45 posts tagged “books”
I've been pretty quiet here at Trifle for a couple of reasons. First off, work has been pretty hectic, as we try to get a version together for a BIG customer. While my company is very very good at resisting long, involved changes for the sake of one customer, when a multi-billion dollar company really really wants something that is on your upcoming feature list, you tend to do your best to deliver it early, right?
I've also become something of Twitter-holic, especially since I added unlimited text messaging to our cellphone plan. As I've mentioned before, I have even received some timely help via my twitter "neighborhood", which is a feedback loop that is hard to resist. I've stopped using TwitterFox though. For one thing, Firefox itself is slightly too unstable, as it tends to crash about twice a day, so I figure I need to cut back on my Addons. Secondly, typing gets very very very slow. Not sure what that is, besides a general Firefox slowdown, but it makes it impossible to use.
So I've been beta (maybe even alpha!) testing phpitter, a PHP(!) app. It took some work to get it installed, but the SVN version is reasonably solid at this point. I suppose I should look at twitux. Or maybe write my own, eh?
But anyway, a couple of short takes on my time wasting efforts, besides Twitter:
- I read Debatable Space by Philip Palmer. A pretty long science fiction novel, it tells the story of some space pirates who kidnap a VIP and then proceed to try and topple the current galactic overlords. A little too much internal dialog by the VIP, and not quite enough action, but the book postulates an interesting future of limitless resources and "travel" by avatar, as the light speed speed limit is still obeyed. If you like "hard" sci-fi, I think you'll like this book. Just skip over all the interminable Lena reflections and you won't miss a thing.
- I watched Michael Clayton onDemand and was decidedly underwhelmed. Originally, I had no interest in the movie. Who cares about battle lawyers? But the previews I saw on cable made it look pretty intense, so I used my free coupon to "rent" it. The beginning was cool, with a very startling event punctuating a quiet time, but then it rewound time (which I generally like in a movie) and got dull. I just never understood why George Clooney's Michael Clayton suddenly got attacked by a case of the guilts. Some whacko lawyer friend of his decides that defending big business is right and he somehow infects Clayton, whose conscience bothers him after years and years of protecting the big guy. I never got connected with him and so the last 2/3rds of the film just didn't resonate. Oh well.
- Fever Pitch became available online at Fancast (a Comcast site), so I watched that yet again while "working" yesterday. Man, the 2004 ALCS still brings a tear to me eye. I wonder if any but heartfelt Red Sox fans can really "get it". It's not as painful as Game Six, as it has a much better ending, but still...
Narrator: Ben became one of God's most pathetic creatures - a Red Sox fan.
Uncle Carl: Careful kid. They'll break your heart.
I almost made it all the way through Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour. I really tried but I have to admit to just losing interest in the adventures of Guy Crouchback after about 600 pages (out of 800). Originally published as three book, this long novel follows the life of Crouchback, beginning just before the start of World War 2. It finds Crouchback in his mid-30s, hanging out at the ancestral Italian summer villa. He decides to "make something of himself" and goes back to England to enlist.
He originally finds it hard to fit in somewhere, but eventually joins an infantry group. The book follows his (mis)adventures through training, getting shipped to Europe just before Dunkirk, getting shipped to North Africa, and then off to Crete. In each case, he just sort of misses the interesting bits. He gets to Dunkirk in time to retreat, to North Africa in time to get sent back for a misunderstanding and Crete in time for the evacuation.
In the beginning, it was a lot of fun. Waugh's wry commentary on the class-conscious society of the 1940s, even with the war clouds building, is quite amusing. Crouchback reminded me a little of Forrest Gump or, maybe even closer, Chance from Being There, as he just sort floats through life, observing, and getting peripherally involved in weird plots. But the detachment got to me after about 600 pages, and so I just gave up.
Strange that this would be one of Richard Dawkins' top five novels of all time, as Crouchback is a devout and practicing Catholic, with religion playing a fairly prominent role in the book. Perhaps it would have been easier to take, reading it one book at a time, but as an entire course, Sword of Honour was too much for me.
