Mike's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 01 Mar 2025 15:48:32 -0800 60 Mike's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History]]> 429483

Just as much as kings and queens, battles and empire, Britain's great themes have been the liberty of the individual, the rule of law, and the parliamentary democracy invented to protect them. Ever since Caractacus and Boudicca surprised the Romans with the bravery of their resistance, Britain has stood out as the home of freedom. From Thomas More to William Wilberforce, from Gladstone to Churchill, Britain's history is studded with heroic figures who have resisted tyranny in all its guises, whether it be the Stuart kings' belief in divine right, the institution of slavery, or the ambitions of Napoleon and Hitler.]]> 848 Rebecca Fraser 039332902X Mike 0 to-read 3.95 The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History
author: Rebecca Fraser
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization, #4)]]> 78166 1196 Will Durant 0965000753 Mike 0 to-read 4.38 1950 The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization, #4)
author: Will Durant
name: Mike
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1950
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (The Story of the World, #1)]]> 225951
Told in a straightforward, engaging style that has become Susan Wise Bauer's trademark, The Story of the World series covers the sweep of human history from ancient times until the present. Africa, China, Europe, the Americas―find out what happened all around the world in long ago times. This first revised volume begins with the earliest nomads and ends with the last Roman emperor. Newly revised and updated, The Story of the World, Volume 1 includes maps, a new timeline, more illustrations, and additional parental aids. This read aloud series is designed for parents to share with elementary school children. Enjoy it together and introduce your child to the marvelous story of the world's civilizations.

Each Story of the World volume provides a full year of history study when combined with the Activity Book, Audiobook, and Tests―each available separately to accompany each volume of The Story of the World Text Book. Volume 1 Grade Recommendation: Grades 1 5. Illustrated throughout with black and white drawings and maps]]> 349 Susan Wise Bauer 1933339004 Mike 5 4.26 Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (The Story of the World, #1)
author: Susan Wise Bauer
name: Mike
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Elegy for April (Quirke, #3) 7431670 Quirke � the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist � is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor

April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Though her family is one of the most respected in the city, she is known for being independent-minded; her taste in men, for instance, is decidedly unconventional.

Now April has disappeared, and her friend Phoebe Griffin suspects the worst. Frantic, Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, and asks him for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men follow April's trail through some of the darker byways of the city to uncover crucial information on her whereabouts. And as Quirke becomes deeply involved in April's murky story, he encounters complicated and ugly truths about family savagery, Catholic ruthlessness, and race hatred.

Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of the difficult and relentless love between a father and his daughter, this is Benjamin Black at his sparkling best.


]]> 293 Benjamin Black 0805090916 Mike 3 fiction, mystery
There are beautiful descriptions here, of a bleak winter Dublin, of the people in a wealthy powerful family and a group of young friends. Black/Banville is good at describing characters and bringing them off the page . . . but the substance is thin. A woman disappears, and the players in the drama spend 300 pages telling each other that they don't know where she went.

Some subjects, like race and class in 1950s Ireland, are touched on, but very lightly and gingerly. Even the relationships between the characters feel in the end very insubstantial - these are all loners moving into and out of each others' lives without making much of a connection.

A pleasant read, but without much substance behind it - this is a book to be enjoyed but ultimately forgotten. ]]> 3.61 2010 Elegy for April (Quirke, #3)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Mike
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/02
date added: 2023/07/02
shelves: fiction, mystery
review:
While reading this book I kept thinking "nothing is really happening, but the writing is great". And that was true for 95% of the book. Finally, at seemingly the last moment, parts of the mystery are solved, but in a truly unbelievable manner, and in a way that does not redound to our heroes' credit.

There are beautiful descriptions here, of a bleak winter Dublin, of the people in a wealthy powerful family and a group of young friends. Black/Banville is good at describing characters and bringing them off the page . . . but the substance is thin. A woman disappears, and the players in the drama spend 300 pages telling each other that they don't know where she went.

Some subjects, like race and class in 1950s Ireland, are touched on, but very lightly and gingerly. Even the relationships between the characters feel in the end very insubstantial - these are all loners moving into and out of each others' lives without making much of a connection.

A pleasant read, but without much substance behind it - this is a book to be enjoyed but ultimately forgotten.
]]> A Short History of Time 6691081
This book concerns the origins and meanings of such concepts as "month", "week", "hour", and "year". One problem, of course, is that a year is not evenly divisible into a whole number of days - and this book details the historical knots people have tied themselves into to deal with that fact. The reckoning of Easter has been a historical thorn, in particular, with political/religious implications that still resonate today. ]]> 137 Leofranc Holford-Strevens Mike 3
There is a whole chapter just on the calculations for Easter, which drove Christians crazy for centuries, and was the basis for the black art of computus, devoted entirely to trying to balance the astronomical and calendrical requirements of the spring festival. I had read before that early church fathers had sent out letters each year to let their churches know when Easter would be that year - now I understand the depth of that undertaking.

Also interesting is the astrological basis for our weekday names, and the story of the battle between the 8-day Roman market cycle with what became the 7-day week, and the reforms that in the 20th century almost created several days in our year that would be "outside" the days of the week.

There is too much jargon at times to fully follow the narrative of the systems and their reforms. ]]> 3.00 2005 A Short History of Time
author: Leofranc Holford-Strevens
name: Mike
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2009/08/01
date added: 2023/04/06
shelves: world-history, science, non-fiction
review:
This fascinating little volume has to do with the day, the week, the month, and the year, and the perennial problem of measuring and labeling them properly. THE central problem is that the year is not evenly divisible into a whole number of days, and certainly not divisible into a whole number of months. Various cultures and nations have dealt with this in a wide variety of ways by adding leap days, leap weeks, and even leap months, in a dizzying variety of weirdly repeating cycles. For example, an early Iranian calendar had 12 30-day months with 5 additional days and various additional days as necessary. The maddening irregularity of the day/year cycle and the surprising diversity of the solutions which have been tried are very interesting.

There is a whole chapter just on the calculations for Easter, which drove Christians crazy for centuries, and was the basis for the black art of computus, devoted entirely to trying to balance the astronomical and calendrical requirements of the spring festival. I had read before that early church fathers had sent out letters each year to let their churches know when Easter would be that year - now I understand the depth of that undertaking.

Also interesting is the astrological basis for our weekday names, and the story of the battle between the 8-day Roman market cycle with what became the 7-day week, and the reforms that in the 20th century almost created several days in our year that would be "outside" the days of the week.

There is too much jargon at times to fully follow the narrative of the systems and their reforms.
]]> <![CDATA[Quite Ugly One Morning (Jack Parlabane, #1)]]> 289169
Quite Ugly One Morning introduces Brookmyre's signature protagonist, the hard-partying, wisecracking investigative journalist Jack Parlabane, who is not afraid to bend the laws of the land (or even the laws of gravity) to get to the truth. Parlabane is nursing a horrific hangover when he stumbles across the corpse of the scion of a wealthy Edinburgh medical family. Determined to get to the bottom of the murder himself, he quickly becomes enmeshed in a wild adventure that will take him through all the strata of Edinburgh society and into some dangerous (and hysterical) situations.

Laced with acerbic wit and crackling dialogue, Quite Ugly One Morning is a wickedly entertaining and vivacious thriller.]]> 312 Christopher Brookmyre 0349108854 Mike 0 to-read 3.92 1996 Quite Ugly One Morning (Jack Parlabane, #1)
author: Christopher Brookmyre
name: Mike
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tiber and the Potomac: Rome, America, and Empires of Trust]]> 6832648
The Tiber and the Potomac explores the amazing parallels between history's two most unusual superpowers. Both nations built empires based on trust, skillfully making friends of enemies. During the course of these lectures, Madden not only reveals these often surprising similarities, but also extracts useful principles from history, including vital lessons from Rome's 100-year struggle with terrorism.]]> 7 Thomas F. Madden 1436169321 Mike 5
In the first lecture, Madden correctly identifies the enduring mystery of the American empire, which is that while it exists, the population at large doesn't seem to really know about it or ever discuss it. We have an unexamined empire, and Madden goes on to explain why that is.

He then goes on to explain the history of the Roman republic, from the overthrow of the Etruscan kings to the alliance of the Italian peninsula. What was fascinating about this was how he was able to explain the Roman point of view and what they were really trying to achieve, and also why an alliance with Rome was perceived as so valuable. I've taken many classes on Rome and read a lot of books about the rise of the republic and fall of the empire, but this was the first that made any sense (to me) of the relationship of Rome to the Greeks, of Rome's reaction to the first sack in 387BC, and of the driving forces to empire that made it almost inevitable.

What is also fascinating is Madden's assertion that the writers of the Constitution not only knew Roman history well, but that they purposely set out to create America as the new Rome, with a governmental system that was even more difficult to wield than Rome's. I had my doubts that those men in the 18th century really were so steeped in Roman history and civic mythology, until I learned this week that Harrison's lengthy inauguration address in 1841, which is generally regarded as having contributed to his quick demise in office, primarily concerned Roman proconsuls. Amazing that this history is no longer taught, alluded to, or known by many in this country.

I could go on and on about how insightful this course was. Madden talks about how each empire has dealt with religious extremism, paxes both Roman and American and how they have led to fierce internal fighting, and has even highlighted why we may see British citizens voting in American elections before too many more decades go by. A brilliant piece of work. ]]> 4.33 2008 The Tiber and the Potomac: Rome, America, and Empires of Trust
author: Thomas F. Madden
name: Mike
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/01
date added: 2020/09/16
shelves: world-history, american-history
review:
This was an amazingly great course. Madden's thesis that the American empire resembles the Roman empire is of course, not new, but the way he characterizes the two entities as a separate kind of empire (different from a (merely) commercial empire or an empire of conquest), and the specific instances and themes he draws out to illuminate the parallel issues that both alliances had and have to face help the listener better understand both the Romans and the Americans.

In the first lecture, Madden correctly identifies the enduring mystery of the American empire, which is that while it exists, the population at large doesn't seem to really know about it or ever discuss it. We have an unexamined empire, and Madden goes on to explain why that is.

He then goes on to explain the history of the Roman republic, from the overthrow of the Etruscan kings to the alliance of the Italian peninsula. What was fascinating about this was how he was able to explain the Roman point of view and what they were really trying to achieve, and also why an alliance with Rome was perceived as so valuable. I've taken many classes on Rome and read a lot of books about the rise of the republic and fall of the empire, but this was the first that made any sense (to me) of the relationship of Rome to the Greeks, of Rome's reaction to the first sack in 387BC, and of the driving forces to empire that made it almost inevitable.

What is also fascinating is Madden's assertion that the writers of the Constitution not only knew Roman history well, but that they purposely set out to create America as the new Rome, with a governmental system that was even more difficult to wield than Rome's. I had my doubts that those men in the 18th century really were so steeped in Roman history and civic mythology, until I learned this week that Harrison's lengthy inauguration address in 1841, which is generally regarded as having contributed to his quick demise in office, primarily concerned Roman proconsuls. Amazing that this history is no longer taught, alluded to, or known by many in this country.

I could go on and on about how insightful this course was. Madden talks about how each empire has dealt with religious extremism, paxes both Roman and American and how they have led to fierce internal fighting, and has even highlighted why we may see British citizens voting in American elections before too many more decades go by. A brilliant piece of work.
]]> Calypso 38348476
If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.]]> 272 David Sedaris 0316392359 Mike 5 humor 4.11 2018 Calypso
author: David Sedaris
name: Mike
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2018/09/21
date added: 2019/08/26
shelves: humor
review:
A terrific, human memoir. Sedaris is hilarious and open and despicable, but in ways that feel entirely familiar. Here he is dealing primarily with his relationships with his siblings and his aging father, life on the road, his home life, his partner. He has a genius for a deeply funny turn of phrase. His humanity, his guilt with himself, and his (one imagines) exaggerated weirdness all blend into a series of wildly entertaining and bittersweet essays.
]]> <![CDATA[Perelandra (Space Trilogy, #2)]]> 102550 C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which also includes Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength, Perelandra continues the adventures of the extraordinary Dr. Ransom. Pitted against the most destructive of human weaknesses, temptation, the great man must battle evil on a new planet -- Perelandra -- when it is invaded by a dark force. Will Perelandra succumb to this malevolent being, who strives to create a new world order and who must destroy an old and beautiful civilization to do so? Or will it throw off the yoke of corruption and achieve a spiritual perfection as yet unknown to man? The outcome of Dr. Ransom's mighty struggle alone will determine the fate of this peace-loving planet.]]> 190 C.S. Lewis 074323491X Mike 3 4.06 1943 Perelandra (Space Trilogy, #2)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1943
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Exhalation 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang Mike 0 to-read 4.27 2019 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: Mike
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kiss Me Again, Stranger 919029 319 Daphne du Maurier 0671753282 Mike 4 literature 4.03 1952 Kiss Me Again, Stranger
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Mike
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/01
date added: 2019/06/03
shelves: literature
review:
A surprisingly excellent collection of short stories, from an author I've only known from "If only I'd known" Gothic romances. du Maurier's stories are creepy, intriguing, very well written, and efficient.
]]> Little Darlings 41806986 “Mother knows best� takes on a sinister new meaning in this unsettling thriller perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Grimms� Fairy Tales.

Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.

A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley―to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.

Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking―and rechecking―your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.]]> 312 Melanie Golding 1683319974 Mike 0 currently-reading 3.62 2019 Little Darlings
author: Melanie Golding
name: Mike
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim, #1)]]> 5776788
Life sucks and then you die. Or, if you’re James Stark, you spend eleven years in Hell as a hitman before finally escaping, only to land back in the hell-on-earth that is Los Angeles.

Now Stark’s back, and ready for revenge. And absolution, and maybe even love. But when his first stop saddles him with an abusive talking head, Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than you’d expect, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future.

