Code Name Verity

Elizabeth Wein

This is the first book I have read by Wein. This is part of her "Young Pilots" series, and from what I can tell, she is developing a series of books that normalize heroic women in roles that we normally only see for men. In this case, young women in Great Britain during WWII becoming pilots and spies. This story is told in two parts, the first about Verity (the spy) and the second about Kittyhawk (the pilot). About half of each is told in flashback to develop the characters and introduce their relationship. This is not a cartoonish, hero story. Instead, it is a plausible historical fiction about life in WWII England and Nazi occupied France. I suppose it is more on par with the historical portions of Blackout by Connie Willis and The Imitation Game than it is with most of the young adult feminist empowerment reading that I have seen lately. Maybe the realism is what made me appreciate it even more.
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The End of Your Life Book Club

Will Schwalbe

People who love books will love this book. This is a memoir written by Schwalbe about the two years between when his mother was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer and when she passed. During those two years, the two of them engaged in a personal book club with just the two of them. The memoir is both a fascinating introspection about the end of life and familial relationships and a great survey of the books these two encountered. It is not a series of book reports, but the themes that arise in their discussions of the books are the same themes the arise in their lives, giving insights to each reader that are often unexpected and necessary voices to be heard. Books are held in reverence in their own right, and this is well communicated throughout. Loved this.
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Against the Night

Kat Martin

I think the library is putting titles onto my wishlist. Either that, or my memory is bad. Well, we know the latter is true anyway, but I still think the former. I was looking for something to read and this showed up on my wishlist at the library. So I got it and read it. Hmmm... It is a formulaic offering of detective, crime thriller. An ex-special forces turned private detective takes on a client who is looking for her missing sister. The client is a mid-western school teacher who has come to LA to search for said missing sister and is working in an exotic dancing club to make ends meet while here. You get the picture. I just don't think I would have put this book on my list, even if I was looking for something in this category...

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Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert A Heinlein

Heinlein sets the story with the first expedition to Mars. An expedition baby is born and raised by Martians. When the second expedition returns, it returns with The Man from Mars. Lots of political intrigue (citizenship, rights of ownership, wealth inheritance, etc.) swirl thorough the story and lots of scientific intrigue (The Man from Mars knows a much more advanced science than earth humans). But this is really a story about community and belief. Heinlein paints a picture of the future that is fascinating and has enough logic built in that the reader believes that it could be true. And apparently Heinlein's biggest concern is with religious fundamentalism. Unfortunately, while this may have been ground breaking in its time (1961), it does not hold up. The portrayals of the church are too predictable and stale, too evangelical/christian centric to be realistic as future church. I much prefer the cyberpunk approach of Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash for how to envision a future thinking of faith. But who knows, 50 years from know, someone will be saying it doesn't hold up either.
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

The first half of this book is good. Huck Finn is a poor kid living on the Mississippi. His dad is a drunk and always gone. Finn lives with the old church ladies who teach him reading and writing. When dad comes back, things are so bad that Finn decides to fake his death and run away. What I like is the fact that Finn is pragmatic. What is the problem, how do I solve it. Didn't work? Roll with the punches as we develop a new plan. Finn ends up traveling down the Mississippi with runaway slave Jim and the two encounter all kinds of adventure. The second part of the book is just boring. At this point, Tom Sawyer enters the picture (whom Huck adores). Tom has a family and comes across as a bored rich, white kid. Tom also likes adventures, but his are all extravagant and over the top, created adventures not based in reality. Huck goes along, but since the adventure is created, it has no urgency and ends up not being very interesting. Unless your intent is to compare the two adventure styles, stick with the first half.
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note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.

The Age of Radiance

The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

Craig Nelson

Nelson presents the historical story of radiation, from discovery to the present. While it is a mostly known story, it is still fascinating and Nelson finds ways of putting the history together to tell a particular story. We are introduced to all the players in Europe and the US pre-WWII, and follow their contributions as scientists transition out of discovery and into application. Perhaps the most thought provoking part of the entire book is the discussion about the necessity of nuclear weapons for war. Nelson paints a picture suggesting that the only actual unique feature of nuclear weapons was the fear that they induced. He suggests that the purely military value was overstated, with equal devastation possible with conventional weapons. The impact of the fear throughout the cold war has lead to a general fear and misunderstanding of radiation. While he does not argue for/against current peaceful uses, Nelson does lay out much of the psychology and sociology that is helpful is thinking about why we are were we are today. This is one of those books that is both excellent as a resource for facts and information, and that sticks with you and makes you think.

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Naked in Baghdad: the Iraq War as Seen by NPR's correspondent

Anne Garrels

Basically a behind the scene memoir by Garrels of her time in and out of Iraq leading up to and during the 2003 war in Iraq. It is an interesting revelation about how reporters and foreign governments interact, how much graft and corruption there was in Iraq, how competitive and scoop oriented the media is (more scoop oriented than story or people oriented), and how beholden we are to this media for information. Garrels made efforts to find Iraqis and interview them, to really find the people of the country and not just report the government information. But this story is really about what it is like to be a journalist, not about the Iraq War. It is a decent companion to Baghdad Diaries, which is the Iraqi point of view on that war. But neither is really complete, as probably no single book can be.
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The Time Travelers Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

With this title, you might expect pure sci-fi. And while the plot mechanism is time travel, this is not really sci-fi. Instead, it is a romantic drama. It is an investigation into relationship and self identity. The story follows Henry, who is a CDP (chronally displaced person). That is, he time travels. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward. He does not control any of it, so finds that it happens often when his is stressed or anxious. The brilliant storytelling here is that each section begins with a date and Henry's age. Something like 'October 17th, 1998. Henry is 32 and 41. Claire is 24'. But these sections do not proceed in an strict chronological order, but are presented in such a way as to reveal the nature of the relationship between Henry and his wife Claire. So as the story progresses, as a reader I am working through what each character knows (or doesn't know) based on what they have experienced. This is great fun as a reader. However, as sci-fi, the time travel is nice. That is, Henry gives some soft explanation about fate, what can and cannot be altered based on information shared. But this is never really pushed (nor does it need to be for this novel). The breaking of time continuity is pushed a bit with Ingrid (Henry's ex-girlfriend), but a true sci-fi treatment might really investigate the nature of fate and information. Or the mechanism of the travel itself (which is also touched on superficially). But then it would be a totally different novel. So read this as a dramatic, fictional novel that uses time-travel as a device (much like Black Out is a historical fiction about WWII London that uses time-travel as a device). In both cases, time travel is not the essence, but the mechanism to tell a good story. With that expectation, you will enjoy this book.

