Mon, Aug 08, 2011

: Snows of Kilimanjaro

Author: Ernest Hemmingway

I “read” the audio book version of this which may not have been the best idea. I didn’t realize it was short stories and those don’t always work quite as well as novels in the car (where I listen to audiobooks). If you miss hearing a sentence in a novel, you haven’t missed much, but in a short story, just one line can be critical. Because of that I found a few of these stories difficult to follow. Like the very first one, “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” I didn’t even realize was a story and thought it was the beginning of a novel (which seemed odd, since it’s about a guy on his deathbed, which is an unusual way to begin a novel). I wasn’t paying full attention, either, and suddenly the “novel” ended and I realized it was just a short story. Because of all that I’d like to go back and relisten to these at some point: I think I’d get more and more out of them over time. That said, I did enjoy the stories, and actor Stacy Keach did a surprisingly good job reading them. Some I liked more than others, though I can’t say that any are particularly memorable. I did enjoy the writing style even in stories I didn’t get (like in the boxing story, which I didn’t really follow or understand). Probably my favorite was the story about the lion hunter in Africa. I need to read more Hemmingway.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Tue, Jun 21, 2011

: The Devotion of Suspect X

Author: Keigo Higashino

Something about this novel caught my eye on Audible and so I bought the audiobook. I was nervous about reading a Japanese book: I have enough trouble keeping track of Western names in books (or in real life) and figured I’d end up hopelessly confused with who was who and aspects of the Japanese culture I don’t know about. While there’s a little of that — I still have no idea what sort of electrical appliance was used as the murder weapon (the Japanese name is given) and I couldn’t tell female names from males (and the male narrator of the audiobook didn’t do female voices in a female voice) — but overall I found it surprisingly easy to follow. The book itself is terrific. It starts with an amazingly simple premise and uncovers a boatload of complications. In the first chapter we meet three people: a lonely high school math teacher who leads a simple boring life and his next door neighbor, a woman with a daughter (I never could figure out how old the child was). We quickly realize the man has a secret crush on the woman. Every day he visits the lunch shop where she works but he never has the nerve to speak with her. Then her abusive ex-husband visits her and in self-defense she kills him. She’s terrified that she’ll be going to jail and leave her young daughter helpless and alone. (I guess they don’t have self-defense justification in Japan.) The neighbor man shows up and volunteers to help her hide the crime. It turns out, he’s a genius, a man of math and logic, and he proceeds to create an amazing coverup of the crime. We are then introduced to two new characters: a detective in charge of investigating the crime, and his friend from the University, a physicist who sometimes helps the detective when the crime is too puzzling. It turns out the mathematician and the physicist were in school together and knew each other. The physicist always wondered what happened to his old math buddy, so he goes to visit him. Through their connection, and the puzzling aspects of the murder, which has several elements that puzzle the physicist, he begins to investigate the crime. What follows is an amazing cat-and-mouse game between the detective, the physicist, and the mathematician. We layer onto that the woman and her story, as she begins to realize that by allowing her neighbor to help her, she is now at his mercy; with a word he could ruin her. What is he going to demand of her in recompense? That’s the first two thirds of the novel, which is incredible. I loved it. Unfortunately that final third has some severe weaknesses. Some of those are endemic to the plot, such as the book’s secondary ending, which is awesome. But the fact that the story has two endings is a problem, for it drags things out a bit too long. Then the book goes on with a third ending, which I found rather pointless and depressing. This last ending didn’t really advance the story (which was long finished) but was more like a long epilog, and while it was interesting following the lives of characters, it would have been far better to leave things ambiguous and let us imagine our own endings for them. (As usual when I have a book that ends poorly, I mentally delete that bad ending and think of my own and use that instead.) I still rate this book extremely highly, but it’s disappointing that such a great read runs of out steam in the end. A tighter ending would have made this a dynamite of a novel. Overall, though, this is a fantastic work. I love the simplicity of the story, the complexity of tiny things that become big, and the wonderful battle of wits between the physicist and the mathematician. And the twist ending is brilliant.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Mon, May 02, 2011

