Summer book reviews

Well, sadly, the summer is starting to draw to a close...next week I've got to start my September preparations. It's time to look back on the

Books I read this summer

Even as busy as the summer was, I managed to finish 15 books (and start a half-dozen more), so if anyone out there is looking for a recommendation, look no farther and -

Stardust

By: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Fantasy

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Campbellian mythic cycle tale, set
mainly in the world of Faerie, of a young man coming of age through a quest,
facing obstacles, fulfilling destiny, realizing his companion/verbal sparring
partner is in fact the girl of his dreams.

My review: Ever see that episode of Battlestar Galactica (the
new series) where Starbuck gets inside the "brain" of a Cylon fighter
and pulls all the right ganglia and nerve endings to make it fly, shoot, etc?
Well, Gaiman knows very well how to pull the ganglia of the Western Canon's
sense of mythic archetypes. Touching and rewarding because deep down, you know
how it's all supposed to go, ala the Princess Bride, except since this
is Gaiman, the fantasy has an edge...innocent people suffer, evildoers
sometimes escape justice (although usually do wind up hoisting themselves on
their own petard), and growth always comes at a cost, even if that cost is "only"
one's innocence. Gaiman's worlds can be at the same time magically exhilarating
and ruthlessly unforgiving (Neverwhere is a perfect example)...Stardust
satisfies. I cried a couple of times, in the exact way I cried during The
Last Unicorn, for the exact same reasons. I will always read anything Gaiman
turns out, even if - nay, because - I know exactly what to expect.

My Grade: A-

Smoke and Mirrors

By: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Fantasy anthology

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Collection of various fantasy stories,
mostly in modern settings.

My review: Not Gaiman's strongest work, but none of the tales are downright
awful, and a handful are actually quite good. A little edgier than usual...more
of the American Gods end of the ruthlessness spectrum than the Stardust
end, but the cruel truths some of the stories force us to face are just that,
truths, things we'd rather not think about but they're there, thrown into painful
(yet somehow cathartic!) relief by the fantastic elements. I have to say, I
didn't know what to expect in a number of the stories, and I always like that.

My Grade: B/B+

Guns, Germs, and Steel

By: Jared Diamond

Genre: History, historiography, political anthropology

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Enormous tome that attempts to explain
the reasons why and how the cultures of Western Europe managed to subdue, dominate,
and control the globe. The author tries to resist explanations of cultural or
racial superiority, instead going all the way back to prehistoric days to discuss
the various environmental, ecological, bacteriological, etc phenomena that in
his analysis created the conditions that gave Western Europe its advantages.

My review: Wow. The scope is simply amazing, and although I have no way
to verify the research, it all looks very thorough. I can honestly say I never
even stopped to think about half of the factors he mentions. I only got through
the first 600 pages (it's twice that long), but I get the point, and will revisit
it later to be sure. Despite what seems like dry subject matter, you really
do want to keep reading...whether your interest is in military history, the
evolution of language, agriculture, etc, you will find something here to connect
with. Airplane reading par excellance, especially on 16 hour flights...

My Grade: B+

King Matt

By: Janusz Korczak

Genre: Allegorical "children's story" for adults

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A 500 page novel written as if it
were a children's book, but most decidedly not one...about the political career
of a well-meaning child king who learns some hard lessons about the nature of
power and the demands of the throne, yet still tries to cling to his idealism.

My review: Very moving and sophisticated in its simplicity. The problems
King Matt faces are the same ones that has dogged any of us with utopian dreams,
ideas of "what we would do if only we were in charge." While
a sad tale, by no means a hopeless one. When you factor in that the author was
a Czech gentile who willingly chose not to save himself from the Nazi concentration
camps but instead elected to stay with Jewish children from an orphanage, marching
with them into the gas chambers so they wouldn't have to die alone...the effect
is just indescribable. I recommend it for anyone, but particularly those with
an interest in politics-made-simple.