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The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula K. Le Guin

George Orr is an ordinary guy. The only exception to this is that he is able to dream "effectively". That is, occasionally he has a dream that actually affects reality. For example, if he has an "effective dream" that chicken nuggets are the most fabulous food ever, he might wake to find that 5 years ago all fast restaurants changed their menus to serve only chicken nuggets (and nobody knows that there was any other reality). His dream might be vague, or have an intent, but the unconscious mind interprets the intent strangely (as dreams are wont to be) and manifests in reality in unintended ways. So of course, George is terrified of dreaming and seeks help. Enter Dr. Haber, dream/sleep specialist, who learns to direct George's dreams through hypnosis. Let the chaos begin.

I love the concept here and the fact that, using dreams and unconscious motivations, Le Guin is exploring the both the human brain and relationships, fear and power. All serious things to think about, and at the same time, it would not have surprised me if the last line of the book was something to the effect "When George woke up, he knew he would never use LSD again".

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Reached

Ally Condie
Book 3 in Matched series
 Matched - Book 1
 Crossed - Book 2

We pick up the storyline with Cassie as a government sorter (i.e. data analyst) extraordinaire, Ky a resistance pilot and Xander an Official Medic in a small border town. A plague hits the population and the resistance is able to manufacture and distribute a cure. This is the start of overthrowing the system and all three are working to help and find their own way (and find each other). There is not a lot of certainty (remember these are teenagers) and some half-hearted attempt to push thinking about the role of society and government. Condie is trying to make this relevant, to push the reader into making connections with current society and government. But everything is either too obvious or not interesting. It is an OK story, and taking the trilogy as a whole, everything is put together in a nice, tidy package. But aside from the basic premise of government controlled, computer matched marriages, in six months this will be entirely forgotten. 

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The Wreck of The River of Stars

Michael Flynn

The River of Stars is (was) a luxury liner, best in its class. Similar to the Titanic of Queen Mary in their time, The River of Stars was the biggest and most decadent of all space travel vehicles. It was also the last of the big magnetic sailing ships. Shortly after its launch, the fusion propulsion systems became the cheaper, more reliable, more modern method of outfitting ships. We pick up the story with The River of Stars classified as a hybrid (retrofitted with fusion engines) and operating with a minimal crew as a tramp ship with a cargo load headed for Jupiter. The crew is a collection of misfits and rejects personally collected by the Captain... who happens to die in the first chapter. So the misfit crew, no longer held together by their captain, struggles through a series of mishaps along their voyage. Flynn's excelling here is in using this plot to explore who these misfits are. Told in third person, and successively focusing on each crew member individually, as a reader we are privy to background and thinking from each individual point of view, knowing things that even the individuals are often not aware of about themselves. Flynn, after telling what a particular character concluded, would often follow it with the parenthetical (although they don't know it yet, they might be wrong about that conclusion). So we have a great story, good technical sci-fi, and interesting/novel characters. What I am not sure about is if the novel was satisfying. What do I require for an enjoyable, or thought provoking novel? My current thinking is that is was trying to be more thought provoking that it actually was, ultimately wasting the great story, good technical sci-fi and interesting/novel characters.

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Eifelheim

Michael Flynn

In the movies, first contact with an alien species always takes place in modern times, or in the future. There is no reason why it couldn't have happened in the past. In this case, in the middle ages during the Black Plague epidemic in Europe. This setting provides the canvas for Flynn to write what is largely a historical fiction novel about life in the middle ages. Yes, there are aliens. But the book is less about the aliens than about how the middle age world view informs thinking about everything. Specifically, we look at how literal the christianity of the time is, and strangely enough contrast this with a hyper-literal translation of the worldview into something the aliens can understand. It is almost comical that the locals don't see that talk about "a God in heaven, who will return to earth to save us" is interpreted as a being that also understands space travel and will be arriving shortly to help with ship repairs. Flynn then intersperses the story with a modern day couple doing research in cosmology and historical mathematics, unknowingly pursuing the first contact event from 700 years earlier. So while this has the makings of a great sci-fi/historical fiction mashup, I found myself bored. Maybe some editing to take it from 400 to 300 pages would have sped things up just enough to maintain my interest. I pushed through and read the entire thing simply because of my own personality defect of needing to know the end of the story (I hate loose ends).  Otherwise, the descriptions of middle ages life were interesting in the beginning and then not interesting enough to keep me engaged.

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The Circle

Dave Eggers

Do you know how you interact with a horror film, watching the teenager hear a strange noise in the dark basement of a secluded cabin in the remote part of the forest? You yell out "Do NOT go down there!!!". And then they do. This was my interaction with The Circle, but the topic is not teen slasher horror, but modern internet privacy. "Do NOT go down that road!!!". The Circle is everyone's worst fear of Google. They develop all kinds of apps and connections that allow everyone to be connected all the time. Retinal display (e.g. google glass), friend circles (e.g. facebook), zings (e.g. twitter), etc. to start. They have an awesome campus that employees never want to leave. Enter Mae, young new hire in Customer Experience. She (like most of the millions of digital natives in this novel) drank the Kool-aid and has no concern about privacy. In fact, she comes up with Privacy is Theft. Withholding anything from the public domain is theft from the betterment of humanity. You can see where this is going (but she can't). Eggers continually releases new Circle apps and products to take the reader well beyond any grey area, showing his agenda and hoping (I am sure) to be a prophetic voice in warning against the dangers coming our way. While reading, I also picked up a distinctly Brasil vibe, which was quite fun. Lots of small screens with various inputs, each a uni-tasker. The entire privacy discussion is extremely fascinating and just to show how subtle the questions are, just this week Sciam publishes a short article on privacy apps that sound remarkably like Eggers' (The Circle's) TruYou. So are they privacy enhancing, or just a short step away from privacy obliterating. Or how do we know?