A couple of last minute additions to my "Books of 2007" that I haven't written anything about would include the following:
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - I picked this up at the same time as I got The Magic Compass from the library, so I went on a bit of a movie magic bing. I bought this one at the local drug store, so it featured Will Smith on the cover. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it turns out that I Am Legend is actually a novella, and so the rest of the book is filled with about a dozen more short stories of his (some of them are only a couple of pages!)
I enjoyed the beginning of the story, as man against monster, but gradually the main character became annoying. He did a lot of whining. It would occasionally pick up steam when he'd go face to face again, but then peter out in some long diatribe against life - not very heroic. Then things change radically on him and it all ends rather abruptly and, I have to be honest here, confusingly. I'm not really sure what the heck was going on at the end, but I doubt the movie ends the same way! I also found the quaint anachronisms (like a push button starter on the car) strangely irritating. Oh well, it was a short ride anyway.
I also read, as mentioned, The Magic Compass by Philip Pullman. I figured any book written by a proud and public atheist was worthing trying, especially given the movie hype. It started off badly for me, as it introduced several fantasy memes that I just can't stand, like a child everyone prophesizes about and a mistakenly overheard conversation. It got a little better and wasn't awful, I guess. I'm not sure what all the anti-religious brouhaha was all about - it isn't the first fantasy book where the controlling religion is pretty awful.
The milieu was pretty eclectic, to say the least. I was happy he didn't spend pages of exposition explaining every little detail, as I find those mind numbing as well. Talking armored polar bears are a little extreme though! And I surely got tired of the "get captured" plot device, as the girl in question must have gotten grabbed five or six times in order to move the plot along. But I did finish it, which is more than I can say for most fantasy novels these days. And I probably will try the next in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.
And I did finished the aforementioned Code of Conduct by Kristine Smith. Unfortunately, it devolved into more of a political thriller, rather than a straight mystery. I got kind of lost in the interwoven politics of the place, although I always enjoyed the heroine. Her back story was pretty interesting and the setting of the books is well thought out and very rational. I do want to get the next book in the series, Rules of Conflict and hope that maybe the mysteries get more attention.
Thanks to BadMojo I've joined Yet Another Social Bookmark site, this time called Shelfari. Maybe Vox will add something to coordinate the two, because I have a hard enough time keeping Vox up to date on my reading habits. But lets see what happens:
A followup to my Year in Music, here is my Year in Books, along with a top ten (more or less). I read a pretty good sampling of genres, from sci-fi, non-fiction, history, fantasy, mysteries and "literature". Some good, some bad, some I never finished.
According to my 2007 Books collection, I read about 30 books this year, an average of a little more than two per month. I probably started another ten or so books, either giving up due to lack of interest (Lord Foul's Bane), lack of time (Das Boot, The One From The Other), disgust (The Looming Tower) or ones I knew I'd be buying (The God Delusion). I did a pretty good job of reading in 2007, although my greatest disappointment was falling down on my quest to read War and Peace. I got sidetracked and haven't returned to it. My first vow for 2008 will be to finish it.
My ten favorite books of the year were:
- World War Z: An Oral History ( review) is a brilliantly realized "history" of the upcoming war against zombies. Great job done of interviewing the main subjects after the war was won. Really clever and I enjoyed this a lot!
- Trials of the Monkey (review) is a funny and at the same time scary book about traveling through the Bible Belt, by an ancestor of Darwin himself
- Homage to Catalonia (review), a brutally realistic true eyewitness account of the ugly Spanish Civil War, written by one of the Internationals, George Orwell.
- The End of Faith (review) is where a philosopher jumped to the forefront of today's freethinkers with this scathing expose of apocalyptic religious dogma. Harris' follow up, Letter to a Christian Nation (review) was equally entertaining, enlightening and scary.
- The Blonde (review) and The Wheel Man (review) were two great little terse mysteries. Funny, entertaining and tautly written, I really enjoyed these.
- Fiasco : The American Military Adventure in Iraq (review) lays bare just how morally corrupt and visually bankrupt the entire disaster in Iraq is and was. From an unbelievably rosy plan to having absolutely no idea what to do once we got there, Fiasco really lays low the entire administration.
- The Time Traveler's Wife (review) was a really interesting exercise in a time travel novel. Touching and well written, if a tad long, this novel had romance, laughs, tension and mystery.