Resurrection sucks. Saving the world is worse.

Darkly twisted, irreverent, and completely hilarious, Sandman Slim is the breakthrough novel by an acclaimed author.]]> 388 Richard Kadrey 0061714305 Mike 3 3.95 2009 Sandman Slim (Sandman Slim, #1)
author: Richard Kadrey
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2019/03/08
date added: 2019/03/08
shelves: fantasy, fiction, horror, humor
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (Johannes Cabal, #1)]]> 5750628
Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not "soul" . . . He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever.

To make the bet even more interesting, Satan throws in that diabolical engine of deceit, seduction, and corruption known as a "traveling circus" to aid in the evil bidding. What better place exists to rob poor sad saps of their souls than the traveling carnivals historically run by hucksters and legendary con men?

With little time to lose, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire (an unfortunate side effect of Johannes's early experiments with necromancy), to be the carnival's barker. On the road through the pastoral English countryside, this team of reprobates wields their black magic with masterful ease, resulting in mayhem at every turn.

Johannes may have the moral conscience of anthrax, but are his tricks sinful enough to beat the Devil at his own game? You'll never guess, and that's a promise!

Brilliantly written and wickedly funny, "Johannes Cabal the Necromancer" combines the chills and thrills of old-fashioned gothic tales like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the mischievous humor of "Wicked," and the sophisticated charms of" Jonathan Strange &Mr. Norrell "and spins the Faustian legend into a fresh, irreverent, and irresistible new adventure.]]> 291 Jonathan L. Howard 0385528086 Mike 0 to-read 3.93 2009 Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (Johannes Cabal, #1)
author: Jonathan L. Howard
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology: Celebrating 25 Years]]> 1754497
There's no mystery to the award-winning success of Warner Books' Mysterious Press: terrific tales well-told by the industry's best writers. Now, in honour of its landmark silver anniversary, Mysterious Press serves up an original short story anthology packed with a who's who of the mystery world, including M. C. Beaton, Charlotte Carter, Loren D. Estleman, Joe Gores, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Peter Lovesay, William Marshall, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake and more.

Donald E. Westlake - Come Again?
Loren D. Estleman - The Anniversary Waltz
Joe Gores - Inscrutable
Peter Lovesey - The Usual Table
William Marshall - THEM!
Macia Muller - The Imposter
Ed McBain - Activity in the Flood Plain
Stuart M. Kaminsky - Sometimes Something Goes Wrong
Jerome Charyn - Countess Kathleen
Archer Mayor - Instinct
Margaret Maron - What's in a Name?
James Crumley - Coming Around the Mountain
M.C. Beaton - Handle With Care
Joe R. Lansdale - The Mule Rustlers
Lindsey Davis - Body Zone
Robert Greer - Revision
Charlotte Carter - Birdbath
Beth Saulnier - High Maintenance]]> 336 Mysterious Press 0892967390 Mike 3
I'm struck a bit at the way mystery authors especially rely on type characters for their stories. There isn't much of an opportunity to really develop character too extensively in a short format, but the fallback to stereotypes seems even more pronounced here than in other fiction. Ranging from tongue-in-cheek neanderthal noir stereotypes to stereotypes from the modern liberated woman's point of view. The characters just don't hold many surprises.

"What's in a Name?" by Margaret Maron stands out as a nice representative and a solid little work of fiction. ]]> 3.58 2001 The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology: Celebrating 25 Years
author: Mysterious Press
name: Mike
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2018/10/01
date added: 2018/10/01
shelves: fiction, mystery, short-fiction
review:
An anthology of new short works, commissioned by a crime/mystery imprint at around the turn of the century. The authors are mostly crime fiction authors active in the 25 years or so before 2000. Some amusing work here, but the quality is spotty.

I'm struck a bit at the way mystery authors especially rely on type characters for their stories. There isn't much of an opportunity to really develop character too extensively in a short format, but the fallback to stereotypes seems even more pronounced here than in other fiction. Ranging from tongue-in-cheek neanderthal noir stereotypes to stereotypes from the modern liberated woman's point of view. The characters just don't hold many surprises.

"What's in a Name?" by Margaret Maron stands out as a nice representative and a solid little work of fiction.
]]> <![CDATA[At Home: A Short History of Private Life]]> 10409199 581 Bill Bryson 0767919394 Mike 5
I am infinitely in love with Bryson's work. His very dry wit comes through in his assessment of various characters in history, with beautifully droll adverbs adorning quotes, rivalries and friendships and inventions and historical trends limned beautifully.

Interestingly, I began reading this book as an audio book many years ago, but stopped, because I realized I needed to see pictures of the structures and buildings he was talking about, and so I wanted to read a paper version. Surprisingly, the book itself (at least the edition I read) was sparsely and somewhat irrelevantly illustrated - I needn't have waited. If you have a chance, try to get a hold of the illustrated editions. ]]> 4.16 2010 At Home: A Short History of Private Life
author: Bill Bryson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2018/09/18
date added: 2018/09/21
shelves: american-history, non-fiction, world-history
review:
Every paragraph of this book makes me wish that schools used Bryson's books to teach history instead of whatever lame texts they used and are undoubtedly still using. He has a way of inspiring the most dull sounding (on the surface) topics with personality and amusement, all the while turning the history of the world around us - literally, the most intimate and familar world around us - into a big story, with heroes and villains, thieves and stalwarts. He touches on so many topics - from central park to the spice trade - that it is impossible not to be enriched and also blessed with a feeling for the _logic_ of historical trends.

I am infinitely in love with Bryson's work. His very dry wit comes through in his assessment of various characters in history, with beautifully droll adverbs adorning quotes, rivalries and friendships and inventions and historical trends limned beautifully.

Interestingly, I began reading this book as an audio book many years ago, but stopped, because I realized I needed to see pictures of the structures and buildings he was talking about, and so I wanted to read a paper version. Surprisingly, the book itself (at least the edition I read) was sparsely and somewhat irrelevantly illustrated - I needn't have waited. If you have a chance, try to get a hold of the illustrated editions.
]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Mike 5 fiction 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2016/03/15
date added: 2018/04/29
shelves: fiction
review:
A beautiful, hilarious farce. The adventures of a unreliable narrator/fan pushing against the quotidian life of a significant artist, forcing contact, and commenting on the interaction of art with the real world.
]]> <![CDATA[Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)]]> 15839976 "I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]> 382 Pierce Brown 0345539788 Mike 3 science-fiction
Well done, overall, obviously derivative, but well written and competently plotted. My only complaint is how relatively easy it is for the resistance to create a perfect elite specimen from a sow's ear. Not only as good - but superior - to the other contestants.

]]> 4.26 2014 Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)
author: Pierce Brown
name: Mike
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2017/04/08
date added: 2018/04/29
shelves: science-fiction
review:
Another book of deadly wargames among the children of the elite, with an added dash of someone from the lowest ranks giving those elitists what for.

Well done, overall, obviously derivative, but well written and competently plotted. My only complaint is how relatively easy it is for the resistance to create a perfect elite specimen from a sow's ear. Not only as good - but superior - to the other contestants.


]]> <![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Mike 4 science-fiction 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Mike
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/20
date added: 2018/04/29
shelves: science-fiction
review:
Pure fan service. A delicious indulgence.
]]> Magic 21780 256 William Goldman 2226004882 Mike 0 to-read 3.66 1976 Magic
author: William Goldman
name: Mike
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All]]> 9618553 248 David Fitzgerald 0557709911 Mike 0 to-read 3.98 2010 Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All
author: David Fitzgerald
name: Mike
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I (The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion, #2)]]> 34658797 David Fitzgerald’s award-winning 2010 book Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianity’s origin story. Now, Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus Myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and reveals the surprising history behind Jesus� evolution.

In this
Mything in Action, vol. I (chapters 1 � 12) looks at the myths of Jesus what it is and isn’t; what biblical scholars are saying about it (and why); and examines our oldest “biographical� source for Jesus � the allegorical story we know as the Gospel of Mark.]]> 357 David Fitzgerald Mike 0 to-read 4.29 2017 Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I (The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion, #2)
author: David Fitzgerald
name: Mike
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Charlatan 1851568
It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly turned “Dr.� Brinkley into America’s richest and most famous surgeon. His notoriety captured the attention of the great quackbuster Morris Fishbein, who vowed to put the country’s “most daring and dangerous� charlatan out of business.

Their cat-and-mouse game lasted throughout the 1920s and �30s, but despite Fishbein’s efforts Brinkley prospered wildly. When he ran for governor of Kansas, he invented campaigning techniques still used in modern politics. Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built the world’s most powerful radio transmitter just across the Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed patients by the score, yet his warped genius produced innovations in broadcasting that endure to this day. By introducing country music and blues to the nation, Brinkley also became a seminal force in rock ’n� roll. In short, he is the most creative criminal this country has ever produced.

Culminating in a decisive courtroom confrontation that pit Brinkley against his nemesis Fishbein, Charlatan is a marvelous portrait of a boundlessly audacious rogue on the loose in an America that was ripe for the bamboozling.]]> 336 Pope Brock 0307339882 Mike 0 to-read 3.81 2008 Charlatan
author: Pope Brock
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams]]> 413806 620 Nick Tosches 038533429X Mike 0 to-read 4.05 1992 Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
author: Nick Tosches
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)]]> 77711 Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.

A Fire upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.]]> 613 Vernor Vinge 0812515285 Mike 0 to-read 4.14 1992 A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)
author: Vernor Vinge
name: Mike
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Field Guide to Knots: How to Identify, Tie, and Untie Over 80 Essential Knots for Outdoor Pursuits]]> 24944968
The perfect knot can make any job quicker, easier, and safer—whether you need to build a shelter, tether a horse, rappel down a cliff, or moor a boat. In The Field Guide to Knots , veteran outdoorsman Bob Holtzman helps With more than 80 time-tested knots and more than 600 color photos , this Field Guide is indispensable for backpackers, climbers, sailors, anglers, hunters, equestrians—and anyone else who’s ever needed to change a sail, reposition a climbing rope, or splice a tent pole!]]> 192 Bob Holtzman 161519276X Mike 0 to-read 4.06 2015 The Field Guide to Knots: How to Identify, Tie, and Untie Over 80 Essential Knots for Outdoor Pursuits
author: Bob Holtzman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)]]> 33395557
Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that's the only part of the plan that's still in one piece. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9 percent of the human race; nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable; a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity; the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition; and the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food.

Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he's become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner.]]> 311 Dennis E. Taylor Mike 0 to-read 4.37 2017 For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)
author: Dennis E. Taylor
name: Mike
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley]]> 23257343 Romantic Outlaws is the first book to tell the story of the passionate and pioneering lives of Mary Wollstonecraft � English feminist and author of the landmark book, The Vindication of the Rights of Women � and her novelist daughter Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

Although mother and daughter, these two brilliant women never knew one another � Wollstonecraft died of an infection in 1797 at the age of thirty-eight, a week after giving birth. Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.

Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.

Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who � with her young lover Percy Shelley � read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death � a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.

Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.]]> 640 Charlotte Gordon Mike 0 to-read 4.19 2015 Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
author: Charlotte Gordon
name: Mike
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 50420 One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.]]> 458 Gabriel García Márquez 0060929790 Mike 3 fiction, literature
On the other hand, the symbolism-with-a-straight-face and the emotional distance - I guess you could call it the author's stance - made it hard to care much about any of the characters. The experience of hearing about this family home and the people in it, of their renewals and decrepitude, of the wide range of experiences and types of people and events that took place with them, paint a broad picture. At the end of the book, when the author, who is constantly flashing forward and back, plays his final look back over the sweep of the Buendia family history, he evokes a strong and unmistakable sense of nostalgia - probably one of the strongest I've ever gotten from reading a book. But his sense of caring really does seem to be for the entire sweep of the story, not the individual characters themselves.

I'm sure that even now, literature majors are writing papers about the symbolism in the book, but frankly I don't have the time or energy to care what GGM was really "trying to say" with his tall tales. Some are very visually evocative, some ribald, some horrifying, but like all dreams and nightmares, they pass through the book and leave much of the narrative essentially unchanged. His women characters almost invariably break on some romantic issue and are swept out of the story by death or living death or convent. His men characters are monkish or whorish in turns. He has one character who embodies just about every experience in civil war.

I just don't know what to make of it as a final, big picture. Interesting, different, and pleasurable, but not fully engaging.


]]> 4.10 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2009/05/01
date added: 2017/02/27
shelves: fiction, literature
review:
My experience with this book is highly ambiguous. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the act of reading it. Every sentence and every page was a pleasure to read, and I felt compelled to get to the end of the story and see what was going to happen.

On the other hand, the symbolism-with-a-straight-face and the emotional distance - I guess you could call it the author's stance - made it hard to care much about any of the characters. The experience of hearing about this family home and the people in it, of their renewals and decrepitude, of the wide range of experiences and types of people and events that took place with them, paint a broad picture. At the end of the book, when the author, who is constantly flashing forward and back, plays his final look back over the sweep of the Buendia family history, he evokes a strong and unmistakable sense of nostalgia - probably one of the strongest I've ever gotten from reading a book. But his sense of caring really does seem to be for the entire sweep of the story, not the individual characters themselves.

I'm sure that even now, literature majors are writing papers about the symbolism in the book, but frankly I don't have the time or energy to care what GGM was really "trying to say" with his tall tales. Some are very visually evocative, some ribald, some horrifying, but like all dreams and nightmares, they pass through the book and leave much of the narrative essentially unchanged. His women characters almost invariably break on some romantic issue and are swept out of the story by death or living death or convent. His men characters are monkish or whorish in turns. He has one character who embodies just about every experience in civil war.

