The Book Stew

10 Days of Halloween Horror Day 8: You Can Beat a Classic

2011-10-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Day Eight of the 10 Days of Halloween Horror 2011! We'll be featuring horror-related reviews right up until the big day! You can find the Halloween Horror posts for Panel Patter here, and don't forget to check out the Book Stew for book-book horror, too!

I recently got out an audio book of classic ghost stories, a sampling of public domain stories from names both familiar (Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Saki) and unfamiliar, at least to me. The production value was top notch, with a venerable Brit providing the narration in a variety of tones and voices. Unfortunately, however, I wasn't impressed with the stories themselves. They felt extremely antiquated, slow-paced, and generally bored me more than thrilled me.

This came as quite a shock to me, because in the past, I found these gothic-style stories to be quite enjoyable. as recently as Summer 2009 I was singing the praises of Dracula. But I noticed upon re-reading some Poe that I was kinda non-plussed, and last year, I barely made it through a classic ghost story I'd downloaded for my nook. This neutral attitude towards the classic ghost stories collection is part of a pattern: I'm just not into old horror in the way that I used to be.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Tastes change over time. I think I've probably read too many Stephen King books by now (and other novels that move quickly) to appreciate the slow-building horror that comes from the older writers. Perhaps I'm just losing my attention span, as I find myself more pressed for time. Get to the gruesome details, because I have ten other things to do today, you know?

I'm not sure that's true, though, because I still enjoy a classic horror film. Slow-pacing is okay for me, but it has to have a powerful set-up. If I can tell what is going on a mile away--and in the case of a lot of the classic horror I've read lately, that was exactly the problem--then I'm just not interested. I think the reason I prefer newer horror, as long as it doesn't involve excessive violence, is that it either gets to the point quickly or the build-up is worth it.

At the end of the day, I think I may stop trying to read classic horror for awhile. Let it sit for a bit. It's certainly not going anywhere. How about you? Still reading the old school stuff, or have you moved on?

Monsters Caught on Film by Dr. Melvyn Willin

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Day Four of the 10 Days of Halloween Horror 2011! We'll be featuring horror-related reviews right up until the big day! You can find the Halloween Horror posts for Panel Patter here, and don't forget to check out the Book Stew for book-book horror, too!

I've always been fascinated by the idea of monsters existing in the real world. Maybe it was part of my interest in dinosaurs or reading comic books from an early age or watching horror movies a few years too early. The answer is lost to time, like some of the legendary beasts captured in this book. Regardless, my ears always perk up at the news of a sighting of Bigfoot, a Yeti, or the various lake creatures that dot the world, allegedly of course.

(I think I should add "In Search of..." to that list of things that spurred my interest, come to think of it. Who can argue with Mr. Spock?)

When I saw this book on the shelf at the library, I simply had to grab it. I haven't really followed the legendary creature genre for awhile, so I was curious to see what the internet age had done to the myths I'd grown up with.

If this book is any indication, time has not been kind to the idea of beasts not on your biology test. Thanks to the ability to Photoshop just about anything, it's possible for anyone with time on their hands to craft a beastie, fog the picture up, and claim it to be original--as long as you "lose" the negative, of course. As a result, this book trips over itself talking about how so many of the photos included in the book are likely to be fake. Dr. Willin's solution to this problem is to add something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be cool if this were real?" to the bulk of the entries, and after awhile, that gets old.

While this book does have a lot of interesting pictures, many of them are the same ones I've seen hundreds of times, and the new ones are, if anything, worse in quality than their predecessors. A section on wild beasts has blurrier photos than when the news reports on television about a celebrity porn video. Other pictures are blatant forgeries, such as the models of a T-Rex taking down a rhino, but they are mixed in with screen captures that might just be real. There is no clear separation between the impossible and the plausible, leading me to believe that the author is entirely too skeptical to be the collator of a work like this. Despite protestations to the contrary, Dr. Willin seems not to regard anything in here as true, with the exception of real "monsters" like the Portuguese Man of War or the Komono Dragon. It would be like me trying to put together a book on Scientology--my credibility in their beliefs is so small that I'd never be able to make the work seem passable to someone who even at least partially gives credit to their faith.

When it comes to things like UFOs or mythical creatures or ghosts, I remain open-minded but generally doubtful. It seems like Dr. Willin has a similar opinion, but ironically, I think books like this are best-served in the hands of true believers. While their opinions may be wrong, they have a seriousness that Monsters Caught on Film lacks. The tone is just wrong, keeping the reader from really getting into the idea of things like Nessie actually being real. In addition, the use of verified creatures confuses things too much for my taste. If you are looking for books about urban legend creatures, there are better ones out there. If you really do believe in Bigfoot, then give this work a berth wider than that of an alleged yeti footprint.

Scandalous Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

2011-07-05T05:00:00.001-04:00

I kinda pride myself on being a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to knowing things about what I like to call hidden history, a term coined by someone smarter than me for the parts of the past that don't tend to make it into school textbooks, or even the History Channel. I'd like to think I work hard on this, but then I read a book like Scandalous Women, which reminds me that no matter how progressive you might think you are, there's always parts of the historical narrative that only the most dedicated researchers can find.

That's certainly the case with this book, in which Mahon turns her blog into a book, hoping to catch people with this eye-grabbing title and maybe help them learn something. She does so not by trying to be neutral or present people in a good light. Instead, like any good internet writer, this book is filled with snark, pithy remarks (like how Anne Boleyn made King Henry VIII put a ring on it), and a frank discussion of the good and bad traits of her subjects.

The title itself is a bit of a misnomer. While some of these women certainly are notorious, I'm not sure that Amelia Earhart counts as scandalous. Of course, "Women You Should Know" just doesn't have the same ring to it. There is definitely an emphasis on sex in the book, even for those who were not really known for their sexual escapades. While the book seems to chastise the contemporaries of these women for focusing on their bedroom habits, it seems to me that Mahon has, to some degree, done the same thing. It does get monotonous at certain points, especially as the book progresses into 19th and 20th century women, where we know more of their relationship history. I know the idea is to heighten the scandal part of their lives, but sometimes I felt like I was intruding where I didn't belong in reading about their love affairs. Perhaps that's just me.

Where the book shines is in highlighting women who should be in their own spotlight, rather than hugging the shadows of a more famous man, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine or Emiie du Chatelet or even Bolelyn. There are also some interesting women who have similar male analogs who strike me as a lot more compelling, like Boudica or Calamity Jane (whose real story would make a great modern Western) or Ida B Wells-Barnett or the pirate lady team of Anne Bonney and Mary Read.

Some of these women were familiar to me, but others, Wells-Barnett in particular, deserve to have their story told on a wider stage. I'm sure there are biographies for these folks, but we need to get them into the wider consciousness, which means movies or at least a reference in a textbook. What Scandalous Women does well is gives readers a starting point. You could spend years reading about each of these women and not lack for quality material to study. The fact that Mahon did this for a blog, without pay, makes it all the more incredible.

Scandalous Women is very much a modern history book. I appreciate the fresh writing but those looking for a more scholarly approach will be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you want to learn a bit more about women who are just as important in history, such as a contemporary of Rodin that might have been his better or a woman who refused to let getting impaled prevent her from art and lovers, then give this book a try. You might even learn something, and even if you don't, I guarantee you'll be entertained!

An Account of the Battle of Wilson's Creek by R. I. Holcombe

2011-06-04T05:00:00.002-04:00

This book is part of my 7-year Civil War Challenge, where I read books relating to the part of the Civil War that is 150 years old. 2011 is 1861.

Not entirely satisfied with the other book I read on Wilson's Creek, I reached out into the public domain of Archive.org and found this text, which is smaller, punchier, and ultimately more effective at giving me the details of the battle that certainly made it seem as if Missouri would be lost to the Union in the Civil War.

This text, which was clearly a source for the newer book, was written in 1883 and spends more time trying to get first person accounts of the battle from those who survived, which is why it is a far more engaging read than the drier, more matter of fact Battle of Wilson's Creek book. Holcombe repeatedly discusses his efforts to find facts from those who were there, and as a result, there is far more editorial commentary and criticism, particularly of General McCullouch's bungling that prevented the South from gaining an even more impressive victory.

As in the other book, it's clear the odds were against Lyon and he died trying to do his best with the crappy situation General Fremont (and to an extent, Lincoln) had placed him. This book posited the idea that had Lyon left the Confederates a way to retreat, he might have even won the battle. I doubt this, given the difference in strength, but it was certainly an interesting idea.

The book itself sometimes slips into breathless prose, but ironically, it has a far more modern feel than history texts written around the middle of the 20th Century. I appreciate the commentary and occasional sarcasm, as it is used quite appropriately and keeps things moving when you are discussing troop formations and whatnot. It is especially fun to see Holcombe condemn those who would mar history with lies. I could have done without a few over the top references to bravery and lost lives, but all in all, this was a quite readable book.

Unfortunately, it's probably not recommendable to anyone. The Archive's version is a very, very bad scan that I had to mentally translate entirely too many times, and it's not on Gutenberg as of yet. If you find this in print form somewhere, definitely grab it. This is an excellent account of a small battle, and the best of the three small engagement books I've read so far for the challenge.

Inventing George Washington by Edward G. Lengel

2011-05-28T12:54:00.002-04:00

If there’s one constant in American politics today, it’s that the meaning and intent of the Founding Fathers is as relevant today as it was over two hundred years ago. Possibly no group of human beings has ever been so analyzed as the powerful Pantheon of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and company, save perhaps Abraham Lincoln. No matter how many books are written about these men, it seems we can never truly agree on what they are. Into that fray comes Inventing George Washington, a book that attempts not to define Washington for what he was—but for what he was not.

It’s a novel approach, one that was initially taken by people called “debunkers” (working on the same theory as World War One de-licers), but is handled here in a far more subtle manner than the firebrands of the 1920s whose goal was seemingly to crash every historical figure off their pedestal—particularly the Father of our Country. In Lengal’s hands, the story of Washington after his death is not so much an attempt to make him less of a person but to show that despite being the most recognizable of all presidents, he is also the one that, pretty much from the day of his death in 1799, America knows the least about.

Starting from the early days, Lengel shows that Washington the man was outdone by Washington the myth almost from the get-go. Due to careless handling of his papers and even calculated destruction, it was difficult for any biographer to get a complete picture of the man. What to do? Start making things up. The more honorable the story (The cherry tree, anyone?), the better. Because this became such a cottage industry, everyone from religious zealots to those with political axes to grind would alter the history of Washington to fit their needs, a practice that goes on to this day. Lengel calmly walks through this minefield, pointing out the flaws as he goes.

Was Washington a prude? Not according to the records of the day. Was he a womanizer? That’s wrong, too, says Lengel, showing that extremes are generally wrong in any history of the first president. The same holds for multiple stories of his prayers/baptisms/conversions at Valley Forge, all of which have no historical basis in fact but are often repeated from grade school to grad school. Washington was neither a fervent Christian nor a Deist, showing both sides of this debate to be dead in the water. Similarly, he did love Martha, contrary to conventional wisdom, and was not above flirting, no matter how hard the Victorian prudes tried to paint him as above cares of the flesh.

Some stories included here are already pretty healthily debunked, such as the idea he had a slave love child or the Betsy Ross legend, but others really shocked me. The Quaker Spy story is just that—a story. I admit I was crushed. There’s also more evidence to support a lukewarm Christianity than I’ve seen in the past, though Lengel’s words will not soothe those who feel strongly about the faith of the Founders.

Perhaps the most interesting thing Lengel brings up is that Washington has been exploited for years upon years, and in many cases people prefer the myth to the legend. Everyone from PT Barnum to modern-day psychics have leaned on the power of Washington to make a quick buck, going back to before the days when Washington was even on the diminutive dollar bill. Want proof people prefer story to truth? A completely nonsensical psychic autobiography of Washington outsells many legitimate biographies. Americans know what they like—and it’s not true history.

Working roughly chronologically, Lengel discusses Washington the myth and does his debunking in a mildly sarcastic way, whether it’s to nibble at the edges of popular expectations or to mildly chastise those who are so desperate for a connection to Washington that they believe every Washington slept here story or take family tales for fact. He’s understanding of the need for connection, saving his venom only for the most poisonous or preposterous lies.

As a book, Inventing George Washington is less of a history and more of an un-history, or rather, it’s a history of the kind of inventions Americans are capable of, showing that our penchant for self-deception when it comes to American superiority started from the early days of the Republic and carry on in the words of 2012 presidential candidates. Washington as fact may not be very sexy, but Washington as myth has all the sizzle of a modern day scandal. For a man like Washington, who was very self-conscious, this would be very painful. Luckily for all of us, the one thing we know for sure is that he’s not alive to see it. Those willing to peek under the covers of popular history will definitely find a lot to enjoy in this work. You might even un-learn something!

The Battle of Wilson's Creek by Edwin C. Bearss

2011-05-14T18:31:00.003-04:00

This book is part of my 7-year Civil War Challenge, where I read books relating to the part of the Civil War that is 150 years old. 2011 is 1861.

In the early days of the Civil War, generals and troops were mostly raw and unused to their commands or how to properly fight a battle with a large number of troops. Even in a smaller circumstance like the Battle of Wilson's Creek, mistakes were plentiful and based mostly on one part misunderstanding and one part incompetence, with just a hint of inexperience thrown in.

The Battle of Wilson's Creek is the story of an engagement that must have seemed large at the time, but dealt with "armies" that had only about as many men as a typical division would hold at the war's apex in 1863-1864. It's the story of trying to hold Missouri, a border state, in Union hands, when there were quite a few in the state who wished it to go with its slave-holding brethren in the Confederacy. There are hopes and dreams and visions of the war to come, from grand ideas that don't work to ill-equipped soldiers to civilians caught in the middle. Told right, this small battle would be quite the engaging prequel to the bigger battles to come, starting with Shiloh.

Unfortunately, in the hands of Bearss, it's a rather dry read. There's not a lot of human interest included, Bearss opts to keep his own opinions out of the narrative, and troop movements dominate the text. Even the battle descriptions are rather pedestrian and don't seem to capture the horrors of war before anyone really knew what that would come to mean. As a result, I had a very hard time getting a feel for this battle. It felt too clinical in Bearss' narrative.

Generally speaking, this battle was an attempt by the Union commander Lyon to try and do some of the things Stonewall Jackson would later be famous for. Unfortunately, he had neither the subordinates to carry out the job or the ability to make it work. Wilson's Creek is an attempt to surprise a stronger foe, and for a brief time, it works. But as the day wore on and mistakes are made, the almost double Confederate force not only gains a military victory, it has a win in morale as well. After Wilson's Creek, the South takes control of southern Missouri for a time, and the only thing the Union has to show for this debacle are dead and wounded troops.

Who's to blame for all this? Arguably John C. Fremont, the arrogant former presidential candidate who would soon be shipped well away from the war. He leaves Lyon out to dry in the face of an important strategic goal and a superior force. Lincoln also has a hand in the defeat, by obsessing over troop strength in the Virginia corridor and not thinking about winning the war everywhere, an idea that doesn't seem to hit home for another two years.

I know very little about Western Civil War battles, so I enjoyed getting to learn something about a small but key early engagement. That's the point of this challenge, after all. However, given how dense this book felt despite its smaller size, I can't really recommend it to others. I'm hoping there are more interesting books out there that cover western battles, or else this challenge is occasionally going to feel like a forced march.

The Original Curse by Sean Deveney

2011-04-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

When I mentioned to a friend of mine, a person with strong Chicago ties, that I was reading this book, he asked an interesting question: Why write this book now? Why read it?

Obviously, no book really needs justification, and no reader needs to explain their reason for reading it, though I suppose I do that every time I get in front of my computer and start a review. However, I think he had an excellent point.

We all know about the Black Sox scandal. Most baseball fans even know that gambling was a bigger deal than just one World Series. A few might go further and name crooked players, starting with the 1919 White Sox team and going all the way to Pete Rose. It's not a proud time for the sport, but in a game with a history going back before the Civil War, there's going to be some blemishes that look terrible at the time but fade in impact as the game moves on.

For me, the thing that makes this book a recommended read for any sports fan is not just the great details about playing baseball in the early twentieth century, when 11 home runs was an amazing feat and a pitcher could throw all eighteen innings of a double header. No, it's the fact that no matter who the men running the leagues are at the time, baseball always has had a problem dealing with trouble.

See if this sounds familiar: In a changing United States economy, the sport of baseball grows more popular than ever, with fans packing the seats of both major and minor league stadiums. Some of these fans don't care much about how they are entertained, and players start to do things they shouldn't in the name of higher monetary gain. Baseball is informed of this problem, but opts to do nothing, shuffling problem players quietly out of the game and doing all they can to quietly discredit (or ignore) those who sound a warning cry.

Only when things are so bad that the court system is involved does baseball make a move, picking certain players to cast to the winds and declaring the game clean, trying to keep the problem as quiet as possible and keep fans in the seats. It's only a few isolated incidents, after all, no need to police the game better or admit there is a wide-ranging problem.

Steroids Era?

Nope, try the early 1920s, when baseball's problem was gambling. Players felt they needed to make more money, and therefore, some (perhaps a lot) turned to bookies, offering to subtly alter the course of a game in exchange for a piece of the action. In The Original Curse, Sean Deveney argues that the year before the Black Sox scandal, angry and disillusioned Cubs players tossed the series to the less-talented Red Sox, giving the 1919 cross-town rivals the idea to do the same thing.

Using sensational ideas, such as that controversial premise and planting Babe Ruth's name on the cover, Deveney hopes to draw the reader into a story that has the real purpose of serving as an allegory for the steroids problem, the drug trials of the 1980s, and baseball's rather weak acknowledgement of its decades-long racism that continued long after Jackie Robinson. It's a cheap tactic, but it worked, because I probably would never have picked this book up if it didn't have Babe Ruth's name at the head of the cover.

What does not work very well, is Deveney's claim that the 1918 shenanigans, promulgated in the shadow of World War I (and this making them even more shameful, as players draft dodged in order to keep making hundreds of times more money than the men--including relatives of mine--who fought and got gassed in the trenches), created the 1919 scandal. His evidence is extremely shaky, and while I think there's a good case that the 1918 series was rigged by the Cubs (thus meaning the aspersion cast on Ruth by the cover is borderline libelous), I do not see how this incident influenced the 1919 White Sox any more than all the other cheating that was going on at a brisk clip.

Ironically, it's the fact that Deveney makes a compelling case that *lots* of games were fixed that undermines what he's trying to prove. It makes me wish he'd changed his focus a bit, but then we'd lose the sexy and marketable title. In this era of competition for shelf space and attention, having a daring cover was more important than matching it to the facts inside, I guess.

Normally when an author misses their primary point, I'd tell you to steer clear of the book. This is an exception, however. The story itself is a strong condemnation of just about everyone involved, from the United States Government, which dithered over baseball's role and caused player uncertainty, to the players who cheated and tried to get out of serving to the owners, who apparently have to sign a "greed" clause when taking over a team. It's the only explanation for the stupidity that dates back at least to World War I and still continues to this say. Think Bud Selig is bad? Despite being a former owner of the Brewers, at least he's never been drunk during a labor negotiation!

While the majority of the book shows that there never was a "good old days" for America's Former Pastime, we can feel for a few players. Grover Cleveland Alexander did the honorable thing and went to war, effectively killing himself in the process. Other players had families and back in 1918, the US didn't care and would still make you serve. Their anxiety makes cheating almost--repeat, *almost*--justifiable.

Filled with little vignettes about important players in this drama, tales of two teams that made the World Series more by attrition than anything else, and some details that are only now coming to light, The Original Curse has a lot going for it, despite the not-very-appropriate title. It won't make Barry Bonds and company any less of a jerk, but at least you'll know they're in good company in the baseball Hall of Shame. At least these 1918 villains are about as far away from Cooperstown as Hawaii. Hopefully, they'll all stay there in the land of infamy where they belong and not move into a different Hall. That would be the biggest shame of all, one that not even years of good baseball could erase.

If you want a good read that proves the more things change, the more they stay the same, this book is for you. I enjoyed it a lot, but be warned: Reading it might make you like professional sports even less than you do now. Sometimes learning the truth does ruin the fun. It's what keeps baseball covering up for its players and owners, both in the history books and in the public eye. That's an original curse I don't think the game will ever shake.

Teaching Books: How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed Ability Classrooms by Carol Ann Tomlinson

2011-04-04T17:09:00.003-04:00

Last year, I started reading teaching books in preparation of starting off in a new direction in my life. Just because I'm actually teaching doesn't mean I stop reading books about it!

As with my past teaching book posts, this is less a review than a summary of ideas. Hopefully, it will help others interested in education with deciding if this is a book that might be helpful for them to read.

If you've ever read or been in a professional development about differentiation, chances are you know the name Carol Ann Tomlinson. She is one of the most well-known authors in the field of adjusting classroom instruction to meet the needs of varied students. In this small solo effort, Tomlinson describes a bit of her reasoning behind differentiation, but focuses most of the book on actual tips that can be taken into the classroom, particularly for those new to the concept of differentiation.

The book is broken down into chapters that provide insight on the process, how to talk to parents about differentiation, classroom management (particularly important due to the fact that not all students will be doing the same thing at the same time), ideas for beginning differentiation, and breaking down what differentiation looks like within the classroom. All of the advice is practical and usable immediately. The ending sections of the book provide ideas and starter hints for taking a boring, one-size-fits-all lesson, and giving it some zing. Anyone looking for ideas on how to take what was mentioned in a one hour session and turn into a living, breathing part of their everyday instruction can find a lot of what they need within this book.

Differentiation is easy to start, but it will take years to master. Even those who are quite good at finding ways to engage students on their level and in their learning preference will find new ideas in How to Differentiate Instruction. There is an unsaid challenge in this book to really look critically at what you do in the classroom. Could you increase student involvement? Can you allow for a varied product? Are you just giving "busy work" to fast finishers when there is so much more to do? This book definitely gets you thinking, unless you are completely cold to the idea of changing how you teach.

I admit, I'm sold on Tomlinson's ideas, so my feelings towards this book are quite positive. However, even if you are leery of going knee-deep in differentiation (you should, though--the water is fine!), there are ideas you can take away from this book. I think it belongs on the bookshelf of every teacher.

Irish Short Story Week Day 1: Oscar Wilde

2011-03-14T05:00:00.001-04:00

I'm participating in the Irish Short Story Week, hosted by The Reading Life. Go see this great idea at its source!

While I know that the King of Irish short stories is James Joyce, I felt like if I was only going to have time to maybe do one of these posts, I wanted it to be Ireland's Court Jester of short stories, Oscar Wilde.

Wilde is one of my favorite authors, though I've read precious little of his work. What I have read, however, is spectacular, taking barbs at the society of his day, all while living a life that he had to hide. When his private life tumbled out into the public scene, he was ruined, jailed, and ridiculed. Not one of England's finest hours.

I love Wilde's playful side, which is why I of course chose one of his most serious and religious fairy tales as my short story selection. As we'll see, however, The Selfish Giant still shines with the flourishes of a man at home with words.

For those who want to play along, you can read The Selfish Giant online here. It's legal to do so, and won't take you very long. Even those who aren't keen on reading by screen should be able to manage it. I'll wait till you get back, playing with one of the children in the story.

Back? Good. These kids were starting to tire me out!

The first thing that really jumps out at me is the subtle Christianity of the story, which only comes into focus as the story nears its end. I don't tend to associate Wilde with being a Christian, though I have no particular reason to doubt his faith. Here he shows that you can make a religious story without beating people over the head with the idea of faith. Once our titular giant learns to love his brothers and sisters, he is ready for his heavenly reward. It's a touching way to end the story and even if you are not of the faith, the lesson is clear: Good deeds get rewarded.

What makes the story work for me, however, are the little touches. Wilde's personification of everything from the trees to hail are performed in short, funny strokes that are easy to picture in your mind. (My personal favorite is thinking about Hail, all made up of little stones, running around the garden after dancing on the giant's roof.) Sarcastic lines slip in (the giant is of limited conversation--he can only talk for seven straight years) but they do not keep the overall feeling of the work from being darkened by their barbs. Even the descriptions of the winter menaces are gentle, evoking more of a Disney imagery rather than, say, the angular work of Chuck Jones.

It's the overall story, however, that makes this one notable to me. It's clear that Wilde wants us to think about the haves and the have nots in our own world, and the Biblical instructions to help those who have nothing. Wilde was not blind to the rampant inequalities of his age (which are eerily similar to our own today), and he wants his adult readers to think about how they might be as selfish as the giant in their own lives. I'm sure Ireland's position compared to England had a bit to do with the story's moral as well.

In the end, we have a great tale that works as a fairy tale, a Christian story of charity, and a social commentary. As a bonus, the story is gentle enough for kids but with lines that will make an adult smirk and give readers of all ages something to think about. Wilde does this within just a few pages, making it all the more amazing. As with Shakespeare's plays or Jon Stewart, it can take a Jester to bring the truth to light.

Take that, James Joyce!

The Irish Short Story Event Hosted by The Reading Life

2011-03-13T14:14:00.003-04:00

Hard to believe with a name like mine, I know, but I'm actually only just a bit Irish. However, you can be sure I'll be sporting some green on March 17th, and not just the usual $6 in George Washingtons I keep in my wallet just in case I need actual cash.

St. Patrick's Day is generally associated with drunkeness, and I've tended to hate the day ever since I started having to share a bus with people who begin taking beverages before sunup and seem to be set on annoying the crap out of anyone sober within a twenty foot radius. In recent years, I've barely bothered to note the day, other than a casual clothing nod.

That's why I was so happy to see that Mel of The Reading Life put together a celebration of Irish short story writers for this week. Calling it "Irish Short Story Week," the event will run from March 14th to the 20th, primarily on her blog, but anyone else is welcome to join in. The Book Stew will lurk out of its semi-hibernation (I just haven't read anything recently that made me want to jump up and write about it) and try to participate at least a few times this week with some thoughts on some short fiction written by Ireland's best.

Mel, of course, is going full court press, and you should definitely keep an eye on her site all this week for a lot of insightful commentary and links to Irish short stories. I like Mel's reading blog because she spends a lot of time looking at short fiction piece by piece, not as a larger collection. She's definitely someone to add to your RSS feeder after this week is over, if you haven't before.

Anyway, hope you have the luck of the Irish, put on your green this Thursday, and enjoy as I keep things short for the rest of the week! (Sorry, no pots of gold. They're on back order.)

Adjust Your Set by Linda Stitt

2011-02-27T15:33:00.002-05:00

It's been a long time since I tried to review a book of poetry, which I don't think was ever my strong suit. As a matter of fact, in 2010 I didn't even read a single book of poetry, so reviewing one would be impossible.

As regular readers know, I'm trying to change that here in 2011, with a goal of reading roughly at least one poetry book a month. I'm aided in this by my pile of random poetry books that I grabbed over the past few years. Whenever I found them for a few bucks here and there, I'd peek at a few pages and see if the lines looked interesting. If they did, they ended up in my shopping basket.

This is not the best way to get excellent poetry, as I've discovered. It does, however, expose you to some interesting books. Adjust Your Set is pretty typical of the three I've tried so far (one of which was terrible and I stopped reading it). There are some awesome poetical moments, but the overall feel is just too uneven to make it a keeper.

Linda Stitt is apparently an older poet who has a few books out prior to this one. At the point this book is collected, she's reflecting on her life and what it means to be an older woman in society. When she's doing this, the results are often quite insightful. She talks about how she's less interested in sex or how she lived her life according to the rules and that it didn't get her anywhere. Other poems discuss her ex-husband (who presumably left her for a younger woman) or coming to grips with the ravages of time.

The concepts are perfect fodder for poetry. The problem is that Stitt tries too often to force her ideas into rhyme schemes, which take the good idea and torture it like humans do with a cat and a laser pointer. Like the cat who can't ever catch the bobbing light, Stitt can't capture the right feel when the seriousness of the verse is undermined by the need to Seussify her thoughts. The rhymes work okay when it is simply a stanza-long idea, but anything longer than that loses me in the sing-song nature of the words.

That's a shame because her free verse is quite good. In a poem about being forced into technology by her children (My New Literacy), Stitt discusses how her very poetry becomes stuff in the act of making it conform to the new computer she can write on. "The Matricide" is far too heavy-handed for my taste, but in the free verse format, Stitt clearly shows she can make allusions via her verse (in this case, that humanity is killing Mother Earth).

"Artifact" is a good example of what I mean:

I was offered a paint-by-the-numbers life
of circumscribed colours and designs,
with traditional patterns, nice and neat,
but I couldn't stay within the lines.

So I scribbled outside my social class,
my duties as mother and wife,
and I scrawled my name on experience.
It may not be art, but it's my life.

And often it stirs me into the crowd
and sometimes it sets me far apart.
It spatters my sense with splashes of bliss
and dashes love's pigments into my heart
and I am quite content with this
untidy life, my artless art.

That's a great way of artistically saying you didn't quite fit the mold. Unfortunately, there are also poems like "Forewarning" which starts thusly:

Look away from beauty,
beauty is to fear.
Beauty grabs you by the heart
and hauls you over here.
Beauty grabs you by the gut
and hurls you over there;
beauty shatters you to bits
and spreads you everywhere.

That seems like the chorus of a 1980s power ballad by a lesser hair-metal band, and the rest of the page-long poem doesn't get any better.

Overall, the good and bad match up roughly equally, making it hard for me to make a final judgment on this book. I think whether or not you'll be interested depends just how much you like rhymed poems. (I once knew a person who only liked rhymed verse, and considered anything else chopped up prose.) If you like or tolerate it, Adjust Your Set might be worth seeking out if you find a copy somewhere. If you are not a fan, then there's going to be too many pages you'll want to skip. I fall somewhere in-between. Adjust Your Set was good enough to finish, but I don't know that I'd actively look for more poems by Stitt.

Want to sample some of Adjust Your Set? A few preview pages are on Google Books.

Hail, Hail, Euphoria! by Roy Blount Jr

2011-02-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

I think it only fair to open this review by saying I have a strong bias in favor of the Marx Brothers. I never thought Karl was as funny as the rest of them, but it's much harder to get humor right in book form, so I think we can forgive him.