: Orion

Though Bova’s one of my favorite SF authors, I somehow missed out on his Orion series. It’s a difficult story to describe, especially without spoiling it. It involves beings who are described as gods, and they can do supernatural things, which is my biggest problem with the novel. Since none of that is explained very well until the end, the story felt groundless and I just drifted along without any way to frame my opinions. If these really were gods, that felt odd because they have limitations and aren’t all-powerful. The actual plot seems to be full of holes as a result, since gods should be able to deal with the obstacles. By the time I understood what was going on I liked the novel a little better, but it still feels awkward and doesn’t sit well. I feel manipulated. The plot itself is redundant, but has its interesting moments. The basic story is a man named Orion who discovers he’s a creation of a god who has programmed him to hunt down and kill a rival god. The story begins in the modern world, and then moves back through time into different points in history. Each time, Orion’s task is the same: find his enemy and defeat him. Their battles are each different and the solutions interesting and not always what you’d expect, but it still felt too much like Sisyphus and his rock, an endless tale of death and rebirth, throughout which Orion must always defeat the same foe over and over and over. What’s the point of all that? Though I liked many aspects of the story (there’s a love-relationship that’s also key and that was intriguing), the very nature of the repetitive story turned me off and I was bored and found reading tedious. I just wanted it to end and it goes on and on and on. There are more in the series, but I’m not certain I want to explore them. It’s possible they’ll have a different feel to me now that I understand what’s going on, so I might give one a try, but right now I’m tired of the Orion universe and want to move on to something else.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Tue, Apr 12, 2011

: Reality Check

Author: Guy Kawasaki

Pretty cool book of tips for entrepreneurs and startups. Nothing revolutionary, but lots of helpful advice on everything from wooing venture capitalists to hiring and firing staff. It’s all written in Guy’s entertaining and playful style with “top ten” lists and chapter titles like “Lies CEOs Tell.” There are stories and anecdotes, quizzes, and best of all, interviews with the authors of other books, so you get a glimpse into other topics (there’s even one chapter written by a lawyer who disagrees with some of Guy’s advice on patents). I thought at first the book would be slim and not that deep, but it’s actually quite extensive and broad, hitting on a wide variety of topics. I especially liked the ending, which featured several chapters on non-profits with some personal stories and interviews that were inspiring. And I loved Guy’s Baccalaureate speech on hindsights, a speech Guy has regularly given over the years. (If nothing else, just read that speech and you’ll get most of what you need from the book.) There were a few things I didn’t like: the main one was the use of a certain profane word for orifice that’s repeated like 100 times in one chapter on that topic, and the fact that some of the material is repetitive and feels stretched or padded to reach a certain book length. A condensed version of the book might be more appropriate for most people. But I still enjoyed this and appreciated Guy’s common sense approach to business and I learned a few things. I just hope I can remember them!

Topic: [/book]

Link

Tue, Mar 22, 2011

: The Dakota Cipher

Author: William Dietrich

I don’t know if this is part of a series, but it’s sort of like The Davinci Code set in the early 1800s, with a rogue American adventurer discovering ancient artifacts while mingling with historical figures like Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson. The plot is wild — the search is for Thor’s Hammer, which apparently has been hidden in the United States back when the Vikings first landed here and explored the new world — but I really liked the way the author balanced the outrageousness with facts and reality. It helps that our narrator and hero, Ethan Gage, is dubious along with us. But what makes the book worth reading is the hilarious writing style: Gage as the narrator writes in a quaint tongue with colorful terms of speech that are just wonderful. It would be over-the-top for a modern book, but works great for a book set in the old west. The historical aspects are also intriguing. However, I was disappointed with the ending which I found unsatisfying in two ways: first, it doesn’t really end as it sets up for a sequel (ugh), and second (slight spoiler), it is not a happy ending. I suppose it makes sense in some ways in terms of the personalities of the characters, but I still wasn’t too happy. It’s probably not enough to ruin the book, which I really liked until that point, but it’s not the ending I wanted. Still, it does make me curious about other books in this series. I shall have to check them out as I’d like to read more about the adventures of Ethan Gage!

Topic: [/book]

Link

Wed, Mar 16, 2011

: The Dogs of War

Author: Frederick Forsyth

Very interesting book. It’s older (1970s, I think), so many aspects are dated. The plot deals with a quest to overthrow a small African nation in order to gain mineral rights and most of the story is the technical details about how to buy arms on the black market, plot a coup, etc. Some of that is hilariously quaint, with mercenaries waiting weeks for instructions via snail mail (today we get annoyed when our email isn’t responded to within minutes). The book’s slow to get started, and it rambles in places, and there are strange parts like the romance in the middle that doesn’t have anything to do with anything else, but it’s an interesting book simply because of the topics of war, mercenaries, and greed.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Sat, Mar 05, 2011