I just don't know what to make of it as a final, big picture. Interesting, different, and pleasurable, but not fully engaging.



]]> Lolita 7608 Listening length: 12 hours

Exhilarating, appallingly funny, and hauntingly sad, Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controverscial novel, a twentieth century classic whose character's names have become synonymous with the outrages and degradations of obsessive passion. For when the aging emigre Humbert Humbert falls in love with the precocious nymphet Dolores Haze, all the rules - of desire, decency, and literature - are broken. Lolita has the power to shock, challenge, and enrapture anyone who listens to this masterful performance by Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons.
(back cover)]]> 12 Vladimir Nabokov 0739322060 Mike 5 fiction 3.89 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/02/19
shelves: fiction
review:
This book is creepy, beautiful, evocative . . . and the experience of having Jeremy Irons read it to me in my car with his rich, deep, creepy voice made it that much more interesting. The doomed love story, told from the point of view of the self-deluded old man, was full of disappointment and longing, beautifully told, beautifully spoken.
]]> Atheism: The Case Against God 97078
"You are about to read a minority viewpoint."

With this intriguing introduction, George H. Smith sets out to demolish what he considers the most widespread and destructive of all the myths devised by man - the concept of a supreme being. With painstaking scholarship and rigorous arguments, Mr. Smith examines, dissects, and refutes the myriad "proofs" offered by theists - the defenses of sophisticated, professional theologians, as well as the average religious layman. He explores the historical and psychological havoc wrought by religion in general - and concludes that religious belief cannot have any place in the life of modern, rational man.

"It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism . . . (but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, that is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity."]]> 355 George H. Smith 087975124X Mike 0 to-read 3.93 1979 Atheism: The Case Against God
author: George H. Smith
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty]]> 1300326 228 W.L. Rusho 0879052104 Mike 0 to-read 4.12 1973 Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty
author: W.L. Rusho
name: Mike
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 186074
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.]]> 662 Patrick Rothfuss 075640407X Mike 0 to-read 4.52 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Mike
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story]]> 16371009 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.]]> Dave Eggers 144989089X Mike 2 autobiography
Dave Eggers is a clever young man who lost his parents to disease when he was college-aged. This book is his mostly-true memoirs of how he dealt with their death in Chicago, moved to the San Francisco bay area with his sister and much younger brother afterwards, became his brother's guardian, and started a hip independent magazine in San Francisco. He has since gained fame in literary circles as a writer of short humor and as an editor.

There are parts of this book that I quite liked. Eggers moved to the SF bay area, lived in the East Bay, and moved over to San Francisco, and eventually moved to the east coast. My wife and I did these things as well, in the same order, at almost exactly the same time as Eggers did (did I ever pass him in the street?) So, I enjoyed his descriptions and memories of the Bay Area, because many of them are much like my own.

On the other hand, Eggers writes himself into this story as an unreliable narrator, an immature, neurotic, narcissistic asshole. The goal is to use this device as a vehicle for humor, and it is possible that might work if the author himself didn't seem like such a jerk, too. To drive his goal home with a sledgehammer, the other people in his story occasionally break into the author's voice to abuse and berate the narrator for his shortcomings. His self-loathing comes through not as humorous, or noble, or clever, or anything else so much as it does boring and non-productive. If this attitude isn't off-putting enough in the body of the story itself, his preface is so full of him hating himself and his book before you do - a literary self-loathing pre-emptive strike dressed up as arrogant I'm-so-cleverness - that it pretty much ruined the book for me.

Dude, why should I care? You barely do. This book is self-aware, exhibitionist self-abuse and self-flaggelation - in short, page after page of wankery. ]]> 3.17 2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story
author: Dave Eggers
name: Mike
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2016/09/07
shelves: autobiography
review:
Meh.

Dave Eggers is a clever young man who lost his parents to disease when he was college-aged. This book is his mostly-true memoirs of how he dealt with their death in Chicago, moved to the San Francisco bay area with his sister and much younger brother afterwards, became his brother's guardian, and started a hip independent magazine in San Francisco. He has since gained fame in literary circles as a writer of short humor and as an editor.

There are parts of this book that I quite liked. Eggers moved to the SF bay area, lived in the East Bay, and moved over to San Francisco, and eventually moved to the east coast. My wife and I did these things as well, in the same order, at almost exactly the same time as Eggers did (did I ever pass him in the street?) So, I enjoyed his descriptions and memories of the Bay Area, because many of them are much like my own.

On the other hand, Eggers writes himself into this story as an unreliable narrator, an immature, neurotic, narcissistic asshole. The goal is to use this device as a vehicle for humor, and it is possible that might work if the author himself didn't seem like such a jerk, too. To drive his goal home with a sledgehammer, the other people in his story occasionally break into the author's voice to abuse and berate the narrator for his shortcomings. His self-loathing comes through not as humorous, or noble, or clever, or anything else so much as it does boring and non-productive. If this attitude isn't off-putting enough in the body of the story itself, his preface is so full of him hating himself and his book before you do - a literary self-loathing pre-emptive strike dressed up as arrogant I'm-so-cleverness - that it pretty much ruined the book for me.

Dude, why should I care? You barely do. This book is self-aware, exhibitionist self-abuse and self-flaggelation - in short, page after page of wankery.
]]> <![CDATA[At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories]]> 12970063 The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.

Contents:
The Man Who Bridged the Mist (2011)
Wolf Trapping (1989)
The Empress Jingu Fishes (2004)
The Bitey Cat (2012)
Chenting, in the Land of the Dead (1999)
My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in my Spouse's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition (2007)
Schrödinger's Cathouse (1993)
Names for Water (2010)
Fox Magic (1993)
Spar (2009)
The Horse Raiders (2000)
26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (2008)
At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2003)
The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change (2007)
The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles (2009)
Ponies (2010)]]> 297 Kij Johnson 1931520801 Mike 0 to-read 4.05 2012 At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
author: Kij Johnson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Mike 0 to-read 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom]]> 3483356
Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong.

What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparalleled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her, but also humor, honesty, loyalty and love.

And for Qanta, more than anything, it is a land of opportunity. A place where she discovers what it takes for one woman to recreate herself in the land of invisible women.]]> 454 Qanta A. Ahmed 1402210876 Mike 0 to-read 3.72 2008 In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
author: Qanta A. Ahmed
name: Mike
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals]]> 401682
to witness a gorilla's self-sacrifice for a wounded mate, to watch an elephant herd's communal effort on behalf of a stranded calf--to catch animals in certain acts is to wonder what moves them. Might there he a code of ethics in the animal kingdom? Must an animal be human to he humane? In this provocative book, a renowned scientist takes on those who have declared ethics uniquely human Making a compelling case for a morality grounded in biology, he shows how ethical behavior is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait, in humans and animals alike.

World famous for his brilliant descriptions of Machiavellian power plays among chimpanzees-the nastier side of animal life--Frans de Waal here contends that animals have a nice side as well. Making his case through vivid anecdotes drawn from his work with apes and monkeys and holstered by the intriguing, voluminous data from his and others' ongoing research, de Waal shows us that many of the building blocks of morality are natural: they can he observed in other animals. Through his eyes, we see how not just primates but all kinds of animals, from marine mammals to dogs, respond to social rules, help each other, share food, resolve conflict to mutual satisfaction, even develop a crude sense of justice and fairness.

Natural selection may be harsh, but it has produced highly successful species that survive through cooperation and mutual assistance. De Waal identifies this paradox as the key to an evolutionary account of morality, and demonstrates that human morality could never have developed without the foundation of fellow feeling our species shares with other animals. As his work makes clear, a morality grounded in biology leads to an entirely different conception of what it means to he human--and humane.]]> 368 Frans de Waal 0674356616 Mike 0 to-read 4.10 1996 Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
author: Frans de Waal
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature]]> 5752 The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker injects calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about a rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Pinker shows that an acknowledgement of human nature that is grounded in science and common sense, far from being dangerous, can complement insights about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: wit, lucidity, and insight into matters great and small.]]> 560 Steven Pinker 0142003344 Mike 0 to-read 4.08 2002 The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
author: Steven Pinker
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prague Cemetery 10314376
19th-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real and imagined,Ěýlay one lone man? What ifĚýthat evil genius created its mostĚýinfamous document?　

Eco takes his readers here on an unforgettable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. This is Eco at his most exciting, a book immediately hailed as his masterpiece. 　
]]> 445 Umberto Eco 0547577532 Mike 0 to-read 3.51 2010 The Prague Cemetery
author: Umberto Eco
name: Mike
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Baudolino 10507
Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander-who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa-adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.

Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East-a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.

With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, this is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.]]> 527 Umberto Eco 0156029065 Mike 0 to-read 3.79 2000 Baudolino
author: Umberto Eco
name: Mike
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)]]> 10487 Adele J. Haft is Associate Professor of Classics, Hunter College, City University of New York. Jane G. White is chair of the Department of Languages, Dwight Englewood School. Robert J. White is Professor of Classics and Oriental Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.]]> 216 Adele J. Haft 0472086219 Mike 0 to-read 3.86 1987 The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)
author: Adele J. Haft
name: Mike
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Railway Detective (The Railway Detective #1)]]> 25690993 Edward Marston Mike 2 fiction
What were not so fun were the book's characters and plot. I picked up the Railway Detective because it was set in the same world of Chubb safes, bank transfers, railroad robbery, and Victorian England as one of my favorite books, The Great Train Robbery, and indeed some of the details of the historical period were fleshed out entertainingly.

The problem? The hero is too perfect, his foils are too bumbling and incompetent (even Arther Doyle gave more respect to Lestrade than Marston does to Colbeck's boss), the damsel too modest yet smitten, the villain too noble and twisted. The ending, too predictable.

The conversations in the book are too expository - every subtlety is explained to the reader by the characters, in dialogs that run, every time, just a beat too long, to where you feel as if the point is being hammered home. The author uses the "tell, don't show" method of getting his ideas across.

On the other hand, things are presented, explained, repeated, and then explained one more time in the dialog, so that it really is a good book to read while driving, for if you are distracted and miss something, you can be sure the characters will make the point repeatedly again in a minute or too.

Not a terrible effort, but there is very little mystery in the book and cardboard characters. ]]> 4.00 2004 The Railway Detective (The Railway Detective #1)
author: Edward Marston
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2016/01/16
shelves: fiction
review:
The Railway Detective is a good book to read while driving, which is how I read this one. Let me first begin by praising Simon Prebble's narration and the ease with which he passed between Irish brogue, Scottish burr, upmarket, cockney, sneering upper class, midland laborer, and soldier of the Raj British accents. Good fun.

What were not so fun were the book's characters and plot. I picked up the Railway Detective because it was set in the same world of Chubb safes, bank transfers, railroad robbery, and Victorian England as one of my favorite books, The Great Train Robbery, and indeed some of the details of the historical period were fleshed out entertainingly.

The problem? The hero is too perfect, his foils are too bumbling and incompetent (even Arther Doyle gave more respect to Lestrade than Marston does to Colbeck's boss), the damsel too modest yet smitten, the villain too noble and twisted. The ending, too predictable.

The conversations in the book are too expository - every subtlety is explained to the reader by the characters, in dialogs that run, every time, just a beat too long, to where you feel as if the point is being hammered home. The author uses the "tell, don't show" method of getting his ideas across.

On the other hand, things are presented, explained, repeated, and then explained one more time in the dialog, so that it really is a good book to read while driving, for if you are distracted and miss something, you can be sure the characters will make the point repeatedly again in a minute or too.

Not a terrible effort, but there is very little mystery in the book and cardboard characters.
]]> <![CDATA[The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome]]> 37811 The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. The result is an entirely new perspective on a much-studied era.]]> 276 Michael Parenti 1565849426 Mike 5
This book encouraged the reader to follow the money, and it described a Rome where the rich Romans were exploiting the crap out the populace - stealing their land, charging rents and interest rates that would make a loan shark blush, screwing over their veterans . . . basically the same shenanigans that American bankers and our elite are up to today.

Caesar tried to slow down this theft, just a little bit, and was assassinated, just one in a long line of popular Roman reformers before him. I don't know if we would call him a Democrat by today's standards, but his political faction, the populares, were met with violence and death by the plutocrats in the optimates party.

The book is an astounding rebuke not only of the rich kleptocrats who fought against Caesar, and the Gracchus brothers, and all of the other reformers who came before and were killed, but of the generations of historians that have come after and have basically taken the side of Cicero, Brutus, Cato, and Crassus against the people of Rome. Parenti exposes the subtle and extremely unsubtle bias towards these rich schemers in the writings of historians down the ages. For good measure, he exposes Cicero as a cowardly over-reactor, and the "Cataline Conspiracy" as the nothing-burger it seems to have been.

History echoes and rhymes, and being able to put Caesar's struggle and death in the context of the class struggle brings extraordinary explanatory power to bear. This is a well written, and important, book. ]]> 4.29 2003 The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome
author: Michael Parenti
name: Mike
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2015/11/01
date added: 2016/01/14
shelves: world-history, non-fiction, politics
review:
This book is one of the best, most eye-opening books I've read in a long time. It illuminates for me one of the mysteries that has long puzzled me - the assassination of Julius Caesar. His death never really made sense to me in the context of the civil fighting that went on before and after him. Most people will say Caesar was killed because he was acting like a king, too big for his britches, made the wrong enemies, trusted his rivals too much, blah, blah, blah.

This book encouraged the reader to follow the money, and it described a Rome where the rich Romans were exploiting the crap out the populace - stealing their land, charging rents and interest rates that would make a loan shark blush, screwing over their veterans . . . basically the same shenanigans that American bankers and our elite are up to today.

Caesar tried to slow down this theft, just a little bit, and was assassinated, just one in a long line of popular Roman reformers before him. I don't know if we would call him a Democrat by today's standards, but his political faction, the populares, were met with violence and death by the plutocrats in the optimates party.