I've been Groucho Marx for Halloween, wooing a former girlfriend in his trademark patter and manic zaniness. I will shamelessly pick up any book I find to be affordable on the subject of this amazing comedy team that, if anything, had its best years in moments never captured on screen. Groucho died a little less than nine months before I was born, a fact I like to bandy about in mixed company. Though never when a food processor is involved, as I can't stand it when things get dicey. Give me hand-whisked company anytime.

Ahem.

Roy Blount, Jr. is also a Marx Brothers fan. How can any American humorist (note I did not say comedian) not be? As a frequent panelist on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Blount is no stranger to making witty remarks that often border on the risque. This book is his love letter to the best of the Marx Brothers films, Duck Soup. Like any true fan, he lavishes praise on the film, perhaps going just a bit too far in places and leaving some lesser moments to hide while he talks about how good the movie it. That's okay, though. When the book's subtitle is "The Greatest War Movie Ever Made" you know you're not in for a critical analysis.

As a matter of fact, Euphoria! reads an awful lot like a person live-blogging the movie, only with unlimited time to add in notes and asides and a bit of additional research. I don't mean that as a bad thing, but it's the best way to describe the way Blount approaches the subject. After a brief introduction to why he has such an attachment to the film, Blount then proceeds to put the movie on his computer and write out his thoughts as the story unfolds before him. He encourages readers to do the same, but I don't need to. Duck Soup is a movie that is indelibly burned into my brain with about a 90% accuracy.

The style of writing has some awkward moments, like when Blount pretends to be talking to one of the Marx Brothers. The boys' banter needs to be read aloud to work, and when Blount tries it on the page, the whole thing falls flat. There's also a definite lack of criticism going on here, which is okay once you understand that this book is a love letter, not a history. Rather ironically, unlike the layered nature of Marx anarchy, this book is quite straightforward. Blount thinks this movie is awesome (and he's right!), and this book is going to tell you why.

Unfortunately, I think in his desire to talk about how damned funny this movie is, Blount misses the chance to also show that Duck Soup has a lot of political commentary in it as well. Think about the premise: A rich widow uses her money to buy a new leader for the country, who is absolutely and completely corrupt. The leader does nothing to help the country, and ends up getting it embroiled in a war, which seems like fun until the shooting starts. Sounds all too plausible, doesn't it?

And hey, what about the way this movie sends up the other movies of its day, culminating in a huge musical number that butchers every possible genre of song it can? The mock patriotism? The idea that many small states run by dictators end up embroiling their citizens in needless conflict? You can easily take any one of these ideas and run with them, all harping (no pun intended) on the idea that the completely chaotic Marx Brothers, when at their best, are tearing down the most serious parts of society. Karl would have been proud, had he lived to see them in action.

I really wish Blount had spent more time going over some of these ideas. If they do come up, it's like Blount is afraid to talk about them, for fear of offending someone. That's this age for you--never say something that might make someone angry. Pointing out the money in politics angle might make some of his conservative readers angry, so it can't be discussed. I'd love to know what Blount thinks about the subversive nature of Duck Soup, but alas, it's not to be. Groucho feared no one, or so it seemed. Blount apparently fears a lack of sales.

Perhaps I'm being too cranky about that omission, but to me the reason why this movie sings to my heart is because it's not just silly slapstick, verbal bantering, and watching the Brothers be mashers. This is the movie where they showed that comedy can be extremely subversive without being preachy. We don't get Jon Stewart without Duck Soup. It's a link that Blount misses, I think. It's also what makes this movie better than the rest of the Marx Brothers films, which tone down the tendency to destroy authority. Blount correctly notes that the Marxes will never again be this anarchic on screen, but I think he misses the true reason why: Comedy like this might just make people think.

But that's enough being serious! Let's talk about what Blount does well, which is describing why this comedy is so good. He correctly notes that it's one of the few 1930s comedies without dead spots, as the Marxes work their way across the screen at a frantic pace, with even the slow-burn set-ups having plenty going on to catch the viewer's eye. Descriptions of things like the Lemonade Stand, the Mirror Scene (always imitated, never duplicated), and the huge musical number towards the end are crafted with the loving care of a man who's watched this movie over and over again, and isn't ashamed to admit he's still noticing new things about the film, even after all this time. These moments are touching, and any Marx Brothers fan will find themselves nodding in agreement as Blount shows just how good these scenes were--and are, even today.

Where Blount really shines, however, is in the moments where he shares details about the making of the film itself. Duck Soup's creation will remind you of the adage about sausage. The original story was, quite frankly, crap. It would never have worked as a Marx Brothers vehicle. (Groucho as an arms dealing looking to start war and bloodshed? Give me a break!) Luckily, much of it was scrapped. As we "watch" the movie with Blount, he provides snippets, so we can see just how close we came to having a disaster rather than a classic.

Who made Duck Soup the movie we saw today? It's almost impossible to know for sure, if Blount's information is correct. Certainly there was ad-libbing from the Marxes, but after reading this it seems that director McCarey took some of the best ideas he used for W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy and adapted them for the insane four men he was trying to corral on the screen. It seems like this soup had an awful lot of cooks, and for once, it didn't spoil the broth.

Blount also provides a few asides about the Marxes, sprinkled in here and there as the story warrants it. Margaret Dumont is compared to the Marx Brothers' mother, for instance. There is a set of vignettes about McCarey to give us an idea of the type of person he is. Each brother has some story or the other shared, whether it's that Zeppo might have gotten himself killed had he not joined the act or that Groucho wasn't afraid to tell everyone about his own personal faults. Some of these were new to me, some were quite familiar. It shows that the Brothers at a certain point really did adapt the persona they used on stage, after awhile. The line between Julius and Groucho blurred somewhere along the way, and now pulling the two apart is as difficult as trying to recall why the youngest brother was called Zeppo, anyway.

Do any of these notes really have much to do with Duck Soup? Not particularly, but that's okay. This book is a long-distance conversation between friends sharing a passion together. Blount didn't write this book to get people to want to watch Duck Soup. He wrote it for people like me. He wrote it for people like my friends Drew and Bill, who once accidentally turned Duck Soup into a Rocky Horror audience participation experience, performing the lines and songs from our seats without even knowing at first that we'd done it. (Best of all? The crowd in the packed theater loved it, and not a single person told us to stop.) He wrote it for the Roys, the Robs, the Drews, and the Bills, who are taken to see this movie at an art theater and fall in love, generation by generation, with this amazing film.

Duck Soup may not be the greatest war movie ever made, but for me it's certainly the best. Any fan of the Marx Brothers owes it to themselves to join Blount here in celebrating it.

A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses by Anne Trubek

2011-01-26T21:36:00.001-05:00

Continuing my look at the quirkier side of American life, I grabbed this book off the shelf from the library based on the title alone. I like to travel to historical places while on vacation, being the type of person who shed a tear at Samuel Clemens' grave and will detour out of the way to visit a museum, monument, or shrine to a person that was of interest to me at some point in my life.

In short, I'm basically the type of person that Trubek doesn't get, as she explains that to her, the idea of immortalizing a writer by keeping their dwelling in existence (often at great expense) is a baffling one. She wrote this book as a way to try and understand the appeal, paradoxically making pilgrimages to such varied places as the ruins of Jack London's safe from everything save fire house to the run down by extremely popular Hemingway home in Key West.

Thus, despite not being entirely fond of the idea, Trubek worked her way across the country over the years, talking to tourists, owners, tour guides, and cabbies about the places where writers came to lay their head, often for periods of time the writer themselves might have preferred to forget. Though the settings and promotion often change, there's a definite theme in these visits: A sense of artificiality and a desire to capture a time period when the world around the building has moved on.

In several of the cases, there is also a monetary consideration. Every city and town hopes to draw in tourism dollars from people like me, and spending tons of cash to create a tribute to a writer, actor, or other potential draw is often at the center of a rehabilitation plan. Sadly, as Trubek correctly notes, these bets often don't work. Running a historic house costs lots of money to keep it in shape, and there's always a gamble on their popularity. For every evergreen Twain or Thoreau, there's the forgotten Tom Wolfe or Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Heck, even Thoreau's benefactor Emerson is losing his luster. The game of historical roulette too often comes up on the wrong color, leaving communities with an aging responsibility that no one wants to abandon, because hey, who wants to be the guy or girl who gives up on history?

I found Trubek's argument to be an interesting one, even if I don't exactly buy into it. She is an English Professor with a PHD, and her level of knowledge is going to be vastly higher than that of the average American (or any other visitor) who is going to these historical sites. While she might find Hannibal's conversion into Twain's fictional world disturbing, I'm sure there are plenty of people who take their kids there and enjoy the chance to be in an environment that's almost a theme park. What is so wrong with that? Why is she disturbed by people who want to go to Walden Pond or like the idea of seeing the Alcott house emphasize the parts of her life with which they are most familiar? There is a tone here that smacks of elitism, as though these writers can only be appreciated by those with sufficient knowledge about the writers. Even those who have an undergraduate understanding of Hemingway--he's a lousy writer who dislikes women--are portrayed in a dismissive light, as though it's necessary to appreciate him to really be a student of American Literature. That attitude turned me off in several places, because I find intellectual elitism to be worse than thinking Two and a Half Men is a great comedy (though only just barely).

On the other hand, Trubek does bring up some great points. The money that is spent on keeping a house preserved could be used for other things, like bringing those author's works to schools or providing economic development that will actually build a community back up in a way that tourism cannot. (She's a veteran of at least two crumbling cities, and in the course of her work sees quite a few more.) It's hard for me to argue that several hundred thousand needs spent on a house Langston Hughes lived in for barely two years when the same city's school district keeps laying off teachers. Probably millions of dollars are spent on preserving the past while our present is falling apart. We're failing this generation's next great writers while trying to keep fragile, stale memorials up for a few thousand die-hards to visit periodically. I can see why Trubek thinks this is crazy, but I also admit that I'll never forget going to Elmira, New York, where we spent several hundred dollars visiting. It's a tricky balance. Who's to say which is right?

There's also the matter of the writer's personal feelings to be considered. Would Poe really want his Baltimore house of poverty kept around for people to gawk at? Hemingway's fourth wife did not want the places where they lived turned into museums--why should we ignore those wishes? Do we really honor these writers by focusing on where they lived rather than on what they wrote? And how do we pick and choose? Which of the many houses Poe frequented deserve documentation? Is there a residency requirement? Washington Irving slept here, so let's pay a million dollars to make sure it doesn't end up as a parking lot? Where do we draw the line of obscurity? Wouldn't a memorial park to aid the community do more than trying to keep an eyesore in the public eye?

Again, Trubek makes logical points, all while also admitting that there is a strong fascination with the cult of the writer, and being where they typed your favorite book or experienced a personal loss that stuck with them until their death and influenced all they wrote. Like the writers themselves, these historical locations are desperate to make their mark and put their stamp on history. Sometimes, that stamp conflicts with the one the writer wanted, but history is shaped by those who follow. A writer might want to be known for their favorite book, but nothing is going to change that Joan of Arc will only be read by the most dedicated Twain scholars while Tom Sawyer is liable to follow us all into eternity.

This is where I think Trubek runs into trouble. She's trying to fight against America's need to prove how valid our history and culture is. Whether it's a state-erected plaque or a set of plaster dinosaurs, communities are always trying to make themselves stand out. Festivals mark events that are really inconsequential, but to those 5,000 people (or even 500) who call that place home, don't dare try to take that event away from them. (You can pry the Houston Pumpkin Festival from Houston, PA's cold, dead hands, and I don't blame them one bit.) These author's homes, as long as the author can still find a place at Barnes and Noble, will be points of pride, both for the places where they exist and for the fans of those writers. It may be foolish, it may be a bad investment, but it's (perhaps misplaced) pride in the heritage that once lost, will never return.

In the end, writer's houses and other historical artifacts only have the value we give them. America likes having as much stuff as possible, whether it's a bigger DVD collection, model trains, or porcelain dolls. There's a desire to hold on to the past, simply because it is the past. That appeal varies form person to person. A skeptic like Trubek isn't going to feel anything when she steps on the same wooden beams as her favorite novelist. I admit that I do.

While there are certainly valid points in A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses, I don't think she's going to win the day anytime soon with her desire to de-commercialize some locations and de-commission others. Still, this is a fascinating look at the idea of viewing history from the eyes of a person who doesn't see it the same way that I do. Those who are interested in the idea of historical preservation will find a lot to chew on in this book, whether you agree with it or not. In the end, the debate over writers' houses is not all that different from the debate over their writing: Those involved in the discussion will often have to agree to disagree. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

United States of Americana by Kurt B. Reighley

2011-01-12T21:15:00.000-05:00

I picked this one up because I love reading about the quirky side of America, and I had so much fun with Way Off the Road that I wanted to read more in that vein.

When I think of Americana, I think of things like Dinosaurland or the Zane Gray Museum, perhaps Sunday flee markets or people who square dance in the old barn. Things that can trace a line back to America's roots, even if those roots are as shallow at the 1950s.

Reighley has a completely different approach, as this book shows. Instead of talking about things that are genuinely old fashioned, he concentrates on modern people, mostly crafty businessmen or hipsters, trying to cash in by making the simple things of the world as expensive as possible. That means customized taxidermy, people who think they're getting back to nature by raising chickens in their urban backyard, and musicians who are copping the acts of those who came before.

Is it interesting? Certainly, when it's not reeking of pretension or overlooking the fact that "American" companies like Woolrich are using overseas labor and have been for decades now. Spending a lot of time on why hipsters buy boots that mimic those of the old miners just isn't my idea of Americana, let alone talking about people who think that canning is a way to get back to their roots.

There is a lot of talk in this book about the yearning of Americans to try and get back to the old days, from trying established brands to listening to vinyl to using older skin shows for modern entertainment. The problem that I have is that nothing here is organic for the people doing it. When a rock band decides to cover Johnny Cash or an old blues legend, they are taking someone else's sound, not playing the same sound they grew up with. Maybe I'm spoiled by growing up knowing people who actually were calling square dances or playing folk from day one, but calling these co-opters members of a "roots" movement just rubbed me the wrong way.

The number grows smaller every day, but there are still Americans who do things the way they used to, even when a WalMart is only a few miles away. Drive into Central Pennsylvania sometime, or northern Georgia. You'll find them. I'm sure they're in the Midwest, Southwest, and West, too, but I've never made it out that far. People who can because they can't easily afford store goods, not because it looks hip to have the jars in your fridge and freezer. People who do make their own belts or boots. People who sing like they were taught.

That's the book I wanted to read, and its' not Reighley's fault that he didn't write that book. It just saddens me a bit that a move back to simpler things involves so much money, based on what he describes in the text. I'm not saying we should all live in a simpler time--that ship sailed ages ago, if it even ever existed. What I am saying is that if we have to buy Americana, then we've lost it forever. And that, dear reader, would be a shame. It's a topic Reighley never talks about, and I think that's the biggest shortfall in this text. Ultimately, United States of Americana is more a book about how we try to buy the past instead of just recapturing it. I really hope we haven't come to that just yet, but I'm afraid it might be true.

Reading Goals for 2011

2011-01-09T17:11:00.002-05:00

I know I'm a little late with this, but here are my five reading goals for the side of me that reads "book books" as I like to call the ones that don't feature a lot of drawings.

1) Read 60 books. I hit 55 last year, so here's a chance to extend that just a bit. A little over a book a week is going to be tight, but I think I can manage it with practice and the help of goals 2-5, as you'll see.

2) Read 10 poetry books. I used to read a lot of poetry, but that's fallen away the past few years. In fact, I didn't read a single poetry book in 2010. That realization made me sad, and that's why I'm including it here to make sure I don't do that again.

3) Make my 10 books about 1861 challenge. I challenged myself to read 100 Civil War books during this 150th anniversary, and I only did 2 of the 5 I planned for in 2010. So I really want to pick things up here in 2011. (Bonus challenge: Make the goal of 10 and then read the 3 books I missed in 2010.) That's another 1/6 of my reading right there. See how easy it is to hit 60?

4) Read 10 of my anthologies. I have a lot of anthologies. Time to read 'em! This is a good chance to see if any of those Best American titles (which I have a love-hate relationship with) are worth keeping.

5) Read 10 books published in either 2010 or 2011. I need to read more new books, and while I could just limit this to 2011 titles, I'd like to give myself a little extra room so that I'm able to better use the "new" section of the library.

These goals do stack, so I can read, say, a poetry anthology and have it count for both. However, regardless, I need to hit 60 books. Can I do it? Stay tuned! And while you're at it, tell me about your 2011 reading goals for the books that mostly have words.

Chaucer and the Doctor of Physic by Philippa Morgan

2010-12-14T05:00:00.000-05:00

I know that historical mysteries with a famous figure in them are quite popular, but at least for me, there must be a reason why the famous person is being used. To push them across the page like a chess pawn only to find they sit on the second rank for 90% of the game, er, book, makes no sense to me and leaves me cheated.

So it goes with this book, which only seems to have Chacuer on the scene to attract people's attention, like it did mine. if you're hoping for a Dectective Chaucer, a very plausible idea in my opinion, you'll need to look elsewhere. Chaucer hates his assignment, doesn't contribute to the solving of the case (with the exception of one single throwaway line almost at the very end), and spends most of the book rehashing the story so far about three times more often than necessary and whining about how he's clueless as to what to do.

The plot would have worked if it had not been so layered in actors running across the stage. A possibly powerful elixir is stolen by a greedy relative, and misfortune follows it everywhere, right into a trade agreement with England and Genoa. Chaucer is sent to fix the problem, though he doesn't know the problem involves something serious enough to kill for. Soon he's in a country town as the unwanted city folk guest. Will he be able to stay alive long enough in a place stacking ever higher with bodies? See what I mean? It's a pretty cool idea. The trouble is in the execution.

The book has so many repetitions it makes me wonder if it was trying to hit a page count. Everything is spoon-fed to the reader except for the "how caught" which ends up being a single gotcha moment buried amongst the dreck. I admit I missed it, but that was because I was bored. By the time you've been stopped in the plot to be inside the head of yet another character (I think we get fed the perspective of every single person in the book, almost down to the walk-on servants), it's hard to keep track of anything that matters.

That was another problem--too many people to keep track of, almost none of whom were even needed--and some of those unnecessary people were supposed to be main characters, making this an even bigger problem. The book starts with a murder far away and ends with a murder closer to Chaucer's interests--but lost mine somewhere along the way.

Honestly, this is a short story masquerading as a book and needed heavy editing to even be passable. I'd have liked it more without Chaucer, and I don't think that's what the author was going for. There's better mysteries out there, and some of them even use famous people (like the ones with Groucho Marx, to name a series I like). Seek out those instead, and make your Chaucer the classical one that writes all the words in funny spellings.

We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury

2010-12-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

[I "read" this as an audio book, if that matters to you.]

Sometimes it feels a little weird when I do reviews here of authors I like quite a bit, because it seems like the review I end up doing would indicate otherwise.

This is one of those times.

My mother was a huge Ray Bradbury fan, and despite not reading his longer works, I'm always interested by a collection of his short fiction. I've read several over the years, though none recently. His anthology television show was great, from the episodes I saw on DVD. You can peg a Bradbury episode of other shows almost without his name, and then it's a great pastime to try and spot the folks who were inspired by him.

That's why this review is a hard one to write, because with a few exceptions. I just didn't care for the stories included in We'll Always Have Paris, a mish-mash of speculative, sentimental, and stolid fiction that only ever seems to flirt at the ages of the Bradbury magic.

When reading Bradbury, you come to expect stories that have a sense of whimsy, of possibilities realized and lost, and of people who often could just as easily be you or me. There's a definite sense of familiarity involved, but that's true of just about any prolific author. The trouble is when the author doesn't use their own quirks to advantage but instead to play it by the numbers. That's the way this book felt to me.

I knew I was in trouble when the lead-off story, Massinello Pietro, never did anything but tell the sad story of a man who refused to give up his animal menagerie. I kept waiting for the big payoff, but in the end, it was just the silence of his absence that drives the closure. Like other stories in the collection, Bradbury seems to be experimenting with the postmodern style here, but it doesn't suit him. Stories of non-sexual seduction or trying to put relationships back together (or watching tragic mistakes play out before you) just aren't in Bradbury's wheelhouse. I give him some credit for trying to be different, including the use of non-straight couples from time to time, but they don't strike out on their own enough to work. When they are mixed in with tales of ghost children who can only stop crying by the act of procreation*, perhaps the very antithesis of a post-modern story, the results are jangling, jarring, and almost cause for giving up entirely. Had this book been longer than roughly five hours, I doubt I would have kept going

Some of the concepts work out okay, but that's as far as they go. A story of golfers who putt well into the night to forget the mistakes of their life is clever, but just not creepy enough to hook the reader. In fact, the strongest stories in this collection all have a bit of a horror feel, such as when a radio personality comes to life to bedevil a middle-manager in Ma Perkins Comes to Stay. The trouble is, the reason for the horror is never fully realized here, leaving the reader wondering just why the man snaps. This is also the problem with The Murder, which was my favorite in the book. Bradbury gives us a great little horror story, but races his way to the punchline, spoiling his own idea like a cook who burns dinner by having the heat up so high.

Even when the story has a pretty good premise, such as bringing the Earth to Mars, the potential is lost in pedestrian prose. The idea that we'd need to change any alien world to match our own makes sense and could easily bring a moral along with it. Here the idea is presented without comment. The hope that might once have added something, anything to the work just wasn't around. It's as though Bradbury himself has become like the dead man walking character that wants to keep his old life going in The Reincarnate. Just as that character must accept that he is dead and will live on in others, perhaps it's time for Bradbury to realize that his literary career, which has so many shining lights, needs to rest and allow others to bring light to the same ideas. Tons of science fiction writers can cite Bradbury as an inspiration. I'd hate to see that change by having more books like this one tarnish his legacy with mediocre prose.

For me personally, I think I'll stick to Bradbury's older work, if this is what he's doing today. There's just nothing here that interests me, as the plots feel recycled or uncomfortable (sometimes both, as when he advocates reviving an older man's life by having an affair with a younger woman). I'm afraid that while I certainly don't want us to Always Have Paris, I'll certainly be happy to say we'll always have the Martian Chronicles. This is a book I'd definitely put on the avoid list, even if you're a big Bradbury fan. Re-read an older collection instead.

*I really and truly wish I was kidding, but When the Bough Breaks is literally about a couple who decides to be child free, hears a ghost child, and makes love to stop the sound. This is such a terrible story idea, I don't even know where to begin.

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya V. Hartman

2010-12-07T05:00:00.000-05:00

This is a very personal book that reads more like a person journaling professionally than anything historical. I suppose the proper word is travelogue, but since I have never read a travelogue, not even Mark Twain's books about his various tours, I guess I'm not familiar with the style in any way.

Hartman is angry, very angry. That needs to go out front, because if you're not willing to read a book by a person who is angry at the past, this is not the book for you. Part of why she's so angry is that, well, let's face it, how America (and the rest of Euro culture) built its Southern (and part of its Northern) economy was on the backs of slaves. And then, even when slavery was over, we did our level best to make life miserable for the lucky(?) few who survived the trip across the Atlantic. It's not a nice business, and when America notices it has something not nice to deal with, we toss it under the rug--arguably worse than tossing it under a bus. Put simply, we don't talk about race issues very well. Hartman is very aware of this, and that is why she sets out on this journey.

The opening pages tell us about the fact that no one wants to discuss slavery, not even those that you'd think would be front-and-center in relating its brutal history. "The counselors taught us to disdain property, perform the Black Power handshake, and march in strict formation, but they never mentioned the Middle Passage or chattel prisons," Hartman notes. She tries to do that which her grandparents did not--return to Africa, thinking she can find something that was lost--not personal history, she knows better--but a connection.

Instead, she finds herself to be a stranger in a land that lives uneasily with its legacy, unable to seemingly embrace it, destroy it, or utilize it. Just as those who were sold into slavery lost their mothers, there is no way now for Hartman to connect to those on the other side of the Atlantic. Despite the problems of being African American, there is no real way for her to link or connect. After pages and pages of trying to do so while wandering the places where slavery was born, she realizes it's a false task.

"'My friend from the diaspora,' was how Akam addressed me, in contrast to the group whom he called his brothers and sisters from the continent. Diasopra was really just a euphemism for stranger, since for the most part, none of my colleagues, with the exception of Prof and Hannington, gave much thought to the way their history was enmeshed with mine, nor did they entertain the idea that the Africa in my hyphenated African-American identity had anything to do with their Africa. They made it clear: Africa ended at the borders of the continent."

That clearly has to hurt, and it's the story that echoes throughout the book when Hartman describes her meetings with those who live there. Eventually, she comes to see that the connection will not be the shared history--there really isn't one, for those who were not shipped in conditions the FDA would reject beef if they found it that way--but in the shared struggle for being in control of their own lives. African Americans might--I repeat might--be finally getting there, but those in Africa are still "managed" by primarily white post-colonial powers who care more about the four-legged animals on its flatlands than the people starving to death.

Interspersed with Hartman's narrative are those of the slave trade themselves. Unflinching in her description of evil--white and black--is part of what makes these sections so powerful. The worst are the slave ships and holding pens, where people would die standing up, but there is no love lost for the slave uprising that was only among the upper class, for instance. After all, they'd planned to use their lower-class brethren as slaves once they'd overthrown the white masters!

But I would be doing a disservice to Hartman if I let that be the focus. It's too easy for Americans of European descent, even those like me who, to the best of my knowledge, came after the Civil War or did not hold slaves at the time or any ties to slavery, to say, "See? Blacks did it to themselves." That's not the point--as Hartman notes early on, Europeans sold each other into slavery, too, once upon a time. But the demand for African slaves was never quenched until well into the nineteenth century--the idea that they were less than human prevailed, and we still see its effects today when major Presidential candidates talk about "hard working, white Americans" and decry those who dare to say that God might not look too kindly on how whites treat their African American neighbors.

The perception of truly fighting for freedom--not your own country, but your own life--is what Africans and African Americans had to do and continue to have to do today. When it's not done as it's "supposed to be done"--Hartman references a statue with a supplicating black man, praying for freedom as a model for how African Americans are supposed to approach equality--there's just as much trouble now as in the era of Jim Crow. Walking amongst the ruins of the slave trade just remind Hartman all the more of how much further away we are from equality than I, quite honestly, want to admit. (It still doesn't mean I can't argue that things are better than Hartman seems to believe them to be, but that's outside the focus of this review.)

In the end, this is a book about being a stranger and examining what that means via a long glimpse away from home in a land charged with painful experience. I can't say that none of this book was hard for me, because I'd be lying. But I think it's a book worth reading, especially for those who dismiss the idea that race--and the estrangement (to at least some degree) of African Americans and Africans from real, meaningful freedom--still matters.

The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons edited by Jerry Beck

2010-12-06T05:00:00.000-05:00

It's probably not shocking to you to learn that I grew up at Bugs Bunny's knee, with additional lessons from Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, and a touch of Foghorn Leghorn. I'm even about as effective a hunter as Elmer Fudd. Never a big Disney person (and really only Donald Duck, at that), I took to the Looney Tunes gang like nobody's business.

As Leonard Maltin notes in the introduction, Warner Brothers cartoons have influenced multiple generations (though I fear the one after mine, those turning 25 or older right about now, might be the last) with their manic antics, verbal wordplay, and refusal to give up just because authority tells them to. An amazing gathering of talent, from Tex Avery to Friz Freeling to my personal favorite, Chuck Jones, all worked at "The Termite Terrace" to turn the idea of "cute" cartoons on its ear, and we are blessed by their legacy.

Like Maltin, I'm probably more affected by the Warner Brothers cartoons than your average person. I can recite almost the entire Rabbit of Seville script, I frequently try to confuse people by arguing quickly and getting them to accidentally change their opinion (it even works once in awhile!), and I still do a quick-stepping foot dance then run that mimics the roadrunner.

All that is to say that a book like this is a trip down memory lane for me, as I found myself leaping from page to page to see what they had to say about my favorite shorts, from Rabbit of Seville to the Duck Season-Rabbit Season trilogy to even the little-seen Russian Rhapsody, where a pre-Cold War studio gleefully uses communist sentiment to sink Adolph Hitler, fighter pilot. (This short contains one of the best Warner Brother original songs, too.) For me, it was a chance to peek into the minds of experts, ranging from the usual animation historians to people I defer to in comedy expertise, such as Mark Evanier (a veteran of writing Looney Tunes comics, which the book sadly fails to mention) and TV's Frank (of MST3K fame). A brilliant choice was Stephan Pastis, one of the few Sunday cartoonists whose characters can match Bugs Bunny and company gag for gag.

Unsurprisingly, most of the shorts focus on some combination of Bugs, Daffy, and Porky. I was a bit shocked to see how many later shorts were included. I know that animation was more modern and the characters more nuanced, but at the same time, the sense of total insanity which I love comes a lot from the older shorts and I thought more would share that enthusiasm. I also was surprised to see that many of the other primary characters were slighted, particularly the Road Runner. Heck, Pepe Le Pew's only mark on the list is in a cameo role. There's almost a bias towards the more obscure characters, like the 3 Bears or shorts that had none of the usual cast at all. I gotta admit, those are the ones I tend to like least. I'm a character man by heart, and for a Looney Tune to really sing, it needs one of my favorite characters to drive the plot.

In terms of the foils, Elmer is by far the number one suspect, with Yosemite Sam (his louder, less sympathetic clone) a distant second. Oddly, it seemed like the commentators preferred Sam because of his primal evil. Neither seem to get a lot of respect from the writers here, which is a shame. Had they been real people, I think a lot of folks would eulogize Fudd as being one of the overlooked supporting characters of the age.

There are the usual pitfalls in a book of this nature. Some of the commentators overreach in their attempt to analyze the characters, particularly the "almost competence" of Porky Pig as compared to Daffy. Others seem to feel like they have to drag Chuck Jones down in order to bring other, lesser-known directors up. I found the need to try and figure out just which cartoon was the most manic (here there is absolutely no agreement) a bit puzzling, almost as much as I found the reduction of some ideas to repetitive gags annoying. (If you have to be told why it's funny that certain jokes get repeated over and over again, you're watching the wrong set of cartoons, folks.)

The biggest mistake, however, was in the inclusion of a grossly offensive cartoon that stands out because none of other other offensive cartoons (and they are legion, let me tell you, having been born early enough to see some before they were banned) are included here. A "great but flawed" section, with appropriate context would have been fine with me, but to say that because they used black voice actors, they were "in on the joke" is just about as offensive to me as the original short. With so many good cartoons to choose from, and given that stereotypes of Mexicans are completely ignored in the Speedy Gonzales short chosen as well, I'm afraid that this book had a tin ear when it comes to valid criticisms of some of the Warner cartoons.