: My Gun Has Bullets

Author: Lee Goldberg

This is the first non-Monk of Lee’s I’ve read and I wasn’t sure what to expect. My first surprise was that the wonderful witty humor I love from the Monk books is fully on display here, in this hilarious skewering of Hollywood television industry. My second surprise was the decidedly adult nature of the writing and plot: sex scenes, murder and gore, porn stars, and a lot of rather disgusting imagery abound. It’s done for appropriate reasons, for the most part, and it’s meant to be funny, but it’s sure a switch from the G-rated Monk series. It perhaps needs a warning label for Monk fans. Beyond that, it’s actually a pretty great read. It’s wild, perhaps too wild, as some of things were so over-the-top they pushed me into disbelief (such as the sitcom dog that bites a man’s hand clean off). But I love the core concept of a mobster simply killing off the competition in his time slot so the TV show he’s financing will get better ratings. The plot’s crazy, with blackmail, murder, and everyone in TV land out to destroy everyone else, but if you take it as parody, it’s works. My favorite was the fake networks and TV shows: they are hilariously ridiculous but enough like real shows to be fully plausible, and some actually sound cool enough to get on the air (like Frankencop, about a cop pieced together from dead body parts). Lee has been in TV for ages and it shows, as he nails everything Hollywood. (Some aspects are dated, as it’s obvious the book was written in the mid-1990s.) It’s a terrific education in the making of television as well as an entertaining spoof. There’s more action than mystery solving, though, but it’s still fun.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Tue, Feb 15, 2011

: Galapagos

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

This is a fascinating book on several levels. The main one is how it is written: the narrator is writing from a million years in the future as he has watched mankind’s evolution from “big brained” creatures into simple-minded otters. The joke is that this is a huge improvement, because instead of using our big brains to steal and cheat and invent atom bombs, we evolve into simple creatures with simple needs and everyone’s the better for it. Kurt does a number of unusual things from a writing perspective, including foreshadowing which characters will soon die by putting an asterix next to their names. These techniques make the first half of the book amazing, as we follow a motley crew of people and catch glimmers of how they are the future of the human race without knowing exactly how that will happen. Unfortunately, this technique fails in the later part of the book where we already know what’s going to happen and the denouement is boring and feels like it goes on forever. The early parts of the novel are brilliant, however, and more than make up for the weaker conclusion. I love Kurt’s wit and sarcasm, especially the way he mocks how our “big brains” get us into trouble. The plot is also terrific, as we learn the remarkable way an unusual set of people end up stranded on the Galapagos Islands and become the future of the human race. It’s fun and fascinating, and highly recommended.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Thu, Jan 27, 2011

: Princess of Mars

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

It’s been a long time since I’ve read Burroughs’ Mars series — I first discovered them in high school (25 years ago, wow!) — but with the new film coming out I thought I’d give them a reread. (And they’re free on Kindle, so yeah!) This is an enjoyable book. Burroughs doesn’t much limit himself to science so these are more fantasy than science fiction (remarkablely imaginative considering when these were written), but he does an excellent job at creating interesting and unusual cultures (that’s my favorite thing about his books). Here he’s got warring populations and species of Martians, a lone human (John Carter) thrust in the middle and trying to survive, and a terrific adventure tale of daring and brawn. Things are a little tedious at times as Burroughs has to spend a great deal of time explaining the world — it’s our narrator hero’s first time there, too — and while some of that exposition is interesting, more action would have been preferable. (I’m really curious about how the subsequent books handle this as they should have more story.) A few of the details are almost too pat (you can see solutions to future problems as things happen to him earlier on), and I found the descriptions of battles boring (war isn’t interesting to me). The love story is the most fascinating part of the book, as he’s falling in love with an alien with a different thought process and culture. Overall, it’s a book that holds up remarkably well. I’m not sure if this is the book they’re making into a movie — it’s the first novel but there is a book called “John Carter of Mars” which I heard was the movie title — but I’m very curious to see what they produce. Considering the nature of the novels — a foreign planet, strange beasts and creatures, epic battles, airships, alien cities — these are not books that were filmable (at least realistically) without today’s special effects abilities. We shall see!

Topic: [/book]

Link

Wed, Dec 29, 2010

: Mr. Monk in Trouble

Author: Lee Goldberg

A delightfully unusual Monk book in that in this one he goes back in time! Sort of. The story takes place in the fictional Old West town of Trouble, a town that during the gold rush had a man named Monk who was remarkably like today’s Monk. Part of the novel is a diary written by a woman who writes about Monk’s exploits in the 1800s, and part of the novel is the modern story of Monk visiting the tiny town of Trouble to solve a murder there. This was fun and a nice change from the regular Monk stories which tend to sound alike after a while, but I have two criticisms. The Old West detective stories all seem to revolve around the same theme of people faking gold discoveries and such, and I wasn’t all that intrigued by the modern murder which seemed very paint-by-numbers. That said, just the exotic setting makes this one worth reading. I wouldn’t be opposed to a whole novel of the original Old West Monk.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Fri, Dec 24, 2010