The book is an astounding rebuke not only of the rich kleptocrats who fought against Caesar, and the Gracchus brothers, and all of the other reformers who came before and were killed, but of the generations of historians that have come after and have basically taken the side of Cicero, Brutus, Cato, and Crassus against the people of Rome. Parenti exposes the subtle and extremely unsubtle bias towards these rich schemers in the writings of historians down the ages. For good measure, he exposes Cicero as a cowardly over-reactor, and the "Cataline Conspiracy" as the nothing-burger it seems to have been.

History echoes and rhymes, and being able to put Caesar's struggle and death in the context of the class struggle brings extraordinary explanatory power to bear. This is a well written, and important, book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (Vintage Crime / Black Lizard Original)]]> 25387573 Presenting Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's latest anthology,ĚýThe Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, the largest collection of Sherlockian tales ever assembled—now in a deluxe hardcover edition, perfect for the collector and gift markets.

Arguably no other character in history has been so enduringly popular as Sherlock Holmes. From his first appearance, in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novellaĚýA Study in Scarlet,readers have loved reading about him—and writers have loved writing about him. Here, Otto Penzler collects 83 wonderful stories about Holmes and Dr. John Watson, the majority of which will be new to readers. Among these pages are tales by acclaimed Sherlockians Leslie S. Klinger, Laurie R. King, Lyndsay Faye and Daniel Stashower; pastiches by literary luminaries both classic (Kenneth Millar, P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes) and current (Anne Perry, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman); and parodies by Conan Doyle's contemporaries James M. Barrie, O. Henry, and August Derleth.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Otto Penzler

THE MASTER
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Field Bazaar�
Arthur Conan Doyle, “How Watson Learned the Trick�

FAMILIAR AS THE ROSE IN SPRING
Vincent Starrett, “The Unique Hamlet�
Bret Harte, “The Stolen Cigar-Case�
Arthur Whitaker, “The Case of the Man Who Was Wanted�
James M. Barrie, “The Adventure of the Two Collaborators�
O. Henry, “The Sleuths�
A. B. Cox, “Holmes and the Dasher�
Stephen Leacock, “An Irreducible Detective Story�
Stephen King, “The Doctor’s Case�

THE LITERATURE OF CRIME
Davis Grubb, “The Brown Recluse�
Kingsley Amis, “The Darkwater Hall Mystery�
J.C. Masterman, “The Case of the Gifted Amateur�
James M. Barrie, “The Late Sherlock Holmes�
Edmund Pearson, “Sherlock Holmes and the Drood Mystery�
A.A. Milne, “The Rape of the Sherlock�
P. G. Wodehouse, “From a Detective’s Note-Book�
Hugh Kingsmill, “The Ruby of Khitmandu�
August Derleth, “The Adventure of the Remarkable Worm�
H. F. Heard, “The Enchanted Garden�
Ring Lardner, “A Study in Handwriting�
Neil Gaiman, “The Case of Death and Honey�
Anthony Burgess, “Murder to Music�

IN THE BEGINNING
James M. Barrie, “An Evening with Sherlock Holmes�
Robert Barr, “Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs�
Anonymous, “Sherlock Holmes vs. Conan Doyle�
R. C. Lehmann, “The Duke’s Feather�
Roy L. McCardell, “The Sign of the �400’�

HOLMESLESS
Christopher Morley, “Codeine (7 Per Cent)�
Laurie R. King, “Mrs. Hudson’s Case�
Bliss Austin, “The Final Problem�

NOT OF THIS PLACE
Anthony Boucher, “The Adventure of the Bogle-Wolf�
Poul Anderson, “The Martian Crown Jewels�
Anonymous, “Sherlock Among the Spirits�
Logan Clendening, “The Case of the Missing Patriarchs�
Loren D. Estleman, “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes�

KEEPING THE MEMORY GREEN
S. C. Roberts, “The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts�
Peter Cannon, “The Adventure of the Noble Husband�
William O. Fuller, “A Night with Sherlock Holmes�
Leslie S. Klinger, “The Adventure of the Wooden Box�
Donald Thomas, “The Case of the Unseen Hand�
Sam Benady, “The Abandoned Brigantine�
Barry Day, “The Adventure of the Curious Canary�
Frederic Dorr Steele, “The Adventure of the Murdered Art Editor�
David Stuart Davies, “The Darlington Substitution Scandal�
James C. Iraldi, “The Problem of the Purple Maculas�

YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY?
Robert Barr, “The Adventure of the Second Swag�
Stanley Rubinstein, “Sheer Luck Again�
John Kendrick Bangs, “A Pragmatic Enigma�
Anonymous, “Herlock Sholmes at It Again�
Anthony Armstrong, “The Reigate Road Murder�
William B. Kahn, “The Succored Beauty�
Gregory Breitman, “The Marriage of Sherlock Holmes�
E. F. Benson and Eustace H. Miles, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes�
Arthur Chapman, “The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes�
George F. Forrest, “The Adventure of the Diamond Necklace�
Robert L. Fish, “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie�

CONTEMPORARY VICTORIANS
Colin Dexter, “A Case of Mis-Identity�
Thomas Perry, “Startling Events in the Electrified City�
Lyndsay Faye, “The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness�
John Lutz, “The Infernal Machine�
Peter Tremayne, “The Specter of Tullyfane Abbey�
Daniel Stashower, “The Adventure of the Agitated Actress�
Michael Moorcock, “The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger�
Bill Crider, “The Adventure of the Venomous Lizard�
June Thomson, “The Case of the Friesland Outrage�
Carol Buggé, “The Strange Case of the Tongue-Tied Tenor�
Tanith Lee, “The Human Mystery�
Anne Perry, “Hostage to Fortune�
Jon Koons, “The Adventure of the Missing Countess�
Rick Boyer, “The Adventure of Zolnay, The Aerialist�
John Lescroart, “The Adventure of the Giant Rat of Sumatra�

THE FOOTSTEPS OF A GIGANTIC AUTHOR
Julian Symons, “Did Sherlock Holmes Meet Hercule�?�
H. R. F. Keating, “A Trifling Affair�
Barry Perowne, “Raffles: The Enigma of the Admiral’s Hat�
Barry Perowne, “Raffles on the Trail of the Hound�
Edward D. Hoch, “The Cipher in the Sand�
Kenneth Millar, “The South Sea Soup Co.�
Carolyn Wells, “The Adventure of the Clothes-Line�
Dorothy B. Hughes, “Sherlock Holmes and the Muffin�
Stuart M. Kaminsky, “The Man from Capetown�
Manly Wade Wellman, “But Our Hero Was Not Dead�
Stuart Palmer, “The Adventure of the Marked Man”]]> 816 Otto Penzler 1101872616 Mike 0 to-read 3.91 2015 The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (Vintage Crime / Black Lizard Original)
author: Otto Penzler
name: Mike
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moriarty (Horowitz's Holmes, #2)]]> 22535533
Days after Holmes and Moriarty disappear into the waterfall's churning depths, Frederick Chase, a senior investigator at New York's infamous Pinkerton Detective Agency, arrives in Switzerland. Chase brings with him a dire warning: Moriarty's death has left a convenient vacancy in London's criminal underworld. There is no shortage of candidates to take his place—including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind.

Chase is assisted by Inspector Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective and devoted student of Holmes's methods of deduction, whom Conan Doyle introduced in The Sign of Four. The two men join forces and fight their way through the sinuous streets of Victorian London—from the elegant squares of Mayfair to the shadowy wharfs and alleyways of the Docks—in pursuit of this sinister figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty's successor.

Riveting and deeply atmospheric, Moriarty is the first Sherlock Holmes novel sanctioned by the author's estate since Horowitz's House of Silk. This tale of murder and menace breathes life into Holmes's fascinating world, again proving that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however im- probable, must be the truth.]]> 285 Anthony Horowitz 0062377183 Mike 0 to-read 3.75 2014 Moriarty (Horowitz's Holmes, #2)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Mike
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Numero zero 24235201 224 Umberto Eco 8858769562 Mike 0 to-read 3.20 2015 Numero zero
author: Umberto Eco
name: Mike
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fifth Heart 21423346
Holmes is currently on his Great Hiatus--his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls during which time the people of London believe him to be deceased. Holmes has faked his own death because, through his powers of ratiocination, the great detective has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character.

This leads to serious complications for James--for if his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power -- possibly named Moriarty -- that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?]]> 618 Dan Simmons 031619882X Mike 3 fiction 3.42 2015 The Fifth Heart
author: Dan Simmons
name: Mike
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/11/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Mike 0 to-read 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lafayette in the Somewhat United States]]> 24602886 From the bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and Unfamiliar Fishes, a humorous and insightful account of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette--the one Frenchman we could all agree on--and an insightful portrait of a nation's idealism and its reality.

On August 16, 1824, an elderly French gentlemen sailed into New York Harbor and giddy Americans were there to welcome him. Or, rather, to welcome him back. It had been thirty years since the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette had last set foot in the United States, and he was so beloved that 80,000 people showed up to cheer for him. The entire population of New York at the time was 120,000.

Lafayette's arrival in 1824 coincided with one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history, Congress had just fought its first epic battle over slavery, and the threat of a Civil War loomed. But Lafayette, belonging to neither North nor South, to no political party or faction, was a walking, talking reminder of the sacrifices and bravery of the revolutionary generation and what they wanted this country to be. His return was not just a reunion with his beloved Americans, it was a reunion for Americans with their own astonishing singular past.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is a humorous and insightful portrait of the famed Frenchman, the impact he had on our young country, and his ongoing relationship with some of the instrumental Americans of the time, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and many more.]]> 274 Sarah Vowell 1594631743 Mike 0 to-read 3.82 2015 Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
author: Sarah Vowell
name: Mike
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug]]> 38065
Founded by Joshua Boger, a dynamic Harvard- and Merck-trained scientific whiz kid, Vertex is dedicated to designing—atom by atom—both a new life-saving immunosuppressant drug, and a drug to combat the virus that causes AIDS.

You will be hooked from start to finish, as you go from the labs, where obsessive, fiercely competitive scientists struggle for a breakthrough, to Wall Street, where the wheeling and dealing takes on a life of its own, as Boger courts investors and finally decides to take Vertex public. Here is a fascinating no-holds-barred account of the business of science, which includes an updated epilogue about the most recent developments in the quest for a drug to cure AIDS.]]> 464 Barry Werth 0671510576 Mike 0 currently-reading 3.90 The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug
author: Barry Werth
name: Mike
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)]]> 154091 Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date... The Mona Lisa Overdrive.ĚýEnter Gibson's unique world - lyric and mechanical, erotic and violent, sobering and exciting - where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace.ĚýInto this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell.ĚýSince childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer.ĚýNow, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled... or even known.ĚýAnd behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yakuza, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes... or so they think.

]]> 308 William Gibson 0553281747 Mike 3 science-fiction Pattern Recognition) shows in the way he describes his characters.

The novel follows four story lines that eventually converge. People meet for the first time, are reunited, are killed, are drugged, are subsumed into the matrix of the network. Cyberaliens, AIs, the entertainment industry, and organized crime get thrown into the mix for good measure. It isn't clear what any of it is supposed to amount to. Still, it is an entertaining read, and Gibson is one of the better writers in science fiction - he can create memorable images with a precise turn of phrase in a way that many others cannot. ]]> 4.01 1988 Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)
author: William Gibson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves: science-fiction
review:
I guess I can see roughly what the big deal was when these books came out in the eighties. Cyberspace, filled with avatars for pockets of data, hackers, artificial intelligences, money. Drugs, the intersection of the fabulously wealthy and the poor, and SHAPE. Gibson is big into the SHAPE of things, and this obsession with form (on further display in Pattern Recognition) shows in the way he describes his characters.

The novel follows four story lines that eventually converge. People meet for the first time, are reunited, are killed, are drugged, are subsumed into the matrix of the network. Cyberaliens, AIs, the entertainment industry, and organized crime get thrown into the mix for good measure. It isn't clear what any of it is supposed to amount to. Still, it is an entertaining read, and Gibson is one of the better writers in science fiction - he can create memorable images with a precise turn of phrase in a way that many others cannot.
]]> Warriors 6714177 Warriors: "People have been telling stories about warriors for as long as they have been telling stories. Since Homer first sang the wrath of Achilles and the ancient Sumerians set down their tales of Gilgamesh, warriors, soldiers, and fighters have fascinated us; they are a part of every culture, every literary tradition, every genre. All Quiet on the Western Front, From Here to Eternity, and The Red Badge of Courage have become part of our literary canon, taught in classrooms all around the country and the world.
Our contributors make up an all-star lineup of award-winning and bestselling writers, representing a dozen different publishers and as many genres. We asked each of them for the same thing � a story about a warrior. Some chose to write in the genre they're best known for. Some decided to try something different. You will find warriors of every shape, size, and color in these pages, warriors from every epoch of human history, from yesterday and today and tomorrow, and from worlds that never were. Some of the stories will make you sad, some will make you laugh, and many will keep you on the edge of your seat."

Every story in this volume appears here for the first time. Included are a long novella from the world of Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, a new tale of Lord John by Diana Gabaldon, an Emberverse story by S.M. Stirling, a Forever Peace sory by Joe Haldeman, and a long story of humanity at bay by David Weber. Also present are original tales by David Ball, Peter S. Beagle, Lawrence Block, Gardner Dozois, Robin Hobb, Cecelia Holland, Joe R. Lansdale, David Morrell, Naomi Novik, James Rollins, Steven Saylor, Robert Silverberg, Carrie Vaughn, Howard Waldrop, and Tad Williams.