I am a huge fan of Looney Tunes, but we also need to acknowledge that some of what they did just isn't funny, when it comes to portrayals of race. (I don't think I'd mind if most DVDs of Duck Soup took out its completely inappropriate racial joke, for that matter.) If you are going to include offensive things, and I am fine with that, it needs to have solid context. This book did not, and that's a mark against it.

That doesn't mean I'd recommend against reading this love story to classic animation, however. The solid choices far outweigh the questionable ones, and I'd have a hard time quibbling with 90% of these selections. The book handily avoids the mistake of ranking the cartoons, which I thought was both appropriate and clever. There are plenty of stills from the shorts, along with a few sketches and promo materials that add to its value for the amateur animation historian. Learning that most people don't like how they changed Daffy Duck was refreshing, and I liked the varying takes on how Bugs was portrayed by different directors.

Overall, 100 Greatest Looney Tunes is a wonderful pickup for the classic animation fan on your gift list, assuming they don't already own it. Just be prepared to listen as they argue with you (whether you want to be part of the argument or not) about the selections or remarks by the commentators. I can assure you that *I* of course would never do such a thing. Oh no.

Two Roads to Sumter by William and Bruce Catton

2010-12-05T05:00:00.001-05:00

This is part of phase one of my Civil War Book Challenge, where I follow the war's 150th anniversary in a series of books from the pre-war years to the start of reconstruction. Feel free to join me!

Progress so far: 2 of 5 books set in the pre-war era.

Bruce Catton formed the heart of my Civil War reading when I was growing up and first learning about the conflict. His books feel a bit old-fashioned now, showing as they do the best of the well-known names such as Lee, Grant, and Lincoln, without the touches of realism and human frailty that we expect from history books today.

Are we better off now that we know more about the men who waged the war, right down to their most personal problems? I'm not sure, but when you try to go back to the classics, it sometimes can be a jarring experience. Two Roads to Sumter spends a lot of its time trying to think the best of Lincoln and Davis, occasionally to the point of distraction. There's really not much you can do to make a man look better when he's advocating for the perpetuation and extension of slavery and denying the right of African Americans to participate in even the most basic aspects of American society.

Sorry guys, but Jefferson Davis might have been an upstanding gentleman who thought he was right, but you can't wash the taint off his hatred by couching it in context and high rhetoric. (It's a lesson I hope we'll soon see extended to the look back at extreme hatred in America today towards groups that did nothing but be different from the norm or look different from others.) The book is stronger in lionizing Lincoln, who certainly had his faults but clearly believed in human rights for all people, even if he wasn't as sure on the particulars or as free from bias as we'd like to think. Still, he too feels a bit larger than life here, able to rise above the petty manipulations of rival Seward, once he's been freed from the extreme partisanship that apparently marred his term in Congress.

Despite some of the problems inherent in writing in an age where criticisms of heroes were tricky to manage, the Cattons do bring interesting ideas to the table that were new to me. Lincoln's extreme partisanship and manipulations for power (I don't think I knew he ran for US Senate in 1854 as well, for instance) aren't as well documented, at least not in the books I'd read previously on the rail splitter. Similarly, I had no idea that Davis was often considered too conservative for his Southern audience, an irony that explains a lot about the problems faced by Jefferson Davis the President.

I also thought it was interesting that this book spends so much time looking at how the Democratic Party might have been able to stave off the war (and extend the life of slavery) by swallowing some pride and looking past the nose on their face to see the bigger picture. It confirms for me that American politics really don't work all that well and thinking they ever did was folly. It also shows how extremists can take control of the political process if given an opportunity, a lesson we're about to learn again soon, I think. In terms of the contemporary politics of the time, our pair of writers leaves no mistake that the feelings of the 1850s echo the 1950s in ways both similar and striking. Cleverly, they even leave those links for the reader to grab onto, rather than spell them out. It's a nice case of understatement that I think served the text well.

It's a bit hard to tell who is writing where, but the lengthy digressions into politics strike me as more from William, where the character profiles fits with those we see in Bruce's solo outings on the Civil War. The two mesh these ideas rather well, I think, with neither dominating. This prevents the book from either becoming too dry or too full of useless character studies that don't show how two of America's best known figures made their way through the years before the Civil War.

The book's central premise is that Lincoln and Davis, who both had roots in Kentucky, were not dissimilar men. They both came from the idea of frontier and expansion, though Davis would advocate it while Lincoln (perhaps in reaction to his father, an idea that's not explored here) rejects rampant growth, especially in light of the slavery question. They both had poor beginnings, but Davis gets a guardian angel in the form of an older brother. This is the key moment that changes the two men, as both face personal setbacks but only one has to really work for his opportunities. The difference gets more and more striking, as the book shows, until there's no way for these two men, who are arguably moderate for their day, to ever agree without bloodshed.

In this way, Lincoln and Davis are avatars for the regions they represent, two factions unable to come to terms because, like parallel lines, their visions for America could never co-exist as long as one based their philosophy on the slavery of an entire race. It took the war to, however unevenly, blend the two lines together. Two Roads to Sumter shows that, while possible, it was unlikely that anything other than the Civil War could have happened, given the actors in play at the time on the political stage. I think this book puts the lie to the idea that slavery would have died a quiet death if left alone. Possible? Yes. Likely? No. There were too many people trying to cling to outdated ideas, another echo of the 1950s and even today.

As I'd expect with most books that take such a specialized perspective on a part of history, this book is not going to have a lot of general interest. It is, however, one of the best books I've read on the pre-war years, however. (Keep in mind that's a limited number, so don't go by just me.) Unlike the book about the Compromise of 1850s, this text takes the time and space to explain is arguments, including why people such as Clay, Davis, and Lincoln acted as they did and what they might have done differently. I may not agree with the alternatives proposed by the book, especially the theory that President Douglas in 1856 might have saved the Union, but at least arguments are made that have real backing and explanation.

Those interested in the politics of the 1850s should definitely check out Two Roads to Sumter. It may have some problems that all older history books share, but it's still a strong study of the time period that presents logical arguments and crucial details I'd never seen before. It definitely belongs in the library of any historian of the Civil War era and should be of interest to fans of older American politics as well.

50 Books Reached!

2010-12-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

I'm so happy to report that I made my goal of 50 books this year!

It's so nice to be reading consistently again. Despite having a hectic schedule, I've found ways to make sure that I'm still getting a regular diet of fiction and non-fiction from a variety of sources.

It will be interesting to see how many books I can finish the year at. Is there time to make 60?

Another good question: Having hit the 50 bar this year, what should I try for next year? 50 again? 60, especially if I come close this year? Go for broke and try 75?

Regardless, it's been quite a good year in reading for me, with books I mostly enjoyed and a few I probably could have done without. Should make for an interesting "Best of the Year" post when we hit January.

Enjoy your weekend and Happy Reading!

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

2010-12-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

[Note: I "read" this as an audio book, if that matters to you.]

Isn't that an awesome book cover? That wasn't the cover to my audio book, but I saw this one and felt it was too cool to pass up.

In a New York City that's both the same and different from our own, a child actor turned gadfly meets up with an eccentric ex-writer who prides himself on seeing hidden meanings. While trying to cope with a life that's increasingly turning into a role he plays for the greater good, the child actor meets others within the circle of the writer's influence and is eventually forced to see that the world isn't the place he thought it was. In a city that accepts almost anything, will the actor fall into line--or fall out completely?

This was my first Lethem book, and it might not have been a great place to start. I admit I'm a bit of a bad reader, in that I don't always want to be questioning the status quo as I read, and this book features that theme in spades. Our rogue writer sees hidden meanings and conspiracies everywhere, and by the end, we're definitely meant to empathize with this perspective. It's one I don't share, so I found myself kinda competing against the theme of the book as things went on.

Lethem does a great job of using familiar icons to fuel these delusions, such as Marlon Brando, an iconic figure that could easily fuel ideas of a world we're not meant to know. He also plays with the idea of faked deaths, nihilistic art, bogus news, and other ideas that you hear if you talk to the right people. We all harbor a few of these, and Lethem gets them all out on display. The trouble is that for them to be believable, I needed a bit more to go on, and we don't get that. It's a problem that plagued the boo for me--Lethem throws out so many ideas, but very rarely do they get the follow-up needed to develop them.

There's also the curious decision to mix real names with fake ones. Brando and Maler are okay, but apparently Frank Oz and the Muppets was not. I can understand needing to change Second Life and Mayor Bloomberg, but I think I'd rather have seen it all be fictional, rather than a curious mix of names I knew and obvious attempts to hide names I knew. It jerked me in and out of the reality of the book's world too many times, as my mind drifted away from the plot and into "Hmm, why did Letham rename this character but not the other one?"

My other issue was in the choice of narrative perspectives. I just did not like Chase, the Child Actor, and found him to be boring at best and a real jerk at worst. He bumbles through this strange world, and only too late does he seem to get it. As a result, I don't know that I trust him to be telling me the reality of the situation. I guess that was Lethem's point, but I think I'd have liked the book if it had been in third person instead. Not only could we then get more from the livelier characters like Richard and Tooth, Chase's blandness wouldn't have been front and center at all times.

I can't say that I liked Chronic City all that much, even though I found some of the ideas intriguing. It's like Lethem tried a bit too hard to mesh it all together while being as clever as possible in the construction. The trouble is he was too clever by half. The point of the book--Who is to say what reality is?--gets lost in the muddled translation of Chase, who seems to prefer to think nothing is wrong until it's far too late to do anything about it. I have no problem with complex narrative structures as a rule. I just don't think Lethem did a very good job of it in service of his story.

Despite being disappointed in Chronic City, I did like Lethem as a writer, strange as that might sound. His narrative turns of phrase are almost poetic at times, and I liked his banter between characters. The interactions, from the formal to the informal, felt quite real. He also does a great job of painting background scenes, whether it's describing a character's appearance so we can know why they're losing credibility or giving you an idea of how each person should talk by their personality quirks. Those are the kind of things I look for in a book, and Lethem has them in spades. It will be interesting to see them play out in a different book. Hopefully, I'll like the whole, not just the sum of its parts, when I next read Lethem again.

The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman

2010-11-29T22:10:00.003-05:00

This is my first audio book in quite some time. I listened to most of Mr. Hillerman's old books this way, so since I wanted to try out an audio book again, he immediately came to mind. Those used to my longer reviews for books should note that it's hard not to spoil a mystery if I delve too deeply, so I've tried to keep this brief.

By this time, Joe Leaphorn, my favorite of his two detectives, has retired, and Jim Chee has settled into marriage. We meet them as Leaphorn has a story to tell--one that might be better off left unsaid to people still in the employ of the government.

In looking up an old friend, Leaphorn tumbles on to a complex story of theft, deception, and murder within the framework of the Native American culture he's defended over the years. When curiosity and the desire to see wrongs righted--not to mention a little threat to his own life--pull him further into a complex puzzle, it seems that this time Leaphorn may be in over his head. With joints aching and the former power of a policeman behind him, he can only work within the sidelines--and sometimes, he'll have to jump off his traditional lines instead.

Can he figure out who is who with enough time to prevent more murders? Can a white man with the apparent power of a shape-changing skinwalker (in the most modern form, of course) stop him? And if they knew the truth, just what would Chee and his wife do?

Though it's somewhat disappointing to learn that Leaphorn is no longer on active duty, the rest of this was vintage Hillerman. If you've read him and liked his stuff before, you're going to enjoy this. If you find his wandering yet precisely plotted prose rather dull, then this is not going to appeal to you at all. Leaphorn's stories are always puzzles, and getting the pieces together can sometimes be maddening to the reader. This one was no exception. But when they're fitted together, Hillerman puts together some of the best climaxes in the genre. Combine that with his ability to create colorful and human characters for his detectives to interact with, and you have a solid mystery.

This particular edition also places a strong emphasis on identity, because of the nature of the plot. Leaphorn reflects on what he is now, as a retired cop. He also connects with another character stripped of his cultural heritage, as Leaphorn was. For the most part, these are weaved into the narrative, though at one point towards the end where the origin stories are rehashed again, it feel like a bit of "look how much I know of Navajo culture" thrown in for good measure. Because of the internal emphasis, there's a bit less on the lay of the land. Those looking for the descriptions of mesas and ruins may find this one a bit lacking in what they look for in a Leahphorn/Chee story. This will also be true for those who really like Chee. He's almost complete comic relief here, and has only a small role.

My only qualm is with Leaphorn's actions towards the end of the book. Perhaps this is part of his evolution as a character, but I remember him as being a very strict law and order type. He bends the law early and often in this one, which, while perfectly natural within the story, does feel a bit stretched here and there. Chee would have been a more likely candidate for associating with a former felon who wants revenge, for instance.

Still, not every write can say they're putting out quality mysteries this far into a series book. Hillerman can, and I look forward to more.

Spooky Virginia retold by S.E. Schlosser

2010-11-28T11:17:00.000-05:00

Having been horribly disappointed by the two ghost story books I chose to read around Halloween (the one about Alaska that I reviews and a "classic" book from M.R. James that I found so boring I couldn't even bring myself to review it), I eagerly grabbed this one from the library shelf in the hopes of trying to find something better.

This was definitely something better. Let's start with the decision to use "retold" instead of claiming authorship over the stories. Almost any book of collected tales and legends is going to be an adaptation of oral tradition. If you are going to use the "by" label, then you need to have written them yourself. Better even than "edited by", I think retold is the way to go. After all, what Schlosser is doing carries on the grand tradition of those who came before her. This is just designed to reach a broader audience by writing them down.

The stories themselves felt warm and familiar to me. I don't know if I'd read or heard some of them before (that's quite possible, as I've been in love with ghost stories almost since I could read) or if we have a situation of similar stories playing out in different parts of the country. Either way, every page in this book was a welcome return to the kind of ghost story I like best--
haunting tales of things gone wrong, cruelty repaid, and horrors revisited again and again.

While the language is soft (there are no oaths or swear words in here), the tone can be quite brutal. People are skinned alive, bloodied before recognition, and dismembered, depending on the story. There are a few that are just sad, such as when a distressed lover dies and remains at his or her designated spot, and a few that are just tragic (the wreck of the old 96 is included). Overall, however, the tone is dark without being gory. It's just the right pitch, in my opinion, for these kinds of tales. The classic story was often the best--make it scary, but don't cause anyone to lose their dinner over the campfire or wood stove.

You have to have a love of folklore and oral tradition to get this book. The stories are all extremely short, and their endings are as predictable as a Pittsburgh Pirate losing season. You'll often know the clincher before it happens, but that's okay. The fun is not so much in the reveal as in the getting there. You either appreciate this or you don't, and which camp you fall into will determine how much you like (or don't like) the book.

The oddest thing about this collection is that, since these are older tales from the south, we have slaves mentioned here and there. I give a lot of credit to Schlosser for not sanitizing the stories that include, for better or worse, things we'd rather not think about as being established history.

Personal favorites for me was a Jack O' Lantern story that was one I hadn't heard before, a story of vampirism set in the backwoods, and one about a sticky finger bone. Each were well plotted and creepy in their own way. I'm sure you'll find your own favorites if you read this book.

I liked Spooky Virginia a lot, and am looking forward to seeking out more books in this series. If you're a fan of the classic campfire ghost story, you should look for this one and its companion volumes, too.

Clutter Busting by Brooks Palmer

2010-11-23T22:01:00.001-05:00

[Google's having some issues, no no cover image to go along with this one. Sorry guys.]

I'm going to start this review off by admitting that I have a problem with letting clutter accumulate. I'm not going to be on Hoarders anytime soon, never fear. I don't have pizza boxes on my sofa, a copy of every single newspaper over the past decade, or food that's literally exploding out of its boxes. You can easily walk in my house, sit on the furniture (most days), and find clean glasses to drink from.

I do, however, have some unhealthy habits in relation to stuff that I'm trying to shake, and when I want to learn more about something, I tend to turn to a book. So this is my first attempt at seeing what's out there in written form to help me. Consider this half essay, half review then, I guess. You've been warned.

To give you some background: My mother always worried about clutter, but seemed to go from one extreme to the other when she tried to get better. My father's never met something he didn't want to keep. I grew up in this environment, and as time went on (and I got my own, bigger places), stuff literally started to creep up on me, especially when I got an attic AND a basement.

Flash forward to moving, in 2010. I had a depressing revelation that I had a lot of stuff I didn't need. I cleaned and tossed, and still had too much, necessitating a lot of expensive and mentally painful moving. I vowed to get a better handle on things, and to cut my stuff by at least 1/3 before I needed to move again. As Palmer will tell you, why pay for storing things you don't need? I've certainly been guilty of that, and I'm glad to see that pointed out as a problem.

The process is not easy, let me tell you. Palmer does a good job of explaining why. We're encouraged to have a lot of stuff, as it shows how successful we are. ("He who dies with the most toys wins" and all that.) Our stuff can bury our problems, mask our fears, and prevent us from doing what we really want. Getting the stuff is easy; letting go is worse than having a tooth pulled. In various ways, we allow things to dominate our lives if we aren't careful, and it's usually in places we look at every day but don't want to face. What's worse is that sometimes we keep the stuff around just to feel guilty about buying it! Yikes!

This much is all true, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I can especially relate to that last point. I've had things I kept because "I paid for it, now I need to keep it around until I use it." That day, as Palmer correctly notes, rarely comes along, and the stuff pile gets bigger and makes you feel worse about yourself. Noting that it's better to just get rid of things and move on than torture yourself was probably the best thing I read in the whole book. I've been told this enough times; maybe it will finally sink in.

Using a variety of examples, Palmer shows how different people he's encountered over the years have faced their problems with clutter. It's everything from tens of boxes under the bed to garages full of unread magazines. I can't imagine hoarding clothing, but there are folks who do it. Reminders from past relationships, items kept only out of guilt or fear, and some things that are out there to help us get noticed that only end up losing us in the process. All of these people have one thing in common--they're using their things as a wall, and having trouble letting go.

It's a problem I share, even if I'm not raiding the neighbor's garbage or holding on to every picture of my past relationship. Part of reading the book was a refreshing "my problems aren't that severe, especially now that I've de-cluttered significantly" and part of it was "I can totally understand that problem"--with just a bit of "I'm still doing that" mixed in for good measure.

The book has several strengths, starting with an affirmation that you are not alone in having a clutter issue. It's a soothing, gentle tone that Palmer adopts in terms of the condition. He's not blaming you for how you've acted, only if you refuse to change. I think there's a lot of merit in that approach. Why make it worse when the person already knows they have a problem? I also like the idea of looking at what you have, finding problem areas, and bringing them into the light of day. That's something I did when I was moving, and it helped me a lot.

Palmer also notes that sometimes friends can be clutter, if they are only negative and don't value you as a person. That's sound advice--look at the whole picture of your life, not just your things. As with the physical clutter, this is not a condemnation, but a request that you open your eyes.

The trouble is that Palmer is too new age for my taste, referring to positive and negative energy and people feeling better just by willing themselves to feel better. The idea that an ill person can get well just by chucking their medical books means they either have a mental illness that needs to be treated, or they're going to have a horrible crash when the de-cluttering doesn't prevent a relapse. They might even start to clutter again as a panic reaction.

Ironically, Palmer's book has too much clutter inside it (by my admittedly biased definition) to really be a book I'd recommend. If you were looking for specific advice that is practical, not couched in words like "Have a conversation with your pile of papers," then you're going to be severely disappointed. I kept reading to see if there were little tidbits I could pick up (or affirm I was on the right path), but as the book progressed and the ratio of hard advice to "pretend your bedroom is art gallery" statements went south on me, I found this was not the book to help me finish my quest to have less stuff.

My biggest problem with Palmer, however, was that his advice seemed to be to just chuck things and get rid of 75% of what you own. Palmer might be happy only owning 25 CDs, but I play parts of 25 CDs in a weekend if I'm working on a writing project! Similarly, he discussed getting rid of 95% of a person's books as though having 80 books was a crime. Palmer regards pictures in a way that sounds downright superstitious and advices getting rid of them all. There has to be a better way to advise people on reducing what they have without giving up the things that make you happy.

Palmer wants all of his readers to live in the now, and that's fine--if that's what you want. I like having a past, present, and future. It's a philosophical difference that ultimately made the book mostly unusable for me. I can glean certain tips--make sure you don't own two of anything, keep an eye on clothes and other items you never use, and so on--but the overall message rubbed me the wrong way. It undermined some of the good things that I liked about the book and made it less effective for me personally.

I'm sure if you asked him, Palmer would say I'm not ready to let go of my old ways. Maybe that's true. Ultimately, however, Palmer himself said we have to do what makes us happy. I'm happy owning and keeping certain things. Where I need more focused help is on deciding what those certain things should be. Palmer's gentle but ruthless method that talks about spacial energy and doesn't allow for keeping much of anything just isn't for me. I need a more neutral path. If you feel you need a radical change and want to de-clutter your life in a new age manner, see if this is maybe the place for you to start. I'll still be searching for awhile longer, and letting you know what I find.

At the Edge of the Precipice by Robert V. Remini

2010-11-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

[This book is part of phase one of my extended Civil War 150th Anniversary Challenge.]

It's rare that I get to read a book that came out the same year that I'm reading it, but this one jumped out on the shelf for me, in light of my plans to read books about the time before the Civil War for the rest of this year.

Remni's book features Henry Clay, a man who probably should have been a United States President, but never quite made it. He certainly tried enough times, but due to being the go-to man for compromise he always had just enough enemies that finding an electoral majority eluded him.

In this book, Remini acts almost as an apologist for Clay's role in making Faustian bargain after Faustian bargain regarding the worst sin this country is responsible for--the legalization and continuation of slavery. His main argument is that had the country split in 1820 (or later, and of the biggest focus in this book, 1850), there is no way that the forces of the North could have kept the South in the country, and further evils may have come about as a result.

What those evils are get left to the reader's speculation. Presumably it's that slavery would have continued for decades longer. That's certainly the implication when your book claims early on that the North needed another 10 years to prepare itself for war. I'd buy that argument except for one thing--it's not like the North was stockpiling weapons in safe territory or building up the size of its army. Hindsight might show that the North was better ready to fight for Union by 1860, but I don't think that was on Clay's mind. To imply that he was keeping the union together in order to wait for the right time to shut down the South's ambitions doesn't make any logical sense to me, hence why I feel that Remini is acting as an apologist.

The fact of the matter is that this book, in sticking only to the political wrangling and power games in Congress (logical, given Remini's role as a historian of the US House of Representatives), evades the central problem of looking at this period of history. While Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and others strove for oratory points, real Americans were being subjected to cruelty day after day. They were beaten, taken from their families, and assaulted, and America allowed it to happen for almost the first 100 years of its existence. (America then allowed it to happen again in a different form for the next 100 after that, and let's be honest, there's still issues here in the first 30 years or so of this third American century.)

Because the book is so heavily focused on Clay's desire to save the union at all costs, we don't get a look at those costs. It's interesting to read about how Clay, Webster, and others who might not have liked each other, worked in the end to delay what was certainly inevitable, if they really stopped to think about it. When Franklin, Jefferson, and others tell you that slavery is going to be a problem, no amount of redrawing borders or parliamentary wrangling is going keep things neat and tidy.

Though I was not happy with the tone of the book in terms of its dismissal of keeping African Americans in bondage for years, I do think it does a good job of showing that Congress really never has been good at fixing problems in this country. I think we have a myth that American government was better in "the old days" and a book like this shatters that to pieces. Look at how stubborn actors used their grudges to keep legislation at bay. See how Presidents fight members of their own party for control of the agenda. Note how legal tricks can doom a bill without getting off a single solid vote. Watch as crass men like Stephen Douglas rise to power by letting dreams die. Say what you really mean, as William Seward did, and watch as your political career dies.

It's sad when you think about it, but extremely instructive. Why think that today's politicians can make anything work when it didn't work before? Reading a book like this is almost enough to make you turn in your voting card.

In the end, At the Edge of the Precipice doesn't work well as a justification of Clay's actions in Congress as the slavery issue simmered. Since that's what the book was written to do, I don't think it serves its subject well. In order to make the claim, Remini would have needed to do more than just record the facts and give a few pieces of commentary. He'd need to dive deeper into the wider world of America at that time, something that doesn't happen in a book that's less than 200 pages.

As a book that shows how America's governmental system may be better than the rest, but still can't solve major problems, this book is a history lesson that doesn't give a lot of hope for the future as issues such as immigration, the environment, education, and job creation loom ever larger in the public's mind. That's the true story this book tells, and rather than a dream of possibility, it looks more like a nightmare. I don't think that was Remini's intention, but it certainly played out that way for me. Perhaps you'll have a different take.

Civil War Score: I don't see this as being a necessary read for anyone, unless you are very much into the history of Congress, Henry Clay, or early 19th Century American History. It's very much a niche book.

Way off the Road by Bill Geist

2010-11-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

[If you care, I "read" this one as an audio book.]

I grew up on the idea of the Sunday drive, back when a lot of folks still had Sundays off, cars were big enough to be comfortable without being gas guzzlers, and gas itself was priced more cheaply than milk.

Because of this habit of piling in the car and finding places to go that were an hour or three away, I had the opportunity to see things that just aren't on your major vacation hot-spots. In addition, when we were on vacation as a family, we often picked a place at random and went where life took us.

Thus, I am fascinated with the odder parts of American life, like stopping by the Zane Gray Museum or seeing a Jimmy Stewart film in his hometown or going some place that has a metric ton of ceramic dinosaurs. Which means that someday, Mr. Geist and I really need to have a drink together--as long as he promises not to call me an idiot like he did to a conspiracy nut who later puts a gun to his head.

I don't often think about dream jobs, but I'm pretty sure Geist has one of mine. He gets to travel across the country, looking at the odder, smaller side of life. You'll find him at a watermelon festival perhaps, or watching school buses go to town on a demolition derby track. He'll talk to a person who runs a hamburger stand in a town of two as earnestly as another reporter might talk to Prime Minister Putin, and that's what makes this work so well.

You see, no matter how ridiculous things may get, like trying to determine who actually has the largest ball of twine or where in Minnesota is colder, Geist always treats his subjects with respect. That doesn't mean he's not critical of some of the things he observes (painting cows to make them look better comes to mind) or provide a wry spin (discussing raises taxes in a town with a population of one last person). Part of the charm of this book is that Geist never takes what he does all that seriously. However, even with taking jabs at the people around him, some of them even a little mean at times, you never get the feeling that Geist feels he is better than the people he interviews.

That's key, because if he was acting superior to people who are trying to make their claim to fame any way they can, it would come off as really mean. We can't all be on CBS, so some of us have to find a way to make our mark, even if it's just holding a unique parade in your two-block town. We all like being known for something, and in America, there's plenty of room for people to do everything from a headless chicken festival to celebrating the tow truck. Who is Geist to judge? He recognizes this, and acts accordingly. The result is a delightful set of stories, with just the right balance of irreverence and wonder.

The book shines best when Geist interviews people who are just trying to do what comes naturally. The 90+ year old man who writes a newspaper and delivers it by plane is a little scary, but shows that you never know what will keep you going over the decades. A postal worker shows that that mail must go through, even to a small town in the Grand Canyon. A lady finds her faith in serving the best barbecue chicken in Texas. None of these folks are people you're likely to live next to, but all of them find these unusual aspects of their lives are just normal for them. It's endearing, even as Geist makes light about how out of the mainstream they are.

Where the book suffers a bit is when Geist tries to be too clever. There are humorous lists that just aren't all that funny, for example, because I've heard the same comments before. A few of the jokes within the pages are canned, and there are places where you can tell that Geist is writing for an audience that's sometimes the lowest common denominator. Though I don't think he looks down on anyone, as I mentioned, Geist's sarcastic comments can come off a little bit mean as well from time to time, so just be aware there are going to be some places where you want to tell him he's being unfair.

Overall, however, I enjoyed this book a lot. Though I'd never visited any of the places that Geist mentions, primarily because a of lot of them are in the West or Midwest, I could make connections to trips I've made since I was barely old enough to walk. Heck, I'm still making those kind of trips today. Way Off the Road shows that there's more to America than the flashy parts, and does it in an irreverent way. It may not be a travel guide--or even a true travelogue--but it sure was a fun book to read.

Midnight's Children Read-Along Post 1

2010-11-14T12:47:00.002-05:00

Jo of Bibliojunkie threw out the idea of a read-along for Midnight's Children, a book that was and is celebrated as an amazing piece of literature, winning not only the 1981 Booker Prize, but also the Best of the Booker (which really should be called the Booker of Bookers) in 1993 and 2008. Clearly, there are quite a few people who have some good things to say about this title from the author of the Satanic Verses.

I'd first read this book back in 1999, if memory serves, and thought it was superior to Rushdie's better known (and more controversial) novel that put him into hiding for some time. Jo's read-along gave me a good excuse to revisit it.

Before diving back into the book, I thought I'd post some impressions that I had about the novel in the first place, to see if my memory would hold up under one of my rare re-reads.

I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the comparison to Satanic Verses. Both have elements that I (perhaps incorrectly) think of as magical realism, where the narrative stays grounded in reality but has some things about it that just can't be explained by ordinary rules. They also both show the tension within India of its major religious populations. I'm still not sure why one book caused a stir and the other did not, but perhaps it's just because I grew up during the Verses flap that I know more about the reception Rushdie received. Checking around, however, and recalling my discussions of the novel in college, I don't remember seeing much about Midnight's Children being offensive. What a difference a decade makes, I guess. One of the things I'll be reading for is to see if there is as much religious commentary in the book as I seem to think there is, based on my hazy memory.

The second thing that I remember is that the book takes a lot of twists and turns in getting to its point. I read a fair amount of experimental fiction in college, but not so much now. I'll be curious to see if I still find an appeal in the confused structure of the narrative. I do remember this book having a very satisfying payoff at the end, and that Satanic Verses did not. If memory serves that's why I tend to think of this one as the better book.

Beyond that, I don't recall much of the book. It's in my memory with pleasant thoughts, despite being part of a class that I ended up hating with an instructor who did not like me one bit. But memory is a tricky thing, as Rushdie himself will tell you in his books. I don't often do a re-read, but Midnight's Children seems like it's worth the effort and the use of my time. I'll be curious to see if I still feel the same way after starting on the book this week.

