainment-oriented era, and about Jon Stewart as a sort of journalistic watchdog. Some compare Stewart's approach to that of specific philosophers, or situate the show within a long history of political satire. Some examine issues that the show is fond of talking about, although, for some reason, most of these seem to involve religion, including creationism, the "War on Christmas," and the tendency of political candidates in the US to claim that God wants them to win. There are a few on other random topics, too, however, including a discussion of neologisms (that is, newly coined words) and a look at some ideas about what irony is and whether Colbert qualifies as an ironist.

The style of the essays varies, with some having a more academic feel, while others attempt to take on some of the humorous tone of the The Daily Show itself. They're all quite readable, though, clearly written by fans of the show, and generally at least moderately interesting. (The one befuddling exception is Kimberly Blessing and Joseph Marren's "On Bullshit: Political Spin and the PR-ization of Media," which, weirdly seems to just keep repeating the same point over and over again in different words for fifteen pages.)

I don't, however, feel like I've gained any stunning new insights into the show, or its subject matter. I think most of the pieces here are making points that seem fairly obvious to me, or that have already been made in the show itself. There's also, especially in the first couple of sections, an unfortunate tendency for a lot of the essays to cover some of the same ground, and many of them use the exact same quotes and examples from the show. (I mean, I fully understand why everybody wants to talk about Stewart's Crossfire appearance, but reading the same quotes from it in essay after essay does get a bit old.)

On balance, I'd say it's worth a look for philosophically-inclined Daily Show fans, especially ones who, like me, are desperately missing both Stewart and Colbert and might appreciate a thoughtful look back. Just don't necessarily expect the book to open up lots of exciting new perspectives on it all.

Rating: 3.5/5

We miss Stewart too; but were very happy to see Colbert on The Late Show this past week. :)

I'm glad to know this book is out there, but it sounds skippable. I am anxious to see what Trevor Noah does with the show. We caught his stand-up on Netflix quite a while ago and thought he was really funny.

>104 avidmom: I'm glad Colbert got the Late Show gig, as he deserves it, but I find myself with a weird mental block against watching it, partly because it's not a show I've been interested in for a long time, and partly because that's not how I want my Colbert, doggone it! I am experiencing a similar block about Noah, but since my DVR is still set to record The Daily Show, the barrier to overcoming my reluctance will probably be small enough to get past.

Apparently, I simply do not like change.

My kids DVR'd The Late Show so I was not able to get away from it.... It's actually pretty good. See....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3HMZsDioB8

(Hey, it's not like I'm trying to talk you into reading Jane Austen. ;)

>106 avidmom: Well, I watched that and my immediate, overwhelming reaction was, "STEPHEN! I HAVE MISSED YOU!" So that's probably a good sign. :)

And, ha, yes, it is infinitely easier to get me to watch Stephen Colbert than to read more Jane Austen. I mean, there are mental blocks, and then there are mental blocks.

>103 bragan: I miss Jon Stewart! Thanks for letting me know about the book.

>108 OscarWilde87: You are welcome!

100. High Five by Janet Evanovich



Book number five in Janet Evanovich's long-running series about Stephanie Plum, bumbling bounty hunter. This time out, Stephanie is called upon to investigate the disappearance of her Uncle Fred. (Well, technically, he's her grandmother's cousin's husband, but whatever.) Inevitably, of course, things get complicated and dangerous and a little bit wacky from there.

These books continue to be feather-light, but I think the writing is getting better and more confident with each one, and, once again, this was a fun, fast read. My one real complaint is that I rather liked the fact that, for the first four books, Evanovich didn't feel the need for Stephanie to have sexual tension with both of the hot guys she works with, and now, out of the blue, that's no longer the case. It's done in a way that's transparently designed to string the reader along, too. Although at least when Evanovich writes sexual tension, it's actually kind of sexy, which isn't necessarily true for a lot of writers.

Rating: 4/5

101. Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir by Bryan Burrough



In the late 90s, NASA and the Russians instituted a program to send US astronauts to the space station Mir. During the course of that program, many, many thing went wrong aboard the aging, poorly maintained station, including a fire and a collision that caused an entire module of the station to depressurize. This book covers those events, as well as everything that led up to them. A lot of it is not pretty, as Burroughs portrays a NASA fraught with internal politics, personality conflicts, and a neglectful attitude towards their people on Mir, as well as Russian cultural norms that overwork cosmonauts, devalue safety and initiative, and encourage cover-ups and scapegoating when things go wrong.