Many of these writers are bestsellers. All of them are storytellers of the highest quality. Together they make a volume of unforgettable reading.

Contents:
- Introduction: Stories from the Spinner Rack by George R.R. Martin
- The King of Norway by Cecelia Holland
- Forever Bound by Joe Haldeman
- The Triumph by Robin Hobb
- Clean Slate by Lawrence Block
- And Ministers of Grace by Tad Williams
- Soldierin' by Joe R. Lansdale
- Dirae by Peter S. Beagle
- The Custom of the Army by Diana Gabaldon
- Seven Years from Home by Naomi Novik
- The Eagle and the Rabbit by Steven Saylor
- The Pit by James Rollins
- Out of the Dark by David Weber
- The Girls from Avenger by Carrie Vaughn
- Ancient Ways by S.M. Stirling
- Ninieslando by Howard Waldrop
- Recidivist by Gardner Dozois
- My Name is Legion by David Morrell
- Defenders of the Frontier by Robert Silverberg
- The Scroll by David Ball
- The Mystery Knight: A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin]]> 736 George R.R. Martin 0765320487 Mike 0 to-read 3.81 2010 Warriors
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sandkings 769902
Contents:
- The Way of Cross and Dragon (1979)
- Bitterblooms (1977)
- In the House of the Worm (1976)
- Fast-Friend (1976)
- The Stone City (1977)
- Starlady (1976)
- Sandkings (1979)

Cover illustration by Michael Whelan

]]> 254 George R.R. Martin 067165554X Mike 0 to-read 4.31 1981 Sandkings
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Mike
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rogues 20168816 New York Times bestselling author George R.R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R.R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.

Follow along with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Cherie Priest, Garth Nix, and Connie Willis, as well as other masters of literary sleight-of-hand, in this rogues gallery of stories that will plunder your heart � and yet leave you all the richer for it.

Contents:
- Tough Times All Over by Joe Abercrombie (a Red Country story)
- What Do You Do? (aka The Grownup) by Gillian Flynn
- The Inn of the Seven Blessings by Matthew Hughes
- Bent Twig by Joe R. Lansdale (a Hap and Leonard story)
- Tawny Petticoats by Michael Swanwick
- Provenance by David Ball
- The Roaring Twenties by Carrie Vaughn
- A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch
- Bad Brass by Bradley Denton
- Heavy Metal by Cherie Priest
- The Meaning of Love by Daniel Abraham
- A Better Way to Die by Paul Cornell (a Jonathan Hamilton story)
- Ill Seen in Tyre by Steven Saylor
- A Cargo of Ivories by Garth Nix (a Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz story)
- Diamonds From Tequila by Walter Jon Williams (a Dagmar story)
- The Caravan to Nowhere by Phyllis Eisenstein (a Tales of Alaric the Minstrel story)
- The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives by Lisa Tuttle
- How the Marquis Got His Coat Back by Neil Gaiman (a Neverwhere story)
- Now Showing by Connie Willis
- The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss (a Kingkiller Chronicle story)
- The Rogue Prince, or, A King’s Brother by George R.R. Martin (a Song of Ice and Fire story)

]]> 806 George R.R. Martin 0345537262 Mike 4 3.91 2014 Rogues
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Mike
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves: fantasy, fiction, mystery, science-fiction
review:
Rogues is an excellent anthology of short stories that for the most part feature protagonists that are a bit outside of social norms and law. The stories come from every genre, but have been apparently been chosen for their level of fun and mischief. Thoroughly enjoyable.
]]> Arcadia 25829156 608 Iain Pears 0571301584 Mike 0 to-read 3.92 2015 Arcadia
author: Iain Pears
name: Mike
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Terror 3974 Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.

When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.]]> 769 Dan Simmons 0316017442 Mike 4 historical_fiction, fantasy
Simmons sets up a similar scenario The Terror, with the doomed historical search for the Northwest Passage by the ships Erebus and Terror. Although the conditions are extraordinarily deadly to begin with, he gilds this lily with an other-worldly nemesis that hunts and kills the men on the expedition. It is unnecessary, and about 1/3 of the way through, Simmons realizes it too and basically just drops it and continues to craft his fictionalized account of what might have happened to these two crews of sailors, trapped in the ice, as their supplies dwindle, their ships are ground into kindling by the glaciers, their health fails, and they are frozen in the perpetual deadly cold and dark of the arctic winter.

It is a fascinating, well-written, grueling, and gruesome tale of the will to persevere and survive in one of the strangest and deadliest environments on earth. Simmons' take on the essential mistake that the expedition makes is that they never get out of the mindset of British sailors, who are by god going to solve their problems with steam power, sails, strict discipline and stiff-upper lip reliance on their ships and boats in this world where water is scarce. If they had just stopped trying to sail everywhere (and it is heartbreaking to read about them hauling their ships' boats painfully over mile after frozen mile), and just tried to simply survive, they might have noticed that there were people in the environment who had already worked all of that out.

In a dream-like postscript, Simmons rescues one of his sailors and demonstrates this way of living to him, to contrast it with the misery and overpacking of the expedition.

This is a long book, and it could have used some tightening up. Simmons leaves many threads dangling as he kills off his characters, and his constant recitation of the men's names, and their ranks and jobs, gets tedious. But he has captured the desolation and fear and claustrophobia of what at least part of their experience must have been. I couldn't put it down and couldn't wait to see what would happen next. I appreciated being able to read it in the hottest part of the summer.

]]> 4.06 2007 The Terror
author: Dan Simmons
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2015/07/01
date added: 2015/07/23
shelves: historical_fiction, fantasy
review:
There are a lot of fantasy and science fictions tales that center around hauling coals to New Castle; they put a group of protagonists into an environment that can already kill them (typically deep space, or the bottom of the ocean) in a million different ways, and then feel like they need to add a supernatural or science fictional boogieman element to really speed up the death. Movie examples abound, including Sunshine, The Abyss, Event Horizon, Alien, Leviathan, Solaris, Sphere, Europa Report, everything having to do with the planet Mars, etc., etc. In many of these cases, the avatar of death seems to be a stand in for the danger of the unknown, the risk of exposing humans to environments and phenomena they aren't prepared to deal with, and seem a bit unnecessarily redundant, when the normal consequences of those environments are so often death in any case.

Simmons sets up a similar scenario The Terror, with the doomed historical search for the Northwest Passage by the ships Erebus and Terror. Although the conditions are extraordinarily deadly to begin with, he gilds this lily with an other-worldly nemesis that hunts and kills the men on the expedition. It is unnecessary, and about 1/3 of the way through, Simmons realizes it too and basically just drops it and continues to craft his fictionalized account of what might have happened to these two crews of sailors, trapped in the ice, as their supplies dwindle, their ships are ground into kindling by the glaciers, their health fails, and they are frozen in the perpetual deadly cold and dark of the arctic winter.

It is a fascinating, well-written, grueling, and gruesome tale of the will to persevere and survive in one of the strangest and deadliest environments on earth. Simmons' take on the essential mistake that the expedition makes is that they never get out of the mindset of British sailors, who are by god going to solve their problems with steam power, sails, strict discipline and stiff-upper lip reliance on their ships and boats in this world where water is scarce. If they had just stopped trying to sail everywhere (and it is heartbreaking to read about them hauling their ships' boats painfully over mile after frozen mile), and just tried to simply survive, they might have noticed that there were people in the environment who had already worked all of that out.

In a dream-like postscript, Simmons rescues one of his sailors and demonstrates this way of living to him, to contrast it with the misery and overpacking of the expedition.

This is a long book, and it could have used some tightening up. Simmons leaves many threads dangling as he kills off his characters, and his constant recitation of the men's names, and their ranks and jobs, gets tedious. But he has captured the desolation and fear and claustrophobia of what at least part of their experience must have been. I couldn't put it down and couldn't wait to see what would happen next. I appreciated being able to read it in the hottest part of the summer.


]]> <![CDATA[Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal]]> 28881 Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more—except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala—and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.]]> 444 Christopher Moore 0380813815 Mike 4 4.23 2002 Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
author: Christopher Moore
name: Mike
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/01
date added: 2015/06/18
shelves: historical_fiction, philosophy, belief
review:
I found Lamb to be amusing and interesting and deep, but not really quite as deep as it thinks it is. The author plays with the tropes of Eastern mysticism, asceticism, magic, and sex, and of course it is always funny to introduce a character named Biff to accompany our fictional Jesus figure. Lightly thought-provoking.
]]> Flashback 9432902
The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.]]> 554 Dan Simmons 0316006963 Mike 2 fiction, science-fiction
The inscrutable Japanese, of course, who have all the money and are too disciplined to get hooked on drugs, the way we decadent Westerners do, take over most of the United States except for

the Reconquista of the fecund Mexicans, who carve out an Aztlan in the Southwest, except for

the Caliphate of scary Muslims who control everything else, except for

the dirty hippies of Boulder, Colorado, who somehow manage to be both liberal and fascist, of course, and

the Texans, who despite having no concept of government, what it's for, and how to manage it, have the only working piece of 'Merica! left.

Oh, what else? Global warming a laughable joke. Electric cars geld everyone. The youth are violent and drug-addled. Civilization is in a handbasket, riding swiftly on the down escalator.

Our protagonist is an aging, white, drug-addicted widower, who overcomes his drug addiction long enough to rescue his misguided son and fight against all of the awful foreigners and liberals and solve mysteries and get off my lawn!!!

Basically, this is Bill O'Reilly's nightmare, and you'd think Dan Simmons, who pulled off one of the major modern science fictions coups with the Hyperion books, would be smarter than this. I'd love to believe this is a satire, but this book doesn't display the wit and humor such a satire would require. Buy this book for your conservative uncle, he'll love it. ]]> 3.26 2011 Flashback
author: Dan Simmons
name: Mike
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2015/06/16
shelves: fiction, science-fiction
review:
It is sad to realize that someone whose work you had admired in the past has had their intellect eaten away by watching too much Fox News. In Flashback, Simmons basically channels all of his old white guy fear into a future of the United States that incorporates all of the conservative boogiemen, no matter how nonsensical or even contradictory they are. Let's see how many ways we can think of that the scary foreigners can sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids, shall we?

The inscrutable Japanese, of course, who have all the money and are too disciplined to get hooked on drugs, the way we decadent Westerners do, take over most of the United States except for

the Reconquista of the fecund Mexicans, who carve out an Aztlan in the Southwest, except for

the Caliphate of scary Muslims who control everything else, except for

the dirty hippies of Boulder, Colorado, who somehow manage to be both liberal and fascist, of course, and

the Texans, who despite having no concept of government, what it's for, and how to manage it, have the only working piece of 'Merica! left.

Oh, what else? Global warming a laughable joke. Electric cars geld everyone. The youth are violent and drug-addled. Civilization is in a handbasket, riding swiftly on the down escalator.

Our protagonist is an aging, white, drug-addicted widower, who overcomes his drug addiction long enough to rescue his misguided son and fight against all of the awful foreigners and liberals and solve mysteries and get off my lawn!!!

Basically, this is Bill O'Reilly's nightmare, and you'd think Dan Simmons, who pulled off one of the major modern science fictions coups with the Hyperion books, would be smarter than this. I'd love to believe this is a satire, but this book doesn't display the wit and humor such a satire would require. Buy this book for your conservative uncle, he'll love it.
]]> The Cyberiad 18194 Solaris. Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.]]> 295 Stanisław Lem Mike 3 The Cyberiad feature two inventors of machines, Trurl and Klapaucius, who are themselves machines, inhabiting a quasi-feudalistic world of space travel and cyber-knights and galactic rulers. The two inventors are a bit like Frog and Toad: friends, accomplices, fellow-travelers, and mildly jealous and competitive with each other. There is an amazing outpouring of linguistic genius here, with puns and neologisms and clever play of idea and concept, and I applaud the translator who had to move this pile of riches from Polish to English and keep so much of the play intact.

The stories are a mix of the profound and the absurd, with philosophy and mathematics and a good deal of actual science and scientific concepts thrown in for good measure. Maxwell's Demon, for example, makes an appearance to pull an unending series of facts from the motion of gas atoms. I feel it is almost certain that Douglas Adams was inspired by this book before the Hitchhiker series. Themes of love, altruism, the perfect society, empathy, greed, haste, cooperation, and technology are all touched on. There are moments of real poetic genius as well.

Overall, this is a work of a clever, creative, whimsical, and masterful mind, interested in questions of philosophy and fascinated by our ability to mechanize our world. ]]> 4.18 1965 The Cyberiad
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at: 2015/05/01
date added: 2015/06/15
shelves: fiction, fantasy, satire, science-fiction, short-fiction, philosophy
review:
The stories in The Cyberiad feature two inventors of machines, Trurl and Klapaucius, who are themselves machines, inhabiting a quasi-feudalistic world of space travel and cyber-knights and galactic rulers. The two inventors are a bit like Frog and Toad: friends, accomplices, fellow-travelers, and mildly jealous and competitive with each other. There is an amazing outpouring of linguistic genius here, with puns and neologisms and clever play of idea and concept, and I applaud the translator who had to move this pile of riches from Polish to English and keep so much of the play intact.

The stories are a mix of the profound and the absurd, with philosophy and mathematics and a good deal of actual science and scientific concepts thrown in for good measure. Maxwell's Demon, for example, makes an appearance to pull an unending series of facts from the motion of gas atoms. I feel it is almost certain that Douglas Adams was inspired by this book before the Hitchhiker series. Themes of love, altruism, the perfect society, empathy, greed, haste, cooperation, and technology are all touched on. There are moments of real poetic genius as well.

Overall, this is a work of a clever, creative, whimsical, and masterful mind, interested in questions of philosophy and fascinated by our ability to mechanize our world.
]]> Mink River 9250050 In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking. . .