It's also notable that I only read one Rushdie book after this, and did not think it was all that good. I don't even remember which one, which is sad (and part of why I now have a book blog). One of my goals is to use this re-reading as a gauge to see if it's time to revisit Mr. Rushdie's work, or to move on to other authors. Lord knows there's plenty to go around.

Want to join in the read-along? Find the opening post here, on Jo's blog.

Bambi Versus Godzilla by David Mamet

2010-11-05T05:00:00.002-04:00

First of all, props to the book cover designer on this one. I don't think I'd have grabbed it from the shelf if it had not been for that absolutely eye-catching cover. Definitely a solid job on a book that probably could use a little help getting attention, since the subject is a bit off to the side in terms of popularity.

The book itself is a series of essays by Mamet ranging mostly on the movie business but also into other areas, primarily politics. When he stays on task, these are brilliant (if bitter) insights by a man who makes his money in an industry he despises for its business practices. When he's rambling on in an ultra-leftist bias, which sadly happens most often at the beginning of the book, it's a boring diatribe. Whether or not you agree with Mamet's politics, his sour grapes on the state of the political world just don't make for good reading.

The good outweighs the bad, though, and Mamet's style is very crisp, which is what he argues for in screen writing--don't keep anything that's not essential. Because of this, Mamet gets right to the point--there are too many producers, there's little respect for writers because everyone wants to be a writer so they're practically disposable, and the number of movies actually made today is small and keeps getting smaller. That's something I don't think we really look at these days, because with all the advertising, it feels like we have a never-ending supply of films to dislike or enjoy. On the other hand, a lot of the movies made when they were churned out by studio houses were complete crap, so I'm not sure the current system is actually worse.

Mamet also talks about what, to him, makes for a perfect movie--Galaxy Quest is one of them, believe it or not--and how so many fall short. In almost every case, Mamet has a movie example, all of which are given brief summaries in the appendix and allow you to explore his themes further. That was a nice touch, I thought.

I simply must mention his rants about auditions and preview audiences. Mamet believes that some people get parts because they can audition well, not because they can act. I'd never really considered that before. In the latter case, Mamet argues that instead of being natural, people in a test audience try too hard to think of what "they represent" and thus give a biased picture of what really works and what doesn't.

For me, the best part of this book came from reading his thoughts on writing, even though I do a different kind. It's not intended to be a how-to book, but those interested in writing fiction of any kind can learn something.

Overall, however, I worry, as did Steve Martin for the blurb, if after all this is now in the public records, that Mamet will ever work again. If not, maybe he can write more books like this one. I'd certainly read it, and you should, too.

Civil War Book Challenge

2010-11-03T21:18:00.000-04:00

All kinds of folks do all kinds of book challenges, so I am officially throwing down mine.

The 150th anniversary of the Civil starts next year. It's a monumental anniversary for a conflict that still reaches out to us today and impacts on the lives of Americans, north and south. The Civil War was a defining moment in American History, and I've had a thing for studying it since I was in grade school.

So here's the challenge I'm throwing out there, and it's a doozy. It also covers the next several years. Hey, I'm nothing if not bold when I decide to do something!

For the rest of this year, read 5 books dealing with pre-Civil War issues.

For 2011 (1861), read 10 books dealing with the Civil War in 1861.

For 2012 (1862), read 20 books dealing with the Civil War in 1862.

For 2013 (1863), read 25 books dealing with the Civil War in 1863, including a mini-challenge of 10 books dealing with Gettysburg.

For 2014 (1864), read 20 books dealing with the Civil War in 1864.

For 2015 (1865), read 10 books dealing with the Civil War in 1865.

For 2016, read 10 books dealing with the era of Reconstruction.

Rules: No books I've previously read. No books dealing with biographies of particular generals unless it is about their actions in a particular year. No books about Lincoln, unless they deal solely with his re-election campaign in 1864 or his actions in a particular year. No books dealing with the Civil War in general or that cover more than one year.

Is this challenge insane? Probably. But it should be fun to watch. I'm starting with well-known Civil War writer Bruce Catton's book, "Two Roads to Sumpter."

Progress will be updated here periodically as well as on a special link at the top of the blog.

Anyone else want to give this a try? It would be more fun if I had a partner or two to keep pace with, but I'm willing to go it alone if I have to!

Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon by Ed Ferell

2010-11-02T17:10:00.003-04:00

I'm sure you're shocked to learn that I have a thing for odd little books on odd little subjects, especially if they have some ties to the supernatural. So when I saw this book, I grabbed it for reading at a later date.

That later date finally came as I looked for something to start reading around Halloween, though I finished it a bit after the spooky season wrapped up. Strange Stories is a collection of newspaper and other articles found by Mr. Ferrell when doing research on pioneers of Alaska. He didn't write this book so much as compiled them and edited the tales for a modern audience. Ferrell is pretty credulous when it comes to the stories within. I have my doubts, particularly when a tropical oasis and a frozen city are among the topics described within the pages.

Most of these stories are extremely short, almost of a length appropriate for a children's book. That's true of the content, as well. Nothing in here is so graphic I'd be afraid to have a middle school (or even a mature grade school) student read it. They're grouped into sections, such as "Unknown Creatures", "Places of Mystery", and "Lost Mines". Each section features tales relating to the theme, with the largest being the one on ghosts.

I have to admit to two very big disappointments in this collection. The first is that "strange stories" means more tall tales than scary stuff. That one's on me. The second, however, is that too many of these accounts feel generic. I often felt as though I could have been reading about any late 19th Century part of the United States, not Alaska and the Yukon. Because of the nature of the stories, specific placement was lacking (of course), and thus I never became wrapped up in the world of these tales. That was a big problem for me.

Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon was good enough as a casual read, but I had hoped for more. I like my legends to have a strong sense of location, and that just didn't happen here. Like the old mines and giants and ghosts, it was all very much a mystery. Unfortunately, it wasn't a mystery that appealed to me. Those who like folklore and ghost stories can do better elsewhere, I think.

Vampire Slayers edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

2010-10-31T05:00:00.000-04:00

Part of the 10 Days of Halloween Horror! You can see the rest here and here.

And here's where all my reading credibility goes out the window, because this was totally a guilty pleasure...

The purpose of this anthology was to restore the evil to vampire stories, as based on the introduction that bemoans the humanization of vampires. I picked this one up on a larp--er, I mean lark--just to see if it was any good. Like the five hundred million other Greenberg anthologies, this one is a mixed bag.

I was a bit surprised at the lack of name authors in this anthology. I guess maybe I just don't read enough spec fiction to know some of these folks. The only two named I recognized were Hugh B. Cave and Charles deLint. Overall, this collection's not bad, but there are some clunkers. Skip Special, a psuedo-porn story, entirely if you value your eyesight. The opening story, while not offensive, isn't all that interesting, either. However, the story by classic pulp author Hugh B. Cave is a nice nautical vampire story, which was something I hadn't seen done before.

I also liked Midnight Sun, about an outpost of humans in North Canada facing almost certain annihilation by the vampire hordes. Revelations in Black is a very literary take on a way to stop a vampire's rampage, though the pacing is a bit slow. Charles de Lint has a nice short short about the costs of appeasing vampires and one woman's fateful decision, and there's a vampire noir detective story by Tanya Huff that I liked but due to its protagonist's undead status, felt was out of place in the anthology.

The last story, Midnight Mass, works well as a closer, with a disgraced priest returning to his town to try and save the parishioners who once abandoned him in his time of need.

All in all, this one's not bad--nothing here is award-winning, but I liked them all in all, except of course for Special. If you like your vampires menacing, this is a good choice. As a fan of short fiction, I had a good time. Greenberg's anthologies may never be 100% amazing, but he's got a pretty good eye for putting together material, and this is no exception. However, this is your last warning, if you get this out, don't read Special. Just trust me, ok?

The Point Man by Steve Englehart

2010-10-30T09:55:00.000-04:00

Part of the 10 Days of Halloween Horror! You can see the rest here and here.

I picked this one up from the library solely on the name Steve Englehart. Though I am quite familiar with his comic book career, I had no idea he'd written a novel. It was sitting in the science fiction section, and I figured what the heck.

Well, it turns out that this "science fiction" book is really a dark fantasy, and not a bad one at that. Englehart crafts a world of magic that has a stronger grounding than you'd expect and some really creepy and terrifying scenes that make this worthy of inclusion in the Halloween Horror celebration.

Max August is a man who hides his war history past and his real name behind the DJ handle of Barnaby Wilde. He's got just about everything he could want--money, fame, and a way to escape everything in the airwaves of San Francisco. When the station manager offers him more--including herself--he opts to take it. What Max doesn't know is that there's another, darker war going on, and he's about to be sucked into the middle.

A simple robbery and crazed man turn the trick, and soon the world of "Barnaby Wilde" is a very different place. As the local police, FBI, and other, more sinister agencies start invading his life, Max doesn't know where to turn. Things are happening to Max that are straight out of a comic book. His only hope is a singer with a diamond-hard edge and her mysterious manager. But can this trio defeat forces that are far older than the nations fighting the cold war? Is Max ready to face his shameful past and return once again to being...the Point Man?

This book has one major oddity that readers should be aware of it. It was written about 1980 but has been re-issued by Tor here in 2010 because Englehart has finally written a second book about August. This is not a new book set in the past. This is Englehart writing how he felt about the late 1970s. In some ways it is a product of its time. The cold war is in full force here, with the idea of the Russians having ties to ultimate evil playing a big part in the plot. References and cultural attitudes are definitely dated (and occasionally cringe-worthy) and the whole idea of DJs having a cult of personality is something that some modern readers might not even understand.

Perhaps the biggest part of this is Max's guilt about his role in Vietnam. Since most Vietnam veterans are now in their 60s or later, I think we tend to forget that it was a very difficult war to be a part of, and Englehart using it as a touchstone would resonate strongly with his intended audience. I'm not entirely happy with the idea of Max being a murderer as a GI, as it adds to the myth that every man who went to Vietnam killed innocent women and children. There are other ways Max could have had a flawed past. However, it's not enough for me to dislike the book. At least Englehart found a way to make it work within the story, rather than as just another cliche.

Once you accept that you're reading classic dark fantasy by a person who never got a novel-writing career off the ground, the book flows pretty well. Englehart's prose is a bit stilted at times, with a few sections containing clunky dialog or romantic scenes. You can tell he's more comfortable with writing a plot for others to illustrate, if you know what to look for. Englehart does avoid information dumps, spreading them out and using the slow reveal of information as a plot point for Max, who needs to get educated on magic as the book goes on. I found this a clever way to explain the magical reality we were dealing with. There's only one time that he slips up, and that's where Cornelius (the singer's manager) talks a bit too much about the nature of magic. I found myself a bit bored and wishing to get back to the action.

It was interesting to me that Englehart, who spent some time writing Doctor Strange (a great sorcerer in Marvel comic books), grounded his book's magic in ideas that any practicing pagan would find familiar. I know enough people who do magick to recognize some of it, and though he takes liberties, the idea that the magic in this book comes from a real source impressed me. We still get fantastic creatures and abilities that are not real, but they start from a point as logical as you can get when dealing with a fantasy. That was a strong selling point for me as I was reading.

The plot itself moves very well. Englehart always was pretty good at balancing action and rest in his comics, and that shines through here. Max keeps thinking he understands and keeps having the rug pulled out from under him. Like any good hero, however, he manages to keep pushing on, and finds something in himself to go that extra mile. Max is a bit like Captain America or Batman--no matter the odds, they'll find that reserve within themselves to be, well, a hero.

I also appreciated that Englehart was perfectly willing to kill people off and to make sure that nothing works perfectly. Max might save the world from a horrible fate, but he'll pay for it. He never comes to anything easily, either, which can be a book killer for me. There are quite a few moments of horror in the book, most of them playing off the occult aspects of the story. We get a very good picture of these scenes, too, which gives the whole thing a darker edge that it might have otherwise missed. We're dealing with demons and the devil, but only just enough to flavor the book, not spoil it.

The Point Man is not a perfect book. It may be too dated for a lot of a readers and the ideals of the main characters probably only work for an audience that remembers when the only thing we worried about was one big nuke instead of dirty bombs. However, this is a series character that's done in one, giving you the chance to sample it without being locked into 1000 pages of reading. If you like dark fantasy, stories that base themselves in our reality, or were a fan of Englehart's comics, I'd make a point of giving this one a try.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

2010-10-28T16:35:00.000-04:00

Part of the 10 Days of Halloween Horror! You can see the rest here and here.

[Read as an e-book, if that matters to you.]

I've read Frankenstein several times over the years, including for a college class. The number of times I've seen the most famous movie version and endless variations is legion. I am a person who loves classic horror, and Karloff's shuffling criminal full of pathos is for me the defining moment of the horror genre.

Perhaps because vampires keep becoming the in thing, I've always been less inclined to Dracula. In fact, other than an excellent comic adaptation by Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano, I'd never even read the source material. That finally changed, and I'm glad it did. Stoker's work may have been used and abused over the years, but the original text makes for a striking book that reads far more modern than its time period and is a much better book than Frankenstein.

For those who may not be familiar with the plot of the actual book, a man named Harker comes to Castle Dracula to help a mysterious man make arrangements to go to London. To his horror, he learns that this man is not all that he seems, but he is powerless to prevent his coming to the teeming metropolis. Soon, Dracula is on the prowl claiming victims, including the lovely but helpless Lucy. Lucy is the friend of Mina, Harker's fiance, and eventually, with the help of the noted but eccentric Dr. Van Helsing, a group of revenge seekers form.

Can this team of weakened but determined adventurers stop Dracula from making an army of the undead? You know the answer, of course, but it's the getting there that's the fun.

I was pleasantly surprised by the text itself, which read a lot more like a modern novel than I'd expected. At first I was a bit put off by the epistle format of the book (a fair number of the characters share their experiences via letters or journals), but they soon begin to link up in a way that drives the narrative. It's really interesting to see how Stoker links things together, and the added advantage of knowing more than the characters by virtue of being able to read all of the letters in a logical sequence provides an omniscience even within first-person narratives. I don't think this tactic is something I'd want to read every time out, but as a change of pace from the books I normally consume, it was extremely effective.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that Mina is a strong female character. Lucy is a typical female victim, but for the bulk of the book, we are dealing with the fact that the male characters in the book don't quite know what to do or are weakened to inactivity while Mina drives them on to the task, even at great personal cost to herself. I suppose it's wrong of me to generalize in this way, but I had figured on things playing out a bit differently. I thought all of the non-male characters would be props for the virile males to either endanger or save. Dracula is certainly no feminist novel, but it's also not misogynistic.

On the other hand, Dracula is extremely anti-immigrant. Dracula is the strange figure from eastern Europe who comes to London to "ruin" it, particularly its females. There is a strong vibe against the feeling of the other, coming in to corrupt that which is considered pure. Even Van Helsing and the American get placed in a different light and offer to do things that would be improper for the Brits in the book. It's hard sometimes to remember that not all that long ago, if you weren't from the right part of Europe, you were the enemy.

You could substitute the location of the book and have it serve as a stand-in against African Americans, Asians, or, most recently, Hispanics. When they spoke in such dismissive tones about anyone that was not a WASP, I winced. It makes the book hard to read in places, though I am somewhat used to that in reading older literature of any kind. I wonder if the recent revival of racism against those who aren't "true" Americans (or Brits or French, to name a few other hotspots) made me more sensitive to this or not.

There is also the prudishness that pervades the novel. Anyone who is not strictly seen as chaste comes off badly, and the link between the vampire's kiss and sex is so well documented I don't think I need to get into it here, as the cultural racism angle interests me far more than if Stoker had problems with people enjoying intimate relations. However, everyone reads for different reasons, so you may prefer to go through the book and pick up on the signs that point to upholding a morality that is (and probably always was) out of date.

Dracula is not a book for everyone. It's still slower than a modern reader may like and the epistle format definitely will bother you if you don't get into its rhythm right away. For those who like Victorian writing or the transition period of James and Wharton, this is definitely something you should check out. I'd also recommend it for anyone who likes vampire fiction. Go to the source and see how it all began. The results may surprise you.

Book Blogger Hop III

2010-10-23T11:38:00.003-04:00

It's that time of the week again, where folks go around and hop from book blog to book blog, seeing what others are reading and maybe picking up a new person to follow along with here and there. I've had a great time with this, and am always looking forward to finding a few new people who share my rather odd book tastes!

The Hop is hosted by Crazy for Books, and is such a great idea!

There's always a question and today's is "Where is your favorite place to read?"

I read in a lot of places, basically anywhere that I'm standing or sitting around idle. I hate waiting without at least the ability to hop online and read the newspaper. My most common reading location is probably my bed, since I always try to read for at least 30 minutes before I go to sleep. However, if I had to pick a favorite, it would be outside, sitting on a porch or under a tree on a pleasant spring or fall day. I love having the breeze, a good drink, and an excellent book!

If this is your first time here, hello! If you're coming back, welcome back! Stick around and have a cup of The Book Stew!

10 Days of Halloween Horror!

2010-10-22T05:18:00.001-04:00

So big, you'll find it on TWO blogs!

A crossover classic with Panel Patter!

Halloween is my favorite time of year, and I'm celebrating it with a 10-day festival on The Book Stew and its companion site, Panel Patter, where I blog about comics, manga, and zines.

Go on over and check out the intro post, then be sure to read both sites to watch Rob geek out in a serious way about his favorite time of the year! You don't want to miss what's sure to be a killer party.

And if you do...you have to answer to this guy:

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

2010-10-21T19:34:00.000-04:00

[Note: I "read" this as an audio book, if that matters to you.]

I'm always a little leery of books that are prequels, but since this was by the always solid Margaret Atwood, I was hopeful that things would turn out a bit better for me.

Sure, given Oryx and Crake's ending, a sequel would make more sense than a prequel, but I had faith that there was a reason behind going back and telling the story from a different angle. Unfortunately, this book verified my reasons for disliking prequels as a rule, and is the first Atwood book I've read that left me feeling less interested in reading more by this usually strong author.

Oryx and Crake was the story of a dystopian technocratic future and, indirectly, the story of one man's obsession to change that future, based on problems in his past. The Year of the Flood is about a group of people who may or may not have influenced that man's thinking, teaching peaceful resistance to the power structure but really working to undermine it step by step.

As with Oryx and Crake, however, there is a distance placed between the reader and the action, as we once again get the information from a source anywhere from one to several steps removed. This time, the narration is a dual one, with a smattering of sermons (more on this later) by the religious leader, Adam One.

Toby is a woman whose life went to hell in this technocratic society, as the powers that be slowly take away everything she's ever had. She finds the Gardeners, the group who, as it happens, may have influenced Crake's mad schemes. Soon Toby is finding a part of herself she never knew existed--one that may in fact save her life. Alternating narration from a different perspective is Ren, a young women who grows up as a Gardener, then must make her way in what they refer to as the exfernal world. Dumb luck saves her life, but for how long?

As these two women tell their stories, both about the way in which their life changes over time, both for good and bad, they sometimes give differing perspectives on the same situations. This is one of the high points of the book. Atwood shows how perspective can make all the difference. The trouble is that she pushes it too far, having Ren end up meeting most of the folks from Oryx and Crake, in ways that eventually stretch credulity to the breaking point. Ren and her friends end up so involved in the life of Jimmy (Snowman) it's almost comical. Unfortunately, Atwood falls victim to the problem of a prequel--she's trying to make things fit too neatly, and it ends up looking like a frame job.

Unfortunately, this also takes away from the uniqueness of the world created in Oryx and Crake. As we learn more details about this future world, it become less novel, less alien, and less interesting as a character. Giving all the details on the corruption of the new government drags things out of the world of wonder and more into our own sad world. The longer the book progresses, even as things get more like a science fiction novel, the less this feels like an innovative commentary and more like any number of movie plots. That was extremely disappointing to me.

There's also the problem that the Gardeners and Adam One sound entirely too much like they are echoing those of Atwood herself. The sermons are clunky, do not add much to the text, and end with a plea about how humanity is/was destroying the earth, depending on if you're reading it as the opinion essay it is or the fictional account it's supposed to be. I'm sympathetic to Atwood's ideals and I appreciate the better use of resources that the Gardeners espouse. The ideology bogs down the text, however, and makes this novel a lot less than it could have been.

This doesn't mean it's all bad. There are still some new elements of this world that I really like, and the characters are more engaging. Toby starts off as a stock character, but she grows into a real force who finally takes control of her own life, after spending so much time as a pawn. Ren loses herself as time goes on, finding that her personality is one that gloms on to others. Zeb, Shackleton, Crozier, Nuala, Rebeca, and the other members of the Gardeners are likable people who we want to see live despite this terrible new world. Another flaw in the book is that it seems Atwood can't kill anyone off, which is a shame because when she does end the life of a character in Year of the Flood, I was profoundly moved.

Year of the Flood ends on yet another oddly placed cliffhanger, which is a shame because I'm not sure I'm all that interested in reading more. Overall there were just too many moments where things fit nicely into place, a sign of plotting gone overboard. Toby and Ren just have to be in all the right places for this book to work, and that takes away from its sense of plausibility. (Is asking a science fiction book to be plausible unreasonable? Maybe. However, when you're asking me to accept things that are not possible in my world, I do ask that you take the time to keep the usual circumstances of life within the bounds of reason.)

Combined with the often heavy-handed condemnation of a world moving in a direction Atwood doesn't like, Year of the Flood just didn't grab me the way that Oryx and Crake did. I am intrigued enough to read the next book when it comes out, but I won't be in as much hurry this time as I was after finishing the first book in this series. There's no need to flood the bookstore or library to grab this one, and there's definitely better Atwood out there for those looking to check out her writing.

Book Blogger Hop II

2010-10-08T16:14:00.002-04:00

It's Blog-hopping time again! Thanks to Crazy-for-Books for hosting!

First of all, thanks to all of you who stopped by last weekend. That was a lot of fun! I tried to get around and make some comments here and there, and I definitely found some new book bloggers to check in on!

The Hop is designed to give folks a chance to jump around to other book-related blogs and see what's out there. With so many folks over the internet all sharing their love of books, it's easy to get lost. The Hop gives you a central place to explore from, every weekend.

So if you're here for the very first time, welcome! It's good to see you! Have a cup of Book Stew and join in the discussion. If you're of a comics persuasion, you can even get in on a little Panel Patter.

This weekend's question--what do you like to drink while you read?--is an easy one for me. Wherever I am, you'll find me with an iced or hot tea in my hand, depending on the weather. Give me sweetened or unsweetened, I don't care. I'll take fancy brewed, solar, or instant. If it's tea, I'll drink it!

See you around the Hop!

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

2010-10-07T22:01:00.000-04:00

I find it unlikely that I'll ever meet Margaret Atwood or that she'll read this review of one of her older books, but if so, I apologize that I cannot go along with her desire not to call this a work of science fiction, because it is clearly dealing with a dystopian future that contains plenty of "things that aren't invented yet," Ms. Atwood's own definition.

I admit that I bristle a bit at the idea of an author denying a perfectly fine genre label, but since Atwood (and this book) are both so good, I'll give it a pass.

Oryx and Crake is the story of what happens when one man has the vision to remake the earth in his own twisted ideas and uses a society that's too obsessed with techo-corporate progress to notice that something might be going horribly wrong. Humanity, which was set on surviving no matter who or what got hurt in the process, suddenly finds itself cut off at the knees.

The human race's only hope? A deranged, defeated semi-alcoholic that calls himself Snowman. He wanders what's left of the "paradise" created by tramping over human rights and scientific ethics and, as the book progresses, reflects on what went wrong. He is left with the ruins of society, dangerous hybrid creatures (perhaps most horrifying being the one that combined snakes with rats), a race of creatures that are almost human--and plenty of time to think.

They look to him for their philosophy and theology, and Snowman obliges, knowing that everything he does will impact on their future. Not wanting to die but perhaps never really wanting to live, Snowman does what comes naturally to him: He continues to live.

As we progress through the book in a series of splits between the present day and prior events, it's clear that Snowman (formerly Jimmy) never had a handle on his life. He was content, like most people, to just inhabit the world around him. Sure, he had questions, but those questions were better left unanswered. If he saw signs, he ignored them, preferring to do what was easiest, from letting Crake run his life to having a series of unsuccessful romantic relationships, often with married or spoken for women. It's obvious that Jimmy's world is a mess--his mom even leaves because of it--but Jimmy/Snowman fears the truth more than anything, and his ability to question nothing overwhelms his occasional exposure to the bare facts.

This approach is perfect for giving us a character who can see his world without judging it, allowing the reader to form their own thoughts. The problem is that for most sections of the book, even when Snowman is all alone, he is reacting rather than acting. There's only a few precious moments where Snowman must show some backbone, and they mostly end up in the back of the book, by which point we've already passed judgment on this man whose penalty for ignoring life is to spend the rest of it mentally chronicling the end of the human race.

Normally, having such a cipher as a main character would bother me, but Atwood's work of world-building is so strong that I'm willing to overlook it. She's really outdone herself here, coming up with a future where technology does anything it wants, aided any abetted by a security force working only to protect the haves against the masses of have-nots (and those amongst the haves who get doubts about this reality). We see all sorts of twisted versions of familiar themes, from the internet to pharmaceutical companies, all taken to the extreme. Scientists work feverishly to "improve" the work of nature, binding raccoons and skunks or creating pigs that provide more food. There's even a twisted thing that provides nothing but chicken legs. They're the horror stories we only dream of right now, but Atwood makes them only real but plausible.

Because of this, Oryx and Crake's world is more of a character than Snowman. We want to know what makes this world tick, where the arts are shoved away from higher learning in a nod to the Cartesian philosophies at work today. There may be a few variations along the way, but the world Atwood creates is more compelling that most dystopias because let's face it--this is world that could easily happen, and might even be happening now.

I think that's the thing that makes me enjoy Oryx and Crake, despite my usual dislike of dystopias as a plot device. We did not arrive here by some dramatic act that's implausible. We got here because man's arrogance kept taking the next logical leaps, and the fall was one just as great as that given in the Book of Genesis. It's even for the same reason--a quest for knowledge without any checks and balances. As we watch technology go further and further, there seems to be no stopping to see not only if we can do something, but if we should. Atwood clearly sees this future and is scared by it. I'm a bit scared, too.

There are a few things that readers should be aware of before diving in. First of all is Atwood's leisurely pacing style, common to her writing. Fans of her work know that sharp, fast-moving stories are not her forte, and this book, despite its dramatic theme, is no exception. I like Atwood a lot, but sometimes I do wish she'd cut a bit here and there and move the story along faster. Snowman's life as a young adult particularly drags, in my opinion,but not enough to kill my enjoyment of the book. If you've never read Atwood before, just be ready to take awhile to get to the punchline.

The second problem is related to the first. I copped pretty quickly to what was going to happen, and I think overall the foreshadowing is just a bit too heavy. The extra pages mean it takes awhile to find out if you're right. I was, and I have a feeling you will be, too.

The third problem is a bit odd in an Atwood book. I felt like she was very neglectful to her female characters. Oryx is literally objectified, and Jimmy/Snowman's mother is the only other strong female in the book. It seems odd that she'd write a book that wouldn't pass the Bechdel test, and it just felt like women got short shrift in this one.

Overall, however, I really enjoyed the book, even if it ends on one heck of a cliffhanger. Atwood's prose is as sharp-witted as ever, from the names she gives futuristic creatures and technology to the acid sarcasm of her characters. There are plenty of secrets left unrevealed, giving the reader plenty of room to explore this world in his/her own mind. Atwood knows that any good writer shows as much as possible, while also giving the reader room to expand on what they've been given. The biggest question--how did the disaster happen--is revealed, but so much more is waiting, either for future books or as fodder for book clubs.

I always enjoy Atwood books, and this one was no exception. Fans of her other fiction books will find lots to like and should not be turned off by the science fiction within the pages. At the same time, those who like near science fiction definitely need to check this one out. Just don't tell Ms. Atwood that I sent you.

In Defense of Stephen King

2010-10-03T10:55:00.000-04:00

When I did my review of Thinner, I had a few more things I wanted to say about King the writer, but did not feel like they fit in with the theme of the review. I still wanted to share them, however. Here they are, expanded a bit.

The idea that I've read nearly a dozen Stephen King books and that doesn't even cover a third of his total output is pretty amazing to me. Not so much the number of books--think of how many Danielle Steel has written--but the variety of those books is what impresses me. We have short story collections, non-fiction, how-to, horror, mystery, collaborations, series, exclusive e-books (anyone else remember The Plant?), and even books released a chapter or two at a time.

King is not afraid to experiment with his writing. Sometimes it works extremely well and other times it falls flat on its face. But instead of simply writing the same book over and over again, King uses different formats, points of view, and other ways to keep his stories varied.

Are there some similarities? Certainly. I was a bit unsure about Cell, because it reminded me a lot of the Stand in some ways (one of those King productions I've only seen in movie form, to be honest). Most of King's books are set in New England, so the supporting characters and settings are often familiar. He's also the King of product placement, for which many often criticize him. (King's argument, if I remember correctly, is that people are less likely to be thrown out of a narrative if you use the real thing. I think that's sound logic.)

However, I don't think any writer is immune to repeating themselves here and there if they have a long literary career. I'm not even talking about people who write formula books, where the audience wants the repetition. (I like Tony Hillerman a lot, and part of that is when Chee and Leaphorn are in character, not out of it.) I'm looking more here at those that are considered literary writers, such as Margaret Atwood or Joyce Carol Oates, because that's where I think King belongs.

It's my contention that King's writing, while pulpy, often crude, and filled with vile people doing vile things, also has a depth that stays with you after you finish the book. Look at the concept of justice explored in Thinner. Yes, there are supernatural elements but scratch beneath the surface and you have questions that don't get an easy answer. Or take a look at Different Seasons, which features a man determined not to let his situation kill his spirit, the wonders of discovery in childhood, the nature of absolute evil, and, okay, that last story isn't as good as the other three but you get the idea.