- Freethinkers (review) is an excellent history of rational thinking since the founding of the United States. Really opened my eyes about some true pioneers of the movement, like Ingersoll and Lucretia Mott.
- The Man Who Would Be King (review) retold the story of Josiah Harland, explorer of Afghanistan. A colorful book of a forgotten niche of history.
I'm not quite done with it, but Kristine Smith's Code of Conduct will almost certainly make this list. An excellent sci-fi mystery featuring an interesting protagonist, I'm really enjoying it and am looking forward to reading the next one in the series.
I also enjoyed The Ghost Map, Middle World, Bangkok 8, A Place of Execution, Flood, "Negro President" and High Fidelity. And, of course, War and Peace, which is just a wonderful book.
Through a strange serendipity (is there any other kind?), I started reading Trials of the Monkey at about the same time as I was watching the Nova show Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. In Judgment Day, the author of Trials, is interviewed. An avowed atheist and great-great-grandson of Darwin himself, Matthew Chapman is now a successful screenwriter, living in New York City.
He was feeling closed in by the rat race that is Hollywood and began casting about for something else to do. As the annual recreation of the famous Scopes Trial was coming up, he decided to write a book about current views in that area of Tennessee. So he embarked on a bus journey there, and began writing his book.
Which quickly evolved (nyuk nyuk) into an autobiographical sketch, leading to the subtitle of the book - An Accidental Memoir. This surprised him as much as his editor, but it leads to a very interesting description of his growing up in England as the son of a very colorful parents, including his mother, an alcoholic great granddaughter of Darwin. Through some very colorful vignettes, Chapman describes his childhood, complete with his unnatural fixation on girls from an early age, which leads to his expulsion from several schools. His is a brutally honest book, often painting himself with almost painful glee as a very warped child!
Interspersed with these autobiographical chapters are the descriptions of his first trip to Dayton, Tennessee, a few months before the trial recreation. As someone who has lived most of his life in the nearly secular (at least, relatively speaking) Northeast US, I found the description of Dayton, with its 45 churches for a population of about 6,000 and its never ending series of religious billboards, to be particularly scary. There are some pretty funny (yet eerie) chapters of him poking about into tent revivals, interviewing the head creation "scientist" at the local Bryan College and other outrageous examples of religion gone wild that I just never have to deal with here.
Chapman also gives an excellent overview of the Scopes Trial itself, complete with thumbnail biographies of the three main contestants - Scopes, Bryan and Darrow. He also gleefully quotes HL Mencken all over the place:
Today, with the curtain barely rung up and the worst buffooneries to come, it is obvious to even the town boomers that getting upon the map, like patriotism, is not enough... Two months ago the town was obscure and happy. Today it is a universal joke.
There is one chapter ("Spelunking with the Christians") that has to be one of the funniest chapters I have read in a very long time. I haven't laughed so hard reading a book since my first reading of A Confederacy of Dunces. I had tears running down my cheeks, as his description of the ride over to the cave in a van full of devout Christian teenagers, lead by his "favorite Creationist" was so full of acid descriptions. And the actual cave trip...
I expected a big yawning mouth with a souvenir shop to one side. I thought we'd plod dutifully within, along well-defined paths until it was almost dark - and then turn around an exit, going "Boy, was that something or what?" [ed. note- that's been my cave experiences] But clearly this is to be an experience of an altogether different order and magnitude.
It's a slit!
The entrance to the cave is a ragged horizontal slit, like a mouth clumsily hacked into a pumpkin at Halloween. Even more alarming, it's at ground level. Doughty Christians insert themselves into it with difficulty, slither down in steep descent - and disappear. This is not for tourists. This nasty, malevolent gash which at its highest is no more than three feet, can only be an invitation to something worse. There's no souvenir shop and not a single reassuring sign saying 'Mind Your Head' or 'Don't Touch The Stalactites'. It's a real cave, one of those narrow, lethal warrens into which children fall and emerge alive only when the TV movie lies about it a year later. It's a perfect cave for adrenaline deficient professional spelunkers with miners' helmets, ropes and pitons. It's not a cave for a gang of infantile Christians and a middle-aged atheist with a panic attack.