It's the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and readers will close the book more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.

]]> 319 Brian Doyle 0870715852 Mike 5 fiction, literature
]]> 4.17 2010 Mink River
author: Brian Doyle
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2015/06/01
date added: 2015/06/15
shelves: fiction, literature
review:
This book is beautiful, full of delicious prose and creativity, with characters you come to care about despite, or because of, their flaws. There are moments of magic realism which I actually didn't like, but they are few enough to let the actual humanity and kind-heartedness of the characters come through. This is a portrait of a town in the Pacific Northwest, rainy, woody, depressed, but coping, and it focuses on four or five families and their interactions. Mostly it is concerned with caregivers - doctors, policemen, teachers, and two memorable characters who have generally appointed themselves the catch-all shepherds for the town and the people therein. There is quite a lot of thought devoted to Northwest native american culture and Irish and Irish American culture, and both come alive through stories. A really enjoyable read from a talented and humane author.


]]> Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk 7857195 if mice kept pets and toads could cuss,
if dogs had wives and chipmunks dated,
sheep sat still and meditated,
then in the forest, field and dairy
you might find this bestiary,
read by storks, by rats and kitties,
skimmed by cows with milk-stained titties.
"I found the book to be most droll,"
might quip the bear, the owl, the mole.
Others, though, would be more coarse,
"Bull," could say the pig and horse.
As to the scribe, they'd quote the hen:
"Trust me, he's no La Fontaine."

(flap copy)]]> 163 David Sedaris 0316038393 Mike 4 fiction, short-fiction, humor Aesop's Fables don't have morals. Those preachy zingers at the end of each tale ("Look before your Leap", "One good turn deserves another") were added by medieval monks hundreds of years later, and they clang against the fabelist's style. Read Aesop again without the morals, and each story simply ends, with a feeling like a haiku or a zen koan. They are beautiful little stories that invite meditation and contemplation, and they contain hidden depths, ambiguities, and layers of meaning that are spoiled by the ham-fisted "summaries".

David Sedaris presents us with a small book of new fables here, thankfully without tag lines. Anthropomorphic animals give us glimpses of human behavior set in an animal kingdom both amusing and pitiless. Sedaris has the writer's ear for dialog that reveals the ugliness within people, from foolishness and jealousy to cruelty and caprice. We behold racism, regret, ugly tourism, pettiness, self-pity, unfaithfulness, betrayal, and even murder through these animals. The stories range from deliciously funny to gruesome and uncomfortable. Each invites contemplation, and let's hope that no scribes in the future feel the need to add a moral summaries. ]]> 3.38 2010 Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
author: David Sedaris
name: Mike
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2015/06/01
date added: 2015/06/15
shelves: fiction, short-fiction, humor
review:
The original versions of Aesop's Fables don't have morals. Those preachy zingers at the end of each tale ("Look before your Leap", "One good turn deserves another") were added by medieval monks hundreds of years later, and they clang against the fabelist's style. Read Aesop again without the morals, and each story simply ends, with a feeling like a haiku or a zen koan. They are beautiful little stories that invite meditation and contemplation, and they contain hidden depths, ambiguities, and layers of meaning that are spoiled by the ham-fisted "summaries".

David Sedaris presents us with a small book of new fables here, thankfully without tag lines. Anthropomorphic animals give us glimpses of human behavior set in an animal kingdom both amusing and pitiless. Sedaris has the writer's ear for dialog that reveals the ugliness within people, from foolishness and jealousy to cruelty and caprice. We behold racism, regret, ugly tourism, pettiness, self-pity, unfaithfulness, betrayal, and even murder through these animals. The stories range from deliciously funny to gruesome and uncomfortable. Each invites contemplation, and let's hope that no scribes in the future feel the need to add a moral summaries.
]]> <![CDATA[The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August]]> 20706317 405 Claire North 0316399620 Mike 0 to-read 4.02 2014 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
author: Claire North
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)]]> 55399 Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson.

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.

However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand...

Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order--an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice.]]> 666 Steven Erikson 0765348780 Mike 0 to-read 3.91 1999 Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Clear (All Clear, #2) 7519231 Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060—the setting for several of her most celebrated works—and sent three Oxford historians to World War II Eng;and: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.

Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory—but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.

Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians� supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own—to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.

Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It’s Connie Willis’s most humane, heartfelt novel yet—a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history.]]> 656 Connie Willis 0553807676 Mike 3 Blackout, is finally answered in this volume. It turns out that time travel is a closed loop, a la Bill & Ted's, in which only things which have actually happened can actually happen, no matter what choices are made.

But don't worry. The characters in this book fret and dither over that for hundreds of pages. And every uncertainty that flies through their minds is duly recorded, as well as every counter-argument. Should they take action X, not knowing if it will change history for the better or worse? Or will the change occur because of their _inaction_? Sweet mother of pearl, the opportunities to fret about this abound.

Our protagonists, historians from the future, inhabit World War II London, interacting with street urchins, ARP wardens, volunteer hospital staff, British intelligence, cranky landladies, and firewatchers. For historians, they are remarkably wrapped up in the drama of their own (relatively) trivial problems, and not very curious or particularly observant about the people, events, and _history_ occurring all around them. And they find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that London during the Blitz is not a great place to keep to oneself and try to maintain professional distance. It is all hands on deck, with everyone needed to pitch in, interact, contribute, sacrifice, and alter things. And make connections they do.

Again, the dual success and failure of this book is frustrating, as it was with Blackout. I feel as if I've been given a very vivid sense of the environment around St. Pauls Cathedral, the Underground shelters, some war time entertainment, and some of the subterfuge involved in the invasion in Normandy. And for that I'm grateful. But the price the reader has to pay, spending time in the heads of the feckless, fretful, dithering, and ultimately passionless protagonists, is at times almost not worth it. Everything is just so hard and complicated for them, from contacting each other to typing fake ads, and everyone jumps to the wrong conclusions about everything, and no one just keeps their damn cool and preserves their sense of wonder about being in the midst of World War II.

The outcome of the plot is relatively satisfying, although it is telegraphed well in advance.

]]> 4.06 2010 All Clear (All Clear, #2)
author: Connie Willis
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/05/01
date added: 2015/05/07
shelves: fiction, historical_fiction, science-fiction
review:
So the answer to "how does time travel actually work"? in the world of this book and its prequel, Blackout, is finally answered in this volume. It turns out that time travel is a closed loop, a la Bill & Ted's, in which only things which have actually happened can actually happen, no matter what choices are made.

But don't worry. The characters in this book fret and dither over that for hundreds of pages. And every uncertainty that flies through their minds is duly recorded, as well as every counter-argument. Should they take action X, not knowing if it will change history for the better or worse? Or will the change occur because of their _inaction_? Sweet mother of pearl, the opportunities to fret about this abound.

Our protagonists, historians from the future, inhabit World War II London, interacting with street urchins, ARP wardens, volunteer hospital staff, British intelligence, cranky landladies, and firewatchers. For historians, they are remarkably wrapped up in the drama of their own (relatively) trivial problems, and not very curious or particularly observant about the people, events, and _history_ occurring all around them. And they find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that London during the Blitz is not a great place to keep to oneself and try to maintain professional distance. It is all hands on deck, with everyone needed to pitch in, interact, contribute, sacrifice, and alter things. And make connections they do.

Again, the dual success and failure of this book is frustrating, as it was with Blackout. I feel as if I've been given a very vivid sense of the environment around St. Pauls Cathedral, the Underground shelters, some war time entertainment, and some of the subterfuge involved in the invasion in Normandy. And for that I'm grateful. But the price the reader has to pay, spending time in the heads of the feckless, fretful, dithering, and ultimately passionless protagonists, is at times almost not worth it. Everything is just so hard and complicated for them, from contacting each other to typing fake ads, and everyone jumps to the wrong conclusions about everything, and no one just keeps their damn cool and preserves their sense of wonder about being in the midst of World War II.

The outcome of the plot is relatively satisfying, although it is telegraphed well in advance.


]]> Ark Angel (Alex Rider, #6) 9206686
Duration: 7 Hours 48 Minutes]]> 8 Anthony Horowitz 1423786971 Mike 3 childrens-books, fiction
Nearly all of the Bond tropes are here - the gadget master, ridiculously named women, the rich villain who must challenge our hero's manliness in contests of skill, the buddy from the CIA, the long-drawn-out death plans for the hero (giving him time to escape), and even the world-weary sense of just being a disposable pawn or bait for MI6.

This particular plot involves a rich Russian mobster, a space hotel, an island retreat, a battle inside a hospital, a fiery skyscraper, and a deadly go cart race. All good fun, and narrator Simon Prebble does a terrific job once again with his accents. ]]> 3.42 2005 Ark Angel (Alex Rider, #6)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Mike
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/01
date added: 2015/05/07
shelves: childrens-books, fiction
review:
This is a rather joyful homage to James Bond, and as those movies have some childish elements, bringing that world into young adult fiction makes it even more fun to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride.

Nearly all of the Bond tropes are here - the gadget master, ridiculously named women, the rich villain who must challenge our hero's manliness in contests of skill, the buddy from the CIA, the long-drawn-out death plans for the hero (giving him time to escape), and even the world-weary sense of just being a disposable pawn or bait for MI6.

This particular plot involves a rich Russian mobster, a space hotel, an island retreat, a battle inside a hospital, a fiery skyscraper, and a deadly go cart race. All good fun, and narrator Simon Prebble does a terrific job once again with his accents.
]]> Blackout (All Clear, #1) 6506307 491 Connie Willis 0553803190 Mike 3 Connie Willis really wants to write a novel of historical fiction. She's researched several interesting areas of WWII Britain, including the Blitz, child evacuees, Enigma, Dunkirk, St. Paul's, and ambulance drivers. And she wants to give readers a view of these events from an outsider's perspective. Add some muddled ideas about time travel, and you have researchers from the future traveling back to infiltrate and observe these events.

The historical fiction part of all of this succeeds quite nicely. Willis paints interesting portraits of the camaraderie of groups of people sheltering from the bombs, of being a store clerk in bombed out London, of being in service in a country manor in charge of a troupe of dislocated children, of disrupted train service and rationed cooking and stiff upper lip heroics.

But my god, the muddled ideas about time travel intrude into this interesting picture in very uninteresting, and ultimately distracting and annoying, ways. Willis makes the nature of time travel deliberately ambiguous, and then regales us with page after page of the characters' thoughts spinning wildly because they have no clue about how it works either. Is the past fixed and unchangeable? If so, what does it mean for the impostors to interact with people and their environment? Do their experiences exist until they leave for the future again, and then revert back? Willis's characters keep repeating "historians can't change the past", so maybe this is right. Is the past malleable, and can they affect the future? In this case, _any_ change is a major change, because (as they also keep repeating) it is a chaotic system where any small change can have major and unforeseen consequences. "For want of a nail", they keep repeating. Or, is the structure of time travel itself fixed, and so like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, anything that didn't happen can't happen, and time travel is allowed as long as it is all self-consistent? This idea is also entertained.

In the end, the characters' inner monologues about this ambiguity becomes increasingly annoying and frantic, and you realize that they have no clue what they are dealing with, and are criminally liable for messing about with a system they do not understand.

So, more well-researched historical fiction, please, and less mental onanism about a deliberately ambiguous time travel mechanism. You wanted to see WWII Britain, characters, so just settle down and observe it.

]]> 3.85 2010 Blackout (All Clear, #1)
author: Connie Willis
name: Mike
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/01
date added: 2015/05/05
shelves: fiction, science-fiction, historical_fiction
review:
Connie Willis really wants to write a novel of historical fiction. She's researched several interesting areas of WWII Britain, including the Blitz, child evacuees, Enigma, Dunkirk, St. Paul's, and ambulance drivers. And she wants to give readers a view of these events from an outsider's perspective. Add some muddled ideas about time travel, and you have researchers from the future traveling back to infiltrate and observe these events.

The historical fiction part of all of this succeeds quite nicely. Willis paints interesting portraits of the camaraderie of groups of people sheltering from the bombs, of being a store clerk in bombed out London, of being in service in a country manor in charge of a troupe of dislocated children, of disrupted train service and rationed cooking and stiff upper lip heroics.

But my god, the muddled ideas about time travel intrude into this interesting picture in very uninteresting, and ultimately distracting and annoying, ways. Willis makes the nature of time travel deliberately ambiguous, and then regales us with page after page of the characters' thoughts spinning wildly because they have no clue about how it works either. Is the past fixed and unchangeable? If so, what does it mean for the impostors to interact with people and their environment? Do their experiences exist until they leave for the future again, and then revert back? Willis's characters keep repeating "historians can't change the past", so maybe this is right. Is the past malleable, and can they affect the future? In this case, _any_ change is a major change, because (as they also keep repeating) it is a chaotic system where any small change can have major and unforeseen consequences. "For want of a nail", they keep repeating. Or, is the structure of time travel itself fixed, and so like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, anything that didn't happen can't happen, and time travel is allowed as long as it is all self-consistent? This idea is also entertained.

In the end, the characters' inner monologues about this ambiguity becomes increasingly annoying and frantic, and you realize that they have no clue what they are dealing with, and are criminally liable for messing about with a system they do not understand.

So, more well-researched historical fiction, please, and less mental onanism about a deliberately ambiguous time travel mechanism. You wanted to see WWII Britain, characters, so just settle down and observe it.