We also see the nature of good and evil as a recurring theme, and how situations can corrupt even the best of us. If you stripped out the demons and resurrections and things from several of King's books, I have a feeling the literary critics would praise him to the heights of the canon. To me, the fact that King can make me think as a reader while terrifying/entertaining me at the same time makes his work even better than one that only contains the moral quandaries. Why is it such a crime that King gives us characters that talk and feel like real people who swear and fight and drink Coke? Is it just because they also have to deal with evils that have their roots in classical mythology of all cultures? We don't think less of "Homer" for adding in Greek Gods to his tale of humanity's foibles, so why do that to King?

I call this a defense of Stephen King, as though he needs it. The man is obviously extremely popular, has quite a few books left in his brain, will almost certainly get more movie deals, and is not exactly hurting for money. Whether or not he's appreciated by the New York Times Book Review set is secondary to the fact that he has millions of fans, including my wife and me. Yet I admit it bothers me that more people dismiss King as being "a hack" or a "writer for the masses" (as though that last one is a bad thing) while praising Charles "I got paid by the word and it shows" Dickens as being a pillar of quality writing.

Take a look at the Pickwick Papers sometime and try that one again, huh?

That's why I feel like I need to defend Stephen King and through him, the idea of popular literature in general. King is popular, true, but he's also a great writer. As his work ages, I think people are coming around to this idea. I often say that in 100 years, we'll be teaching King in schools, and they'll look back on all those articles and laugh as they describe him as a classic writer of the late 20th Century.

Some of us knew that all along.

Book Blogger Hop

2010-10-02T11:56:00.002-04:00

I'd heard about the Book Blogger Hop before, but I don't always have a lot of time. I decided to make some time for it this weekend. For those visiting The Book Stew for the first time, welcome!!

The hop is a way for folks to go around and randomly hit up other book bloggers and see what they're writing about. As I'm in a transitional reading state--and also a bit of a transition in terms of how I want to use The Book Stew--I figured this might be a good thing for me to participate in this weekend.

The question for this weekend is a pretty good one: How do you promote your book blog?

Honestly, I don't really do a lot. I will tweet when I get a new review up, the same as what I do for Panel Patter, where I post reviews and things on comics. I keep the two separate because I feel like there's a different audience for comics and "book book" (as I like to call them), though perhaps that's not as true as it used to be.

There are so many good book blogs out there (and I hope to add a few to my RSS after this weekend!) I just don't know where Book Stew fits in. I tend to read older books as a rule, and I don't read primarily from a certain genre. I think that hurts me when I'm trying to find a place in the larger book-blogging world.

But hey, part of the advantage to having your own blog is that you can do whatever you'd like! :)

So anyway, welcome again to those stopping by from the Hop, and I hope you find a review or two that interest you. Please come by again, we're always open and always serving!

Thinner by Stephen King

2010-09-30T22:18:00.000-04:00

[I read this an audio book, in case that makes a difference to you.]

For a few minutes, I thought about marking this as being by Richard Bachman, but it's not like anyone is fooled these days by Stephen King's pseudonym and it makes it easier to find for those who might want to see my thoughts on books I've read by one of the masters of horror.

All told, this is my 11th Stephen King book, and that's not even a third of his total output. It is, however, one of the best I've read, and I think it might just be my favorite now. (Previously, that was held by Different Seasons, closely followed by Cujo. Clearly, I like early 80s King.)

Thinner is the story of attorney Billy Halleck, a man living the American Dream. He's got an amazing job, a sexy wife, and a darling daughter, all while living in one of the most prestigious areas in New England. Not even making an arrogant mistake while behind the wheel can stop him. After all, powerful white men like Halleck have powerful friends, who can help him out when he's in legal difficulty.

You see, Billy Halleck has killed someone, and gotten off scott free because it's only a Gypsy. Who cares, right? They're drifters, nobodies--people who are so far below Halleck and his ilk, they might as well be ants.

Maybe, maybe not. An old Gypsy man cares, and when he takes the law into his own hands, Halleck and his friends find themselves dying in various, hideous ways. Only Halleck, the man with the biggest guilt complex, can figure out why. The trouble is, what can he do about it? Can he convince the old Gypsy to take off the curse, even as he takes off pounds faster than a Photoshopped picture? His time, like his very self, is getting...Thinner.

The book begins in media res, which is a bit different for a horror story but works quite well. As we see Halleck's situation slowly growing worse, we also see inside his mind, as he links his problems to the events of a night in which neither he nor his wife used good judgment. Halleck's mental guilt drives a lot of the horror early on, which might disappoint those looking for a more splatter-filled book. There's quite a bit of build-up going on, even if King splashes a bit of horror here and there. If you want immediate gratification, you're likely going to be disappointed.

Since I am a fan of the horrors of the mind, I found this part of the book to be quite a bit of fun, especially since it stays with us, even as Halleck's desperation leads him to allow very uncomfortable--and bloody--choices to be made on his behalf. Even if they work, Halleck will have a lot to live with for a very long time. The old Gypsy's death won't be the only thing on his conscience, and that fact is allowed to sink in nice and slowly, fitting again with the psychological horror theme.

And oh boy, does this book get some bloody imagery by the end. There are dead bodies, severed limbs, and dripping blood--and that doesn't count the stuff going on inside Halleck's head. Yet none of it feels added on to please those who want blood. Every action in this book, no matter how horrible, relates back to the story in a natural way. Halleck is in the middle of a blood feud, and the results happen accordingly.

One of the things I found most interesting about the book is that the reader should never want Halleck to win--after all, he's guilty as sin--yet they must follow his quest and listen to his perspective. The Gypsies are the wronged party, and King makes that abundantly clear. All through the book, you can see King's social commentary about how rich white people treat those they consider beneath them, especially the Gypsies. Even Halleck comes around to this idea, although far too late to help him.

When the time comes for Halleck to strike back, using his friend Ginelli the Mobster, there is a sense that maybe we are to root for Halleck. After all, Ginelli is built up to be the likable Italian Gangster. However, as he plows onto the scene and starts using horrible means to get his way, both Halleck and the reader learn that no matter how nice, a killer is a killer. King's description of the maniacal glee that Ginelli gets in bringing pain to the Gypsies is just as chilling as his depiction of the curses. Perhaps even more so.

As much as I enjoyed the way in which this story builds, the ending is one of the best payoffs, because it's exactly what you think might happen, if you're following along closely. I like when a book has an ending that meshes nicely with what's come before. Halleck thinks he can be rid of his sins, but our old, seemingly ageless Gypsy antagonist knows better. So do we, and so does King. When we get to the final scene, it hits Halleck worse than the car he used to kill the old Gypsy woman in the first place. The setup and execution are about as well done as I've read in a good long time.

In some ways, this book is more literary than it appears. We have violence, but it's almost secondary to Halleck's reflection on the way he--and many, many others--live our their daily lives. We don't think about how much we have until something causes us to lose those advantages. (Think of how many people out of work now who never gave a thought about the other 5% of the country who are chronically and constantly unemployed.) We try to dismiss that which we cannot control, and ultimately, look to blame others for our problems. We keep our dirty little secrets, and hope like hell they never come to light, all the while hating those who share in them.

Come on, you know you have a few. Don't try to deny it. You can't, and neither can I. By the end, neither can Halleck. That's a commentary worthy of being taught in school, and frankly is made all the more interesting because it contains supernatural elements and bloodthirsty mobsters.

Thinner is a great horror story on its face, with multiple levels of commentary weaved in and out of the descriptions of nightmares and cancerous tumors. It's a tribute to King's qualities as a writer that he can do both without taking away from either one. If you only think of Stephen King as a schlocky master of cheap horror, think again. Try Thinner on for size--you might just change your mind.

Lines of Contention by J.G. Lewin and P. J. Huff

2010-09-25T09:06:00.000-04:00

I have fondness for political cartoons, though I find that these days they tend to be a bit less clever than I remember them growing up. I have several books containing political cartoons on a variety of subjects, so when I saw this collection on a recent trip to Harper's Ferry, I jumped on the chance to add it to my shelf.

Lines of Contention focuses on the many political cartoons of the Civil War, a time when all eyes--even those in Europe were on the United States and how a dark horse presidential candidate would deal with a major challenge to the idea of a united country in the face of a significant ideological difference.

These cartoons may be crude and offensive more often than not, but they carry with them the voice of a generation and show that popular opinion was as apt to swing violently then as much as it is now. We may ask for cleaner portrayals, but the shifting sands of opinion, blunt panic or belligerence, and generally weak understanding of details show up just as often here as they do in the cartoons of the week feature in a major magazine.

Lewin and Huff give a strong introduction to this collection discussing the importance of political cartoons (which may have started with none other than Benjamin Franklin) and how we can use them to see what people were thinking. I also like that they discuss the difficulty of mass reproduction, the large number of newspapers in the 1860s (Gettysburg alone had 11, if I am remembering correctly), and that just about every paper had a strong bias one way or the other, which comes out in these cartoons.

The book is structured into several chapters, and my only problem with the way the book is put together is that the cartoons are not always in chronological order. It can be a bit disconcerting, and I am a pretty solid Civil War buff. I do appreciate that each comic is given a context, and figures that might be familiar to a person with a Civil War Preservation Trust member but not to the general public are pointed out and explained. There were a few even I didn't know!

My favorite part of this book by far was that Lewin and Huff searched for less common cartoons to include, staying away for the most part from drawings we've seen a million times in other books. Jeff Davis in drag is pretty familiar by now, but how about Lincoln eating his treasury secretary as a fish? Or Lincoln cowering before the might of the British as a trapped raccoon (with likely double meaning)? There's even one of Congress as a bunch of unruly schoolboys, doodling and feuding during a lesson on the Constitution. I greatly appreciated the chance to see these kinds of commentary, and I think anyone who picks up this book will feel the same way.

If there is one thing I'd have changed, it would be to give a bit more attention to Confederate papers, or at least talk about why there are less of them. Were they too offensive for print? Burned and lost in Sherman's raids? Just non-existent? It's a question that we don't get an answer to, which is a bit of a shame.

Still, Lines of Contention was a great book to read and one I'm happy to own. It fills a gap in Civil War history for many readers, including myself, and really helps show what the public was thinking during the long conflict. If you or someone you know is a fan of both politics and the Civil War, pick up a copy of this book. You'll be glad you did.

The Incredible Double by Owen Hill

2010-09-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

It's not often that you stop by the new mystery section of your library and find a book that's about a bi-sexual protagonist. So, though there were other books I was interested in, this is the one that came home with me. I probably could have made a better choice.

Clay Blackburn is a man of unusual occupations. He's a book hunter by his tax return, a dying industry in this age of Amazon and E-Bay. That's why he moonlights as an unlicensed private detective, the first of many unlikely things that really kept this one from being a book I'd recommend to others, despite some really cool ideas.

As we meet Clay, money is a bit tight and despite his leftist leanings (he's friends with a man who has quite a few resources on the radical fringe but never gets caught, which I also find unlikely) he takes on a case that involves assisting a Joe Walton-like figure who owns a drugstore chain. His employer practices are questionable, but that's no reason he should meet with foul play, and anyway, the money is good.

When Clay digs deeper, he finds a beautiful woman and a vast conspiracy that combine to give this book its name. She makes him do things most people can't, but will it cost him everything to be with her? With his employer turning against him and his only allies a set of conspiracy theorists, semi-homeless men, and radicals, can Clay survive?

The answer is probably not, but since this book is part of a series, Hill has to put the reader through increasingly unbelievable hoops (and a few total cliches about a femme fatale) to keep Clay alive. I'd have been okay with this had the plot been tighter, but characters roll in and out of the story as needed, ideas are forgotten, and the whole process is just so muddled that even after reading the ending twice, I didn't find a way to make logical sense of the whole thing.

Maybe I wasn't supposed to, and should have just relaxed and enjoyed the ride. I certainly am no stranger to extraordinary tales, and can take a fish story as well as anyone. The problem I had here is that the plotting was so loose, it almost felt secondary to the whole operation. When you are dealing in a genre that bleeds cliches like a character who has been shot with a tommy gun, plot is essential. I'm afraid this book's plot felt like something that needed workshopped a few more times before publication.

There are some good points, which is why I was maddened by the writing itself. Clay's sexuality is taken as a given, as are the other queer characters. A character going through a sex change is treated as normal, and even an object of sexual desire here and there. (Unfortunately, this is marred by some racially tinged remarks that have no place in a book set in the present day.) I of course was geeked at the references to old books and hunting for books, even if I've given up the practice myself. I also enjoyed several of the one-liners and the attempt to have a noir feel to the proceedings.

On the other hand, what worked for a 50s sleuth won't fly today, and I cannot believe the ease with which these characters do illegal things. I feel like Hill should have done more legal research, and not been as blind to modern realities as Clay appears to be. It's okay for your character not to know, but the author, as God-of-the-story, should know much more. I also found a lot of the chapter breaks to be arbitrary and artificially short. This didn't help the flow of the writing any, and led to me feeling like I had to work to stay with things. That's not where you want a detective story to go. The more the reader moves, the less they have time to think.

If you are going to constantly reference some of the greatest detective writers (Clay lives at the Chandler, for God's sake), then you'd better be ready to be compared. Sadly, I don't think this book meets its mark. The Incredible Double really should have been double-checked before it met final publication. There's just too many holes in the plotting and too much stilted writing to be what I was hoping for. Despite some good ideas and respectful treatment of alternative sexualities, I just can't recommend this one to others.

Between the Assasinations by Aravind Adiga

2010-09-22T21:04:00.001-04:00

[If that's the kind of thing that matters to you, I read this as an audiobook.]

Sometimes it's good to get outside your reading comfort zone, especially in the realm of fiction. I know there are some folks who think that the best reading comes from reading a particular type of literature only, because you can read almost everything that comes out.

I don't work like that, as a casual glance at my reviews here or on Panel Patter can show you. I prefer to read whatever strikes my fancy, and try as many new things as I can. It doesn't always work, but hey, it's worth a shot.

That brings me to this book, Between the Assassinations, a collection of short stories set in a darker side of India that most would rather not touch. There are lower-caste people, pimps, deranged priests, corrupt cops, and desperate men and women just looking for a way to survive in a world that grows crueler by the minute. These are their stories, and they aren't pretty or polite.

Adiga pulls no punches when it comes to depicting life in his fictional town. There is no attempt to sugarcoat the baldfaced lies, deception, and general despair that haunts just about every character we meet in these chapters. This is both a blessing and a curse: Adiga's characters are refreshingly honest, but most are so unlikable that after awhile, it's hard to want to keep spending time with them.

That was my major issue with Between the Assassinations. I read books for their characters, and so many of his were so unlikable, it made the book drag in places for me. I was moved almost to tears when a little girl must risk the dangers of the street to get her drugged out father his fix. A rogue bookseller, who is tortured for the Satanic Verses, captured my heart. I understood the despair of the newsman who learns that his whole life has been a lie. Even the man who tries to get ahead in life but lets his lust get the better of him is a person who you want to root for, at least for a time.

But so many of the others are just so rotten, like the elderly priest who cannot stand his students trying to live out their impulses, or the punk rich kid who decides to be a terrorist. Their stories felt like they took forever, and I couldn't wait to be rid of them. I had less strong feelings about the boy who opts for a fast life and dies for it or the old communist who opts to turn to lechery when the party's faith leaves him, but they, too, were just not all that compelling to me.

It's not just that they were horrible people. I can enjoy a book about a horrible person just fine. My issue is that they only had one common feature--misery. That's an overwhelming theme of this book, but when you apply it to an unlikable protagonist, the story fails to grab me.

This is not to say that Adiga is not a good writer. His prose is bleak, to be sure, but that's the point. His dialog felt natural for these characters, whether I like them or not. I have a small knowledge of India, but not enough to picture this world on my own. Adiga does a great job of painting the setting, without getting too wordy. This book has an amazing shared universe, and I give Adiga a lot of credit for putting that together.

In some ways, Between the Assassinations reminded me of the noir books I read earlier this year. Like those books, there are ups and downs in here, and that may be enough for some folks to skip this one. I can't say that I'd recommend it, but if you are looking to try something different, and are okay with having a book that's likely to dampen your mood after you read it, this one is worth a look. If you do, I'd love to know what you think.

Tried by War by James McPherson

2010-09-02T21:09:00.000-04:00

[Listened to this as an audiobook, if that matters to anyone.]

It's been awhile since I've had the pleasure of sitting down with a Civil War book. They tend to be a bit on the long side, and I've not had a lot of time to myself for pleasure reading. I decided to take advantage of my new, longer commute to pick up this study in command by James McPherson.

McPherson is a well-regarded historian who, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, I've never read. There's a lot of Civil War books out there, and by the time I got to McPherson, I was already reading more specialized works on the war.

This book, however, intrigued me because of the subject matter. We all talk about Lincoln as being a great president, but the details as to why don't often get looked at very closely.

In this case, going from Lincoln's pre-inauguration days to the tragedy of his death, McPherson shows the progression of a man who knew about as much on the practice of war as I do on trigonometry when he first took office. By reading books, listening to a wide variety of opinions, reacting to practice, and dealing with the realities of war. In addition, Lincoln had to also juggle political actors, public opinion, and his own personal demons.

Any one of those things would be enough to break a lesser man, but Lincoln, in this rather glowing portrayal by McPherson, rises to the occasion. Honest Abe, despite his doubts, seems to be one step ahead of almost everyone around him, from the crafty cabinet members like Chase and Seward to military minds as diverse as Scott and McClellan.

In McPherson's account here, Lincoln had the right idea all along--he just didn't have the generals to implement the plans, until Grant, Sherman, Sherridan, and Thomas (an odd inclusion) came along. Once that quartet is in place, it's only a matter of time.

Similarly, Lincoln walks the tightrope of slavery here in a way that makes it seem as though the 16th president quickly transitioned from fighting for union to fighting for freedom, despite the displeasure of many around him. Father Abraham is nearly worshiped by freed slaves, and in the process, the struggles black soldiers faced to just get on the field (and be used in a meaningful way) is hidden into the background, with Grant's blatant racism completely overlooked.

True, McPherson does highlight Lincoln's failure with political generals and a few other mistakes, but they are waived away as being beyond Lincoln's control. The problem is that in the process, it looks like McPherson wants us to have it both ways--Lincoln is praised for his virtues, but not shown as being responsible for for his faults. It's a throwback to an earlier type of history book, where heroes are made to look as good as possible. I'm just not comfortable with the level of hero-worship on display here.

I also disliked the way that McPherson ignores the factors on the other side of the field that may have led to some of Lincoln's (and Grant's) successes. Jefferson Davis, despite being a former Secretary of War, was an idiot as a commander in chief. I also think even someone as cautious as McClellan could have won on the field by 1864, when the south's resources just dried up. Yes, the Union had a lot of bad generals, but the Confederacy had a lot of good ones, too. In the name of making Lincoln look better than his generals, I don't think McPherson properly takes circumstances into consideration.

There's also the tricky issue of Lincoln's shaky stance on the Constitution. Lincoln did a lot of things to create the Imperial Presidency, a style of managing that's great when it works, but lousy when the President's plans are less than stellar. McPherson says "other did worse" as the answer to this challenge to Lincoln's legacy, but overlooks that they all did it because *Lincoln did it first.*

Overall, Tried by War was a fun read, because it highlighted just how much Lincoln was involved in the war effort. As President, he acted in ways no one else has before or since, and his keen intellect often had the right idea. Focusing on Lincoln's army stovepipe hat is a worthy endeavor, and those looking to learn more about Lincoln's role in the war could do worse than to start here. I just wish McPherson had been willing to be more critical, or at least acknowledge there was more at play than just the Union side. When you finish Tried by War, I think you'll agree.

American Creation by Joseph Ellis

2010-08-11T05:00:00.000-04:00

The founding of America was a rather amazing time, even if you don't feel that the leaders at the time were perfect men who were getting their inspiration from a higher power.

Writer Joseph Ellis has made quite a reputation writing modern biographies and period studies of the men who lived the first twenty-five years of America. I'd read Founding Brothers by him some time ago, and was quite pleased with the book, feeling as though he'd spent just about the right amount of time on each subject.

I do not like history books that are either trying too hard to capture the casual audience of the History Channel or dig so far into the minutia that I want to throw the book but at 800 some pages, it's too heavy for me to pick up. Ellis's writing style tries hard to balance the two, which is just what I want out of a modern text.

In American Creation, another book dealing with concepts rather than a single subject, Ellis once again gives a good accounting of the history but does not lay it on so thick that the reader becomes bored. By the end of each chapter, I found myself wanting to read just a bit more about each incident described, which I think should be the goal of any author not trying to write the definitive biography of a person or event.

Take his discussion of Washington's dealings with the Native Americas, for instance. I had no idea that, relatively speaking, the old general was a progressive when it came to the rights of the American Indians. In Ellis's hands, Washington is a man trying to do the right thing, within the needs of his new country, but the racial and commercial desires of the majority of the country are too much for his aura of respect and deference to overcome. It's a fascinating story of which I was previously unaware, and I definitely would like to know more.

As an aside, I wonder if maybe the problems with carving out territory for Native Americans didn't contribute to keeping the slavery problem on the back burner for so long. If Washington couldn't get any traction on this issue, how could he on slavery, even if he wanted to (which I don't know if he did)?

The section of "The Treaty" was by far the most interesting for me, but every point that Ellis tackles is a good touchstone. 1776 (with a bit of 1775 thrown in) is called "The Year", and focuses on what happens when you try to start a revolution. Valley Forge is given a new perspective as a time when the soldiers who would later be statesmen (and Federalists, for the most part) determine a national government is needed to sustain the revolution. Formation of political parties is given a big role, despite America's distaste for them. Rounding things out, Jefferson's hypocritical use of power to double the size of the United States is the springboard that moves American onto the international scene, just by its very scope.

These are all good points of discussion, and Ellis gives them a pretty good airing. My problem is that Ellis has an agenda of his own, and it seems into his writings here. I don't know if it comes from his feelings or the desire to tap into the patriotic feelings after the events of 9-11, but the idea that America was (and is) better than everyone else and even in getting things wrong, we got things right, is troubling to me.

Ellis has a tendency to make the founders seem like they had created a perfect system, and that America's path is the only way that will work, and all others are swept aside to history's dustbin. Try telling China that, given they own a good chuck of this perfect government's debt. It blinds him at times and makes it seem like there weren't other paths to take that might have worked just as well. We cannot know for certain, and Ellis leans heavily on the hindsight of a historian to declare that the choices made were the correct ones.

A typical example are his thoughts on the slow path to leaving the British Empire. He claims that historians on the left see this as a moral failure, but doesn't back that comment up. Instead, he goes on to state,

"In my judgment the calculated decision to make the American Revolution happen in slow motion was a creative act of statesmanship that allows the United States to avoid the bloody and chaotic fate of subsequent revolutionary movements in France, Russia, and China."

The fact of the matter is, it wasn't a decision made to avoid a bloody fate, it was because there were quite a few people in America (I've read that it may have even been a majority!) who didn't want to leave the Empire at all. There was no way to do this quickly, because trying would have led to conflict within the colonies themselves.

I completely disagree with Ellis here, as well as anywhere else that he posits that the folks making the decisions at the time knew exactly what they were trying to accomplish--the creation of the "best" government. That's an argument made by people who feel that America is perfect and those who criticize it are wrong. We have it better here than in a lot of other places, true, but that's not because John Adams was worried about how things were going to play out in the centuries to come--he was just worried about staying alive to make it 1777.

Time and time again, the decisions made by the Founding Fathers were on a practical level, not on one designed to make a country last for hundreds of years. They took the time to make sure that any decision put off hard choices, and only came together when things were so bad as to be untenable, such as the failure of the Articles of Confederation. It's a pattern we see over and over again in this nation's politics, and we suffer for it every time.

Practicality may have made America more stable than in other places, but it also sowed the seeds for later problems. To argue that America's history is not bloody is to ignore the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and other times during which people died to fix the flaws of the people that started this whole country. I realize that Ellis specializes in early American History, but to ignore the deaths that happened later in the struggles for this nation over the past 200 years and to say that the only alternative to America's system is Islamic fundamentalism is a terrible oversight for a historian who should know better. Even a casual knowledge of history after the early 1800s and world history in general should result in blanket statements that are not so obvious in their mistakes.

It is not within the scope of this review to argue each of Ellis's points, and I only bring the above up to show what a person who reads a lot of historical non-fiction needs to be prepared for if they opt to pick up this book. There are plenty of other points I could discuss--Ellis calling political parties necessary to harnessing the energy of democracy, completing ignoring the party machines used over the years is another sticking point for me--but I think the example I used is enough to show that if you view all history with a critical eye and an open mind to what could have been, you are going to have some issues with Ellis's take on the forming of America.

Despite my problems with Ellis' editorializing, I did enjoy this book. He's obviously done his research and is just as passionate about his time period as Bruce Catton was with the Civil War. I want that in a writer, as that passion shows and makes for compelling reading. It also, unfortunately, creates blind spots that I feel any reader should be aware of and ready for. Who knows, you may even agree with them and feel my view is flawed. I worry more for those who are reading this without any background knowledge or the time/desire to read more on the subject. For them, this may be the only take on the material and time, which I think would be a shame.

Overall, American Creation is just as human as those Ellis writes about. It's a great starting point for those looking for new areas to explore during America's early years. Just don't take it as gospel and you should be fine.

Blockade Billy by Stephen King

2010-08-03T05:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel a little strange when I'm writing up my first review for a book by a major author, because while I may have been reading them for years, this could be their first appearance on the blog.

Thus, if I'm not happy with the book I read, it can feel like I don't like the author, which is often not true. Such is the case with Blockade Billy, a book that feels like it could have been a lot more had King taken the time to write it well instead of tossing it out there in time for baseball season.

Blockade Billy is the story of a baseball player no one's heard of, because he's been erased from the record books. Only a few old timers know him, and one is willing to tell all to King himself, as it beats the boredom of sitting in a nursing home.

Soon we learn about Billy, an amazingly talented ballplayer that clearly has something to hide. As we move deeper into his magical season, you know something has to give, and it does--with a bang that's about as obvious as when a player is out at home by 30 feet.

Written in the narrative style with multiple references to the old ballplayer talking to King, it's formatted much like Deloris Claiborne, another King work I wasn't fond of, for much the same reason. Both tales never offer much on what the promise and in the end, I was disappointed. The twists just don't materialize, and I expect better from King as a writer.

In the case of this book, part of the problem is length. This book is barely 50 pages long, and I was able to read it in only a little over a half hour. As a magazine story, which was much of King's early career, it might have worked. As a novella, with the King name attached, I figured on a lot more writing. Its brevity is not refreshing for the wordy King. Instead, it constricts him, and leaves time only for a quick summary of the details as to why Billy's tale must come to the end it does.

From what I understand, King wrote this in about two weeks, and it shows. There's little plot, the character of Billy is a cipher, and if you don't know much about baseball, I'm not sure this book will mean anything to you. The trouble is, if you *do* know a lot about baseball, King's puzzling decision to make his team major-league level just creates all sorts of logistical headaches for no good reason. (Perhaps the biggest of which is the way in which Billy gets on the team in the first place. No big league club, even in this 1950s setting, would have done what this fake team from Jersey does.)

Billy could easily have played for a minor league team, and still do all that he does. In fact, the drama of having him come so close to being in the bigs before the crucial moment would have added so much. That's a lost layer of drama here.

Unfortunately, that's what happens when you rush things. Details that might be otherwise thought out get missed, and it mars the overall quality. Blockade Billy's logical leaps, obvious conclusion, and wandering text all make me nostalgic for the days when books were given stricter editing.

It doesn't help that the ending, while predictable in terms of general concept, throws more things at you as a reader than a five-tool pitcher. So many gaps in the story are covered in the last ten pages, you'd think it was a set of working notes rather than finished product. I appreciate the closure, but if your story is that complex, then take the time to flesh it out. There's no harm in more pages, especially when you're Stephen King.

I also found the setting to be weak, despite efforts to ground the text in the past. It's obvious King knows and loves his baseball history, but the references to vintage players don't fall into place very well. It's name dropping for name dropping sake. The idea of a simpler time when the game was played hard is probably what's supposed to come across, but I just didn't get anything other than a feeling of grumpiness. It didn't make me pine for the old days--except maybe Stephen King's old days.

The narrative style of the book is vintage King, and you either like it or hate it by now, after he's had such a long career. This narrator talks like so many others in King's books, and I like it, except when they're narrative first person, as this one is. The natural tone of King's best characters just feels forced to me when I have to read it like this. Let the point of view stand on its own, and don't get in the way with comments about needing water, especially if you've already done that before in your career.

Stephen King may love baseball, but his two attempts at it in fiction, Blockade Billy and Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, just don't serve his beloved sport well. He's an all-star writer that in this case, managed to strike out. For the price of this book and the size of its text, Blockade Billy just isn't recommendable. I'd turn elsewhere for my baseball or King fixes. Maybe next time the two meet, the results will be better. For now though, let this one ride the pine.

Year's Best SF 15 edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer

2010-07-26T05:00:00.001-04:00

I've picked up a few of these collections by Hartwell over the years, but as with a lot of books I own, I hadn't really sat down to read them. They went in the mental "someday" list and kinda got forgotten.

If the prior 14 volumes are as good as this one, I'm going to have to move them up the to-read list pretty quickly.

Year's Best SF had everything I'd want from a collection in this genre--a few alternative histories, a few space stories, a few tales that might happen someday soon, a few literary pieces, and a few that blend between sci fi and other genres. More often than not, these stories featured a combination of those elements, which was even better.

The fact that I liked almost all 24 stories spread across nearly 500 pages is no small feat. I'm usually happy when an anthology gives me about a 2:1 ratio of like to dislike, so this was a pleasant surprise. There were really only a few tales that just didn't do anything for me, mostly the hard SF material that gets so bogged down in showing off the author's technical knowledge that they forget to hook me on the characters.

Hartwell and Kramer give a short introduction to each author, which is quite helpful to see what they've done before and what they're working on. They also talk about why they selected a particular story, allowing the reader to either agree or disagree after finishing the tale. I liked this feature, as it gave me some insight into the editor's minds, even if I didn't always agree.

My disagreements were few and far between, however. The editors felt that Charles Oberndorf's "Another Life" might have been the best SF story of the year, and it's hard to argue with them.

A man who lives in a world where bodies can be changed as they age (for the right price, of course) talks about his past selves to a woman who's opted out of the world of changing people. It's his confession to a person who loves him but never got to know him, and all the pain of telling the most intimate details of your life--and waiting too long to do so--come through in every page. If that's not enough, the body switching also means gender-swapping as well, adding a layer of complications that soon become clear as the story goes on. "Another Life" shows that you can include sexual themes in your fiction without them feeling forced or used to get a reader's attention.