And it just gets funnier. There's a bit of a twist at the end, but it wraps up nicely and he seems to have been better off having written the book. Combined with Judgement Day (and some of the grotesque polls that have come about, like how many people still prefer creationism to evolution), it was a real eyeopener and made me quite sad for the state of education here. One thing that really struck home was the remarkable similarities between the Scopes Trial and the Dover Trial. Here it is, over 80 years later, and the evolution side still has to bring on scientists to point out just how solid and beautiful a theory evolution truly is. Nearly the exact same testimony, showing the power of evolution and how, over the intervening years, it has become even more of a bedrock theory, was brought out for the Dover Trial. And still, perhaps due in part to the guilty finding at the Scope Trial, education is so lacking in some areas they just have never been exposed to the grace of evolution. Sad and disheartening.
But read this book. Trials of the Monkey is incredibly funny and enlightening. Chapman's story is a little less so, as he seems like a odd duck (a fact of which he seems to find truly ironic, given his heredity!). But solid writing and wonderful insights have me penciled in for his next book, which is on the Dover trials.
Unfortunately, I haven't read any of these. But I have read three or four (all non-fiction) from the 2006 list (see the links on the left). And just what I need - yet another list of book I just gotta read :-(
I struck a motherload of media yesterday. Great music and books were discovered, songs were dug, first chapters were devoured and much joy commenced.
I had a 40% off up to 3 CDs coupon at Borders, so I took a quick run up to the local one. The CD racks were a mess and I could not find anything specifically on my want list. But some more digging uncovered a few gems, including Blown to Smithereens: The Best of the Smithereens, Massive Attack's Collected and The Best of the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I've listened to the first two and am totally blown away by both.
I'm not even sure how Massive Attack got on my want list, but their first three CDs were on there, so the Collected CD was a nice find, as it summarizes their first four CDs. And wow, what a great collection of trip-hop! I love the sounds and really dig Liz Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins) on this one called Teardrop:
Then I popped in the Smitheeens CD and I immediately hearkened back to simpler days in the 80s, when their first CD, Especially For You came out. With their heavy guitar sound and Pat DiNizio's unique vocals, they are immediately recognizable. And this CD is filled from front to back with great indie rock sounds. Hard to pick just one, but I'll go with the big, deep guitar sounds of Blood And Roses.
(sorry for the icons instead of pictures in my MP3s. I still can't seem to correctly upload MP3s that have the cover inserted in them.)
I haven't listend to the Squirrel Nut Zippers yet, but I love their infectious swing/jazz/pop sound.
And then I took the girls to the library and while they were checking out the children's section (R took out her first Hardy Boys mystery - she wasn't interested in Nancy Drew), I looked over the new books. Again, not that I need any new books to read, as I really just want to finish the library books I have and get back to my War and Peace reading, which has slipped horribly. Luckily, I didn't see anything there, but then I remembered another author I wanted to read - Norman Mailer. Perusing his obits, I realized that I had never read a Mailer book, although The Executioner's Song has always been on my To Read list. Well, both it and The Naked and The Dead were there, so I decided to go with his first book, a 500+ page epic on the taking of an island during World War 2, written when he was just 24. And just reading the first chapter has me dying to dive into the epic.
And then I decided to check out the "humanist" section of the library (Dewey Decimal at 211, if you're interested). And, lo and behold, there was The God Delusion! There are like six holds on it, but there it sat, lonely and hidden deep in the stacks, which is very odd. I wonder if someone was trying to bury it?
Be that as it may, I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I quickly scooped it up. And just reading the introduction made me remember how excited I was reading his book The Ancestor's Tale - it sounds too good to just be a temporary library borrowing and I'm pretty sure I'll have to own it. Especially as it comes out in paperback Real Soon Now. I'll probably have to bump that to the top of my reading list, as I'm sure I won't be able to renew it.
So a plethora of stimulating sounds and words. Truly my cup runneth over! And now, rather than type this in, I should head upstairs and get my nose in a book.