My Grade: A

Bel Canto

By: Ann Patchett

Genre: Literary fiction

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Guerillas take a bunch of rich and
famous folk hostage at a dinner party...during the weeks of standoff, relationships
form between the hostages, and between the hostages and the terrorists.

My review: Surprisingly moving and well written. Although you can "call"
a lot of it, the writing is still good enough to grip you and get you to care
about the characters. A great pean to the power of relationships, and peace,
in a world of violent politics. It made me cry, at any rate. It was also just
really weird because it focuses on both Japan and Latin America, the two places
I visited this summer...

My Grade: A

The Elephant Vanishes

By: Haruki Murakami

Genre: Literary fiction (Japanese), slight touch of magical realism and
the surreal

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A series of short stories taking
place in contemporary Japan, all involving alienation, loneliness, and troubled
relationships.

My review: Eerie and draining, yet compelling, to read. While some of
the stories are better than others, all essentially focus on young-middle age
professionals who, despite their material success, feel lonely, disconnected,
purposeless and too alienated even to properly be depressed. Sexual interludes
are intense but meaningless, and even the magical realistic elements don't seem
to shake them out of their funk. It's heavy to read...not so much the language
or the writing in any way (the actual pages turn quickly), but just because
of the sense of hollowness. Still, well written, an interesting insight not
only into the Japanese psyche of hollow bourgeoisie materialism but our own
as well. Funny fact: someone, in every story, is named "Noburu Watanabe",
even though in one story it's a cat.

My Grade: A -

Tokyo

By: Mo Hayder

Genre: Literary fiction / thriller

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A young mentally ill woman with
a troubled past and a burning obsession moves to Tokyo to try and achieve catharsis.
She works in a hostess club while pursuing a Chinese scholar whom she feels
can help her get closure to a childhood trauma, and winds up getting involved
in a yakuza conspiracy with roots in the Rape of Nanking...

My review: At first it seemed kind of cheap and tawdry, but it actually
developed into a decent novel. The story, while melodramatic and overwrought
at times, is still a page-turner, and as more and more was revealed about the
protagonist I grew more interested in her. Slightly educational about Japanese
atrocities in China in WW2 as well. It was a good airplane read, especially
in my "Japanese mood" this summer.

My Grade: B+

Norwegian Wood

By: Haruki Murakami

Genre: Literary fiction (Japanese)

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Haunting tale of a young man's coming
of age in contemporary Japan, his tortured romance with a childhood friend whose
boyfriend (his best friend) committed suicide as a teenager. The introduction
of an extroverted young woman (who is also secretly in much pain) creates something
of a love triangle, as all of them struggle to find their way as young people
in the modern world of freedom, sex, depression, and a lack of meaning in life.

My review: Absolutely beautiful, albeit depressing and heavy. Some dark
humor and a good narrative pace keeps it from ever being oppressive, but make
no mistake, it's a poignant, poignant book. The characters and their pain is
very believable...older adults just don't seem to remember how tough it is to
be a young adult, even when one has material comfort.

My Grade: A

Woman at Point Zero

By: Nawal El Saadawi

Genre: Literary fiction (Egyptian)

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A proud and defiant woman in prison
on death row in Egypt tells her story of how her innocence was repeatedly lost
and shattered, how and why she became a prostitute, and eventually a murderess,
condemning the patriarchal ways of Islam and politics in general.

My review: "Moll Flanders" for contemporary Egypt, it just didn't
work for me. Unrelentingly bitter and depressing, there is not a single character
the protagonist meets who does not use her and abuse her. Sadly, this is probably
not an exaggeration of life for a woman in an Islamic state (although I always
thought of Egypt as much more secular/liberal than, say, Iran), but what are
we supposed to take from this? There is no hope, no catharsis, nothing except
a sort of bitter pride she has in the moments when she exerted her personhood,
even though her husbands/pimps/the state were all quick to brutalize her after
she did so. Not particularly well-written, either...makes a lot of use of repetition
of passages, maybe it's cultural, but it feels oddly nursery-rhymy at times.
I've met 3 other people who read this book and they all loved it, so maybe I'm
just strange, but I just didn't see why the international literary community
has made such a huge whoop about this book. Just reporting pain and suffering
does not make for literature - the writing needs to be provocative,
too.