: American Psycho

I just recently wrote about my rewatch of the film version, but I finally did finish the audiobook today. This is definitely an unusual book. It’s not pleasant (you may literally feel like puking), and it is way, way too long. It’s basically one long bit of rambling by a serial killer, talking about his day-to-day life and his really disgusting murders in the same no-nonsense tone. He feels nothing. He’s a psychopath. He’s a lonely, alienated creature trying to fit in by mimicking the behavior of real humans and not quite getting there. The “gimmick” of the book, if you will, is that because he’s wealthy and incredibly good looking, no one believes him capable of murder, even when he practically flaunts it. He walks down the street feeding stray dogs bits of brain of the prostitute he killed. He actually verbally tells girlfriends things like, “I’m feeling very homicidal today,” and they don’t even notice. He quotes serial killers to his friends and even points out women he’d like to rape and kill and they just think he’s being a morbid joker. In other words, this book is a bit of a black comedy. At least that’s how I looked at it and was able to get through it. (If I saw this as a documentary, I’d have to shoot myself and give up hope on the human race as a species.) The comedy is very dark and subtle, but that does lend a certain charm and fascination to the story. For instance, my favorite scene (slight spoiler here) is when he serves his fiance a used urinal cake dipped in chocolate. He watches her struggle to eat it, trying to pretend it tastes good. That scene epitomizes the entire book for me (it was missing in the film, much to my dismay). This is a guy with a sick sense of humor that no one else in his life gets. He’s wanting them to get it, but no one does. That’s his tragedy. In many respects, that’s why this novel is brilliant and it raises the story to literature. There’s also the satire of 1980s Wall Street, obsession with technology, the wealthy, and other aspects American life mocked, but for me the black humor was the key as it actually gets you to sympathize (ever so slightly) with the guy.

In terms of negatives, there are a few. The most significant is the length: the book is very long and much is repetative (endless restaurant meals, descriptions of music and TV shows, boring daily life, etc.). I be you could cut half the scenes out and it would still generate the same feeling. The length does help really hammer home the nails of how messed up this guy is and how utterly pointless his life is, but doesn’t need to be that long as we get the idea quickly. The 80s setting is interesting, but it really dates the novel, especially when the guy keeps bragging about his hot technology and it’s stuff like a six-CD changer or a casette Walkman and his main excuse to get away from people is to claim he has rented videotapes to return! Also, the endless lists of tech, clothing, and other details gets repetative and boring. I realize it does convey the personality of the psycho narrator, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious. Still, despite these issues, the novel succeeds. That’s surprising (and impressive) because on the surface this is a plotless story about a disgusting guy murdering people in brutal and horrible ways. Yet it rises above that low-brow shock value and gives us a convincing and sobering portrayal of an intelligent yet extremely flawed creature. Not pleasant, as I said, and not I book I would ever read again, I think, but definitely fascinating.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Wed, Nov 24, 2010

: The Associate

Author: John Grisham

I have to give a thumbs down on this one. It sounds interesting and exciting: a young law student is blackmailed into accepting a job at a huge NY law firm for the purpose of leaking secret info on a big lawsuit to his blackmailers. Unfortunately, this starts off weak and while it gets better in the middle, it falters at the end. The book opens with the young man being accosted by a lawman. This is strangely handled, as the man’s reaction doesn’t seem natural. He is alarmed but acts as though it’s normal for cops to be following him, yet we later find out this is about a rape accusation from five years earlier… an investigation that was halted for lack of evidence after just a few days. In other words, a non-event. So why would the man be a cop expert and all worried about his past indiscretion just because he sees a man in an overcoat hanging around? That didn’t make much sense to me. The next flaw is that the blackmail setup takes about 70 pages. This is way too long for something that’s nearly irrelevant. We all know what blackmail is — we don’t need to have the concept spoon-fed to us. Just have the bad guy say “We’ve got a video. Do what we want or we’ll release it.” Once the blackmail is established, the novel gets going and it’s pretty good. Our young lawyer has to learn spy-craft and figure out how to fight the bad guys. Everything’s good until the ending, which is a horrible disappointment. Basically, little is resolved. After reading the ending, I asked myself why I’d wasted so much time reading the book. Maybe a condensed version of this would be better, but it mostly felt like hundreds of pages of reading about what boring work lawyers do in their 100-hour work weeks, with hints of spy stuff in various places to keep you entertained. I also felt like Grisham cheated in several places. For instance, in one scene we’re taught that a particular computer system is impenetrable. All obvious methods of attack, such as a USB port, have been removed from this custom designed machine. Then later, a hidden USB port is discovered and used to crack the system. Huh? What kind of a moron designs an impenetrable system, specifically removing all ports, and then accidentally includes a hidden one? (Much of the computer tech in this novel left me scratching my head as it made little sense: Grisham obviously knows very little about computers.) Unless you’re such a Grisham fan that you read everything he writes, this is one to avoid.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Sun, Nov 14, 2010