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The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Richard P. Feynman

Really this is a set of collected speeches that Feynman gave over the course of his life. Some of it is quite technical (e.g. his talk about nano-technology), but still amazing in that much of his thinking in the 1960's is showing up today. What I enjoyed most about this were his ruminations on science and education. That is, what is science and why is it different from religion, or any other field of study for that matter. How do you teach science? What really is important to teach if you want to bring someone into the world of science, and not just dump a bunch of facts on to them? Worth it for all science educators (and religion teachers, I would say) to read at least those sections. 

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Submergence

J.M. Ledgard

The plot (such as it is) involves James and Danielle. It is really three memoirs, James, Danielle, and the one Christmas that they met and hit it off. Each individual story is the "submergence" of the title, with the joint memory interspersed for breathing room. James story is one of capture by Somali terrorists. Danielle is one of scientific inquiry into the depths of the ocean. This is really a 'state of mind' novel, giving the reader a picture of what happens in an isolated mind, whether by choice or by force. The prose is very matter of fact and at times, although I was reading from paper, had the distinct impression that I was listening to a monotonous voice giving me documentary style backstory. I must say that I didn't really understand this, thinking that this is a book to be read by a few and then discussed over coffee.

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Robert A. Heinlein

That Hugo Award generally gets them right. This is a straight up science fiction story. But the story is not only about the science fiction. We also get revolution, self determination, politics, love, family systems, and thinking about the individual vs. society. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly is a computer technician on the Lunar Penal colony. He was free born, spent some time on earth in school and then came home. He gets mixed up in a scheme to initiate a revolution and have the lunar colony declare itself independent from earth. What I love about this book is that we spend a lot of time with Manuel and get to know him. We also get treated to trivial little descriptions of what life is like on (in) the moon. The fact that residents use language of 'cubic' instead of 'area', the use of the lunar cycle and how it affects life, the way that "laws" and social conventions have developed in this prison with no guards. It is all fascinating. So while the plot is about revolution and independence, the story is about life and decisions in a strange place. Love this.

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Pnin

Vladimir Nabokov

In my recent reading, I have been contrasting Character and Narrative. Is the authors goal to have you know a person, or is the goal to tell a story? Nabokov writes a book about Timofey Pnin. This is a character book, in the extreme. Pnin is a professor of Russian at a small school in the east. He is an immigrant and has never really caught on to life in the United States. More accurately, he has a personality that does not recognize the need to "catch on" to life in the United States. As such, many (most) of his interactions are misinterpreted by either him or the other party. The entire novel is a series of interactions which push the reader deeper into understanding who Pnin is. And the descriptive prose by Nabokov is extensive. That is, paragraph length sentences with multiple parenthetical, relative and independent clauses. I would often have to reread a paragraph to find the subject/verb amidst the massive description just to track the intent of the sentence. Which may very well mean that I have missed the intent altogether. It is likely that the joy in reading a book like this is in savoring the descriptive, the clever turn of a phrase, the rabbit hole of prose. I feel like Nabokov accomplished his purpose with me, I know Pnin. But I did not savor. I will, however, reserve judgement since for me, it takes time to know whether this Pnin will stick with me, or will fall to some poorly used neural pathway, akin to the names of the barn cats that meandered through my life as a child.

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note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.

Neuromancer

William Gibson

Published in 1983, this is probably one of the first novels in the cyberpunk genre. Jacking into a matrix with hardwired biological/computer connections, nanotech, software based enhancements to humans, asian underground black market clinics to test everything out. More recent books in this genre that I have read are Feed, Snowcrash, Counting Heads. Neuromancer leaves nothing out. Case is a matrix cowboy who was burned and now finds himself a drug junky in the Asian underworld. He is pulled out of his slow suicide for a job and a chance at his life back. Along with other recruits (Molly is the muscle, Armitage the middleman/organizer, Flatline the computer based hacker personality), Case is charged with infiltrating the computer networks of one of the worlds biggest corporations. Who does he actually work for? Does a matrix cowboy have any responsibility to be ethical, or is he just working for the paycheck? How important is his life? A straight up thriller that, 30 years later, is still fresh.
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The Magician King

Lev Grossman

Picking up immediately after The Magicians, Grossman finally breaks new ground. Quentin and his friends are fully aware "adult magicians" in their travels to Fillory (aka Narnia) and therefore we are able to see this portion of the story as a bit farcical. When going on a quest, one does not make plans for what to quest for since in a magical world, the fact that you are on a quest will lead to the revelation of the purpose of the quest along the way. Farce. But then Grossman moves the characters back and forth into the "real world" and provides back story for how this entire situation gets started. That is, back story for how "the gods" are coming to shut down magic. I love how the characters in "real world" are struggling with the meaning of magic and the responsibility of power, the nature of existentialism, and the magical class system that they were raised in. Appropriate amounts of real thinking balance the silliness, and true seeking for meaning underlies the entire story. Here is to hoping that the final installment will evolve enough to push the thinking and meaning to new limits, making this a meaningful trilogy.