]]> <![CDATA[The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos]]> 22889752 Ěý
Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a passionate and inspiring tour through the exciting history of human progress and the key events in the development of science. In the process, he presents a fascinating new look at the unique characteristics of our species and our society that helped propel us from stone tools to written language and through the birth of chemistry, biology, and modern physics to today’s technological world.
Ěý
Along the way he explores the cultural conditions that influenced scientific thought through the ages and the colorful personalities of some of the great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers: Galileo, who preferred painting and poetry to medicine and dropped out of university; Isaac Newton, who stuck needlelike bodkins into his eyes to better understand changes in light and color; and Antoine Lavoisier, who drank nothing but milk for two weeks to examine its effects on his body. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and many lesser-known but equally brilliant minds also populate these pages, each of their stories showing how much of human achievement can be attributed to the stubborn pursuit of simple questions (why? how?), bravely asked.
Ěý
The Upright Thinkers is a book for science lovers and for anyone interested in creative thinking and in our ongoing quest to understand our world. At once deeply informed, accessible, and infused with the author’s trademark wit, this insightful work is a stunning tribute to humanity’s intellectual curiosity.
Ěý
(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)]]> 352 Leonard Mlodinow 0307908232 Mike 0 to-read 4.09 2015 The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
author: Leonard Mlodinow
name: Mike
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Algorithm 23338241 460 Arthur M. Doweyko 0989401197 Mike 0 to-read 3.92 2014 Algorithm
author: Arthur M. Doweyko
name: Mike
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
Ěý
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]> 419 Jonathan Haidt Mike 5 belief, non-fiction, politics
* why the crazy content of so many religions has nothing to do with why people adhere to them

* why virginity is so maniacally important to some people

* why liberals think conservatives don't care about harming people

* how our moral decisions are actually formed

* how to talk to people who aren't in your group

* why groups and belonging are so important to humans

and that is just touching the surface. Grasp the contents of this book and you will understand the vital roots of how to build coalitions, finding your own happiness, and discovering what your innate moral landscape is like. I can't say enough good things about this book. Read it! ]]> 4.18 2012 The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2015/03/01
date added: 2015/04/03
shelves: belief, non-fiction, politics
review:
This book is a home run on many levels. It is well-written, entertaining, enlightening, concerns the most important topics of human life, meaning, coalition and faction, cooperation, morality, belief, politics, and religion. I've never seen a more cogent description of the human animal, what makes us tick, why we argue, and how to push people's buttons. Author Haidt describes important and relevant scientific discoveries that explain things like

* why the crazy content of so many religions has nothing to do with why people adhere to them

* why virginity is so maniacally important to some people

* why liberals think conservatives don't care about harming people

* how our moral decisions are actually formed

* how to talk to people who aren't in your group

* why groups and belonging are so important to humans

and that is just touching the surface. Grasp the contents of this book and you will understand the vital roots of how to build coalitions, finding your own happiness, and discovering what your innate moral landscape is like. I can't say enough good things about this book. Read it!
]]> <![CDATA[Collateral Damage (A Stone Barrington Novel)]]> 18079840 Stone Barrington returns in the thrilling new novel from the New York Times–bestselling author.

After a productive trip to Bel-Air, Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan—and back in his element, ready to return to the world of deluxe fine dining and elegant high society that New York does best.

But then an unexpected visit from his friend and periodic lover, CIA assistant director Holly Barker, draws Stone into a dangerous game of murder and vengeance, against an enemy with plans bigger than they could ever imagine. . . .]]> 0 Stuart Woods 1611762537 Mike 1 didn-t-finish, fiction
Which brings me to this audio book, of which I was only able to stomach about the first CD. The whole thing felt like a parody of what a dumb person would think a good international thriller would be like. Starting with the protagonist's hilarious name. Stone Barrington. Manly enough for you? Anyway, so Rod Stiffington is this operative with some undefined relationship with the CIA, and does things occasionally for them like saving the President and his cabinet from being blown up by swarthy Muslim (of course) terrorists, and he also is friends with benefits to a female CIA agent. Did I mention that the head of the CIA is the president's wife? Also, Wood Shaftington has a friend named Dino with whom he has exploits.

I realize I am jumping in at what is probably a point in a series that is past its sell by date, but the idea that this author is moving copy while Iain Pears is relatively unknown is criminal. Also, the author crowbars his research into the story in very unsubtle ways, emphasizing dumb details like what distinguishes diplomatic plates into characters' dialog. Bleh. ]]> 2.67 2012 Collateral Damage (A Stone Barrington Novel)
author: Stuart Woods
name: Mike
average rating: 2.67
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2015/03/01
date added: 2015/04/03
shelves: didn-t-finish, fiction
review:
Something that has surprised me lately is the stultifying badness of books that are really popular. Books that seem to move a lot of copies seem to be poorly written and edited - almost deliberately so - to the point where it feels as if books achieve sales _because_ they are poorly written.

Which brings me to this audio book, of which I was only able to stomach about the first CD. The whole thing felt like a parody of what a dumb person would think a good international thriller would be like. Starting with the protagonist's hilarious name. Stone Barrington. Manly enough for you? Anyway, so Rod Stiffington is this operative with some undefined relationship with the CIA, and does things occasionally for them like saving the President and his cabinet from being blown up by swarthy Muslim (of course) terrorists, and he also is friends with benefits to a female CIA agent. Did I mention that the head of the CIA is the president's wife? Also, Wood Shaftington has a friend named Dino with whom he has exploits.

I realize I am jumping in at what is probably a point in a series that is past its sell by date, but the idea that this author is moving copy while Iain Pears is relatively unknown is criminal. Also, the author crowbars his research into the story in very unsubtle ways, emphasizing dumb details like what distinguishes diplomatic plates into characters' dialog. Bleh.
]]> <![CDATA[Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)]]> 15800595 WHSmith Collector's Edition

Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the "steam" that children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant "shining" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes "Doctor Sleep."

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.]]> 19 Stephen King 1442357614 Mike 3 fiction, horror The Shining, but moves away from that quickly, with Dan Torrance struggling with his alcoholism and his gift and their consequences. But then it moves on from that story and becomes more about a long distance duel between a very severely gifted girl and a group of psychic vampires, with Dan playing a role.

Perhaps it is true about Stephen King generally, but I feel like he leaned way back away from the dark side of his characters and story here. The protagonists are treacly, good, kind, and even Dan's troubles are dealt with neatly and quickly. The antagonists seem more hapless then truly scary, with the main villain having quotidian issues managing a group of geriatric nomads instead of really scary predators. The outcome is never in doubt, despite King's efforts to build some tension, and his picture of Dan remains somehow incomplete. After conquering and managing his alcoholism, do we really believe that Dan wouldn't get involved in serious relationships - is he never to fall in love and try to build a family of his own, or is his adopted town and nursing all of the connection that he needs in the world?

It was satisfying to hear the rest of Dan's story, especially after the heartbreaking picture that was painted in The Shining, but I feel that if King had gone to some darker places in this book, created some real risks and put some bigger stakes on the line, this would have been more meaningful. ]]> 4.10 2013 Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)
author: Stephen King
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2015/04/03
shelves: fiction, horror
review:
Doctor Sleep definitely has its moments, but I was surprisingly unmoved by it in the end. It starts off very promisingly, with material that follows along from The Shining, but moves away from that quickly, with Dan Torrance struggling with his alcoholism and his gift and their consequences. But then it moves on from that story and becomes more about a long distance duel between a very severely gifted girl and a group of psychic vampires, with Dan playing a role.

Perhaps it is true about Stephen King generally, but I feel like he leaned way back away from the dark side of his characters and story here. The protagonists are treacly, good, kind, and even Dan's troubles are dealt with neatly and quickly. The antagonists seem more hapless then truly scary, with the main villain having quotidian issues managing a group of geriatric nomads instead of really scary predators. The outcome is never in doubt, despite King's efforts to build some tension, and his picture of Dan remains somehow incomplete. After conquering and managing his alcoholism, do we really believe that Dan wouldn't get involved in serious relationships - is he never to fall in love and try to build a family of his own, or is his adopted town and nursing all of the connection that he needs in the world?

It was satisfying to hear the rest of Dan's story, especially after the heartbreaking picture that was painted in The Shining, but I feel that if King had gone to some darker places in this book, created some real risks and put some bigger stakes on the line, this would have been more meaningful.
]]> Moral Disorder 1199394
In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences � the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present.

In � The Art of Cooking and Serving ,� the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In “The Entities,� the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 8 Margaret Atwood 0739340514 Mike 2 fiction
Margaret Atwood has an amazing gift for prose, prophecy, and the telling detail, and sometimes they combine to create amazing, angry works of art like The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. In other outings, what shines through most is her sense of disappointment. Her disappointment with life, with people, with the way they are, with men and their patronizing and domineering, with women and their submission and foolishness.

This is a ten-part sort-of novel, the equivalent of something like a triptych, that floats into and around one character's life, her childhood, her adolescence, her later years and married life and trying to achieve . .. something. She is maneuvered passively into taking over another woman's responsibilities, first the woman's children then the woman's husband (a huge theme in Atwood's works), which she does, and then meekly goes through the sad motions of biting off more than she can chew in a rural setting, following her hapless husband's lead. There are complications with her parents and her sister and the children who aren't really hers and her own offspring, and Atwood is just too bored and disappointed by it all and so am I.

I enjoy fiction where the author finds some things to enjoy and love about their characters, and this wasn't it. ]]> 3.14 2006 Moral Disorder
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Mike
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/03/31
shelves: fiction
review:
Meh.

Margaret Atwood has an amazing gift for prose, prophecy, and the telling detail, and sometimes they combine to create amazing, angry works of art like The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. In other outings, what shines through most is her sense of disappointment. Her disappointment with life, with people, with the way they are, with men and their patronizing and domineering, with women and their submission and foolishness.

This is a ten-part sort-of novel, the equivalent of something like a triptych, that floats into and around one character's life, her childhood, her adolescence, her later years and married life and trying to achieve . .. something. She is maneuvered passively into taking over another woman's responsibilities, first the woman's children then the woman's husband (a huge theme in Atwood's works), which she does, and then meekly goes through the sad motions of biting off more than she can chew in a rural setting, following her hapless husband's lead. There are complications with her parents and her sister and the children who aren't really hers and her own offspring, and Atwood is just too bored and disappointed by it all and so am I.

I enjoy fiction where the author finds some things to enjoy and love about their characters, and this wasn't it.
]]> <![CDATA[Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey]]> 22285 320 Chuck Palahniuk 0385517874 Mike 1 didn-t-finish, fiction 3.85 2007 Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Mike
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2007
rating: 1
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2015/03/31
shelves: didn-t-finish, fiction
review:
I couldn't finish this book. I've been mildly amused by Chuck Palahniuk, but found I couldn't even remotely care about his tar-toothed, booger-decorating, venom-collecting wildman antihero, nor the stupid car-crashing pastime he invented. I'm sure it is all very metaphorical and deep, but also incredibly boring and pointless. In addition, I tried reading the audio version, and the switching between narrators every 30 seconds made this even more tedious to listen to.
]]> <![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 259028 447 Erik Larson 0375725601 Mike 0 to-read 3.97 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Postmortal 10673576
Old age can never kill him now.

The only problem is, everything else still can...

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors.

Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.]]> 369 Drew Magary 0143119826 Mike 0 to-read 3.75 2011 The Postmortal
author: Drew Magary
name: Mike
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Drug Discovery: A History 2176840 480 Walter Sneader 0471899801 Mike 0 to-read 4.33 2005 Drug Discovery: A History
author: Walter Sneader
name: Mike
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (American Empire Project)]]> 12292260
Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by “a few bad apples.� But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to “kill anything that moves.�

Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American unit all but inevitable. Kill Anything That Moves takes us from archives filled with Washington’s long-suppressed war crimes investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led soldiers to commit what one participant called “a My Lai a month.�

Thousands of Vietnam books later, Kill Anything That Moves, devastating and definitive, finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts Americans to this day.]]> 370 Nick Turse 0805086919 Mike 0 to-read 4.22 2013 Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (American Empire Project)
author: Nick Turse
name: Mike
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Orphan Train 15818107 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780061950728, found here.

The author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be delivers her most ambitious and powerful novel to date: a captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.

Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both.

Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.]]> 278 Christina Baker Kline Mike 0 to-read 4.18 2013 Orphan Train
author: Christina Baker Kline
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Mike 0 to-read 4.00 2013 The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden]]> 86654 304 William Alexander 1565125576 Mike 0 to-read 3.76 2006 The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
author: William Alexander
name: Mike
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)]]> 18214414 Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...]]> 464 Robert Galbraith 0316206873 Mike 0 to-read 4.02 2014 The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Landline 18081809
Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her � Neal is always a little upset with Georgie � but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?]]> 320 Rainbow Rowell 1250049377 Mike 0 to-read 3.54 2014 Landline
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Mike
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills � and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit � he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Mike 0 to-read 4.41 2011 The Martian
author: Andy Weir
name: Mike
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Fighting Chance 18779662 A Fighting Chance

As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher—an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws?

Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis but became a target of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62, she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitive—and watched—Senate race in the country.
In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing book, Warren shows why she has chosen to fight tooth and nail for the middle class—and why she has become a hero to all those who believe that America's government can and must do better for working families.]]> 365 Elizabeth Warren 1627790527 Mike 5 autobiography, politics
Why? Warren has _studied_ it. She has spent years actually getting into the details of what these banksters have been pulling off and the misery they've created and the injustice they've been the architects for. And it has made her angry.

Read the book. Her righteous fury at these well-heeled cutpurses is palpable.

If she isn't running for office, I see no reason for her to have written and published the book, because it is the most eloquent expression of purpose and justification for candidacy that I've ever had the pleasure to read.

We need her to run for the presidency, because she is just about the only person on the national scene right now who can demonstrate that she gives a damn.]]> 4.12 2014 A Fighting Chance
author: Elizabeth Warren
name: Mike
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2014/10/21
shelves: autobiography, politics
review:
In "A Fighting Chance", Elizabeth Warren outlines the broad path of her life and political career. But one thing rings through all of the stories of fighting for consumer protection: her anger. She is actually upset at the way that the thieves in suits who run this country have repeatedly and thoroughly screwed average people - robbed them, conned them, cheated them, all the while having their well-bribed buddies in Congress make all of the robbery, theft, and chicanery "legal".