It's interesting stuff, all of which I was only very, very vaguely familiar with from the news at the time. (Which, in itself, probably says quite a bit about how little anyone cared about Mir. Although, no doubt, it also says something about how much attention I payed to the news back then.) But I can't quite decide whether to praise it as a fearless examination of some of the darker sides of space travel, or complain because its relentless focus on the negative feels very one-sided.

Rating: 3.5/5

not sure I knew anything about this either. Weird. But then how did we get news back then anyway? I've forgotten. That seems a bit early for Yahoo! I think I must have watched TV.

>112 dchaikin: Yeah, I think it was TV news and newspapers, still. Neither of which I paid much attention to at that point in my life. The web was still pretty new, and hard to find things on. It's probably a miracle I know about anything that happened in the 90s at all.

>113 bragan: It's probably a miracle I know about anything that happened in the 90s at all.

That made me chuckle. I went to university at the start of the 1990s, thus heralding the start of my big party decade. TV and newspapers definitely weren't my priority either back then!

Sounds like an interesting read. Not sure I could read a full book on the topic, but would love to understand much more about what happened at MIR.

>114 AlisonY: Yeah, I started college in '89, and while I was never much of a partier, that decade was pretty much all about me focusing on a) getting my degree and b) my personal life and trying to figure out how to be an adult. Both of which were very effective at distracting me from the world at large.

I will say, the full book was a bit much. It's over 500 pages, and covers a lot of the politics behind things and the establishment of the program, and so on, so it's really not a fast read. (As evidenced by how long it took me to finish it.) But it's definitely a topic worth reading about.

It's probably a miracle I know about anything that happened in the 90s at all

This made me laugh too. I started college in 1991. Nirvana was still fresh. I found NPR about the time I started working, in 1998. So, yeah, in between I'm pretty much clueless.

At the beginning of the 90s I was focusing on my career, and then I got married, and then I had babies and finished off the decade remodeling a 100 year old house. The only thing outside of my life I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. The rest of the decade is a blank. I couldn't tell you what movies, books, music or fashion define that decade.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Maybe the 90s were just a vast cultural wasteland?

Doesn't ANYBODY remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? OK, it wasn't in the 90s, technically (November 1989).

>117 Nickelini: From everything I've heard, it was actually a pretty nice decade, overall. I feel bad about missing it now. :) Well, except for the first Gulf War, I guess. That kind of sucked. And I did watch CNN for that.

>118 FlorenceArt: Oh, I do, indeed, remember that. I remember watching it on the news on a tiny TV in the campus pizza joint, with a student from Germany standing next to me trying not to cry.

I worked at a newspaper from 90-94, so I had no excuse. LOL! After '94, though, that's a different story.

That's a cool story you have about the Berlin wall and the German student. :)

>118 FlorenceArt: Yes, I remember that, but it was late '89 as you point out (and if you believe that I actually knew that, well . . . ). You know what else I remember from the 90s? Clinton and all his scandals. "I never inhaled," all the women, the Star report, don't ask-don't tell.

Oh, and when I was in Europe in '92, I remember some woman standing next to me at a pay phone (remember those?) slamming down the phone and looking at me and yelling "you wouldn't believe what's going on in Yugoslavia!"

The fog is lifting a little.

Pay phones... Yesterday, walking back from lunch, we saw two of them being carried away on a truck. One of my co-workers took a souvenir photo.

Oh, you kids!

>122 FlorenceArt: I'm almost surprised there were two left to carry away. :)

>124 bragan: There's no telling whether there were actually phones inside though.

It struck me after I posted that my colleague took the photo with her cell phone (obviously!).

I thought the 1990's were just a little better than the 1980's. At least Thatcher and Reagan had gone. I had left London and buried myself in the East Midlands, not much news there.

Moving on from the 1990s...

102. Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith



Book two in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, featuring the only lady detective in Botswana. These books, or at least the two I've read so far, are like photographic negatives of a standard detective story. The detective plots, while interesting enough, sort of happen in the background, while most of the novel focuses on the characters' personal lives, along with some gentle musings about the past traditions and modern realities of Africa. The result is oddly, wonderfully charming. This one may have been slightly less so than the first one, if only just because it was less of an unexpected surprise, but it was a pleasant read nonetheless.

Rating: 4/5

>127 bragan: Despite nothing but good comments, I never get around to these. But I do so very much love that title. I have also been a long time giraffe fan. If I flew to Africa, went on safari and saw only giraffe, I'd be over the moon happy.