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The Magicians

Lev Grossman

Quentin is a brilliant but bored student in the New York public school system, preparing to be accepted into the Ivy League university of his choice and move on to a successful life. And then he is recruited to attend a highly prestigious school of magic where during his interview, he gets the "thrown into the frying pan" revelation that magic is real. It is everything he believed and hoped for while ready Fillory and Further. It is here that Grossman relies on a distinct popular culture knowledge (or at least a target audience knowledge) of C.S. Lewis Narnia series. Fillory is Narnia. A magical world that kids secretly get pulled into with talking animals, they become kings/queens but they must return home and future cousins/siblings go back in later volumes. Grossman provides enough hints about this magical world that insiders will know fully what the context is. And the same way with his school of magic Brakebills. He provides enough similarities to Hogwarts that readers can jump immediately and quickly into the world. This is potentially a massively beneficial strategy, allowing the story to cover lots of ground without spending the time developing the world fully. Just let the readers past experience with similar worlds fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, Grossman does not manage that balance well. At least 4 times throughout, I found myself saying "Ok, I get it" only to have to read through several more chapters of unnecessary detail and nuance. Only in the final third does he put everything together and does the story become a page turner. Only then, does the weaving of these worlds become its own unique thing, taking us to a place where neither Lewis nor Rowling were willing to go. And based on this, it means that I will probably need to read the sequel, which if the trend holds, will be a wholly unique offering of this mash-up sort of magical world.

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Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys

I have been interested lately in the difference between narrative and character. It seems that my reading enjoyment comes from narrative (see The City and the City as an example). By narrative, I mean the telling of a story where things happen. The intellectual thought process of following cause and effect, or of developing culture or history, creating a world system however strange it may be is fascinating. Character, on the other hand, seems to me to be about being and knowing. This book is definitely a character book. However, what is particularly intriguing here is that the character, the being and knowing that is revealed, is not a character.  Or perhaps more clearly, I think the character portrayed is actually Jamaica, the place. Set in British colony of Jamaica in the late 1800's after the abolishment of slavery, I was not engaged with the protagonist, but in what life was like in Jamaica at that time. The racial tension between mixed white/black people, poor whites and free blacks integrated with the reality of living day-to-day. Only after the fact did I put together the connection to the title (the Sargasso Sea) being this massive gyre in the Atlantic. And in hindsight, an oceanic gyre is the exactly correct description of the character of Jamaica as portrayed here. Brilliant.

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note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.

The Brothers K

David James Duncan

This is the story of the Chance family in the late 60's. Patriarch Hugh Chance is a minor league pitcher and even after a career ending injury, his identity is as a ball player. This identity is so strong that it is also the identity of his family (4 boys and twin girls). The family is also wrapped in the identity of the Seventh Day Adventist mother and her history. Narrated by Kincaid Chance (4th son), the story actually provides insight into the family life from the point of view of each of the brothers at various times. While the narrative ebbs and flows, sometimes engaging and other times dragging, the development of complex battle fronts within the family was always engaging. There is no typical antagonist here, but a series of familial interactions that are deep and interwoven in their motivations to allow the role of antagonist to be passed around the family and the community. In this way, the characterization was likely more in line with how actual families function. I absolutely loved the baseball portions of the book (the first third) and pushed through the middle to enjoy the last third as well.
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A Canticle for Leibowitz

Walter M Miller Jr.

Written at the height of the cold war (1959), Miller takes this opportunity to look at a possible future resulting from the likely nuclear holocaust decisions that he saw in his political leaders toying with. But instead of looking at the world dealing with the aftermath of a radiation event, we are treated to a historical detective story. Miller takes us on a sweeping journey through three, 500 year intervals in the three novellas that make up this book. Set in the Southwest (former) United States in an Abbey dedicated to the historical scientist/engineer Leibowitz, the monks are charged with preservation of ancient documents. They are some of the few literate people in a largely hunter/gather society. It is fascinating now, at the start of the 21st century, to think about what life will be like at the start of the 31st century. And to look back to the 11th century for clues about how dramatically life can change. Miller also asks us to think about the correlation between civilization and religion, the relationship between levels of technological advancement and secularism or religious influence. He asks us to evaluate our (American) belief in progress. The themes are intriguing and, even 50 years later, remarkably relevant. The story across the long view (1000's of years) provides a unique point of view and perspective that is fun to engage. And yet... I have had more fun thinking about this book and the implications of it that I did reading it. Somehow, I was not engaged, it was not a page turner for me. So put it somewhere you can pick it up on occasion, read through it slowly, and enjoy the unfolding revelations.

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The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Sherman Alexie

A somewhat autobiographical tale of life on the reservation. Alexie is a Spokane Indian and this collection of stories provides us a picture of modern reservation life. By no means is this a linear story of Alexie's life as he portrayed in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Instead, since these are fictional short stories, we are not really sure which character would be Alexie and the stories are mythological in scope. What I found fascinating was how, even after more than a century removed from traditional Indian life, a large part of life is spent struggling with the integration of traditional and "modern" life, both in terms of day to day living and in terms of expectations for how to live. What also comes through strongly is the honor given to tradition. It is clear that fancydancing and storytelling continue to provide a lot of meaning. By presenting these short stories, by embracing the free form, mythological storytelling style, Alexie provides real insight to how modern Indians think and who they are.

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Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Leslie T. Chang

I am not sure what genre this book falls in. It is part autobiography/memoir, part expose, part cultural exploration. Chang is a reporter who, while living in China for several years, also explores her own family history. She does this by investigating/developing relationships with the migrant class in south China. This class is predominantly female (70%) and young (starting at 15, with 20 somethings finding themselves old and experienced). They have moved from the village, where they lived on a family farm, and entered the big manufacturing cities. These cities are factory driven, with 10 million or so people living with the purpose of producing goods and (initially at least) sending money back home. Chang befriends some of the women working in the factory and writes about their transition to city life over the course of several years. This portion of the book is fascinating, and it is a bit of an expose about life in the big factories that produce all of our products. However, Chang focuses on the actions/life of the workers, including their own dreams & struggles. This means we are not being taken into a moralistic, anti-consumerist, worker-quality-of-life outrage against the corporation. Instead, we are looking at people and individual decisions about what makes life good and what makes life hard. We are looking at the changing of a culture from holding a collective, community based value to one in which individualism is king. This brings us to a place where we can really think about cultural differences and our (U.S.) role in globalization.