The pain and unintended consequences of the future technology shine here, as Oberndorf quietly lays out the problems inherent in losing yourself over and over again. The ending is as perfect as it is heartbreaking. To me, this is the perfect science fiction story, because there is no way this could be told using the reality of today, and yet it also features the same emotions and complications that can happen in our world.

It's a shame this didn't get a Hugo Nomination, but I am really glad to have had a chance to read it. Sadly, Oberndorf does not write very often anymore, which is a shame because I'd love to have more of this to read.

From a comics geek perspective, it was nice to see Paul Cornell make it in for his story that did get nominated for the Hugo, "One of Our Bastards is Missing," a tale of intrigue in a world where the royalty of Europe still rules the day and an independent-minded royal princess is the subject of a plot to redraw the political map. His main character is your typical hardened black ops person, able to deal with any situation, even one in a world where guns can be hidden in "pockets" of the world. The concepts are not all that new, but the ways in which Cornell uses them made this another of my favorites.

I'm afraid the other Hugo-nominated story in this collection, "The Island" by Peter Watts, just didn't do anything for me. It was just too focused on the situation and not enough on characters that I wanted to read more about, and that's my main hook for any story. Those who prefer more technical stories than I do will probably have reverse feelings about these two tales.

Other former Hugo winners are in this collection, such as Nancy Kress, who pens a story that's a bit overly clever about how objects aren't the only thing that can have different interpretations over time. I found the idea to be cute, but I'm not sure I'd think of it as something to label the best for a given year.

Robert Charles Wilson, who did not impress me when I read Spin a few years ago, is also a Hugo veteran for that same book. I liked him a lot better here in the short story, "This Peaceable Land; or The Unbearable Vision of Harriott Beecher Stowe." An alternative history where the Civil War never happens and slavery is fazed out in a way that leads to a horrible, racial purity solution, Wilson makes sure that the reader is uncomfortable with this peace that came at a similar price to the Civil War, albeit in a different way. When the two main characters are forced to think about the cost of peace, the words unsaid are larger than those that are. It's a great use of historical what-if to address a philosophical question. If this is more typical of Wilson's prose, I'll have to give him another chance.

"Edison's Frankenstein" is another alternative history that references the Civil War, though in a far more casual way. Chris Roberson pens a world in which a technology from the sea powers the world, instead of electricity. Tesla is a famous sci fi novelist (great touch) and Edison is trying to find a way to keep his life going. What lengths has he gone to prove his point? It's a bit of a gotcha story, but the clues are there when you stop to think about them. I don't think the author quite hit this one as strongly as he might have in a longer form, but it was entertaining.

A Frankenstein of a different kind figures prominently in "The Consciousness Problem," where Mary Robinette Kowal provides an ethical dilemma in cloning I'd never considered. Her solution may not be one you agree with, but it's definitely food for thought. Ethics also frame Marissa K. Lingen's "The Calculus Plague," where a scientist tries to infect people with smarts and sees it all go wrong.

Science fiction often allows a writer to explore themes in a way we can't in non-fiction, and I could probably add "The Fixation" and "Erosion" to the list of stories in this collection that ask us to look at what we're wishing for. The former is science without considering the consequences and the latter reminds us that asking to live on beyond our time may not be the best plan, even as we try ever-harder to live longer and in places we were not meant to go. All of these stories remind us that in our rush to do things not even imagined 100 years ago that sometimes we may need to take a few minutes to think, "should we do this?", a lesson the nuclear bomb should have taught us but we never stopped to pay attention to.

Not every story is so serious, however. "The Highway Code" by Brian Stableford reminded me of a children's story, and not in a bad way. A self-aware engine breaks the rules, at great cost. Is he a hero or a villain? There are a few underlying concepts if you look hard enough, but it's also fine as just a fun surface read. Its placement at roughly the halfway point makes for a nice breather. I have a feeling it's also the story most likely to be one readers either love or hate. Some readers may find it too childish for their taste.

I can't talk about every story in the collection, but I do want to mention, "The Last Apostle" by Michael Cassutt, the best near future sci fi story in the collection. Written when there is only one person left in a rather familiar moon landing party, we follow a man who made choices that compromised his life but allowed him to lead a long, famous existence. As he reflects on what happened to him, we get bits and pieces of the past and why his last act is so important to him. Ultimately, it's a story of hope and the possible, without being unrealistic about humanity's actions. This was another of my favorites and makes me think I need to investigate reading more near-future texts when I'm looking for new genre fiction to read.

I'd soured a bit on reading science fiction in the past few years, despite really liking it in college and shortly afterwards. I'm glad I picked this book up, as it showed me that there's a lot of people writing excellent genre fiction and that I need to get out there and try more of it. My taste may have changed over time, but there's so many different kinds of science fiction that I (and anyone reading this review) am sure to find something I'll like, provided I allow myself to look.

Year's Best SF 15 is not a perfect book, but the overall quality is very high, and shows you the possibilities that are out there. And after all, isn't that what science fiction is all about? Those who like reading about the future should definitely check this book out. You'll be glad you did.

Sheepfarmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon

2010-07-20T05:00:00.003-04:00

It's been a long time since I read a fantasy novel that was part of a series, to the point that I can't even tell you what the last one was. Maybe the first book of the Seven Songs of Merlin? (Of which I only ever read the first song, mostly because I couldn't find the rest.)

At any rate, it's not something that I'd done in ages, and even reading fantasy at all was a bit of a rarity over the past few years, with graphic novels more or less replacing my need for a fantasy fix.

This book came on to my radar as a result of the Mobile Reader book club, and I figured it would be worth a shot. I'd recently rekindled my interest in science fiction, so why not fantasy, too?

Sheepfarmer's Daughter is the first book is a series, featuring the story of Paksenarrion, a young woman who rebels against the married future set for her by her parents and enlists in a mercenary company to make her own way. It's hinted that she will go on to do great things, but this is the start of her tale, and it's filled with more drudgery than derring-do.

Paks, as she is called, must learn how hard the military life is, and to obey the military code. She's not the only woman, but must fight against the injustices still shown to female members of the mercenary group she serves. Once she's in the middle of the fight, Paks shows her worth, but also how her independent spirit may also get her killed.

As time passes, Paks is clearly something special. She's able to survive in a world that's designed to kill you. She wins the respect of those around her, and even those on a higher level. When the time comes for the work to be less about money and more about personal honor, Paks is asked to take a central role. It's a part she'll gladly pay--but at what cost to her own personal values?

Through small battles, sieges, sneaks through the woods, and large attacks, Paks proves that she belongs in the world of fighters. But does her code put her at odds with the world around her, or can she compromise in the name of loyalty? Is it possible she's destined for greater things?

Those are the questions left open-ended by the end of this book, which featured so much set up and yet never managed to make me understand the world in which Paks inhabits. Despite taking so much time to know all the details of the drudgery involved in being a military grunt, Moon never gives me a good idea of what kind of land we're operating in.

I can tell you every part of a pike drill (despite our main character *never using a pike in battle*), but the politics of the land are a vague hint of Counts and Dukes. I know there's magic and that it costs money, but how it works reminds me of a video game, where a player can restart after a bad mistake by going to a save point. The cost may as well be limited continues for all I know.

We get references to elves, dwarves, and the rest of the standard mythical creatures, but none of them are used after they are introduced. They serve no purpose at all, other than to add to the page count of the book. I was expecting to find them in a battle somewhere, but no such luck.

For me, that's the killer problem with Sheepfarmer's Daughter. It's obvious that Moon wanted to write a series, which is cool, but she structures it in such a way that this book might as well be a handbook rather than a novel. Sure, there are battle scenes and close calls for Paks, all of which is pretty interesting and happen just often enough to make me keep going. But they're all so short compared to the pages and pages of drills and line order and the like that I felt like *I* was slogging through the mud.

I have no problem with a slow-building story. However, I do take issue when the build up goes nowhere, or worse, is written in a way that says I should just be patient because in another 300 pages and in another book, this will all be worth it.

That might be the case, but what about now? The climax of this book simply wasn't. Paks is awkwardly placed in a way to be involved in a key scene (another troublesome pattern repeated frequently), but the scene itself ends up being only a few pages within a book that has over 400 of them to work with. If page count was an issue, why not ditch scenes of digging a ditch so that Paks can have plenty of time to deal with the antagonist at the end?

Again, it feels like we're in a video game and this is an opening act with a mini-boss. As a reader, that's just not satisfying to me. In a fantasy, I want to feel like I'm part of an epic struggle but also that every part of that struggle is important. I just didn't get that from Sheepfarmer's Daughter. I felt like it was a long march, culminating in almost nothing.

This wasn't helped by the fact that Paks' battle scenes, for the most part, felt incredibly forced. Her first adventure worked within the plot, but as she ends up entangled with the bigger names, to the point that she's in the Duke's tent almost as often as the Duke himself, each encounter makes me feel less like circumstance made it happen and more like the author pushed it into place.

I realize that of course all authors push their characters into doing things, and Paks would hardly be interesting if she only ever held the flank, but by the time she's being asked to save a rival army's son and then, despite only being a Private, is asked to head a squad taking on the main villain, I'm not feeling very credulous about the flow of the narrative. Because we've spent so much time establishing Paks' place in the ranks, every time Moon pulls her out of the ranks, it's harder for me to accept it. The writing style just conflicts too much for me, as we pinball from the bland to the extraordinary.

After spending entirely too much time trying to get the reader grounded in the daily military life of her world, Moon puts her main character, Paks, into situation after situation that look dire, only to have her find a way to get out of them--and mingle with the most important people while she's at it. By the end of the book, it's clear that Paks is something special, but it's also clear that this is due heavily to the circumstances created by the author and not by the story itself.

What makes this worse for me is that Paks has a habit of getting seriously in trouble and magically (sometimes literally) getting out of it. There are several times where Paks should just die, but doesn't. I know she can't, but the believability factor is stretched thin because no matter how charmed she is, it feels like the writer is making her that way. I guess in the context of a trilogy, that's less pronounced, but in one book it feels like she got a lot of saving throws.

There are other issues, like how supporting characters weave in and out of the story rather haphazardly, a large scene of villainy goes nowhere early on for how much time we spend on it, and Paks seems to have no feminine emotions, making her character feel flat or miscast in terms of gender. Because she's a merc, the enemies are by rule rather flimsy and shapeless, and only take form at the end, by which time we're rushing to a non-ending that has a big setup for the second book rather than properly closing this one.

All in all, Sheepfarmer's Daughter left me wondering if I really have grown past fantasy as a genre I like to read. I can't tell if it was this book or the premise, and I think it might be awhile before I try another fantasy book to see which it was. This book was about as interesting to me as a book on sheep farming would have been. I can't say I'd recommend it, nor do I expect to go on to book two.

Domestic Interior by Stepanie Brown

2010-07-12T05:00:00.002-04:00

I like reading personal poetry, but it can sometimes be a a tricky world. There's a lot to be said for the reading of verse that is close to the author's heart. You can see their pain and joys, their trials and triumphs, and what's most important to them.

The thing is, if the author is not careful, these reflections can end up sounding like a long string of negatives, as though their life is nothing but misery.

When you're a multiple times published poet who received an NEA fellowship and run a library, it's hard for me to understand why you think you life is so bad that your poetry reads like a person who is at the end of their rope.

That's the case in "Domestic Interior," a collection of poems that, to me, is just too depressing and makes Ms. Brown's life seem to be one of problem after problem. And those problems just aren't real issues.

In a poem called "Private School," the focus of the poem complains about having to bid on art from children in the name of charity, paying outrageous prices. Another poem complains about a wonderful property that is apparently spoiled because it won't allow a certain flower to grow. "Education" makes it seem like Brown's liberal arts education was torture, because she was having someone show her rare Octavos from the 1500s.

I just wasn't able to relate to any of this. These problems are those many would kill to have, and to see them put on display like this just shows, to me, how banal they are. If the point is to show how awful it is that these are the concerns of upper class Americans, then I bow to her ability to fool me, because I just didn't get that impression. The personal links thrown in make them seem like these are Brown's real concerns.

Domestic Interior just didn't work for me at all. If it was meant ironically, I didn't get it. If it was meant to be serious, then I'm sorry to hear that. If Brown wants to learn what it's like to really suffer, I suggest she give up some of the things she's so unhappy about and spend more time with kids who can't afford a private school and wouldn't be allowed within 50 feet of a rare book. That's a real tragedy, and would certainly make for more interesting poetry.

In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood

2010-07-05T05:00:00.004-04:00

[Note: I read the original, non-updated version. I cannot speak for any changes in information included in the revised copy available now. -Rob]

We all know, to various levels of depth, the story of the Trojan War. Some may have even read the great epic poems and plays that spin out of its events. But was Troy real? And if so, did they fight what could rightfully be called a world war at its gates?

Those are the questions that Michael Wood attempts to answer in this companion book to the mini-series of the same name. Using all the information and resources available to him at the time of the writing (early 1980s), Wood travels across the places named in the Iliad, trying to nail down the authenticity of Troy, its rulers, and those who opposed it, from the arrogant King Agamemnon to the wise Nestor.

This is obviously one of those books that is only going to be interesting to a very select group of people. I love Greek myth and the Homeric poems, along with the many plays "his" stories inspired. I really didn't know much about the fact behind the myths, so I found this book to be a compelling, if sometimes a bit dry, read. You probably need a bit of an interest in archaeology as well to really appreciate the work that has gone into finding Troy, which I also have.

If you like the idea of looking for the history behind the fact, then this book will be for you. It's broken down into sections, starting with the appeal of Troy, its first major (and controversial) investigator, Heinrich Schliemann, and also a section on Homer "himself." Wood tries to find the other locations mentioned in the Iliad, and shows that life for some of the people in this area has not changed greatly. Wood ends the book with his own believes, which, from what I understand, are now considered to be wrong. (This is likely what has been updated.)

I like the way that Wood weaves the story of the ancient Greeks to that of the modern day, even finding links in oral storytelling, a dying art that Wood seeks out in other countries to understand what the Homeric poets must have done. I also appreciated his recognition that often early archaeology was about looting, yet we still can learn from those who first took spade into soil.

There are plenty of illustrations to help you get a feel for what Wood is describing, making it unnecessary to watch the documentary (though I did after finishing the book). They are mixed into the narrative in a way that compliments rather than distracts, from what you are reading.

At times, Wood is a bit dense, which I admit put me off the text a bit here and there. History can be dull sledding, and I wish he'd given the prose a bit of a smoother feel. This is probably more an indication of the age of the work, since I'm now used to historians trying to make their books read more like creative non-fiction.

Despite the dull tone here and there, this was a great read for me, as I love this time period and happily read anything I can from it or about it. If your other favorite Homer is the guy who "wrote" the book on Troy's fall, then pick up this book. I think you'll find it as fascinating as I did, and you'll have the advantage of reading the revised edition to boot.

Olson's Penny Arcade by Elder Olson

2010-06-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid I can't find an image of this book to save my life, which is a shame because that's what attracted me to it in a random library grab. The cover depicts what I believe is supposed to be an old penny movie viewer, where you turn a crank and the photos inside move rather like a flip book.

You don't have to turn a crank to get the poetry inside started, fortunately. All you have to do is turn the page. Inside, you'll find a set of four sections, two that offer a variety of poems, one with a set of themed poems, and another that is a short play in verse.

Mr. Olson says that, "If these poems range from jocosity yo fury and near suicidal despair, that is because they reflect the kind of person I happen to be and the kind of world we happen to live in." I think that's a pretty accurate accounting of the contents, even allowing for the bias of the author. You can't find a particular style in this poems--there's no reliance on nature as theme, or strong use of personal circumstances, or anything that you might expect to find as a signature style.

Instead, what we get, at least in my opinion, is just a clever collection of words to tell a short story or message. Olson doesn't try to make a square peg fit a round hole. He'll write in rhymed verse if that makes sense, but he's not wedded to its use (or its absence). In other cases, there will be structure within a free verse setting. It's a refreshing variety that worked quite well for me.

If you must find a common idea in this collection, I guess it is the idea that the human race has kinda screwed up. It has its moments, but all in all, we seem more likely to do the wrong thing. Olson is a bit of a pessimist, but it doesn't make him write the poetry of the depressed. Instead, he channels his ironic look at life into well-structured form.

Take this poem, "Abdication of the Clown":

"Here, take the old suit
Of spots and rugles,
I've only been wearing it
As pajamas
And somehow lately
I just can't sleep.

Take the hat, too.
It's really only
A duked-up dunce-cap
But it's part of the uniform.
And here's the mask:
Take it, you need it

To give you character.
Go on, get in there
And do what they tell you
And hurry, hurry:
The stands are empty,
Everyone else
Is clowning already.

Don't worry about me.
I'll sit here
Dressed in my skin,
Disguised as myself
And from here on in
I'm only a spectator
Who can't bear to look."

These are the words of a man approaching seventy, who was a child for the first world war, an adult for the second, and a (likely) frustrated older man for Vietnam. He's done with playing the fool, but knows that someone else must take up the mantle. This is a very sad poem, but it's by no means maudlin. You can easily see that Olson is cynical about life, but it doesn't make him express his feelings in a way that reads like whining about it.

There is a similar vibe in other poems, as Olson appears to be reflecting on all kinds of things here in his arcade. "That Nothing is Evidence to Those to Whom it is not Evident" talks about an elephant who refuses to believe in butterflies that dies when someone doesn't believe in him. It's funny, but the point is clear. Who are we to say something cannot be, just because we cannot conceive of it ourselves?

The third section, a short play, makes the characters self-aware of their surroundings. No matter what they wish to do, they've become too attached to their roles, and can neither remove the clothes given to them by stage direction nor even remember their original names (if names they ever had). Despite this self-awareness, the players are still helpless to do anything other than their prescribed roles. I love how Olson created these characters and makes them speak about their use in theatre while also showing that we in life may also be just as trapped in our parts, even if we do know our own names.

Olson's Penny Arcade was a hidden gem for me. I loved the poetry and would definitely read more by him in the future. If you can find a copy of this book, and you like poetry that exposes life for what it is without getting maudlin, I think you'll find it every bit the treat that the original penny arcades were back in the day. I know I did!

Poe's Children edited by Peter Straub

2010-06-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of classic horror, but for some reason, I have a hard time managing to find good new horror writers. I was hoping that maybe this anthology, collected by a veteran of the horror genre, would help me find a new voice or two.

Fortunately for me, it did, but overall, I'm not sure that there's enough quality stories to make this anthology one I'd recommend to others. There's just not quite enough there worth reading, at least for me, to balance out the stories I didn't like.

I really enjoyed the first story, "The Bees," where a man trying to run from his past may have it brought back on him no matter what he does. It's a classic horror trick, using a character's failings to drive the narrative and Dan Chaon uses it to good effect. I was left with a strong hope that maybe this would be the time I got the stories I wanted in a horror collection.

Sadly, that vibe didn't last long, as most of the other stories just didn't have enough going on for me to want to read more from that writer. They weren't bad, per se (though I found Elizabeth Hand's story to be offensive and skipped it after about getting halfway through), but I didn't really get into the writing or feel anything, positive or negative, towards them.

In a few cases, the author tries a bit too hard. "The Man on the Ceiling", a joint effort between Melanie and Steve Tem, probably overreached in its attempt to be experimental. I'm still not sure I understood what they were trying for, other than their lives impact on the stories they write? "Louise's Ghost" didn't seem to have a reason to be a ghost story, which is clearly a problem. A simple re-write, and it's a standard piece of literary fiction.

"The Voice of the Beach" by Ramsey Campbell, was probably my favorite story. Our narrator finds that a part of a beach has a strange attraction for certain people, and finds that call is irresistible. As with Chaon, Campbell uses a classic concept to good effect, and I guess it shows my story bias that I like these tales more than the rest. (In addition, I see that Campbell is not a new writer, either, which makes me a bit sad.)

As my reading went on, I just wasn't satisfied with the selections made by Mr. Straub, finding that they had the same problems I've seen in other anthologies of this type, with writers adding sex to give an otherwise boring story some shock value. Others seem to wander too much and don't ever end up really giving me a thrill in the way that I can get by reading the atmospheric horror of Poe or others from the 19th Century.

I think the problem is that horror is a much harder genre to write than people give it credit for. You almost have to write it over and over again, and know that you're going to have some hits and misses. I think Stephen King is the best example of this. Cujo is horrifying but Needful Things was just annoying. Spend too much time grossing people out, and you lose me. But if you don't give me some really terrible stuff to imagine in my head, then I'm wandering off to other stories.

In this book, there are more misses than hits, which is why I can't really recommend it to someone else. There's the obvious good stories by King, Straub himself, and Neil Gaiman, but you can get those writers elsewhere, either in other anthologies or in their own collections or full length books. Beyond that, it gets a bit tricky.

For every "Plot Twist," where David J. Schow places his characters in a Twilight-zone like scenario where nothing seems to change except the characters' ability to wrong each other, there's a "Leda," the story before it, where I feel like a victimized woman's feelings are reduced to story fodder for a weird fantasy that involves predatory animals.

After awhile, I became rather disheartened because an anthology where you're only getting stories you like about a third of the time is a bit rough. I usually hope for at least better than half, between love and like. Straub's selections, when you take out the major writers, just didn't click with me sufficiently for this book to be one I'd want to read again.

If you go into Poe's Children looking for some new voices and can deal with hitting more than a few tales you won't remember for long after reading them, it should be okay. But if you are iffy on anthologies in the first place, and only want a book that features a level playing field, I think you're best served to look elsewhere.

Picasso at the Lapin Angile and other Plays by Steve Martin

2010-06-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

Most people who are reading who know me should find it unsurprising that I really like Steve Martin, particularly his early career, when the man seemed to be liable to do just about anything for a laugh.

As he's aged, his humor has changed with it, and I don't always find Martin's new style to be to my liking. Sadly, when he does try to capture some of the old magic (see Pink Panther), you can tell that it's forced. The light just isn't on, and the jokes suffer for it.

That's why I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy every single one of the four plays contained in Picasso at the Lapin Agile, showing that when the Hollywood mindset is taken out of the equation, Martin can put together a work that is both deep in thought and rich in jokes that are obvious, subtle, and sarcastic--just the very things that made him so good for all those years.

I'd only known of the title work when I picked this up. I remember there being a little bit of buzz that Martin had written a play, but after that, nothing. The story revolves around the idea of Albert Einstein meeting Pablo Picasso shortly before both have breakthroughs in their career. They're joined by a few other people, who are used to contrast the two titans as well as a rather familiar stranger who has a few words about fame.

Obviously, part of the fun is watching Martin manipulate the brilliant but often a bit flighty Einstein and the opportunistic Picasso. They say things that match their characters as we know them best, but also withhold some of their talent, because they haven't reached it yet. There are quite a few moments where Martin's wit shines through, such as when another character can't get that Eisnstein thinks in universal terms. In another part of the play, Martin's ability to cut to the quick and expose the darkness of humanity showcases itself, as a conquest of Picasso's doesn't act as she should, and goes on to talk about how she's familiar with "men like him," i.e. those who like a constant woman so they have a backup plan when their affairs fall apart.

It's the blending of the comedy with the insight that makes this play work so well. While Martin is no Shakespeare, he does catch on that the best plays are funny on their surface, but hide layers of depth when you start to think about them. He uses humor and sarcasm and irony to show that in the end, science and art must both have their place at the table--and watch carefully that commercialism doesn't eat them alive in this unknown future of the 20th Century that is before them.

The other three plays are shorter, and tend to be more of exercises in thought. The Zig Zag Woman is an exercise in philosophy with a tinge of bitterness, and discusses things that are absolutely absurd. It's a chance for Martin to make commentary on convention and the idea of relationship. Unfortunately, I don't think it works quite as well it should, because the conceit feels, well, out of shape. I wonder if it would be better seen in person.

Patter for the Floating Lady offers an insight into the hurts that can happen when two people are in a relationship and one wants to be the controlling figure all of the time. Deftly using the metaphor of a magician and his assistant, Martin shows the danger of this idea, and what the controlling person loses by trying to take too much, too fast. His realization is as crashing as the end of his act, but in the end, we see by his final words that he's learned nothing. Though this is but a short scene, it carries a powerful weight. This is not funny in any way, but shows off Martin's ability to capture a feeling and make it work on the printed page (or in person).

WASP is a bit longer, and is the most straightforward of the four works. It's a clear condemnation of the fallacy of the ideal family. From the opening lines that starts with a prayer denying scientific truth to the end, where the cold and authoritarian father states that since he never got love, why should he give it to others (even if he can, which is doubtful), this is biting satire that will make you bleed if you touch its edge.

I only know a bit about Martin's life growing up, but I can't help but think this work has some personal moments in it. You don't write such out of touch, out of sync characters without knowing what that's like. Similarly, you can't fully appreciate it if your life didn't have its own moments, maybe not exactly like these, but with similar themes. Those who feel their lives were perfect (or who live in denial of what they had to deal with) are going to miss the boat.

Not everything is perfect. This satire is a bit heavy-handed at times, such as when the father objects to getting rid of his lawn jockeys or when he can't even remember his daughter's name. However, I don't think a few moments of hitting us on the head with a hammer dilute the power of seeing how the little ways in which we go about our lives can add up to serious problems.

I'd love to see any of these plays in person, but in all of them, words are of primary importance. I was able to realize the quality and meaning of the play easily, without being able to watch it in person. Reading plays can be a tricky thing, but in this case, I think they worked well, a tribute to Martin's careful crafting and a sign that while his other writing was for the big screen, he's no novice to plotting, character, and wordplay.

Picasso at the Lapin Angile is one of the better plays I've read, and definitely one of the best modern plays to cross my book list, though I admit the latter category is a bit limited. The others are all also very good, and make for a solid collection. If you are a fan of drama or Steve Martin, reading (and maybe, if you're lucky, seeing) these plays is highly recommended.

More Than Petticoats Remarkable Pennysylvania Women by Kate Hertzog

2010-05-30T08:30:00.003-04:00

Though the title is rather embarrassing (who thought putting that tagline on this title was necessary), I always enjoy books like these. Sometimes you just want a book that's going to give you a brief overview of someone's life, not the comprehensive history of every time they used the bathroom.

In this case, Remarkable Pennsylvania Women gives the reader at fifteen women with ties to the Keystone State, and why they are important enough to read about. No section is very long, but if the reader wishes to learn more, they can either do a search on their own or refer to the bibliography in the back of the book. Personally, I probably don't need to go and read a lot more on any of these figures, though I might for one or two. However, I really like that the author took time to include this section for those who really do like to get down and dirty in the details.

I must admit to being a bit ashamed that I did not recognize the stories of more than one third of the women in the book. I kinda figured I'd be a bit better steeped in non-traditional PA history than I apparently am. It's easy to pick up on Rachel Carson, of course, but it's not every day you talk about Sybilla Masters, the first woman to get a patent from the King of England and the first person to do that in America, period.

Or there's Margaret Corbin, one of the women who, I've learned over time, fought in the Revolutionary War as a soldier. If you're of a more peaceful mind, try Amanda Berry Smith, an African American who started life as a slave but ended as a missionary who traveled overseas. Is medicine more to your liking? In addition to the Civil War story I knew, I was introduced to Florence Seibert, who worked in the TB test.

These are just a few of the tales that were new to me. Depending on what era of history you've concentrated on the most, your experience will vary, but I'd wager that almost anyone picking up this book will find quite a few new faces staring back at them, with a short set of pages ready to tell you why they are important.

Short is the operative word here. I do admit that, while I like my biographies brief, these sketches are only slightly longer than an encyclopedia entry (does anyone use an encyclopedia anymore?) and thus are lacking in depth. This book is clearly meant to be a sampler, which makes it ideal for the casual reader or a student.

It's the latter group that I think can most benefit from this book. It's important for young people to realize that while we always focus on the biggest names from any conflict or issue, there are a lot of Americans, of all races, genders, and social standing, who came together at one point or another to make this country what it is today. Highlighting women, some famous, some not so well known, gives a student a better sense of context and also gives a chance to look further, if they're so inclined. This is also true of adult readers, of course, but I think it's crucial that a person learning their sense of the world and sense of self see that while George Washington might lead the battle, it takes the Lydia Darraghs of the world to help him do it.

Remarkable Pennsylvania Women may not be a remarkable book, but it is a good introduction to the lesser known side of history. I learned a lot from its brief pages, and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for insight into the role of women, particularly those in Pennsylvania, in the making of America.

Drive, They Said Poems About Americans and Their Cars edited by Kurt Brown

2010-05-27T16:40:00.000-04:00

Anthologies are always a tricky thing, but I love the mystery that goes into reading one. You never quite know what you're in for, even if you're familiar with some of the authors. A lot of times, it all adds up to luck, even if the book comes with the backing someone you trust.

Drive, They Said was recommended to me by a person I usually agree with in terms of poetry, but this time we're as far apart as a highway with a scenic divider. The theme of this collection is poetry about how Americans relate to their cars, and at least to me, it made for some pretty bland reading.

I probably am not the target audience for this. While I might ogle a classic car, it's the age of the item, not the item itself, that wows me. I can appreciate a fine corvette, but I have no desire to get behind the wheel, not even for a test drive.

I own a car, but it's strictly utilitarian. I don't tinker with it. I don't fret that it's got a few dings from parking lots. I would no sooner change its oil myself than I would volunteer to clean up Three Mile Island. Hell, I've never even washed it. In other words, I'm not in love with cars, just what they can do for me when I need it.

Thus, this was an odd choice but I tried it anyway. Unfortunately, it just didn't register for me at all.

The first problem is that from the get-go, we're separated into gender before we do anything else. I hate gender separation as a rule, and given the subject of cars, that just made matters worse.

So the men get poems that try hard to sound masculine, with references to speeding, drinking, and leaving people behind. The women leave bad men, worry about the danger of being alone, and of course, the safety of their children. There's nothing wrong with these poems, but it feels like Brown as editor tried hard to make sure he ticked off ever gender cliche when compiling his opening sections. That turned me off, and made for tough sledding the rest of the way.