: The Partner

Author: John Grisham

Somehow I missed this older (1997) book. I saw it recently and thought it was new! (I was puzzled as I read it why the action was all set in the early 1990s.) It’s a fascinating read. We begin with the capture of a man on the run. We learn he’s a former lawyer who faked his own death and stole $90 million from his firm and escaped to Brazil. The book deals with his return to the States and the maze of legal trouble awaiting him. This is an odd premise, as it seems our protagonist is a vile criminal, but early on I predicted where things were going and sure enough, there’s a lot more to the story. Grisham takes his time unveiling the details, which is annoying at times, but it does keep you reading (I read about half the book in one day). Overall, a terrific read, but not without its flaws. There’s one major plot hole I didn’t understand (Why didn’t the guy just turn himself in?) but the biggest mistake is the lame tacked on “twist” in the last couple of pages. I won’t spoil it for you but basically it completely ruins the rest of the book and makes zero sense (a primary character acts completely out of character with no warning or hint). I basically just deleted those last couple of pages from my head and pretend the story ended the way I wanted and I would advise you to do the same!

Topic: [/book]

Link

Wed, Nov 10, 2010

: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

I’ve been hearing about these books and movies for a while, by Swedish author Larsson, but I hadn’t realized until recently he actually died before they were published and became a worldwide phenomena (they’ve sold like 30 or 60 million copies or something). Anyway, this is the first complete book I’ve read on my Kindle (I finish Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop on it, but I’d read about half of it on my iPad first) and I dived in knowing absolutely zero about the story. It turns out to be a murder mystery. It’s slow going at first, establishing characters and the situation, but once the mysteries start, they are intriguing. Basically our main protagonist is a disgraced journalist who is hired to investigate a young girl’s disappearance from 40+ years earlier. He isn’t sure he can do anything for the case has been studied for decades and there are no new clues, but he has nothing else to do, so he takes on the task. Eventually, of course, he makes breakthroughs, and the book takes an extremely dark turn (it’s definitely not for kids). He has help from a fascinating character: the girl with the dragon tattoo. She’s a hacker and information researcher who is exotic-looking, anti-social, and has odd personality problems, but somehow the two get along. The book is slow-moving, for sure, but never dull. You always feel you’re on the brink of huge discoveries, though in truth most of the really big breakthroughs don’t happen until the book’s final third. (But I should point out that the progression is extremely realistic.) I would imagine some people would prefer a condensed version of the novel, but I really enjoyed the Swedish environment (I have Swedish ancestors), the complex world of corporate finance, hacking, psychology, and other detailed topics the author explores. It’s a long book, but from the halfway point I read through it very quickly as the story really became exciting. It’s a disturbing read, unpleasant at times, bizarre and confusing at others, but literary, intelligent, unique, and perhaps even profound. The interesting character of the hacker girl is one of the special aspects of the story. The final mystery, when revealed, makes sense and all the pieces fit together beautifully. I found it unusual that when the mystery’s solved the book keeps going — there’s still more than 10% of the book to go! (I’m not sure I like that. Most things felt wrapped up and it felt odd for the story to continue and the later stuff that happened was not as compelling as the odd mystery that’s at the core of the book.) Overall, I’m extremely impressed and can’t wait to read the other books in the series, as well as see the Swedish films.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Mon, Oct 25, 2010

: Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop

Author: Lee Goldberg

Better than average Monk book. He solves a ton of little mysteries, which I like, but the one drawback is the main “dirty cop” story doesn’t really get going until halfway through, which made it a little easier to set the book down. Another negative of most Monk books is what I think of as the “Rockford Files Flaw,” which is where the main character always has bad things happening too him. It gets depressing reading about a character constantly suffering. But while this book starts out that way (he loses his job) it includes some too-good-to-be-true things that you just know are going to turn sour later on. Fortunately, it’s still an entertaining ride, though too much of the book is devoted to highlighting Monk’s idiosyncrasies. (By now, anyone who likes these books knows Monk and the TV show and doesn’t need explanation.)

Topic: [/book]

Link

Thu, Oct 21, 2010

: The Trial (audiobook)

Author: Franz Kafka

Let me preface my remarks by pointing out that my opinion may be severely hampered by the medium I chose for this novel. This particular 1998 edition audiobook is horrible: not only is the narrator poor, with no voice distinction between characters making dialog scenes confusing, but from a technical standpoint the recording is awful. I’ve never experienced this before, but there are many, many places where they obviously went back in and re-recorded a line or two of text and the sound quality of these edits is completely different, as though they recorded these with different equipment in a different location. It literally makes the narrator sound like a different person, and when you have one sentence out of a paragraph read in a different voice, it’s bewildering and off-putting.

Another flaw is that this particular version is a new translation, which is fine, but the audiobook includes an introduction by the translator explaining some of his choices. For someone who has read the book, this would have been fine and interesting, but I knew little of the story and this introduction actually gave away the ending! It would have been much more appropriate coming at the end, after I’d read the book. Besides, it was virtually useless to me anyway as it made reference to scenes and characters I knew nothing about, as well as to past translations I didn’t know. In a book I would have been able to skip this intro, but that’s much more difficult to do with an audiobook (especially while driving, which is when I listen to books).