Chang intersperses this fascinating story with an exploration of her own family history. It just so happens that her genealogy includes advisors to emperors and participants in the events leading up to the cultural revolution. For me, this section loses steam. But I suppose it was necessary to allow a real comparison between the village-centric life (her uncle gives her a 30 generation genealogy and explains that its main purpose was to ensure that marriages did not happen between relatives who were too close) and the individual focus existence that is being promoted by the factory. I loved the exploration of how generations shake of values of their elders or if it is even possible to do so. I loved thinking about other community cultures in Latin America or Africa where land ownership has differed dramatically from China, and wondered how a view of the land could so dramatically affect a view of family. I loved thinking about globalization and its relationship to consumerist and individualistic identities in the producer, wondering about how these changing identities will manifest in culture.

This is a fascinating book to read, although it was slow enough at times that I had to commit to picking it back up. In the end, the whole process holds together and Chang makes it worth your while.

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The Man in the High Castle

Philip K Dick

Expectations are always high when reading the master of modern sci-fi. Unfortunately, this book didn't do anything for me. It is an alternate history, set in San Francisco in the 60's after the Axis victory in WWII. San Francisco is part of the Pacific States of America, a territory of Japan. The East is controlled by Germany, with the Rocky Mountain states in a semi-autonomous buffer zone. Germany has all the technology (they control hydrogen bombs, travel to Mars and offer 45 minute flights from Munich to San Francisco on their rockets). We are following several intertwined characters without any of them really rising to the role of protagonist. A dealer in American antiquities, a closeted Jew who makes fake American antiquities, Japanese trade minister, German special forces officers, etc. Throughout, Dick is painting a picture of what life might be like in this world. The novelty is in the introduction of the man of the title. He has written a book that is itself an alternate history that describes life in a world that the Allies win WWII. So alternate - alternate history. Clever. But clever in and of itself does not make an engaging book.

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Baghdad Diaries

Nuha al-Radi

A set of four diaries set over the course of about 15 years. The author is a Iraqi artist who was in Baghdad during the initial US bombing after the Kuwaiti invasion. She found that writing short snippets of thoughts and chronology was all she could manage creatively for awhile and it turned into a discipline she continued for the next decade. I love the descriptions of life in Iraq. It is not a description that is place based, although place is clearly important. Instead, it is relational. These are the people who lived in my house during the bombing, these are the people we checked on every week, these are the people we corresponded with, etc. And the little hints about what it means to be Iraqi (apparently Iraq is a dog country, while Lebanon tends to favor cats). Al-Radi has a section on war, embargo, exile, and identity. Each is revealing of the stresses and idiosyncrasies that come with being the recipient of bombs and missiles. While she is not blind to the wrong-doings of Iraq and its political leaders, she does legitimately call out the hypocrisy of the west, in particular the US and UK in the decade long sustained war. And continually asks the question about the justice of bombing the people of Iraq. Overall, while I enjoyed reading her first hand account of this now "old" war, the main effect was just to make me mad all over again. Frustrated with the political leadership of my country, both then and now.

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note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.

Grail

Elizabeth Bear
Book 3 of the Jacob's Ladder trilogy

Perceval as Captain, and Nova as her AI "Angel" have squashed all known remnant AI's and led the Jacob's Ladder through a 50 year time of relative peace. We open with the ship making contact with a human settlement on a planet (called Grail). With the intent of making landfall, Perceval must negotiate the political waters of what landfall would mean, both for the current inhabitants and for her own citizens. An ideological consensus does not exist on Jacob's Ladder or on Grail about whether landfall should be allowed or attempted. Amidst the continued AI/corporeal tensions and power struggles, we are treated to fun discussions of humanity's role in evolution in the universe and arguments about whether activist evolution is moral, or simply inevitable. Bear does a great job of teasing out some of the themes she set up in the first two books and setting up a tension that is easily translatable to 21st century earth. One of my favorite pieces is her referral to all ruling governments in 21st and 22nd century earth as Kleptocracies, including a reference to capitalism as one of the the religions of the time. As a forward looking piece of literature, we may in hindsight find these identifications prescient. 

This is an excellent sci-fi series. 

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Chill

Elizabeth Bear
Book 2 of the Jacob's Ladder trilogy

We start this episode with The World successfully surfing the front shockwave of a supernova. Perceval has successfully donned the mantle of Captain, with all its perqs and responsibilities. But she may not be emotionally ready to fully use the resources of the Angel that is ready to serve. Remnant minor angels continue to work at subterfuge and this entire novel follows Perceval in her efforts to maintain control of the world, keeping all its constituents safe. 

The fascinating thing about this series is the genre mashup of sci-fi and fantasy. It reads like a medieval knights tale, but is set on a massive interstellar space ship. And we begin to see the ideological lines setting up around the spectrum of directed v. natural evolution. Are humans "beyond evolution" since they dominate all other species? What is their responsibility in this role? Or should humans artificially limit themselves to participate as equals with other species? It is an interesting line of thinking that has implications for our current ideology around environmental impact. 

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Dust

Elizabeth Bear
Book 1 of the Jacob's Ladder trilogy

I would like to say this is straight up sci-fi, but in fact, it has the flavor of a fantasy novel... wrapped in straight up sci-fi. There are angels and battles, Houses in conflict and honor among royalty, gods and mythical creatures. Add in artificial intelligence, nanobots and symbionts, and type 1a supernovae and the fun begins. Finally sprinkle in some foreshadowing for black hole weapons and religious fervor in future episodes and I am hooked. For me, the joy of reading this was not knowing where we were going. Start with fantasy... proceed with caution.