The other sections feature exactly what you'd expect, with no surprises to be found. "Driving into Yourself," "Stopping by the Side of the Road," "Head On," "Driving as Metaphor," "On the Bus," and "Passing Through" all do what they need to do in a way that passes muster but doesn't stretch the reader's comfort zones in any way. It's as though every poem was tested in front of an easily-offended church group. Unlike a highway in the rain with traffic moving far too fast, these poems gave me no sense of danger or thrill.

The section "Driving as Metaphor" ended up feeling far too forced, with the editor choosing the most obvious examples available. The comparisons are forced more often than not, reading more like an exercise for a college class than something I would want to read. In their own context, they probably aren't bad. However, when you read tortured line after tortured line trying to fit in the idea of cars relating to other parts of our life, it just gets to be a bit too much.

Of these sections, only "Head On" features any poem that wasn't apparently given an "inoffensive test" before making it into the collection and even those are edgy only in comparison to what is around them. As a result, I enjoyed it the most, but not enough to make up for the banal nature of the poems I read in the other areas.

There are a few well-known names in here. Joyce Carol Oates has a few entries in the women's ghetto, Robert Bly appears, as does Charles Wright. Wright's poem is one of the best in the collection, using the idea of a road to discuss the various ways people interacted by going to different neighborhoods. ee cummings also makes an appearance in a clumsy poem comparing driving a car to a person new at sex. I admit I've read very little of cummings' work, but I'd like to think he's done better.

Overall, I took a chance on this one, and feel like I came up with a lemon. The theme isn't close enough to me to forgive some bad poetry and the desire to make sure that no one reading this would get upset at a blatant sexual reference or overtly foul language just killed it for me. I'd recommend cruising to a different poetry book, but if you have a car-loving reader in your family, preferably an older one, this book might just work better for them than it did for me.

Baltimore Noir edited by Laura Lippman

2010-05-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

This is the third book in Akashic's series of crime anthologies set in cities across the United States and in some cases, the world. I'd really liked the first two books I'd read, but unfortunately I was not charmed at all by the one set in Charm City.

The book starts off pretty good, actually, which is why I was so sad when I hit the second part of the three-section collection and very quickly ran into three adventures that left me cold. Editor Lippman's introductory piece, "Easy as A B C", finds us with a corrupt contractor that cheats on his wife but can't stand it when his lover turns him away. That's a textbook noir plot, and Lippman's snappy writing from the perspective of the killer sets the mood for what I hoped would be more stories in this vein.

The problem is that somewhere along the line, whether to pad the page count (this entry is nearly 100 pages longer than the other two I read, give or take a page) or because she was lacking in stories with a true sense of desperation and grime, we end up getting to the point where there's a cozy with a huge cliche for a solution in the middle of the book.

Now I understand the idea of what makes a story fitting of the noir label is variable depending on who you talk to, and I bet if you asked me twice a few months apart, I might even give you a different answer. But when "Almost Missed It by a Hair" features a woman who does PR for hairdressers solving the crime for her cop sister by using an amateur trick that was old when fellow Baltimorean Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre in the first place, I'm going to cry foul.

That was the only story written by an African American about a city that's overwhelmingly African American and I'd be lying if I said that didn't bother me a bit, especially given the fact that it's not like this anthology is jam-packed with writing gems. I find it a bit hard to believe that there weren't more crime stories written by black authors and set in Baltimore. I find it even harder to believe this when Ben Neihart's "Frog Cycle," possibly the worst story in the collection, doesn't even have any cultural link to Baltimore at all. (Move the exhibit to any other city and it would have worked fine.) I also failed to see anything crime-related about it.

The point of these collections is to spotlight the dark edges of the cities in which the stories are set. And sometimes they do. Robert Ward's "Fat Chance" places a man of Hollywood back into the hells he tried to escape. "Pigtown will Shine Tonight" has a disturbing premise and a character that wants to do the right thing, but also save his skin. "As Seen on TV" by Dan Fesperman skewers the idea of a noir story by having his main character think that he can relive the glories of fictional drama. Those are all great stories that fit the theme.

However, there are just too many that don't. A simple murder to take control of a business or a Scooby-Doo style ghost story, "Goodwood Gardens", do not provide the reader with anything grimy or creepy. I'm afraid that the multiple inclusions of violence against women don't count, either.

Horrific crimes aren't noir, they're terrible crimes. They no more fit into a book like this than an armchair detective piece. You have to give them a feel like the characters have no way out. Time and time again as this anthology progressed, I just wasn't feeling that sense of desperation or situational helplessness. I got in in bits and pieces, such as when David Simon provides us with a drug addict who can't do the right thing in "Stainless Steele," but that's just not enough to carry this anthology through.

Anthologies rest on the backs of their editors, and in this case, I think Ms. Lippman and I have a different definition of what makes for a good noir story. She seemed to be going for a very general idea of revenge crime, if you look at all the stories as a whole. Had this been called "Uncharmed Lives: Baltimore Gets Revenge" I might have felt better about the contents, some of which were pretty well written. But I don't think revenge automatically equals noir, nor do I feel that Ms. Lippman explored enough avenues of possible stories (a lot of these authors all have ties to the Baltimore Sun) to give us a good variety of material.

Overall, Baltimore Noir was a disappointing entry in the Noir series. But after taking a break to finish up things before the move--to Baltimore, as things happen--I'll definitely keep reading more of these anthologies. I'd just recommend that you give this particular volume a pass.

"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" by Beverly Daniel Tatum

2010-04-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

[Just as a side note, I read the original version, not the revised text. -Rob]

Despite the title, this book is less about dealing with racial issues in class than in the general idea of racial issues. Dr. Tatum structures her book to discuss why we often don't talk about race, the idea of racial identity for blacks and whites, and even a bit about why in an America where immigration is far more complex than it used to be, why this discussion can't solely happen in black and white terms.

The Chapter from which this book gets its name was part of a set of readings I needed to complete, and it intrigued me enough to want to read the entire text. As I've grown older, and especially now that I will be a white teacher primarily working with black students, I want to read all I can on the idea of racial identity.

This is a tricky subject. It's one that, as Tatum notes right away, no one wants to talk about. A young child who sees someone different from them is often told to be quiet, rather than engaged in the idea of difference among people. As a result, as these issues of difference grow over time, it's not something to be discussed. Instead, the child is given a steady diet of racial depictions that are often stereotypical at best and horribly racist at worst.

Once you get talking, as Tatum works to do in her classes on race, the answers can be troubling, both to hear and to express. The book is sprinkled with multiple comments from her past students, several of which might just make you fly into a rage or be stupefied by the ways in which people think about racial relations. I do wish she had shared a few more positive stories, however, as I can't believe there were nothing by bad journal entries.

This book works best when it's centering on the idea of forming racial identity. Her explanation of why after a certain age, children stop playing together in racial harmony and begin forming groups in the lunchroom and elsewhere makes perfect sense. As a child gets older, the messages of society tell them that's the thing to do. The idea of beauty, for instance, is completely race-based. It only makes sense (even if it's horrible in practice) for children to take in these messages and act accordingly. If they're told, in action if not in words, that they aren't supposed to be together, or are supposed to act out in class, or any number of other things, then that's just what they're going to do. That's sad, but true.

Having a popular culture where race-based stereotypes exist in everything from television (how often are African Americans depicted in a way that's not negative), to the news (how often are the stories in poor, minority neighborhoods a positive one?), to my own personal favorite genre, comics (white Hal Jordan, almost never makes a mistake, while black John Stewart has a long history of making mistakes or perceived errors, often tied to race). If there's no one out there to fight these depictions, then we're going to internalize them. It's a problem that Tatum brings to the forefront and makes the reader think about, whether they have before or not.

The central section of the book, where Dr. Tatum refers to the idea of whites and blacks facing their own racial identities, did have a complication for me that might say more about me than about the book. I was a bit distressed by her feelings that it is best for people to go over their feelings about race with people who are of the same race as they are. I got the impression that only after a person had finished being completely comfortable with their identity that they could and should move on to bridging the racial divide.

In an ideal world, that might work, but this is a very imperfect place. Leaving people in their comfort zones to explore their issues is not going to work. After all, if you're comfortable, are you going to tread the dangerous ground of possibly upsetting someone by pointing out that they made a racial remark? To me, down this road leads to a status quo for too much of the white population. It means the individual has to work too hard to change. I don't think people are going to do that. After all, with gated communities and the ability to voluntarily segregate if you have even just the smallest income flexibility, why try?

In my opinion, I think you have to interact well before the person is completely comfortable with the differences of race, mostly because I think the only way to change things long-term is to stress the similarities, not the differences. I agree that people need time to find out who they are, especially in a culture that downplays their importance, but if we're always looking at how we are different, how are we ever going to find a way to be together? As this country moves to majority minority status, that's going to be the key to keeping America together. I don't see a way for that to happen if we're all spending all our time waiting to be perfect.

I may be misreading Dr. Tatum's argument. This is a subject that is easy to have a personal opinion on, and I'm obviously coming at it from a different angle. But while I agree with her that it's hard to have a positive image of being black (or for that matter, latino/hispanic or even asian, since a stereotype is still a stereotype) and that whites take for granted a hell of a lot, I don't think the way to solve this problem is through navel gazing.

Dr. Tatum does spend a bit of time at the end making suggestions, such as writing a letter to the editor, getting a racial dialog together, or looking closely at race relations at work or in your school. I think those are all good ideas, and they can be hard. But they don't need to wait until you feel better about race to do them, and they don't need to be done in a racial block.

At the end of the day, I agree with this book more than I disagree with it. The biggest problem about race in America is that we aren't talking about it. If you've ever tried, it's hard. I know personally I often just opt to fall out of a situation rather than talk about it, when faced with racial remarks in person. I wish I'd been stronger at those times, but as Tatum notes, you pay a price for being the person who makes others examine their actions. What I did was better than agreeing with them, but it still pales compared to what I could have done.

A book like this one is good for people who are already pretty far along the racial recognition progression, to see how others view the same concepts. It's not going to reach anyone who wants to defend their racist views, but I don't think Tatum expects it to. I think it does a great job of showing how people form their racial ideas, but struggles when discussing how to move from exploration to action. It might be unfair of me to have hoped that it would, however. I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the subject of racial identity and how that impacts on society. To answer Dr. Tatum's question of has she said anything helpful, the answer is definitely yes.

After all, her role is to start the discussion, either in a classroom or through this text. It's up to those of us who read the book to decide what to do next.

Teaching Books: The Heart of Teaching by Audrey J. Sirota with Laura Ianocone Taschek

2010-04-14T16:13:00.003-04:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

This book offers a look at some actual lesson plans used by either individual or groups of teachers across a variety of grades and subjects that put a high focus on literacy, interactivity, and achievement.

They are grouped into sections based on the primary focus of the lesson (participation, complex thinking, making connections, etc.) and generally contain three examples for the reader to consider. In several cases, the reader is even allowed to see how the lesson plan was revised over time to make it better, based on either student feedback or seeing how it worked in the classroom.

Heart of Teaching shows how effective lesson plans can be created with scoring rubrics and goals based on state achievement tests without using the standard lecture format. In fact, in almost every case, the lessons were revised to reduce lecture time as much as possible. It also helps to show that creating a lesson plan does not need to be complex so much as it needs to be focused.

Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith

2010-04-14T10:21:00.001-04:00

It's always fun to see other writers play with the ideas created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all those years ago. Some, like Laurie King, opt to use Holmes himself as a side character. Others try to write a book that fits neatly into the cannon.

In the case of Holmes on the Range, Hockensmith tries a different tack, and it works surprisingly well. Our story involves two cowboys who are down on their luck that get a job at a ranch that might not be all that it seems.

They're basically told to stay out of things, but that's not in the nature of Old Red Amlingmeyer, an avid reader of...The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Soon Old Red and his brother Big Red are doing "deducifyin'," whether the rest of the ranch hands want them to or not. Can they solve the crime before someone makes them stop permanently?

This is a fun variation on the Holmes script. Big Red, like Watson, narrates the adventure and is an often reluctant participant in the proceedings. His brother has an eye for detail, but he's nowhere near as arrogant as his idol and also not quite as good at staying out of trouble.

Hockensmith writes a book that features two men who are aware of how good Holmes is, and one who wants to emulate him. That doesn't mean they're perfect at it. In fact, just like Hockensmith might tell you he's not as good a writer as Doyle, the characters know they aren't going to be as good as the master detective. It's a conceit that might not work in other hands, but Hockensmith pulls it off in a convincing fashion.

Plus, his mystery is not too shabby. We're given a few likely suspects, but solving the crime will take more than just suspicion. After all, how can two drifters looking for a job be trusted? Getting over prejudice and finding a way to make things right give the plot some extra twists and turns. Plus, by the time we get to the end, unlike an 19th Century story, the crime itself is far more complicated.

I liked Holmes on the Range a great deal, and I need to get around to reading more by Hockensmith. If you're a mystery fan that likes the Holmes mythos or Westerns, give this a try. I think you'll be glad you did.

Everyday Racism by Annie S. Barnes

2010-04-12T07:30:00.002-04:00

Any book dealing with racial issues is not easy to read. Sadly, issues of racism aren't something we can leave to the history books. It's very real and very current. Life would be better if that weren't the case, but since it is, we need to study racism in all its forms and learn how to combat it.

That's where a book like that by Ms. Barnes comes in. Rather than looking at racism as an issue of the past, she takes it into the daily life of Americans. Using a variety of real-life examples to bolster her arguments, Barnes shows how African Americans are still running into discrimination.

The stories are, quite honestly, brutal to read. It pains me to know that as a country, we often aren't any better than we were fifty years ago. There may not be segregated buses or schools, but the idea that I can get a separate check without thinking and a black person might not is horrible. Similarly, I don't have to worry about being followed at a store or held back from getting a job or being promoted.

We all know this happens, but I think everyone tends to treat it as a rare occurrence. When Denny's gets nailed for discrimination, it allows people to pretend that the issue is over. Unfortunately, that's not the case, not even close.

I know that I was offended when I was asked to join an all-white (I know because they didn't ask my black cross-street neighbors) neighborhood watch because the street was getting "crime ridden," which was blatant code. A security company tried the same thing with me. I hate the fact that this still happens, and I hate the fact that because I'm white, I'm supposed to go along with it. Further, I hate myself for not being firmer in my rejections.

That's exactly why we need a book like Everyday Racism. Barnes lays it out in page after page of very difficult reading. She uses examples from all classes and situations, so this is not a case of people discriminating because a person looks poor. Racism happens to affluent African Americans as well.

Barnes wrote the book knowing it would touch a nerve. That's the point. She doesn't even need to add much in the way of commentary--the stories do that for her. It's a chronicle more than an analysis. A fervent Christian, Barnes notes in her introduction that an awful lot of Christians don't practice very Christian actions towards minorities.

Each chapter also has a set of suggestions for both white and black people to deal with the racial issues presented. They're mostly about attitude and perceptions. None of them are earth-shattering, and most of them seem like no-brainers. Yet I bet you'd be surprised if you look around and realize just how often these little things don't happen.

If you don't want to have your perceptions challenged, then don't read Everyday Racism. I know that I came away from the book looking more closely at how I interact with people, both white and black. This book is designed as a place to start the conversation of racial relations. Anyone interested in doing so should definitely pick it up. Unfortunately, those who most need to read something like this probably won't.

Teaching Books: How to Say the Right Thing Every Time by Robert D. Ramsey

2010-04-11T18:43:00.002-04:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

This book is directed primarily at principals and superintendents, but I figured that any kind of information about how to talk to people in relation to a school setting would be helpful. The book is fairly similar to any other how-to management book I've read, designed with simple sentences and prescriptions that end up using targeted language to get the results you are looking for.

The biggest thing in the book is its desire to keep away from using jargon. Ramsey argues that jargon turns people off, and that straight talking is the best policy. He also stresses honesty, even when it's uncomfortable, and never covering up the truth, as it will always get out somehow.

Ramsey's book is divided into short chapters for dealing with students, parents, the general public, and of course, people in the education field. The advice is similar in all areas, reflecting back to the theme of being honest and direct. There are sample examples of correspondence as well as listing of proactive words. The last major components are dos and don'ts for various occasions.

Two things that did stand out were Ramsey's continued references to Jesse Ventura and his occasional mentions of God and religion. The former is a weird quirk, but understandable. The latter may be troubling for some readers, so just be aware that it exists.

Boston Noir edited by Dennis Lehane

2010-04-09T09:02:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed the first book I read in this noir series, so I decided to try another one, this time moving all the way across the continent to Boston. I was not disappointed. Boston Noir is another collection of solid sordid tales, and almost as varied as Mexico City was.

Editor Lehane scared me a bit when I first started reading this book, because his introduction talks about noir as being "working class tragedy," and that sounded like a buzzword for pretension if there ever was one. He dismissed the idea of fedoras and private eyes out of hand, and that really bothered me.

Fortunately, the stories themselves were a lot better than the introduction, and we even got a couple of private eyes. And while they may not have been wearing fedoras (well, one of the might have been for all I know), they still had the same shady operation that defines a good noir tale. Whether or not they have a happy ending, none of these stories feature people that are morally pure, and that's just how I like my crime fiction.

If there was a general problem with this edition of the series, I'd say it was in the lack of the city as a character. Mexico City's background featured prominently in the other anthology. In this case, Boston just did not shine through for me. It felt like these tales could be set just about anywhere. Some stories tried harder than others to set the stage, but as a rule I felt the backdrop was a bit lacking. I'll be curious to see what I think about the books set in other cities in this series.

Since I want good stories more than regionalized ones, that really wasn't a problem for me. And this book delivered almost every time. I was particularly impressed by the variety of settings. We get everything from the current day to a pre-Revolutionary War Boston, with a trip to the 1950s thrown in for good measure.

"Femme Sole," the story set in the 18th Century, might be the best of the bunch. Dana Cameron shows the plight of a woman trying to life her own life in an age where that was nearly impossible. But if you were willing to do almost anything, a life alone was possible. The tone is probably a bit too modern, but I loved how it played out.

I also liked the strong entry story, "Exit Interview," where Lynne Heitman plays with the reader in terms of what is going on at a Boston business. Despite the short length, it does the job of keeping the reader off balance very well.

The editor's contribution, "Animal Rescue," shows a kind heart behind the cruel crime writer. An abused dog changes the way the protagonist looks at life, and he ends up using his connections to make life better for the dog and maybe even a young woman. There are degrees of evil in the world, and sometimes it's nice to see the lesser evil win and not feel bad about it.

Those were my favorite stories, but most of the ones in here are pretty good. Though it's pretty straightforward if you read a lot of PI stories, Brendan DuBois's "The Dark Island" is very well constructed. He captures the way a private detective can avenge a crime in a way no lawman can do, and often will. The shades of grey that pervade a story like that also play out in Don Lee's "The Oriental Hair Poets," where our PI must try to figure out which of a pair of poets is lying to him. Does he make the right choice? Or just the one he can live with? It's up to the reader to decide in an ending that's as final as it is mysterious.

"The Place Where He Belongs" is a story of media manipulation, with writer Jim Fusilli missing the boat on the noir angle but still turning in a story I liked about a man who needed a muse. Itabari Njeri is not afraid to give us an older female character as the focal point, and neither is Patricia Powell. Their two entries are sort of book ends, as the former features a woman who doesn't let anyone get the jump on her and the latter runs from one trapped life to another.

The only clunker, at least for me, was John Dufresne's story that takes on the problem of the Boston clergy scandals. I didn't think it worked at all, and felt like he was just using fiction to veil his desire to express anger at what happened. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I hate stories that preach at me.

Boston Noir may not have put the city of Boston in my mind every time, but it did put a smile on my face as I read a set of excellent stories that for the most part captured the feel of a noir tale well despite writing in the modern age. The authors are as diverse as their stories, which is a real credit to the editor. I definitely recommend this for anyone who likes crime fiction, and I look forward to reading more in Akashic's series of noir stories in the near future.

Teaching Books: Teaching as Leadership by Steven Farr

2010-04-07T13:25:00.003-04:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

This is a required book for new Teach for America corps members. It is also written for anyone who is interested in reading about strategies for reducing the achievement gap.

The book is structured into six sections which match up with the qualities TFA believes are needed for effective teaching: Setting big goals, investing in students, planning, execution, working to improve yourself as a teacher, and never giving up on your efforts. Each of these ideas gets a chapter, explaining the concept and how to use it to be a highly effective teacher, often with charts explaining what a good teacher does versus a struggling teacher.

Teaching as leadership uses a large number of stories from former and current corps members to bolster its arguments. There are also a lot of ties to current research both in education and in business strategies. (The latter might make educational purists wince.)

The back of the book explains a bit about the philosophy of Teach for America, its rubrics for measuring teacher performance, and how they select candidates. There is also information on al the teachers used in the book.

This is by far the most current teaching book I've read so far, but it's also the only one with a 2010 copyright.

Rob's Adventures in E-Readerland: Picking an E-Reader

2010-04-06T08:20:00.000-04:00

As you can see from my profile information, I'm getting ready to make a move to another state. Because of this, I've had occasion to touch a lot of my books, and do a purge of those titles that I don't think I'll read again (or, in some cases, will ever read period).

Put simply, I've got a lot of books. And moving them is both a pain, an expense, and means we have to live somewhere maybe bigger than we need. I've been spending a lot of time lately on the idea of getting an e-reader. Probably too much time, actually, but I tend to agonize over technology purchases. (Plus, it beats worrying over my Praxis scores.)

So, let's start with what I was thinking going into this:

1) I know that e-readers tend to be protective of data, but I'd like one that reads as many formats as possible.

2) I don't want to pay through the nose, so the cheaper the better.

3) I'd want a wide selection, as I tend to read things that are, being charitable, obscure.

4) Trade paperbacks on a true e-reader are several years away, so this was only for book books.

5) I'd want to hold on to my e-files as long as possible.

Based on this, a few things trended in my mind, most notably that while the Kindle may have a large book selection, its proprietary nature is a huge turnoff.

Then I started reading.

Oh god.

I don't think I've ever seen a gadget genre ever be this hard to nail down. When I went to buy my really nice not-quite-professional-level camera, I read for a few hours, set a price point ($500 or less), and used my desired features to get the camera that fit as many of my needs as possible. The review sites has consistent information and my camera is about 95% like how they described it in the reviews. (I'd actually argue it's a bit better than they gave it credit for.)

Over the multiple hours I've spent reading about e-readers, I don't think I've gotten the same information twice. That's probably a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

Generally speaking, the word was favorable on the Kindle. BUT! Amazon zapped people's books that they'd already paid for, which I suppose any electronic company could do but still is really uncool. The battery requires sending back to the manufacturer, and there's no room for an expansion card. Plus, Kindles don't read anything but Amazon books and those formatted like an Amazon book.

The nook has the advantage of being based on a Google engine and backed by a bookstore. It reads more book types than the Kindle, but still has rights issues. Unfortunately, it has a rather useless split screen IMHO and from all indications there's about 67% chance of getting a lemon. Even on pro-nook boards, I found story after story about how the device didn't work very well. It also was the e-reader of choice on e-bay, meaning people were dumping them left and right. Not a good sign. Only one reviewer seemed to like it, making that perhaps the only thing they could agree on.

The Sony name is a mixed blessing, at least for me. I love my Playstation 2, but I still have nightmares about the various problems I had with my Walkman and Discmans over the years. Sony arguably had the most open e-reader, but their standard model has a glare-prone touch screen and the pocket edition can't expand. Plus, at least half of the sites I went to complained about Sony's software, and I don't think I want to be playing around with alternative interfaces that might not stay around. I'm very technology friendly, but I hate wasting time fiddling.

There are a ton of other e-readers out there, but I am leery of using any product that may not have strong company backing. (I love you Border's, but I'd never buy a Border's only e-reader.) That's why I basically concentrated on the three companies above. Barring major political changes this is a clear case of bigger is better, at least in my opinion. Amazon isn't going anywhere since everyone uses it. Barnes and Noble is extremely stable, and Sony has the longest history in e-readers and the most brick and mortar store presence.

The trouble I'm running into is that there's no clear-cut winner here. I'm a man who lives in shades of gray, and likes to have experts help get him to one point or the other. E-readers don't seem to have that one-is-the-best device, which is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

Price doesn't help, either. Thanks to the publishers putting the squeeze on (again, that's good for my friends the writers and bad for me as a consumer), Amazon is no longer cheaper as a rule. I picked out different authors I like, and the prices were either stable or within a dollar or so of each other. With the Sony reader, I'd be using Adobe e-pub, and they were actually higher as a rule.

In fact, one thing that almost threw me out of this entirely is that e-books tend to be priced about the same as a mass market. I've gotten so spoiled by used books that paying more than $5 for anything I want to read is hard for me now.

However, as a result, I never read anything new. I've mentioned before I want to be more on top of the reading curve, so an e-reader would help with this.

The fact of the matter is I was hoping to have something that would enable me to pare down the number of book-books I own, freeing up space. (Someday, I hope to get to do this with comics, too.) But several of the things I collect--as opposed to just reading--aren't available on e-readers. You can't get the "Best American..." series on e-book, at least not that I was able to find. That's a bookshelf right there. Nor are there very many Civil War titles, and certainly not the smaller press editions, at least not yet.

So at least for now, having an e-reader would only cut my book book ownership by about 33%. Tony Hillerman and Stephen King would go digital, but discussing Longstreet's merits as a general would likely still be on a dead tree.

The question is--is that enough to make it worth my while for an e-reader only? I'm honestly not sure but my inclination is to say no.

That thought circled me back around again to what I wanted from my e-reading device.. If the e-reader can't be a 100% non-comic book replacement, then it has to do more. That drops Sony out of the equation, for all intent and purposes. If you want an e-reader only, Sony seems to be the way to go I think. But I can't see paying $200 for something that only reads 30% of the books I want to keep.

Now we circle back to Kindle and nook, our internet-capable readers. While the nook can theoretically get online, it can't do anything but buy books from its parent company, Barnes and Noble. The Kindle can do simple web work, and with its full (if small) keyboard, I could use it to double as a word processor by hopping over to my Gmail and making a draft. (I do this from time to time with my cell phone, but it drains the hell out of my battery.)

So, looks like Kindle might be the way to go, right? Here's my credit card, let's get this angst-fest finished.

But not so fast! The web browsing is probably slow (how slow I don't know, because you can't test one) and I have no idea if the small keyboard is any better than the virtual ones I tried on the nook and Sony. Plus, there's still the small nature of formats, because while you can change the formatting of some ebooks, the legality of doing so appears to be a bit sketchy.

I have no desire to do anything that might run me into trouble later, no matter how ethical it might be. Violating the TOS of the Kindle is going to leave me with one expensive brick.

I could probably deal with the mostly Amazon-only nature of the Kindle except for one big problem--library ebooks. I have no idea how often I'd use them, but I really like the idea that they exist. Sadly for Kindle users, they're mostly unavailable due to their format. While my old library offers no e-books on the main company for doing so, Overdrive, my future library does. I rather like the idea of being able to e-read a best seller without committing to paying for it until I know I like it. (Sony and a lot of the smaller company e-readers can do this, and from what I can tell, so can the nook.)

All of this has led me down a path that probably leads to madness. In the end, it seems like they don't make an e-reader at a price point that makes me comfortable or one that offers as many books as I'd like. Adding other features is nice, but it may not do them very well. I am reminded here of the waffle iron-sandwich maker-grill I just gave away after 3 mediocre tries at using it. I might not end up being very happy with what I get in my extras, so I've spent more than on a basic e-reader getting something that drives me crazy when I try to use it.

So, what should I do? That's the $300 question.

And it could be answered by something that's strangely familiar.

After thinking hard on what I want and what I'd be willing to pay for a device that does many things pretty well, though not perfect, and factoring in the advantage of adding color, I'm actually leaning towards buying a cheap netbook. This is sort of like going the ipad route, but without the expense and with a workable keyboard that comes pre-installed. (Nothing personal against the ipad, but it seems to me to be an expensive, crippled laptop. I like what it can do, but I think I can do it better and cheaper another way.)

Let's go over that list above again and see how a netbook stacks up:

A netbook satisfies the first criteria, because I can download clients for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Adobe, plus others if I really wanted to, for no cost. That also gives me number 3 and number 5, because it opens up the reader types to all formats and also lets me easily back up to my external hard drive. Number 2, price, is doable if I search, and even a top of the line netbook is roughly the price of a Kindle.

Best of all, it actually puts #4 into play--I could do any color comics that a publisher puts out an app for if they make it run on a PC as well as an ipad, which seems pretty likely to me. (Why alienate the majority of computer users by going mac only?)

I would also have my ability to use the device for multiple things, like writing, checking my e-mail, and even reading all those webcomics I've become so fond of over the past few months. Paying $300 for that would be a damned sight better than paying $300 for an e-reader only. I know a netbook can do these things to my satisfaction, because that's what they're made for.

It won't have e-ink, but I'm rarely in direct sunlight. (I'd never take an e-reader to the beach or in a jacuzzi, that's what $1.00 books and magazines are for. I shudder at the idea of sand near an electronic device, to say nothing if you end up too close to the ocean!) I think the eye strain thing is overrated. I've been at a computer for years, both at work and off work, and if you take breaks, it's fine. Getting color and a reliable word processor (even notepad) would make up for not being able to read 4 hours straight. Besides, who does that anyway? Not me, not even if the book is good!

A netbook would be less portable, certainly. But even the Sony pocket reader is too big for anything but my cargo pocketed shorts, and even if it did fit my jeans, I already have my cell phone there so there's no room. I'd almost certainly end up carrying it in a bag, like I do anytime I'm going out for more than a shopping trip as it is.

For me, the idea of carrying a bag around is a way of life. I've been doing it for my entire adult life. Having a bag with a three pound netbook would be an advantage compared to lugging around 10 pounds now. I can't really imagine that I'd be any more inclined to take an e-reader places I don't already take a bag.

If I don't want to carry a bag, odds are I'm not carrying a book, either. My cell phone and online websites work fine for when I need a quick read and have nothing on me. I imagine whatever phone I get next year in my upgrade will be equipped with a simple e-reader, though a screen smaller than I'd want to use daily.

I also think battery life is overrated. My "big" laptop gets 4 hours if I'm only writing and web browsing on it. While I sometimes am away from an outlet for longer, a netbook these days seems to get 10 hours or more life from a charge. I'm not out camping for weeks on end, and carrying either a spare battery or lugging the AC cord are not hardships for me. I can't see a time when I'm going to want to be reading for over ten hours with no access to a power outlet.