Why? Warren has _studied_ it. She has spent years actually getting into the details of what these banksters have been pulling off and the misery they've created and the injustice they've been the architects for. And it has made her angry.

Read the book. Her righteous fury at these well-heeled cutpurses is palpable.

If she isn't running for office, I see no reason for her to have written and published the book, because it is the most eloquent expression of purpose and justification for candidacy that I've ever had the pleasure to read.

We need her to run for the presidency, because she is just about the only person on the national scene right now who can demonstrate that she gives a damn.
]]> <![CDATA[Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World]]> 18222843 272 Mark Miodownik 0544236041 Mike 5 science
I have to confess that this book touched me very deeply. I think the moment in my life that made me want to be a chemist and study materials was when I found out how the atomic structure of graphite translated into its use as an industrial lubricant. That moment, when the smallest-scale structure reveals property reveals macro-level function, was like unlocking a puzzle, and made the whole world full of mysteries to explore and discover. Miodownik shares this passion, and his love for his subject shines through in this excellent book. I could have happily read further chapters - on paints and coatings, on adhesives, on dyes, on stone - but until then, I strongly recommend what the author has given us. ]]> 4.10 2013 Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
author: Mark Miodownik
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/10/21
shelves: science
review:
This is a beautifully written book about materials science, and the materials that make up our civilization and lives. Each short section focuses on a material that makes up our world, and concrete, steel, glass, ceramic, polymers, and paper each are discussed from their discovery to their microscopic structure to their macroscopic properties and use in our lives. There are also interesting discussions on diamond, graphite, gels, biomaterials, and fabrics. One section is a love letter to the materials science of chocolate. Several rare and new materials are also discussed, including silica aerogel, graphene, and self-healing concrete.

I have to confess that this book touched me very deeply. I think the moment in my life that made me want to be a chemist and study materials was when I found out how the atomic structure of graphite translated into its use as an industrial lubricant. That moment, when the smallest-scale structure reveals property reveals macro-level function, was like unlocking a puzzle, and made the whole world full of mysteries to explore and discover. Miodownik shares this passion, and his love for his subject shines through in this excellent book. I could have happily read further chapters - on paints and coatings, on adhesives, on dyes, on stone - but until then, I strongly recommend what the author has given us.
]]> <![CDATA[Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement]]> 379041
Recently the movement known as “Intelligent Design� has attracted the attention of journalists, educators, and legislators. The scientific community is puzzled and saddened by this trend–not only because it distorts modern biology, but also because it diverts people from the truly fascinating ideas emerging from the real science of evolution. Here, join fifteen of our preeminent thinkers whose clear, accessible, and passionate essays reveal the fact and power of Darwin’s theory, and the beauty of the scientific quest to understand our world.]]> 272 John Brockman 0307277224 Mike 5 evolution, science, belief
The hand of the editor here feels light, as many arguments are presented in roughly the same manner, and the early parts of the book make it seem like a "Murder on the Orient Express" treatment of Michael Behe and William Dembski, two of IDs most visible public proponents, as each essayist in turn drives their stiletto of logic into the corpus of Behe and Dembski's statements on ID.

There are two essays that stood out for me. Steven Pinker gives one of the clearest, most cogent, and beautifully written summaries of moral behavior as adaptive behavior that I've ever read. And the appendix of the book contains judge John Jones's opinion in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case involving the teaching of ID in public school science classes. I had heard that Jones's ruling was excellent in its analysis of whether ID was a scientific theory, but actually reading it is a real pleasure, as it is a fantastic and logical take down of the clownish defense of ID that was presented in the Dover case. By the end, I needed a metaphorical cigarette, and that it was written not by an expert in the field but rather by a sharp judicial mind makes it even more satisfying. ]]> 3.93 2006 Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement
author: John Brockman
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2014/10/01
date added: 2014/10/13
shelves: evolution, science, belief
review:
I could read books about what a great scientific theory evolution for the rest of my life, and I probably will. The narrative of life is so rich and interesting, with so many side-stories and anecdotes, that I feel it is a real shame that it is not taught more loudly in high school biology classes. This volume is a collection of essays by a wide field of leading thinkers about why Intelligent Design is a poor alternative to the theory of evolution by natural selection, why ID is not science, and why ID should not be taught as an alternative theory in science classes. The usual suspects make their appearance here, including Dawkins, Dennett, and Pinker. Each essay is short and easily digested, and different flavors of appeals to the beauty of evolution and the paucity of ID are presented, including just how stupid our "design" is in many aspects, how the eye evolved, various refutations of the watchmaker analogy, the information content of the universe, just how weird consciousness actually is and how it might have arisen, our collective educational goals, the entwining fields of ecology and evolution.

The hand of the editor here feels light, as many arguments are presented in roughly the same manner, and the early parts of the book make it seem like a "Murder on the Orient Express" treatment of Michael Behe and William Dembski, two of IDs most visible public proponents, as each essayist in turn drives their stiletto of logic into the corpus of Behe and Dembski's statements on ID.

There are two essays that stood out for me. Steven Pinker gives one of the clearest, most cogent, and beautifully written summaries of moral behavior as adaptive behavior that I've ever read. And the appendix of the book contains judge John Jones's opinion in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case involving the teaching of ID in public school science classes. I had heard that Jones's ruling was excellent in its analysis of whether ID was a scientific theory, but actually reading it is a real pleasure, as it is a fantastic and logical take down of the clownish defense of ID that was presented in the Dover case. By the end, I needed a metaphorical cigarette, and that it was written not by an expert in the field but rather by a sharp judicial mind makes it even more satisfying.
]]> How Music Works 13235689
Acting as historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, he searches for patterns—and shows how those patterns have affected his own work over the years with Talking Heads and his many collaborators, from Brian Eno to Caetano Veloso. Byrne sees music as part of a larger, almost Darwinian pattern of adaptations and responses to its cultural and physical context. His range is panoptic, taking us from Wagnerian opera houses to African villages, from his earliest high school reel-to-reel recordings to his latest work in a home music studio (and all the big studios in between).

Touching on the joy, the physics, and even the business of making music, How Music Works is a brainy, irresistible adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.]]> 345 David Byrne 1936365537 Mike 0 to-read 4.00 2014 How Music Works
author: David Byrne
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 15783514
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 181 Neil Gaiman 0062255657 Mike 0 to-read 4.00 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (The Hinges of History)]]> 27200 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore "the hinges of history," Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining—and historically unassailable—journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.

In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.]]> 304 Thomas Cahill 0385495544 Mike 0 to-read 3.74 2003 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (The Hinges of History)
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Mike
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)]]> 7235533 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, book one of The Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths:

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.]]> 1007 Brandon Sanderson 0765326353 Mike 0 to-read 4.66 2010 The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Darwin's Lost World: The Hidden History of Animal Life]]> 4867453 the depths of the Precambrian. Yet hidden in these depths is a great mystery--something happened around the Cambrian to dramatically speed up evolution and produce many of the early forms of animals we know today--and scientists don't really know what provided that spark.

In this vibrantly written book, Martin Brasier, a leading paleontologist working on early life, takes us into the deep, dark ages of the Precambrian to explore Darwin's Lost World. Brasier is a master storyteller. As he explains what we now know of the strange creatures of these truly ancient
times--540 million years ago--he takes readers to many far flung places around the globe, interweaving an engaging account of cutting-edge science with colorful and amusing anecdotes from his expeditions to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, and other remote places. As he shows, decoding the evidence in these
ancient rocks--piecing together the puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion--is very challenging work. What they have discovered is that, just at the beginning of the Cambrian period, animals (mostly worms) began burrowing into the mud. Why they suddenly began burrowing, and how this might have changed the
atmosphere, may be important clues to the mystery. Brasier gives his own take on the emerging answers, as one of the leading players in the field.

A richly readable account of far-flung expeditions and leading-edge science, Darwin's Lost World is a must-have book for all natural history buffs.]]> 304 Martin D. Brasier 0199548978 Mike 4 3.81 2009 Darwin's Lost World: The Hidden History of Animal Life
author: Martin D. Brasier
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/01
date added: 2014/07/31
shelves: evolution, non-fiction, science
review:
I enjoyed parts of this book quite a bit, though overall it was a slog to get to the end and finally gain the important punch line. Each part of the book is framed through a past trip to some remote geological location that the author took to view obscure but important fossil remains or markings, all in the service of eventually explaining why a lot of single-celled fossils are hard to find in rock beds older than those which were laid down as life was beginning. The reason, and I guess this is a spoiler alert, is that after worms evolved and were constantly churning up sea beds and mud, that fossilization of the smallest creatures became rare indeed. But by following the clues back into older and older sediments, and finally into fine-grained phosphate nodules from about 3 and a half billion years ago, the traces of the earliest single-celled life forms can be found, and even found in the act of reproducing. This book was interesting in the way it traced concepts and disputes through years of geological research, including the political and geographical scientific issues involved, and finally laid out the story from the beginning. A nice summation of a field and a career in some of the most interesting research of the last few decades. Another bonus was learning the correct pronunciation of "Ediacaran".
]]> <![CDATA[The Best American Short Plays 2001-2002]]> 1798926 216 Glenn Young 1557837058 Mike 3 plays 3.25 2007 The Best American Short Plays 2001-2002
author: Glenn Young
name: Mike
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2014/06/01
date added: 2014/07/31
shelves: plays
review:
An enjoyable collection of short theater, providing an opportunity to imagine the staging and sound effects and dialog happening in one's mind rather than in real life. Some is frivolous, some overwrought, some affirming, some delightful and light. All of it is amazing for being able to pack an emotional punch in a short number of pages or minutes of stage time.
]]> <![CDATA[The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #0)]]> 13152282
Now he's being sent to a new orphanage, where he will encounter vicious bullies, selfish adults, strange circumstances � and a mystery that could change his life forever. Luckily, he does have one thing in his favor: He's a a genius.

On his quest to solve the mystery, Nicholas finds enemies around every corner, but also friends in unexpected places � and discovers along the way that the greatest puzzle of all is himself.]]> 14 Trenton Lee Stewart 0307968316 Mike 5 4.37 2012 The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #0)
author: Trenton Lee Stewart
name: Mike
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/01
date added: 2014/07/31
shelves: childrens-books, fiction, mystery
review:
This is an excellent book, equal to The Mysterious Benedict Society in the way in which it frames the challenges of gifted kids against institutional indifference (or worse). But that makes it sound as if it isn't as much fun as it is. It is a lot of fun, and the way in which young Nicholas works around, avoids, overcomes, and generally outsmarts his problems is inspiring and clever. A great book for younger readers or to read aloud with children. There is something that rings so true about the way the adults in Trenton Stewart's books deal with clever children - a mix of underestimation and exasperation - and they way in which the young characters in his books have to deal with a confusing and often hostile world.
]]> Lord of the Flies 1167532
Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.]]> 190 William Golding 3125738040 Mike 0 currently-reading 3.57 1954 Lord of the Flies
author: William Golding
name: Mike
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee]]> 20149192
The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first.

A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman reveals how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty, Creator of all things. But how did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? In a book that took eight years to research and write, Ehrman sketches Jesus’s transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him after his death—alive again—did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today.

Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.]]> 416 Bart D. Ehrman Mike 0 to-read 4.05 2014 How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
author: Bart D. Ehrman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Winger (Winger, #1) 11861815
With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.]]> 439 Andrew Smith 1442444924 Mike 0 to-read 4.04 2013 Winger (Winger, #1)
author: Andrew Smith
name: Mike
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Child Thief 6308379 not Neverland. Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always more to lose.

Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries—one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.

There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.]]> 483 Brom 0061671339 Mike 0 to-read 4.08 2009 The Child Thief
author: Brom
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies]]> 1839 The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.]]> 518 Jared Diamond 0393061310 Mike 5 4.04 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
author: Jared Diamond
name: Mike
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Consider the Lobster and Other Essays]]> 6751
Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."]]> 343 David Foster Wallace 0316156116 Mike 5
These non-fiction essays shine like a set of beautiful beads on a string, each unique, each revealing the author and the subject with provocative prose. There are scholarly essays on Kafka and Dostoevsky and Updike, on the ethics of conservative talk radio, boiling live lobsters, and pornography. There is what is probably the definitive piece of writing on John McCain's run for the Republican nomination in 2000. There is a hilarious rumination on the mental blankness that makes great athletes great. And, there is the centerpiece of the book, which connects language use to identity and politics in such an irrefutable way that you will never think about how language is used in the same way again.

A tour de force, and a thought-provoking pleasure. ]]> 4.19 2005 Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Mike
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2014/05/01
date added: 2014/06/01
shelves: non-fiction, politics, humor, literature
review:
The Venn diagram where erudite writers cross with truly funny writers is very sparse. Wallace sits in the center of that intersection, and what is more, he is an author with heart. He cares, deeply, about his subjects, and that comes through in both his scholarship and his laugh out loud humor. He is also a pleasure to read, and a master of words and the use of language.

These non-fiction essays shine like a set of beautiful beads on a string, each unique, each revealing the author and the subject with provocative prose. There are scholarly essays on Kafka and Dostoevsky and Updike, on the ethics of conservative talk radio, boiling live lobsters, and pornography. There is what is probably the definitive piece of writing on John McCain's run for the Republican nomination in 2000. There is a hilarious rumination on the mental blankness that makes great athletes great. And, there is the centerpiece of the book, which connects language use to identity and politics in such an irrefutable way that you will never think about how language is used in the same way again.

A tour de force, and a thought-provoking pleasure.
]]>