If you need a plot synopsis, suffice it to say that Perceval is a knight of the royal bloodline. She has her wings amputated in battle after her surrender, which is completely without honor. She escapes from prison before her scheduled execution and works her way home to warn of the treachery that befell her and begin the planning for revenge. Meanwhile, the World itself turns out to be in grave danger, and the political reality is completely unstable with several factions vying for control, making catastrophe planning nearly impossible.

Have fun...
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As a Driven Leaf

Milton Steinberg

Published in 1939, the novel was written by a conservative Jewish Rabbi. It is written as a novel, but based on the idea of a historical figure Elisha ben Abuyah, of whom there is not actually very much known. The novel is set in the 1st century, moving between Palestine and Antioch (Syria), both under Roman rule. The protagonist Elisha was born to a landowner father who studied Greek philosophy as well as Jewish theology, and as a result, had greek tutors growing up. On his fathers death, he is put in the care of his uncle, and trained in the traditional Jewish scholarship, which eventually leads him to ordination as a Rabbi and as a member of the Sanhedrin. After a time, Elisha then leaves the faith to pursue a course of study in Greek philosophy, with the goal of creating a system of reason and logic that proves from unassailable axioms the existence of God.

The novel is fascinating on many levels. Steinberg paints a picture of 1st century life in two different worlds, the Jewish Palestine and the pagan Antioch. For each of these, he is able to demonstrate the idealism of the world as well as illuminating the underbelly. But this is not a historical narrative, so the idealism and the underbelly are all discovered in the midst of life experience, as each character develops over the course of their lives. Also fascinating is the metaphysical/theological conflict that is the center of Elisha's struggle: "What is the basis of faith?". Approached from the greek philosopher point of view as well as from the Rabbinical tradition, the implications of this study have real world impacts on people. In this world, metaphysical questions have physical realities. Also fascinating is the relationship between mainstream Judaism and the cults of Christianity and Gnosticism that are growing in prevalence. I think the western, christian ethnocentrism often thinks of 1st century as predominately christian. After the first easter, the world was taken over by a tidal wave of belief and conversion. More realistically perhaps, Steinberg shows how fledgling Christianity really is in the grand world of Pax Romana. Also interesting is how Pax Romana, the peace of Empire, is really what allowed this fledgling cult to survive, what allowed the relatively free development and flow of new ideas. So we must ask about the net benefit/cost of the Empire. And we must, of course, extrapolate to benefit/cost analysis of our current Empire.

The list of fascinating things could go on. Loved this novel.
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What I Talk about When I Talk about Running

Haruki Murakami

This is a short memoir describing a few years of Murakami's life in the early 2000's. As an avid runner (he has run at least one marathon a year for the past 25 years), the premise is one of illuminating his thinking about running and ruminating on its impact on his life. This particular book follows his preparations for one running of the New York City marathon in 2006. It turns out to be as much about him as a novelist and a person as it does about running. The only other thing I have read by Murakami is The Windup Bird Chronicle, which I really enjoyed and shows some of the same style characteristics. Here, I think, we get a picture of how Murakami is as a person, which informs his writing style. I would probably categorize him as a severe pragmatist. He takes everything in life in stride, accepting what befalls him as it is and moves on. There is no drama. Perhaps that should read NO drama. I don't know if this is Murakami personality, or this is Japanese culture. I suspect it is more of the former, and only a bit of the latter. When he talks about running, he does not proselytize, or dissuade. He reveals, "this is what I feel like when I run. I don't think it will be that way for everyone and if you think this sounds appealing and decide to run, great. If not, also great." You could substitute almost any idea in for running, as he says the same thing about his writing. "This is why I write. If someone happens to like what I write, that is great. If not, then they don't." And yet, with this pragmatic personality, Murakami is able to simultaneously demonstrate a true passion for what he does, describing the joy and energy that he receives from writing and running. It is by no means a dry or stale existence. He is a fascinating person and author. A very fun read.
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Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Marisha Pessl

One of my personality traits is the inability to leave a story unfinished. When it comes to things like work projects, this is a strength since it means projects get finished. When it comes to bad films or books, I suppose it is a weakness. I continue to read a bad book, even though it is not enjoyable or fulfilling, just to get to the end. So here we have the first review of a half-book. I am intentionally not finishing it, with the full support of my bibliophile/librarian/recommender-extraordinaire friend Nora.

Here's the thing. This book is all gimmick. Our storyteller is Blue. She is a senior in high school, travels around with her itinerant professor of a single father, and hasn't spent a full year in a single school for her entire life. Her education comes primarily from her father, who seems to be an arrogant, philosopher/historian type, but whom Blue adores and idolizes. So the gimmick of the text is that every thought that Blue has is footnoted and referenced. This is a cute device, and I was hoping that Pessl would hit it heavy early on to give the reader the idea, and then taper off, banking of the fact that an occasional inline citation would remind us of the personality of the character. But I suppose to her credit, she sticks with the gimmick throughout (the first half at least). Secondly, the story is really about these Breakfast Club like characters in school. The troubled teens that band together in spite of their differences, rallying around the part-time film class teacher as mentor. But I just wasn't that interested in the characters, nor was I patient enough to see them develop. While I don't need there to be action (a la fancy car chase scene), I do need to see progression of character. 300 pages in and I don't see it... or enough of it.
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Budding Prospects

T.C. Boyle

Our protagonist is Felix. He is a very smart, not very ambitious young man. I think he is intended to be a caricature of the millennial generation, or at least with much of what is supposed to be wrong with it. Felix finds himself embarking on a new venture to grow pot in Northern California. He (and two buddies) provide the year of labor in exchange for 1/3 of the profit (starting out at $500k). Of course they encounter problems with locals, nature, the law, and themselves. But through it all, we are taken in with a story-telling style that mimics the millennial generations traits of narcissism and entitlement. The story folds in on itself, forcing the reader to be as myopic as the characters. When a character is introduced that could potentially provide perspective, we see them through millennial eyes. In this way, Boyle does an excellent job of drawing the reader in and creating the world that the characters live in. Only after sitting and reflecting a bit after the story has wrapped can we see what was, and what could have been. I find that I like this book better having read it, than while I was reading it. So if you like to discuss these sorts of themes with your friends, it is quick and worth the read.
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The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood

Iris Chase narrates her life story in three views: the present (as an 80 something woman), the past (what an 80 something year old woman remembers of her youth), and from within a secretive love affair. The love affair is also part of the past, but written as 1st person present. The setting is 1930's central Canada (Toronto and environs) and follows the political landscape of WWI, Depression, and the Red Scare from the Canadian perspective. It turns out, however, that this book is not really about story or plot. It is about Iris and her sister Laura. It is about who two sisters are, not about what they do or how they live. It is about relationship, love, endurance, guilt, duty, and place.