In terms of reading itself, for better or worse, I tend to read with the book pretty far away from my nose anyway. No idea why, I just do. So having a keyboard in the way shouldn't present a problem--after all, it doesn't now. I'd say 50% of my non-comics reading is online now, between newspapers and blogs. Same holds true for the weight. I am a shifty reader at best, and book, e-reader or laptop is going to be moving all over and never crushing me anyway.

The only issue I can see with using a netbook as an e-reader is distraction. Given I would have other options, I might not read enough. But that's really a personal thing, and could just as easily happen with an e-reader or paper book. I'm not distracted if the book is really good!

From reviewing this post, it sure seems like the netbook is the way to go, at least for me. It addresses the needs I set out at the beginning and a few other things I wouldn't mind having. I could always test this theory for a bit on the current laptop as well. Your mileage may vary, but I think the case for using a netbook as an e-reader is pretty strong, the more I think about it. And I've been thinking a LONG time!

Having an e-reader would be cool. There aren't a lot out there, really, and getting one would make me an early adopter. The problem with being an early adopter is that if things change (and like it or not, the ipad and tablet PCs or cheap netbooks are going to have at least some kind of impact), you can easily be the guy holding on to the Sega Dreamcast. It might do a lot of cool things, but if it isn't supported, you're left in the dust. For $100, I'd take a flier on it. For $200 it better be pretty solid. At $300, it better be the Wolverine of e-readers.

So far, from what I can tell, none of those kinds of e-reader exist. But using a smaller PC to do the same thing plus a few other options I'd like to have handy would be just fine. I'd guess I'll be getting one soon, after I confirm I am okay with reading off a screen for an entire book. (Why, hello there Project Gutenberg!) You may want to try this as well, if you're on the fence.

One last thing I want to mention here before I wrap this up. With all of the reading I've done, and again, it was a lot, I feel like I learned more than I ever have before about the march of technology. Reading things on a computer is the future. My generation is probably the first to have spent so much time on a computer, and the price of data storage makes it feasible for just about anything to be primarily electronic.

Photos were first. Then came music. Video and television are headed that way. Newspapers are either going to go online or die. Due to people loving the feel of a book, it might be the last thing to go, but it's going to happen. Depending on who you ask, we'll be primarily e-reading in a generation or so, or perhaps even as early as the not-too-distant future, to borrow a phrase.

Reading about this process and thinking about how *I* read today as compared to say 5 or 10 years ago (hell, even a few years ago) has been fascinating, and I consider it time well spent. In the end, I'm a lover of *reading* more than a lover of books. I didn't know that when I started all this, but it makes sense to me. You might find that's true for yourself as well.

That means it's time for me (and maybe you) to start e-reading, and if they drop the price or make a better multiple-use device, I'll be there (and maybe you'll join me). But even if I use just my laptop or a netbook, I think I'm ready to embrace the future, and slowly start getting more books electronically. The technology, whether it's an e-reader or a laptop, has caught up to the point that I feel comfortable doing so. I have a feeling that's going to start being true for a lot of people. It might even get more folks reading again.

My final advice to anyone who's read this far is that unless you end up captivated by the future of e-reading, don't bother trying to wade through the reviews. They quickly became pointless for picking a device and good for watching minor flame wars and true believers behind each device clash. Try the nook and the Sony e-readers in person, and if you don't like them, get a Kindle or use your laptop, maybe even both. If you have a question about whether or not a device can do something, hit the forums, NOT the review sites. Forums were far more helpful for me.

This was not an easy process or decision for me. I doubt it will be for anyone who reads seriously. Good luck, and just remember how hard the book burners will have it when we're all e-reading!

Teaching Books: Teaching with Adolescent Learning in Mind by Glenda Ward Beamon

2010-03-30T10:49:00.002-04:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

This book, which is a bit dated in terms of references and use of technology in the classroom, focuses on the idea of using what we now know about how adolescents learn to change how we teach students in the classroom. This is referred to as Adolescent-Centered Teaching, or ACT. (The problem with this acronym is that ACT to me and probably most people is a particular type of test.)

A lot of time is spent on talking about the emotional needs of teens and how to approach them in terms of trying to get them to learn. This book argues that the key is to engage them by bringing the learning to them in ways that they can relate, or by giving them activities that draw them into the material.

There is a high priority given to teaching knowledge, not test content, using group activities, and varying learning methods on a regular basis. The idea is that teens do not learn when lectured to. The book also argues that a teacher must be careful not to do anything that will emotionally damage the student, such as putting them on the spot in front on their peers.

The author uses a lot of studies of learning to make her points, but it's hard to know how many of these studies are valid, as sample size is never referenced. There also seems to be a bit of a gap between the ideas espoused (get a DNA testing machine!) and a teacher's ability to actually gather such a resource. Also, nothing is said about working with proscribed curriculum. The book's focus is on ideas, but placement within reality of a teacher's situation is not discussed.

Noir by Olivier Pauvert

2010-03-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

The time is somewhere in the near future. A typical everyman who indulges in one vice too many now and again wakes up to the most gruesome sight possible--a dead woman hanging off a tree, completely mutilated.

Soon enough, he's the chief suspect, and under a totalitarian regime, he's guilty before the eyes of those who find him. But fate spares him and now he has the time to figure out what really happened.

There's only one problem--our protagonist seems to have shifted out of time. Not only does he no longer feel part of the world around him, that might just be true! Searching for answers on a multitude of questions, our "hero" must travel all over France to find his answers. They just might not be the ones he's looking for!

This was a random library grab, one of my favorite things to do when I have those rare moments with room on my card. As followers of my two review sites know, I like noir stories, so a book titled like this is going to catch my eye.

The thing is, while this was a pretty good story overall, I felt like it was trying to do too much in only about 250 pages. There are all kinds of concepts thrown about as our present-tense narrator walks about in this world that's changed because the white majority voters give in to fear. I'm a big fan of shorter novels--I prefer them, in fact--but in this case, it seems like the book is a platter with too many ideas piled on it, and as they shift off, I want to look over the edge and see what happened to them.

Here are just a few of the ideas brought up by Pauvert that don't get much room to breathe: A resistance movement, French minorities as guerrillas, the fate of the protagonist's family, and the implications that what we see has happened to France ends up quite possibly infecting the world.

That latter question is given about one paragraph with only a few pages to go, thrown in as part of a conclusion that rushes to get everything in that the writer wants to say before hitting the last white page. It honestly annoyed me more than anything else--why include such a tantalizing idea if you aren't going to do anything with it? I was perfectly happy living in the world of France only; there was no need to go outside the boundaries.

I understand that in a first person present tense novel, we aren't going to see anything that isn't in front of the narrator's nose, but I felt like there was a better way to go about addressing these issues. While his family is a priority early on, by about halfway through, they're barely mentioned. These kinds of omissions bugged me as I was reading.

I also had a problem with the fact that this book really does fall into the traps of a book like this, where everything is so bleak. Every character you meet is going to die after talking to the protagonist, because the Police State will get them. The hero will have all sorts of narrow escapes, usually one per place setting. Everything is bleak, but that doesn't seem to make more people want to resist. The back cover blurb mentions that this book echoes other books written in this style. What they don't mention is that this book copies them almost like a formula.

There are some good things about Noir that I did like. The idea that people who voted for the horrible government that takes over end up being used as their bag men is a great concept. Only minorities can see through the haze of lies, even as they are the worst treated. That echoes how Europeans have always seemed to find a way to harm people of color, basically from the date of first contact. Experimentation with dangerous drugs to control the masses probably happens today, in some laboratory no one knows about.

I also liked the very natural way in which our narrator realizes what's happened to him. I thought his revelations occurred steadily based on what he discovered on his quest to make things right, and his final fate made sense. His love of motorcycles and use of them in the book was a nice humanizing touch as well. One could blame the lack of focus on his need to keep moving, but I think that's a bit too easy. There had to be a way to get some answers added into the book via our narrator, and the book suffers for lack of it.

Overall, Noir was a quick read, but one that did not satisfy me as much as I'd hoped. I's a perfectly okay book, but it's not special enough to warrant some of the praise listed on the back cover. There were a lot of great ideas contained within, but the execution is a bit too derivative for my taste. Combined with the fact that the book leaves too many unexplored ideas on the table, I just can't recommend this one for others to read.

Child 44 byTom Rob Smith

2010-03-27T11:21:00.000-04:00

In the middle of the secretive world of Stalin-era Russia lies a set of murders that keep getting written off as accidents. After all, there is no crime in Communist Russia--that's a capitalist problem.

Leo Demidov is a man who believes in the actions of the state. It's served him well, and he and his family are secure within the system. Are there problems? Maybe, but those who think too hard about them end up at the wrong end of the interrogation room.

Before he knows it, Leo is just such a man. He's angered a person below him, and as he well knows, sometimes the only way up is to ruin those who control you. On the run, Leo is mixed into a strange set of murders.

The only way to clear himself seems to be to solve the crime. But how can he do that with no police help and with an entire system trying to kill him?

That's the fun of Child 44, which stunningly is the first novel of writer Smith. This novel reads like it was in the careful hands of a veteran, not someone who was forming his first long work. We get a great set up that seems unrelated but you know will go somewhere, then an introduction to the main players in the drama. The plot takes twists and turns all over the place, but never feels like it's bogging down or adding scenes just to pad page count. By the climax, everything fits together, and the reader is not left feeling like there are any loose ends.

It's so tightly woven, and done in a historical context, to boot. Smith made a brilliant choice in opting to use Stalanist Russia as a place setting for a noir book. The perpetual suspicion, betrayals, murders, and conspiracies not only work within the context of the genre, but really did happen! I can't speak for the historical accuracy of the novel, but from what I know of the time period, it seems right to me.

About the only thing the book lacks to be a true noir tale is a faithless woman. Leo's wife is the main female character, and her only perceived faithlessness is disagreement with the way the government operated. For Leo, however, that's almost enough, given his devotion to the cause.

I absolutely love the way that Smith uses his setting to drive the book. Obstacles don't have to be made up to thwart Leo--Russia's bureaucracy does it naturally. The idea of lying or moving blame is so second nature to everyone in the novel that Smith can do whatever he likes with the characters and it is completely believable in context. A bit part of what makes this book so good is Smith's manipulation of circumstances.

Despite moving at a rapid pace, Smith makes sure you understand the settings he moves Leo and the other characters through. You know what it's like to live on a rail line in Russia or to have better accommodations because of State connections. We even see the horrible side of things, as the Soviet use of torture is not avoided or sidestepped. (Let this be a notice to the more squeamish among you.)

Though the murder mystery and suspense of Leo's flight are the biggest parts of the book, there are other concepts as well. Leo sees first-hand the way that the system he's trusted for so long can betray the very people it's meant to protect. By the end of the book, Leo understands that so much of his life, from the personal to the professional, is a lie. But in order to survive (another key theme), he has to accept this dualism. To a certain degree, don't we all?

Layered and intricate, Child 44 is one of the best books I've read. If you like historical fiction, mysteries, or suspense, you owe it to yourself to check it out. You'll be glad you did.

Teaching Books: Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap Grades 4-12 edited by Dorothy S. Strickland and Donna E. Alvermann

2010-03-23T10:33:00.003-04:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

This book presents a series of articles by a large variety of authors addressing what is called the achievement gap. The first section discusses the idea of the achievement gap and what it means to education. Next is a section showing how various districts attacked the achievement gap and the progress they made.

That latter section is by far the most interesting, showing concrete examples from "failing" schools and the ways in which they overcame issues ranging from funding to violence to teacher indifference.

Almost every case study stressed that doing things as they'd always been done cannot be accepted. They also were frank about what worked and what didn't. Often, plans had to be changed after they did not work as expected. A lot of times, the first thing that had to change was the culture. Once new ideas were accepted, change happened.

Most interesting to me was the idea that in the cases that seemed to work the best, plenty of time was given to make the necessary changes. Success was not expected in year one, two, or even three, nor was failure condemned. The key was working on things, tweaking them, and reaching a goal within a set period of time.

Somewhat more dense and academic than it needed to be, but the content definitely makes up for it.

Teaching Books: Stupidity and Tears by Herbert Kohl

2010-03-08T08:55:00.002-05:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

A series of five mostly theoretical essays about the difficulties Kohl sees for teachers who want to break outside the mold of standard education, particularly in the school districts with severe problems in the achievement gap.

Mr. Kohl makes no secret of his political leanings, which is very refreshing, as most non-fiction writers tend to bury that part of themselves. He is a educational thinker on the far left, and his ideas about what should go on in the classroom reflect this.

The book brings up a lot of questions, but is very short on answers. He talks about teachers wanting to quit rather than work under new guidelines and laments the loss of talented, caring people. However, there are no suggestions for how to solve this problem.

Another section offers questions to consider when teaching students today, but again, does not offer guidance on how to approach these questions.

Essay Four, about how talking in the classroom is more than just words, comes closest to offering advice. Kohl cautions that what might be appropriate in a college setting will not work in a classroom. He urges teachers to set a level of trust and understanding, so that learning can begin to happen. Kohl also notes that students are listening far more often than one might think.

Overall, this is a book designed to bring up issues in the classroom and get people thinking about how they might address them. It is a call to action, but what actions to take are only vaguely hinted at.

Teaching Books: Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol

2010-03-01T10:30:00.002-05:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

Long-time education writer Kozol returns to the archaic practice of using letters as a narrative structure for this book. Like C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, these missives are directed at one person, but really are written to the wide audience Kozol hopes to reach.

In this case, the subject of the letters is a teacher called "Francesca," who is apparently a real person fictionalized to keep her safe from any repercussions. She also incorporates some other points about teaching that Kozol wishes to express to anyone who is starting on their teaching career.

While Francesca is nearly perfect in these letters (Kozol admits in the afterward that he did not focus on her struggles but instead praised her achievements--a teaching technique within a book about teaching, I'm sure), there is a lot of discussion about things that the author feels are not perfect about the education system.

For instance, Kozol praises his model teacher for allowing students the time to experience wonder, but decries the reliance on testing that can put a student on the failure track as early as kindergarten. He has strong words about this, as well as the idea of corporatizing education. Francesca resists these urges and Kozol praises her for this.

Kozol also dislikes the jargonizing of education training, school vouchers, and argues that the American education system is almost as segregated now as it was before Brown. (He even goes so far as to say that the current funding system does not even meet the separate but equal requirements of Plessey v. Ferguson!)

The book features a lot of Kozol arguing against what he dislikes, mixed with stories of what Francesca is doing to combat these issues and his own struggles as a young teacher in the Boston system. However, he also stresses the positives, such as taking the time to get to know the parents of your students, even advocating home visits where possible.

He advocates listening to children and letting them learn, using testing as an opportunity to grow their knowledge, not just a way to ensure scores are meeting political metrics. His final words are to remind teachers that sometimes, they must get political for the sake of their students.

Mexico City Noir edited by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

2010-02-26T10:31:00.000-05:00

This almost never happens to me--I actually read a book that came out only a few weeks ago! Someone check my temperature and make sure I'm feeling okay!

This was a library impulse grab, one of my favorite things to do. It's a little hard to tell from the size of the cover to the left of this text, but when you see a skeleton in a wedding dress, it's hard not to just run up to the shelf, grab the book with both hands and shout MINE! shortly before getting banned from the library in question. I resisted the temptation to do so, but not by much.

Mexico City Noir is the latest in a series of short story books by Akashic Books, a small press that states on its website that they want "reverse-gentrification of the literary world." That's a philosophy I can get behind, and it's obvious in the sometimes course nature of the material in this book that they are not afraid to publish work that might not be considered "refined" enough for another publisher.

The stories themselves are set across the landscape of Mexico City, with a helpful map marked by dead bodies giving the location of each treacherous tale. Editor Taibo divides them up into three sections, "Above the Law" (exactly what you think), "Dead Men Walking" (not at all what you think), and "Suffocation City" (not quite what you think). He opens by talking about the worst possible aspects of Mexico City--corrupt police, rampant killings, and streets of crime--but then also mentions the best, such as being a city with more movie theaters than Paris. As with all major cities, Mexico City is a place of grand contradictions. And those that love the city, such as the folks contributing to this anthology, embrace their city, warts and all.

Those contradictions play out in this volume time and time again, right from the beginning of the collection. Eduardo Antonio Parra features a homeless man trying to make sense of his world as it collapses around him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Benardo Fernandez's protagonist is a pillar of the community--and a ruthless killer. Myriam Laurini features a cop who can laugh at a literary pun but also shoves his gun in a suspect's mouth to get a fake confession. In the best story of the final third of the book, Victor Luis Gonzalez's narrator won't off the man that killed Kennedy but refuses to let a man who harms animals go unpunished.

These are writers creating very human characters. You immediately feel sympathy for people who are going to lose no matter what, like the homeless man in Parra's story. There's rage as powerful men like the actor in F.G. Haghenbeck's story (or even the writer who moves crime to another block in editor Taibo's contribution) get whatever they want because of their position in the social hierarchy. These may be fictional creations, living on on the printed page, but the concepts are very real--and not limited to a crime ridden city south of the US border.

I'm a very character-driven reader, so the contributors' ability to make people I could either believe in or relate to made this small (it's only about 170 pages) anthology work really well for me. Taibo definitely worked hard to ensure there was a solid overall quality to the stories. There were no stories I disliked, which is rare for me in a work like this. In addition, the voices of the authors are quite varied. Taibo mentions in his introduction that the writers use various styles, and that's definitely true.

Over the course of this collection, we have a broken narrative, a private eye procedural, a dying man's last few moments of thought, a GOTCHA story (my definition of this being a short story that takes a hard left turn in the final moments), a series of taped interviews, and even a back-and-forth style, to name just a few. Some of these are pretty experimental, too, and require the reader to take time to follow the story. For a small anthology like this to take those kinds of literary chances really impresses me (and makes me want to read more in this Noir series). After all, not only are almost half of the contributions written in a style I'd say was non-traditional, they are in translation to boot!

This is as good a place as any to compliment translator Achy Obejas, who does an amazing job bringing this sometimes challenging narratives into English while still retaining the quality of the material. "BANG!" in particular (by Juan Hernandez Luna) works very well despite the change in languages.

As I mentioned, this is one of those rare times where I liked every story, so I won't do what I normally would in an anthology review, highlight my favorites. If I had to pick the story I liked best, it would probably be Haghenbeck's "The Unsmiling Comedian" because it features a private investigator whose client is only just a bit better than the criminal foe. I'm a sucker for those kind of stories, and he nails the theme perfectly. I wouldn't mind reading more stories with the protagonist from this story in the future.

There's only one minor complaint that I do have and that's the level of swearing and gay slurs. I am not a prude by any nature, and I understand that sometimes you have to be vulgar, particularly in dark stories like these, but there were a few times where I felt it was just piling on. If you're sensitive to that sort of thing, be warned. However, there's so much good in this book that I was willing to overlook it. I really don't read a lot of new fiction--perhaps this is just a norm today that I don't know about?

Mexico City Noir is a winner on several levels for me. It's a quality anthology, it features crime stories, and it uses a variety of narrative styles, some of which are quite experimental in nature. I've found a new series of books to love and some new authors to explore. This is an early candidate for my "Favorites of 2010" list, and I definitely highly recommend it to those who like experimental fiction, short stories, or crime books. Those who like all three need to grab this book with both hands right away--and try not to shout MINE! while you're at it.

Teaching Books: Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? by Cris Tovani

2010-02-23T16:40:00.003-05:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? addresses the idea that many students are not prepared to be strong readers when they get into your classroom. They may be on different levels, barely able to read, or afraid of reading that which is more challenging than they are used to.

Tovani offers a set of strategies to fight this problem over the course of the book, with worksheets that a teacher can use in their own classroom. This includes things like a double-diary (taking parts of a reading and relating them back to their own life), using alternative materials for those who struggle with a traditional textbook, ensuring that you are always teaching what helps you meet your objective, and using group work to help students understand different approaches.

There is a strong focus on the fact that there is not a one size fits all solution. Depending on the type of reading, a different strategy may be needed. It's also important, according to Tovani, to make sure that you as the teacher are constantly monitoring what works and what doesn't. An activity that may have helped in the past grows stale over time.

The key for Tovari is getting students engaged in what they are reading, and to really think in their heads rather than just parroting the material. This is true even for when a test is involved. For her, this is the only way learning happens and it is the only way a student will get better at reading.

A final note--Tovari is big on using sticky notes to express your feelings on a book, not just writing in the margins or highlighting a passage. Gives the commenter more room and allows the teacher to review the notes and give them back to the class. A very interesting idea!

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

2010-02-23T12:49:00.001-05:00

Ordinary People is the story of a young man who is returning to his life from a suicide attempt. His family is an upscale 1970s clan that firmly believes such things don't happen to them. Thus, while all parties involved want to return to normal, it's absolutely impossible, and trying only makes the issues worse

Our young man, Conrad, flounders all over the place until he meets a new therapist, Tyrone Berger. Dr. Berger wants Conrad to do what his family can't--face the issue that drove him to be suicidal in the first place.

While Conrad is told he must address the past in order to move into the future, his parents continue to pretend that nothing is wrong. Except that his father wants to cheat on a wife he may no longer love and his mother can't deal with the idea that she has no emotional attachment to her family.

This book could not have a more appropriate title. Everyone in the book is similar to anyone you might have met. They're all ordinary people, living lives that we all face, and in the end we either deal with the problems or we fall apart. That's Guest's lesson for the reader, and it's a good one.

As a book about how a family approaches their issues, this book is very we done. The reactions of the parents to Conrad feel natural based on their personalities. Conrad's school mates sound realistic (for a thirty year old book) and some of the issues he has to face--exams, his future, girls--are timeless. Dr. Berger is ahead of his time in relation to the material presented (mental illness) and it's nice to see that Guest feels his approach--while probably flawed by today's standards--is the right one.

Guest firmly rejects the idea of burying a family's problems as a relic of a past age. It's the age my parents lived in--one where things looked good on the outside but held demons on the inside that were forbidden to talk about with anyone who was not part of the inner circle. I'd be a fool o think that we have moved past that as a society, but I think we're better now than we were then.

In that respect, Ordinary People is a valuable tool for exposing the hypocrisy and damage that hiding things can do. I think we can all learn a lesson from this book in terms of truly expressing ourselves, even if it might cause some hurt in the short run. Even if the message is a bit dated, there's nothing wrong in having it reinforced.

Where this book has a problem, however, is that the family involved is anything but ordinary. They are definitely well-to-do. These are folks who golf and play tennis and can afford to go to Europe to run away from their troubles. It's hard for me to have sympathy for them because I cannot relate to them as people. I may understand the struggle a family has with mental illness in the family, but to really care, I need people who can't just run off to another country on vacation if they need a break. I want to care about Conrad, but I have a feeling his dad will get him a job somewhere if it comes to it, and that means my concern for him is diminished.

(Is this a bit classist of me? Probably. But I'm from a family of people who never could afford to stop looking over their shoulder, so I just can't relate to those whose idea of cutting back is less dinners at a five start restaurant.)

I also feel like things proceed just a bit too neatly. Plot elements work just a bit too neatly for my taste to get to Guest's desired conclusion. Conrad just eventually falls into Dr. Berger's line and then his life is better. I just don't see real life working like that, and since this is a book that's supposed to relate to real life, I found that to be a flaw I couldn't quite shake.

Ordinary People is not a book I'd normally read. I read this in one of my many failed attempts to be a part of a reading group. ( It's weird that while I read all the time, reading something someone else asks me to is sometimes really hard for me.) However, I can see its appeal, even if the work is definitely dated. Guest's characters are struggling to admit there's an elephant in the room, just like we all do. And just like the rest of us, how Guest presents this issue is flawed but she does the best that she can do. Overall, I think she does a pretty good job.

At this point, I think Ordinary People only has a limited appeal because the people portrayed are very much products of the time in which it was written. If you like books that deal with real problems, however, I'd give Ordinary People a try. It's definitely a relic, but a useful one, I think, for the right reader.

Teaching Books: What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker

2010-02-15T22:22:00.002-05:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

Another book recommended by my former boss. Mr. Whitaker puts the focus on 14 areas that he feels a teacher can have an impact on in his or her classroom. Instead of stressing the negative, Whitaker talks about what the teacher personally can do to make things better. This includes shunning those who only are pessimistic/sarcastic in the faculty lounge and meetings, never letting students feel like you are negative, and approaching things from a constructive, rather than destructive perspective.

While acknowledging the challenges teachers face, Whitaker argues that looking internally rather than blaming externally, can lead to positive change. There is a strong sense of personal responsibility, from dealing with students and parents to setting expectations in the classroom. Approaching problems with a "how can I make this better for all" rather than "what can I do t make this easier on me" attitude is the key, Whitaker says, to being a great teacher.

Last point of note is Whitaker argues for teaching to the best and raising everyone up, rather than just teaching to average. He also mentions being careful not to single out students, even for good things.

Teaching Books: What's Worth Fighting for Out There by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan

2010-02-14T23:21:00.004-05:00

[I'm not going to try to review the books I'm reading as part of my transition to becoming an educator. However, I do want to at least do summaries, both for myself and if anyone's interested. Consider these mini-reviews, if you will.]

Recommended by my former boss, this book discusses the need for schools--and in particular, teachers and principals--to reach out into the community and partner with parents, students, and others to make education work. It argues that the more a school isolates itself, the harder it is to make sure that learning is happening, and the easier it is for outside sources to make decisions that ultimately do not help make teachers better or schools more effective.

There is a strong emphasis on making learning student-centered, bringing hope to those who need it, and refusing the idea of doing things just because that's the way it's always been done.

Part of a series of books by the same authors.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

2010-02-06T11:31:00.001-05:00

A long, long time ago, I started listening to this as an audio book and remembered wishing I'd have finished it. I took advantage of a business trip to read the hard copy I picked up a little while back.

Krakauer is best known for his work on outdoors books, and if this book is any indication I can see why. Turning his sights on America's best known home-grown religion, Krakauer weaves a modern story of incest, polygamy, and murder with the founding of the Mormon religion. The former is tightly linked to the latter, as Krakauer makes clear.

Mormonism, founded on the imagination of a dubious man with a large sexual appetite, Joseph Smith, has always had a violent history as it tried to find a niche in American society. Moving from New York to Missouri to its eventual home in Utah, the fledgling Mormon religion fought its neighbors constantly and used a patter of lies to stay alive. Only when it became obvious that it could not survive alone, Krakauer notes, does the Mormon faith try to mainstream itself.

But those roots of individuality that set the Mormons apart never left the religion permanently, and splinter groups try to carry on under the old ways. The trouble with a faith that allows you to talk directly to God is that anyone can get their own revelations.

This is where the murder case comes in. The perpetrators of the crime took to the extreme views of hard-line Mormonism and used them to exact revenge against a woman who scorned them and her infant. Similar tales pepper the pages of this book, as various self-proclaimed prophets use the voice of God to do terrible things to other people. Krakauer uses interviews, news reports, and historical sources to tell the stories, many of which would not reach outsider ears otherwise.

The modern murder case is by no means new. Krakauer goes back into time to show us the series of conflicts the Mormons had at almost every stop, with the largest being the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Mormons, disguised as Native Americans, butchered a party bound for California and then scapegoated one member for the crime. As per usual, this was all done in the name of God, though clearly it was the act of selfish, evil men trying to hold on to their claims.

There's a song whose title I can't remember that talks about "do it in the name of Heaven" and that's very appropriate here. Smith adds polygamy to cover his adulterous affairs and starts getting revelations about those who oppose the idea, right down to his wife. Ron, the co-killer of the main murder story, gets all sorts of revelations telling him to "remove" those who oppose his decisions. Dreams telling people to get spiritual wives who can't even drive a car abound. It's sickening to read at points, and Krakauer is unflinching in his presentation. All in all, the history of the Mormon Church doesn't have a lot going for it.

But before you start to dismiss Mormonism as a crock, consider this--how many radical Christians twist the words of the Bible for their own ends and claim to hear god? Is Pat Robertson and his insane proclamations representative of protestants everywhere? Krakauer warns to be cautious before passing judgment, as the belief system of just about every religion can be seen as fanciful to those on the outside.

Krakauer brings up a further point on this score--Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammad have the advantage of starting their faiths before the age of extensive written records. Would they be just as derided if they started in the 19th Century, as Smith did?

This is not to say that Krakauer finds the Mormon origin story credible--it's pretty obvious he does not--but I appreciate how he takes care to remind people to be be careful how they are judging those who follow a different belief path from themselves.

In the end, Krakauer's book is a condemnation of all extremists in any religion. He just uses the mirror of a few radical Mormons to do it. This theme would be the same if he were writing about Jerry Fallwell or any other fundamentalist from any other sect. After all, is the desire of the Mormons to conceal their cloudy past any different from that of the Catholic Church?

What makes Mormons so fascinating, both to Krakauer and those on the outside, if its habits are not so far off from other religions? I think it's partly because of the way the religion is still evolving. We can't go back and see the meetings at Nicaea, but we can watch as a bigoted church opens its doors to African Americans. Flawed or not, it gives us a window into the ever-changing nature of faith. After all, millions join the Mormon church--it's one of the fastest growing sects. There has to be an appeal, and perhaps its the idea of structured individuality that appeals to so many and that keeps those harmed by the religion coming back for more.

It's also true, however, that that support of individual faith is exactly what causes Ron and Dan to kill, allows eighty year old men to take teenagers as brides, and puts those at odds with true believers right in the cross hairs. As with America's peculiar culture in general, the Mormon faith has limitless potential for both good and evil--it's all in how its used.

Maybe that's why we're drawn into learning more--by analyzing Mormons, we can analyze ourselves at a safe distance, whether it is about our faith, our independence or our capacity to harm.

If you are looking for a history of the Mormon church that is more than names and dates and gets into the heart of the matter, or if you like reading true crime stories, you'll find Under the Banner of Heaven to be a great fit. It may not be written on golden plates, but at least you don't have to read it out of a hat!

Stirring the Pot

2010-02-06T10:40:00.002-05:00

I haven't done anything with this blog for awhile, partly because I haven't been reading a lot of what I like to jokingly refer to as "book books." I'm planning to change that here in 2010, so I wanted to let anyone who's still reading know that The Book Stew is back on the burner!

Look for some new content soon!