I’m a big Kafka fan, but perhaps these flaws influenced my impression of this book, for I did not like it. It is entirely possible that a second reading (in print form) would change my opinion, or additional research into the novel, but I’m not sure. All I knew going in is that this is a famous novel about a guy put on trial for a crime he’s not told about. That premise fit in with Kafka’s absurdist tendencies and I’ve always wanted to read this novel but never gotten around to it.

Unfortunately, I found the novel too bizarre to be interesting. What confused me is the setting: I cannot tell if this is set in an alternate universe or if it’s supposed to be the real world Kafka lived in. Basically, the steps of this “trial” bear zero resemblance to any court proceeding I’ve ever encountered. Court sessions are held in apartment buildings in the living rooms of bailiffs with the wife doing laundry in the corner. Huh? Apparently in this world, being accused of something is enough to put you on trial, and the suspect is never even told the charges and no one finds that the slightest bit remarkable.

Perhaps all this is intentional and the whole point of the novel. That is an interesting idea, but the way this is presented does not make that clear. Part of the problem is that the novel is old so it’s essentially a period piece: it’s hard to tell from the story when the events take place, for while there are modern things like telephones, there’s also a lot of candles used for lighting, which sounds ancient. Because it’s old and in a foreign country (presumably Germany, Kafka’s country), one can assume some of the aspects of the trial are cultural or period specific. Someone of that era might immediately spot the absurdities but I could not. I had to take things at face value and I found the process annoying and tedious.

Not a lot happens in the actual story. It’s mostly about one man’s fight with absurd bureaucracy, but the situation is so off-putting I found in near unreadable. I was bored, distracted, and disinterested. Also, since I knew the ending (spoiled by the translator introduction), I really didn’t care because I knew what was going to happen anyway.

I am sad, because I’m sure this is a good novel. It has flaws — it is unfinished and there are fragments of the manuscript that weren’t included in its original publication (these fragments are read at the end of this audiobook, which was nice) — but I can sense some profound things happening. I would like to read it again, but in print form, where I have more control over pace and can reread passages I don’t understand. I won’t do it for a while, though, as I want to forget this memory. This audio edition is dreadful and really ruined the experience for me. I would also like to do more study and research before I read the novel, so I can make sure I understand the historical context, which I’m sure is important.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Fri, Sep 10, 2010

: Talent is Overrated

Author: Geoff Colvin

Cool book with a simple premise: that what makes great performers — in any field — isn’t innate “talent” but hard work. Lots of evidence and research is cited to prove this point, showing how even child prodigies aren’t so prodigious when we really examine them. For instance, Tiger Woods’ father starting teaching his son golf when the boy was 18 months old! Is it any wonder he was a “prodigy” by age five? The reality is simply that by that age Tiger had already had more golf experience and training than most of us do in our entire life, and by the time he was an adult, he’d been working extremely hard at his craft his whole life. Of course Tiger had drive and a keen interest in golf. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have kept up with his training. But basically any of us could be a great performer in any field we want simply by working really hard at it.

I like this premise because it makes more sense to me than the idea that some people are just born with a genetic disposition to do something like write or make music or trade stocks. The truth is we’re born with no skills at all. We might have certain physical gifts that help us or family that lean us in a direction (i.e. literary parents are more likely to read to their young children who will grow up with stronger verbal skills), but it’s up to us to do the work.

The book’s well-written but takes a lot of pages to make its simple point. I suppose if you’re inclined to disagree with the point you may need the additional convincing, but I really like the idea that there is no such thing as talent, only skill, so I didn’t need much convincing. The good thing about the book is the way it has changed my thinking: I am literally deleting the word “talent” from my vocabulary. I will replace it with “skill.” Think how that changes your perspective. If I say to you, “You don’t have any talent for singing” versus “You don’t have any skill for singing.” With the first phrase, you’re likely to just give up and not try. But with the second, you might think, “Hey! I could learn that skill.” In other words, this book is inspiring and empowering. Well worth the read.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Sat, Jul 31, 2010

: The Sirens of Titan

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

This is a bizarre, ambitious, and genius bit of work from Vonnegut. It’s somewhat a science-fiction piece, with time-travel and interplanetary voyages, but it really is about the quest for the meaning of life. The joke is that the sum total of all human endeavor turns out to be for the sole purpose of assisting a stranded alien motorist. But Kurt presents all this in a wild tale of manipulation, fortune-telling, war, and religion that is fascinating. The plot is difficult to describe. Basically a man on Earth tries to fly to Mars and gets caught in a time-loop of some sort: he’s basically stuck in every moment time, past and future. He appears on earth and elsewhere as a projection, but he can communicate, so he starts manipulating people on Earth to start a war between Mars and Earth. You don’t find out his ultimate purpose until closer to the end of the book. It’s a wild story, interestingly told. I found Kurt’s science-fiction aspects to be very well done. He invents cool new places and creatures really well. Some of the technology he describes is quite old-school and dated (I’m not sure when this story was written, but I think vacuum tubes were still popular then), but in the end such things are minor parts of the novel. Ultimately, I’m not quite sure where this all leads. If his purpose is to say that there is no purpose, he’s defeated himself in the process. Either way, the ending is a letdown; much ado about nothing. That doesn’t take away from the many positives of the book, but it does keep it from being great. It’s a worthwhile read for everything else, however. I recommend it to Vonnegut fans.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Thu, Jun 24, 2010