I must admit that I didn't love this book. It didn't do enough. Probably the only reason I stayed with it was because the three view mechanism that Atwood used to tell the story changed views often enough to allow me to push through. But in the end, not enough happened. I am thinking that in order for character to mean something, the characters must engage with the world. They must do something in order for character to be revealed or formed. I feel the same displeasure with TV like "Downton Abbey". The characters sit around being (outraged, pleased, confused, put out, etc.) and we don't get to see often enough where these values come from or how the affect you in the world. And we don't want the other extreme, where there is all action, and no character (a la Clive Cussler). Many, I am sure, would argue that sci-fi often goes to this extreme of plot without character, but I would argue that good sci-fi at least tackles big ideas, which can become character-like in how you think about a story. Maybe I need to try a couple of "pure character" books of the highest quality to see how they sit with my theory.

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note: this book is part of a Reading Lolita in Tehran project, which you can read more about here.

The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel

Adam Johnson

I suppose that this is fictional realism. That is, a fictional story that is based in reality. This could have actually happened. In fact, the story and writing reminded me a lot of both Unbroken and Shantaram. Specifically, all of these stories follow a protagonist through a portion of their life and the life described is fantastical. The events and interactions and series of coincidences are crazy/amazing that they could happen to a single person. And these three books are non-fiction, fiction based on a true character and pure fiction. But the gestalt is the same.

Based on his research and interviews with those who have interacted with North Korea, Johnson creates the character Pak Jun Do. Jun Do is raised by his father (a single dad) in an orphanage. He takes on the identity and characteristics of an orphan (a particularly low social class) while his self identity is as a regular kid who lost his mother. As Jun Do grows, we follow him through his jobs as a tunnel rat (military position of living/fighting in the tunnels that cut under the DMZ), a covert radio operator on fishing boat and in prison. We are introduced to the crazy social strictures of North Korea, ostensibly a fear based society where it is better to feed yourself to a shark that to lose your copy of the portrait of the Great Leader Kim Jung Il. It is also a society where the story is king. It is more important to have a believable story, or at least plausible, than to be a truthful person. This way at least you give the listener something to hold their hat. Johnson contrasts this with the American society, where the truth of the story doesn't matter, but it is because we judge the honesty/trustworthiness of the person. Johnson demonstrates this throughout the book, but really drives it home in the second half when he starts following Commander Ga, the Minister of Prisons and Mines. His interactions with the interrogation unit are highly illuminating.

Perhaps the most valuable part of the text is the appendix interview between Johnson and his editor. This interview gives some background on the research done to create the characters and describe the culture of the close North Korean society. This interview gives confidence that we really are reading fictional realism. Without this, you could easily mis-categorize this novel as dystopian. In fact, maybe the most amazing thing is that this story is more on par with Hunger Games and Divergent than it is with any realistic situation. 

A great book on many levels.
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The Reading Lolita in Tehran Project

More information on this project can be found here

Baghdad Diaries by Nuha al-Radi

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Dean's December, Herzog and More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow

The Clown by Heinrich Boll

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

Jacques Le Fataliste by Diderot

Shamela and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

The Blind Owl  by Sadeq Hedayat

The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James

In the Penal Colony and The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville

Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading and Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad

The Language Police by Diane Ravitch

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

The Net of Dreams by Julie Salamon

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

A Thousand and One Nights by Scheherazade

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky

Loitering with Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor

A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Back When We Were Grownups and St. Maybe by Anne Tyler

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Galileo's Dream

Kim Stanley Robinson

I love this guy's work. Both the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, Blue) and The Years of Rice and Salt show deep insight into culture, civilization and the politics of being. The current book is no different. Basically a biography of Galileo, Robinson provides a fascinating look at the political and cultural context for Galileo's life, work and the decisions he made. Intersperse this with a bit of 1000 year time travel to the Galilean moons of Jupiter we have jumped from historical biography to science fiction. I love that Robinsons starting point is that future humans would sacrifice two gas giant planets in the solar system as a source of energy to push a quantum time travel device into the past. Of course you would do this. And now that it is done, we have a mechanism to look at Galileo and his impact on our current scientific worldview, posit his impact of the future of humanity and dabble in explanations for a universal/scientific revelation of the identity of God (and get Galileo's thoughts on the matter while we are at it). Robinson blows my mind. Unfortunately, with all of this fascinating and interesting storyline, I found that I was not engaged in this book like I have been in the past. I was actually able to put this down for weeks at a time. Apparently it is possible for a book to be fascinating, but not engaging. But still, read this book, and then let's talk.
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The Fall of Five

Pittacus Lore

Book 4 of the Lorien Legacies series

This is becoming my favorite serial series. It is lightweight enough that I don't mind waiting a year between installments (the plot doesn't required that I know the ending), but intriguing enough to pull be back for each installment. In this episode, we have 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 all hanging out, having just survived a battle with the enemy. They are trying to plan their next move when they find 5. With the group all together (including the humans), individual personalities, histories and loyalties begin to rise to the surface. In the end, we get story altering information about 5, 8, 10 and even BK. Fun, Fun, Fun, bring on the next...

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Mindset

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

Subtitle: The new psychology of success: How we can learn to fulfill our potential.