>128 Nickelini: There's not really much about giraffes in the book, for the record, just a couple of sentences at the end. But all the books in this series seem to have entertainingly quirky titles.

I got to feed a giraffe in a zoo once. They have amazing tongues. :)

>127 bragan: The audio versions of these books are quite good. The reader, Lisette Lecat, has a lovely accent. I find them calming.

>1230 Excellent. I'd think the narrator would be totally make-or-break for an audio version of these, so it's nice to know they got it right.

>129 bragan: Yes, I wasn't expecting a high giraffe presence in the book. I read the same author's Portuguese Irregular Verbs and I don't remember anything about irregular verbs, Portuguese or otherwise. I like his quirky titles.

103. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain



Mark Twain's classic tale of a 19th-century go-getter who gets hit on the head, wakes up in the kingdom of Camelot, and proceeds to gleefully set about introducing his own era's technology and ideas about civilization to the Dark Ages (soon to be briefly lit by electricity).

This isn't the first time I'd read this novel, but my last encounter was nearly a quarter-century ago, and apparently I hadn't remembered it nearly as well as I'd thought. I'd recalled it, somewhat fondly, as a comic romp, a humorous satire of both Arthurian romance and the social attitudes of the Gilded Age, as well as the predecessor of a zillion less interesting science fiction stories in which improbably ingenious time travelers manage to rebuild their own technologically advanced civilizations centuries early, from scratch.

Well, it is all of those things. But what I'd completely forgotten is that it's also a scathing diatribe against monarchy, slavery, state-established religion, and the oppression of the poor, complete with lots of disturbing and depressing scenes calculated to bring the importance of these subjects home. Twain being Twain, it's very well done, but it does perhaps get to be a bit much. It certainly wasn't an ideal thing to read at a time when I was busy and easily distracted.

Rating: Despite it not being quite the right book at the right time for me, I figure it still probably deserves 4/5. Because, come on, Twain.

104. Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry



This latest collection of humorous essays by Dave Barry features, among other things, accounts of trips to Russia for a lecture tour and to Brazil for the World Cup, a review of Google Glass, and open letters to his daughter (who is about to get her learner's permit) and his infant grandson. That last one really rather touching, as well as amusing, and contains some genuine good advice.

Some of these pieces are funnier than others, and I wouldn't call this his best-ever collection, but overall, Dave Barry's still got it. You'd think I might be tired of his goofy, slightly gimmicky writing style by now, but apparently that's never going to happen. Even he, however, is never going to convince me that I should be interested in soccer.

Rating: 4/5

105. Futurama Conquers the Universe by Matt Groening, et al.



A collection of comics based on the great, still-lamented TV show Futurama. Two of these I very much enjoyed, and thought had the classic Futurama feel. (Star Trek references! Math jokes! The Robot Devil!) Sadly, the other three were meh at best, and kind of lame at worst, although at least one of those had the virtue of being very short.

Rating: Averaging out the scores for all five comics, I give it 3/5.

I love your collection of books lately! I've already read (and own) Tears of the Giraffe and should read that Mark Twain, because, as you say, Mark Twain!

We love our Futurama here too.

Do you have a favorite episode?

Because I've been kind of busy and distracted lately, I've been picking mostly fun, fairly light books that I figured would be easily entertaining. The results have mostly been pretty good, even if the Twain wasn't quite the right choice.

Favorite Futurama episode? Oooh, that's a tough one. Well, like everyone else with a soul, I can't help weeping buckets at "Jurassic Bark." And, giant Star Trek nerd that I am, I have a huge fondness for the one where they meet Melllvar, obsessive Trekkie cloud creature. (I'm blanking on the title.) But I feel like I'm forgetting a million other awesome episodes that might qualify just as well.

Both my daughters are huge Futurama fans, and I've watched a few episodes and enjoyed all of them. A family favourite is The Late Philip J Fry (younger daughter just piped up that this is the most famous episode, so not original I guess). Love the line from the song "In the year one million and a half / Human kind is enslaved by giraffe / Men must pay for all his misdeeds / When the tree tops are stripped off their leaves"

>138 Nickelini: Oh, the time machine one! I don't know if it's the most famous one or not, but that's a fantastic episode.

And that's it for my third-quarter reading! A fresh thread with which to end the year can be found here.

>133 bragan: Love your Twain review. Too bad that it wasn't the right book at the right time. But I guess that happens.

>141 OscarWilde87: It does, and you can't blame the book. I still did get something out of it, though.