A friend of mine asked me for some kid book recommendations, so I thought I would just post them here. We have a ton of books, and story time is an integral part of our bedtime routine. My wife has been a stickler for a regular time (7pm) and routine for bed, and I think it is the major contributor to our girls' excellent sleeping habits. They tend to go to bed reasonably easy, and are usually sound asleep before 8pm. And they sleep until 6:30 or so, no matter what time they actually go out. And rarely wake up during the night. And it has been that way ever since they were very little. Can't ask for anything more!
The final step in the routine (after things like toothbrushing, bathroom, washing, and the like) is for all of us to gather together on our bed and read a book or three. We borrow plenty of books from the library, and each girl has a full bookcase. This list doesn't include any classics, like Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd), Pat the Bunny (Dorothy Kunhardt) or anything by classic authors like Dr. Seuss, Sandra Boynton, or Eric Carle (you can't go wrong with any of them). These are more obscure books that I think really work well with any child up to about 6 or so, but are also interesting enough to read (over and over and over and over) again and again by adults. Often this means some good rhyming action, but not always.
- Click Clack Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. We haven't found the sequels to be nearly as clever.
- How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. On the other hand, we've found all the books in this series to be outstanding. One of my fondest memories of our youngest are of reading this book and her answering the question "Noooooo".
- Bubba and Beau Go Night-Night by Kathi Appelt, Arthur Howard (Illustrator)
- Oh My Baby, Little One by Kathi Appelt, Jane Dyer (Illustrator)
- The Water Hole by Graeme Base. This one has some cool illustrations, with hidden animals on each page. We're still working on finding all of them
- The Complete Adventures of Big Dog and Little Dog by Dav Pilkey
- Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, Marla Frazee (Illustrator). Babies love babies and this one has a bunch of them, with some really nice rhymes too
- Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. The whole series remains a favorite, with sparkly illustrations that really attract the eyes, and very nice fables with solid morals.
- Sally Goes To The Beach by Stephen Huneck. All the Huneck Sally books are big colorful books on a Labrador Retriever's adventures. This one and the mountain one are favorites.
- The Everything Book by Denise Fleming
- Kiss Good Night by Amy Hest, Anita Jeram (Illustrator)
- My Car by Byron Barton. Probably the best for the youngest set, very bold bright colors and easy words. A real favorite of the girls when they were younger. The author has a bunch of books and all are good.
- Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo and Diane Dillon. Clever rhyming in this one, with typical odd Brown patterns.
- All By Myself by Aliki. If I were forced to pick just one book, I think this would be it. Clever rhymes about growing up and trying to do stuff yourself.
- I Love You Like Crazy Cakes by Rose A. Lewis and Jane Dyer. A poignant book about adopting a Chinese baby
- Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine. For any parent who has tried to convince their kid about clothing choices. That means all of us.
- When Sophie Gets Angry...really, Really Angry by Molly Bang. Very clever book about a little girl who can barely contain her anger.
- Alpha Bugs: A Pop-Up Alphabet by David A. Carter. There's a whole series of these pop-up books, but this was a favorite.
- I Love You, Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester Clark. All of these are very cute stories about a little girl and her stuffed animal, Blue Kangaroo
As for buying these, I can heartily recommend AllBooks4Less.com and its sister site BookCloseouts.com. I think they may actually be the same company, but the prices can't be beat, although as you can imagine from the names, the selection is hit or miss. I always start with AllBooks4Less and then try the other major online vendors.
After seeing a good review of it on M-----l's blog, I asked for and received Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee from my local library. Like I needed another book to read, but luckily this was a rather thin tome, so it was one I figured I could handle.
And I did finish it, which something I've had a hard time doing lately. Disgrace tells the story of a South African professor who gets involved with a student of his, gets found out and then kicked out. He goes to stay with his daughter, who has gone back to the earth and runs a farm by herself off "in the country". More bad things happen, which interferes with his writing of a Lord Byron opera.
I have to admit to being a little nonplussed by it all. Disgrace is a Booker Prize winner, and Coetzee is a literary darling. But in many ways, it reminded me of reading The Welsh Girl - a book populated with characters who seemed to never leap off the page, remaining just literary figures who never resonated with me as "real" people. Motivations seemed to be missing or, even worse, random. And the main character never came off as someone to feel sorry for, who seemed to be reaching for something, but actually rather pathetic in the end. Not a bad book, but not one that makes me want to run out and read another Coetzee.
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