My Grade: C

Notes from the Hyena's Belly

By: Nega Mezlekia

Genre: Historical Memoir (Ethiopian)

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A not-quite-linear self-history
of a young man desperately trying to survive turbulent times of violence and
scarcity in Ethiopia.

My review: Yipes. Intense, traumatic, to the point where the reader (and
by his own admission, even the protagonist) just starts to become immune to
the one-horror-after-another progression. This book doesn't always know what
it wants to be...sometimes it tells playful little anecdotes and legends, and
seems to want to be the second coming of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
At other times it launches into historical summary/political analysis, and while
I found these passages educational (as well as extremely biased, but then, he's
not claiming to be objective), the writing was much weaker here and reading
it really disrupted the flow. The unannounced or explained jumps back and forth
in time gave me great difficulty in processing the memoir, and I didn't find
the narrative or prose particularly compelling, except for a few shining moments.
As I felt about Woman at Point Zero, I think the laudatory words about
this book by the literary community came more out of respect for what the author
had to live through, and admiration of "the first big book to come out
of X country"...but this isn't a really well-written book. I'd recommend
it only for someone interested in Ethiopia, and then, to be read along with
other sources for balance and perspective.

My Grade: B-

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

By: JK Rowling

Genre: Fantasy/young adult

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: The latest (and darkest) chapter
in the Harry Potter series - Harry and his friends struggle to live "normal"
(wizard) teenage lives whilst a war rages around them. Can Harry hold onto his
humanity and his relationships as he takes on the burden of being the "chosen
one" to slay the evil Lord Voldemort?

My review: Rowling's got this down to a T...her teenage protagonists have
aged believably, have genuinely awkward forays into the dating world, trying
to balance it with their friendships, find themselves maturing sometimes ahead
of their friends...both Harry and his foil Draco Malfoy have become less wide-eyed
and adventurous and more obsessed with revenge, especially as old allies' loyalty
seems called into doubt. Dumbledore insists love is the way to defeat Voldemort...can
love, and friendship, survive the sacrifices that war seems to demand? Very
relevant in our own paranoid times. Not as compelling a story as the last
book, Order of the Phoenix, but a great character study and a real page-turner,
just like the other books. A must for Potter-files, but a difficult introduction
to the series...go read the others first if you haven't already.

My Grade: A-

The Lake House

By: James Patterson

Genre: Adventure/Pop-scifi

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: A middle aged veterinarian must
guide and protect a bunch of genetically engineered kids with wings who are
being pursued by evil scientists bent on exploiting them. Lots of things blow
up.

My review: Oh. My. God. How did this shit ever get published? The writing
is painful, painful to read. The utter antithesis of "show, don't
tell", a character will enter and the narrator will say, "she was
the kind of woman who never suffered fools and always demanded the most from
her employees"...no, even that isn't good enough, I'm not including all
of the omnipresent colloquialisms and clichés: "she was the kind
of babe who would `do it again, play with your heart, get lost in the game.'"
Ack. Thhpt. To be fair, the story did make me want to find out what happened
next...even though the characters were all cliché and it felt as if this
were a story being told by a particularly creative twelve year old boy who had
spent the last two weeks watching nonstop back to back Hollywood action movies
while listening to the best of the 90s pop CDs. This is action-adventure if
it all took place on the Family Channel, despite the book's R rating (meditate
on that, and if you need help, imagine sex scenes -- of which there are a gratuitous
few-- that seem to be written by a 40 year old virgin who read lots of Playboy).
The best thing I can say about this is that I didn't pay a cent for it (a passenger
on a plane loaned it to me), and that despite being a giant hardcover, it was
marked down to $6.98. But the author apparently has had several of his books
made into movies, which made me tear my hair and scream.