Dweck is a psychologist who did a bunch of research (starting with kids) about how people learn, think about intelligence and respond to failure. She comes up with a paradigm that suggests people are either in a "Fixed Mindset" or a "Growth Mindset". Fixed being: you can't change your talent or intelligence, and Growth being: you can learn new talents and learn to be more intelligent. Sort of an "if you try you can do more". Notice that this is not you can do "it", but do "more", because she does not suggest that everyone can do anything, with effort. But talent and intelligence is something that can be developed. As with all good self-help, popular psychology books, the "findings" of the research generally come across as DUH!. But Dweck infuses her book with application suggestions, leading to perhaps the most interesting insights. She presents cases for how language used can actually push people into either a fixed mindset or growth mindset in different situations. As a teacher, a coach, a person interested in social organization and structures, I see daily how students have become "grade hounds" and fall firmly into the fixed mindset. With this, I have also noticed how my natural language pushes people that way (as most of us probably do in U.S. culture). So I suppose I was the target audience, someone who will now think about my language and my discussions, working to motivate people with development oriented, growth mindsets instead of results driven, fixed mindsets. The DUH! portion may be that this has been my goal and my interest in teaching and coaching from day one, but now I have a framework to help shape my own thinking.
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Unsouled

Neal Shusterman

The third in the trilogy (Unwind, Unwholly), Unsouled picks up with the AWOL unwinds scattered around after their hideout is discovered and destroyed by the Juvenile Authority. Shusterman proceeds to spend the entire novel connecting the pieces of all the major characters. Unfortunately, he also decides to reconnect story-lines with minor characters. The storyline feels like he is trying to weave together an extremely complex plot into a clever and deep conclusion. In fact, a complex plot is not necessary (and comes out as manufactured complexity). Instead, since he has such great material in the unwind and rewind ideas, we should be watching the characters grow into their understanding of the implications of these ideas and alternatives. We get glimpses of the question of whether the Composite has a soul. But Shusterman never lets the characters explore this (and by extension, we don't get to explore it). In the end, I will recommend this only as a means to complete the series. It doesn't really provide the metaphysical substance that was promised in the first two volumes and it leaves too many loose ends (even though it seems his goal is to wrap all loose ends).

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Bloody Jack

L.A. Meyer

Set in the 1700's, the story follows Mary Faber, a young orphan in London who escapes her life on the street by posing as a boy and getting a job on a royal navy ship. She gets in a couple of years of experience before she is discovered. During that time, she makes friends, gets a reputation as Bloody Jack for her participation in boarding a pirate ship, saves the sinking ship from certain doom, and makes everyone extremely wealthy. An easy and fun read, with good research to give us what seems a pretty good picture of life on the seas in the royal navy.

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Allegiant

Veronica Roth

Book 3 of Divergent trilogy

The factionless have taken over Chicago, breaking the social structure of the city. A new conflict is arising between the factionless and the Allegiant, who hope to return the city to a system of factions. With this background, Tris and Four decide that they are going to leave the city (as suggested in the message from Tris great grandmother) and most of this final installment takes place outside Chicago (at O'Hare airport in turns out). On the outside, we get a picture of what the world really is, with the US consisting of a few metropolitan centers, surrounded by those who live in "The Fringe". In this world, society is divided into Genetically Pure and Genetically Damaged, which for Tris is just another couple of factions. I like that Roth has added a completely new layer to this series with the genetic questions. I like that she never "preaches" by telling the reader what to think. Instead, there are hints about the characters starting to think about equality and mixing of factions. We readers are pointed in a direction, but don't have to listen to the authors point of view through speeches of the characters. We get to watch the authors point of view through the actions and life choices of the characters. A solid, enjoyable, thought-provoking conclusion to this series. Highly recommended.

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Shantaram

Gregory David Roberts

An epic novel. And by that I mean huge, covering lots of territory, broad in scope. The book is fiction, but based (presumably loosely) on the life of an escaped Australian convict. In the novel, this character is Lin. Lin has traveled to Bombay to get lost in the sea of people there. He gets involved with the local underworld (working in the money trade, passports, etc.), lives in a slum, spends time in prison, lives in a rural village and works as a talent scout in Bollywood.  In all of these contexts, Lin (and we) get to know Bombay and fall in love with the city on a variety of levels. Throughout, the enduring characteristic of Lin is that he will always help a friend, at any cost. And while this often gets him into trouble, it also bonds him to people who help him out as well. After spending a large portion of the novel in Bombay, Lin travels to Afghanistan on a gun delivery mission and we get a good introduction to that country during the Russian occupation. I actually listened to the audio version of this book and it was a fabulous book to listen to. The reader captured the indian accents extremely well and I found myself laughing out loud (which I would not have done with text). In hindsight, the love for Bombay is very romantic and clearly leaves out the crowds and claustrophobia and filth and density of the city. But it makes for a great novel.

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I am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Last Days of Lorien

Pittacus Lore

This novella is a continuation in the Lorien Legacies series. Set on Lorien before the invasion of the Mogs, we get a picture of what life is like and how complacent the Loric have become. The protagonist of this iteration is Sandor, who eventually becomes Cepan to Nine. He is basically a hacker in a world where no one would ever believe a hacker could exist. A few fun details, and since it is a novella, it takes about an hour to read.

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The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

As lighthearted a look at teen cancer as is probably possible. I didn't think this was a great book in that the story was pretty straight forward. A couple of kids with cancer meet up and probe the existential world they live in. Neither is really interested in developing real relationships because they don't want to be a "grenade" for the other. But relationships happen and the characters are appropriately cynical, thoughtful about their disease, expressing their teen angst, and mature beyond their years. It is a quick read, and enjoyable... just not astounding. I would still recommend Going Bovine, although it is not explicitly about cancer, but about the wacky way a particular brain may try to cope with extreme stress (which is cancer induced). Maybe these two books would be a good point/counterpoint on how to write about the ugliness of adolescent mortality?

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