: Sellavision

Author: Augusten Burroughs

This is a bizarre book. I’d heard of the author (he did Running with Scissors) but this wasn’t what I expected at all. I expected a biting satire about home shopping TV and while there’s some of that, it’s presented within interrelated tales of several “Sellavision” hosts. It’s depressing, as the network seems to have a knack for destroying the lives of all these hosts, as we watch one guy get fired for accidentally exposing his penis on TV and then eventually, becoming a gay porn star, while a woman ends up in the looney bin. While some of these stories are interesting, I didn’t really care about any of the characters, which made this for an endless read. It’s well-done in many ways, and I liked the way everything wrapped up at the end, but throughout the entire book I kept wondering, “Where the heck is this going?” and I never did get a satisfactory answer. It’s just a slice of life, I guess, like a stream of consciousness. There’s no real plot, just excerpts. Not terrible, but not what I expected or wanted, and I was disappointed. And some of the sex stuff was really unanticipated and offensive.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Thu, May 27, 2010

: Player Piano

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Interesting and unusual book. I’m not sure exactly when it was written (I listened to the audiobook so I couldn’t exactly flip to the copyright page), but it’s obviously quite dated based on the technological terminology used. It’s set in the future in a 1984-ish totalitarian state. It’s a world where machines are replacing humans at all their jobs, upsetting the working class. It’s an interesting idea of a society, though many of the machines are hiliariously primitive (reminding me of the tech on the Flintstones). For example, there’s nothing like the Internet and even computers are hardly mentioned — instead there’s focus on automated machines that print and deliver newspapers.

But I found myself frustrated at the glacial pacing of the story. Individual scenes are entertaining and funny and interesting, but I wanted more of the actual story. The story, per se, is about our our main character, an elite of society, waking up and realizing what’s wrong with the world and what’s missing in his life. It is interesting but it just takes so long for this to happen. Many of the extra characters, like his wife, are purposely sketchy and thin, which meant I didn’t care about them, but of course they are important to the main character, so many scenes involve those other characters — meaning I was disinterested in many scenes. The whole thing just got tedious after a while. I think this is the type of book I would like better on a second reading. Once I actually know where the story’s going I’m more apt to enjoy the scenes for their own sake. As it was, I kept itching for the scene to finish so I could get on with the plot, which never did get going. Not Vonnegut’s best best work. It’s not bad — some aspects are quite brilliant and hilarious — but as a novel the thing feels long and is hard to get through.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Sat, Mar 13, 2010

: The Lost Symbol

Author: Dan Brown

This is a strange book. I guess that should be expected, considering the author, but I still found it unusual. It doesn’t quite know what it is: a thriller with pseudo-science/religious overtones? Is it an agenda piece? What’s the point of it?

The pacing is as annoyingly Dan Brown as ever, with ultra-short chapters each ending on an overly dramatic suspense point (i.e. in the middle of a sentence). What I found most frustrating is the way he deliberately withholds information just to milk the suspense. Most writers do this to an extent, but only with one or two key secrets that are the core of the novel — like the identity of the killer. Brown does it with everything. It makes the novel grating to read. Every chapter ends with, “And then he uncovered the shocking text. He stared in disbelief, unable to fathom what he was seeing. Could this really say what he thought it said? This was going to change the world!”

It would be one thing if the deep dark secrets hidden were actually deep dark secrets, but most of the time they aren’t. Either the clues are fairly obvious, or we’re so manipulated as a reader by Brown’s information withholding that there’s no possible way we could figure anything out. It feels like a cheat. The most egregious of these is when Brown actually goes back to an earlier telephone conversation, which we thought we had listened to verbatim, and reveals that there was more conversation we hadn’t heard. WTF? That’s traitorous on the part of the author, as far as I’m concerned.

Speaking of going back in time, Brown makes heavy use of that technique, too, with perhaps 80 percent of the novel being flashbacks. He presumably does this to provide “insight” to his characters, doing things like having a character remember his first meeting with another character. This often happens when the reader first meets the characters, with the result that the reader is left confused about time. Is this fifteen years ago? Is this today? Even worse, sometimes Dan flashes back within a flashback or re-flashes back to reveal new and different information he withheld from us the first time! Arrgh!