My Grade: D -



The Madness Season

By: CS Friedman

Genre: Science fiction

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: In an era when humanity has been
conquered by an aloof and irresistible alien race with a hive-mind, a man with a tortured
past becomes an accidental participant in the revolution, all while discovering
the secrets of the aliens, history, and most importantly, himself.

My review: This was a terrific book - complex protagonist, really interesting
aliens, a unique and very compelling love interest character, and some great
statements about humanity (issued in a non-beating-you-over-the-head manner.)
The nature of individuality, what defines a "monster", the pros and
cons of immortality, etc are all big themes, explored through nuanced characters.
The book actually crosses genres slightly, but I can't really say much more,
because a major part of this book involves a secret that is right in front of
your eyes the whole time, but creeps up on you slowly, and to reveal it here
would spoil the fun. Good, solid writing, fast pace, satisfying twists and turns...and
the ending is satisfying enough. A sequel set in the same universe, with
different focus characters, would definitely make it into my order bin.

My Grade: A

Shadow of the Hegemon

By: Orson Scott Card

Genre: Science fiction (political/military)

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: Book#2 in the Bean subseries, set
in the same universe as Ender's Game. In the years following Earth's
victory over the insectoid Buggers by using genius children as virtual soldiers,
the unity among nations has shattered. Now countries around the globe are jockeying
for power, trying to use (and in effect being used by) those genius children
and their strategic minds. The wars between nations serve as a backdrop to the
personal battle between the supergenius (yet emotionally challenged) Bean and
the psychopathic Achilles, each of whom use nations and armies as pawns in their
own vendetta, which in this book focuses around the one lead female character
from the battle school, Petra.

My review: Ehh, I think Card has really jumped the shark. Ender's Game
was a work of genius, Speaker for the Dead was a damned good novel, and
the rest of that series started to outwear its welcome, but still holds its
place as a classic run of scifi. The first Bean book was interesting, casting
the events of Ender's Game through the eyes of Bean. This book is, um,
unnecessary. It feels like watching a game of Risk play out. The characters
are too wooden and underdeveloped, and seem to think too much with their strategic
brains and not enough with their human feelings (yes, I know, that's part of
the point, but we need foils to throw that into relief, and while such characters
arise here and there, they still feel stilted). Too much of the plot feels like
a game of iocane powder...ie, "aha, you guessed my plan...ah, but I guessed
you guessed it, so I did this....ah, but I guessed you'd guessed that I guessed
that, so I did this!...oh shit, you beat me..." It also just strained
belief too much that entire armies and nations would just respond like
clockwork to the central characters' whims. There is no appreciation for chaos
theory here, for the individual whims and personalities of officers and civilians,
for a freaking sandstorm or typhoon that might serve as an X factor...like I
said, it all plays out like a game of Risk, and not a novel. Not to say
that there are not some nice moments here...particularly an argument between
Bean and Ender's mother about the nature of love and why humans need it...but
they are too few and far between. I kept reading because I wanted to see where
all the nations would stand after the dust settled, not because I gave a crud
about the characters themselves. Petra's character is a shining exception, actually
well-developed and interesting...she needed more airtime. Worth a read for die-hard
Ender fans, and yes, it's a page-turner, but overall, one could find better.

My Grade: B



Everything bad is good for you

By: Steven Johnson

Genre: Nonfiction, sociology/media studies

Spoiler-free synopsis in a nutshell: An argument that the media in which
today's kids partake - the TV shows, the video games, etc - are far more advanced
than those of yesteryear, do not in fact rot the brain or impede social progress,
and actually train kids to develop all sorts of critical thinking and problem
solving skills.

My review: An interesting thesis! The book, essentially an endless string
of examples, could have been 1/2 the length, and by its nature in referring
to so many specific titles of films and games will date itself very quickly
(already, I snicker at its reference to Zelda, Ocarina of Time, as cutting
edge). But the book does make one really question popular educational paradigms,
and will probably make kids feel a little more vindicated and validated about
their own personal popculture. Read the first couple of chapters and skim the
rest.

My Grade: B

Quote of the day: "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX) in 1999, criticizing President Clinton for the airstrikes against Bosnia