All this said, Dan still manages to create a somewhat compelling novel. There are moments of brilliance, in terms of plot, and some of the action sequences are surprisingly well done. There are several surprising events that as I read them, I thought he’d blown it, as they seemed farfetched or over-the-top, but his explanations proved surprisingly logical. And I really liked the secret twist at the end — the identity of the bad guy — which wasn’t contrived and actually made sense.

The plot itself is fairly simple, though elaborately drawn out. It basically involves a bad guy kidnapping a friend of Robert Langdon, the symbologist from Brown’s other novels, with Langdon forced to solve ancient clues left by the Masons to reveal the location of the knowledge of the “ancient mysteries” which supposedly would give a person incredible power. There’s a time crunch involved with this task that’s nothing short of absurd, with weeks worth of events happening within a few hours (apparently no one gets tired or overwhelmed by circumstance in Dan Brown’s universe). The actual puzzles Langdon solves are not bad, though it’s highly questionable they would have survived so many years unrevealed and mechanical things still in working order.

Brown sort of tones down the anti-religious rhetoric in this one, though that gets heavier (and more absurd) toward the end. While the plot is wrapped up sufficiently, his non-plot conclusion is awful, especially considering the hyped build-up since page one. After hundreds of pages of emphasizing the power of the “ancient mysteries” and how this knowledge would revolutionize the planet, he reveals it’s nothing more than “humans are gods.” Lame.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Thu, Jan 21, 2010

: What the Dog Saw

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

This book is a collection of Gladwell’s terrific essays for the New Yorker. They’re available for free on the New Yorker website, but I got the book anyway and found it an excellent read. There’s an amazing variety of topics here, with essays spanning 15+ years, and always with Gladwell’s unique story-based presentation and fascinating linking of the seemingly unrelated. There are far too many topics for me to cover them all, but I don’t think there was even one article I didn’t enjoy. The title one is about Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, trying to explain how he can communicate so well with dogs. There are many others on talent, teaching, and even dog biting. Excellent.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Fri, Dec 11, 2009

: 361

Author: Donald E. Westlake

I’m not sure why I got this audio book. I don’t remember what the description was, but I guess something intrigued me. It turned out to be about the mob, which is a topic that doesn’t interest me (I don’t understand the fascination people have with gangsters). That said, though, this one turned out to be a little different and interesting. It starts of dramatically with the young son returning home after being discharged from the military, and on the way home with his father, his father is shot and killed and the son badly injured. That starts the son on a quest to find out who killed his father and why. The secrets uncovered lead to organized crime and the son’s surprisingly role in that gangster world. It’s a decent yarn, well-written, and I ultimately liked it. However, in the middle of it I was somewhat bored as I didn’t care for the topic, and secondly I was confused because the main character who seemed like a good guy was doing bad things and it seemed like he was going to do worse. Everything turned out appropriately in the end, but the journey was rocky for me. Interesting, but not a book I’d ever read again.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Fri, Nov 13, 2009

: The Survivors of the Chancellor

Author: Jules Verne

I’ve been listening to this audio book for a couple weeks and it was an interesting coincidence that on the way home from watching the end-of-the-world caper 2012 I finish this book which is also a survival story, though set 150 years earlier. This is about a ship that sinks while crossing the Atlantic and the survivors who build a raft and try to stay alive long enough to reach land or be rescued. It is a harrowing and grim tale, and halfway through you think surely they’ve suffered enough, but the bad stuff is only beginning. It is a quite remarkable story of survival and the ending has an unexpected aspect that I enjoyed. There are aspects of the book that are a challenge to understand because of differences in time and culture (many of the nautical terms were meaningless to me, for instance), but the human condition and will to survive is understandable to all. Excellent.

Topic: [/book]

Link

Wed, Oct 14, 2009

: Prophet

Author: Frank Peretti

I’m not the biggest Peretti fan, but I find him and his work intriguing, and though I’d had this book sitting on my shelf for years, I’d never gotten around to reading it. It was not what I expected. The beginning sets itself up like the (sadly canceled) Eli Stone TV show where the main character has visions and sees the future. Unfortunately, unlike the TV show, where the visions play a key role, here it is almost a side story, as though Peretti didn’t want to scare off readers with too much supernatural stuff and focused more plodding detective work instead. Another sad choice is that the murder involves the controversial topic of abortion, and while Peretti does play it well and fairly and doesn’t preach, it’s just a heavy topic to read over five gazillion pages and many, many hours. Overall, it’s not bad, but just tedious and not interesting enough. It takes until halfway through the book to see where it’s going and though the ending is visible from a hundred miles away, it takes forever to get there. It’s well-done, but a condensed version would work just as well.

Topic: [/book]

Link