Z/Web

Author: Orson Scott Card

What a fantastic book! I thought this was a newer novel of Card’s because I hadn’t heard of it, but apparently it’s older, from the late 1980s, and got lost amongst his more popular works. However, this is one of his best. It is set thousands of years in the future on a planet colonized by humans 7,000 years earlier. The humans and local species have interbred and evolved into several new species, each of which are interesting. A key part of the novel is that the indigenous species can communicate through telepathy while humans cannot (though humans are susceptible to its influence). The main human character is a young girl, the seventh seventh seventh daughter (basically 300 generations down) who has been prophesied to be either the savior or destroyer of the world, so various groups want her dead or alive. Her mission is to kill the Unwyrm, the original indigenous creature of the planet, who is calling her telepathically to mate with her: he has waited 7,000 years for the human DNA to reach a point where perfect merging is possible. She does not want this and wants to kill him, for he seeks the end of humanity, but she is powerless to resist his telepathic call. That is the core conflict, and it sets up a fascinating world of humans, creatures, politics, and religion, and Card brilliantly allows amazing discussions on the nature of good and evil, why a good person who does bad things can still be good, and so on. The novel is action-adventure — the girl has been trained as an assassin by her father — and thus it’s a wonderful blend of philosophical discussion and action. I listened to the audiobook version but this is one I will probably buy in book form to reread and have on my shelf. It’s that good.

Author: Grant Wahl

This is the “controversial” book about David Beckham’s coming to Major League Soccer and his first couple of years with the L.A. Galaxy. It’s a decent book, told chronologically, about his arrival and experiences, but there are several flaws. First, the book really doesn’t give us much insight into Beckham. We learn far more about minor Galaxy players. David himself is hardly quoted at all. That’s disappointing because many aspects of the book are theories as to what David is thinking or wanting and there is no conclusion there because David hasn’t given his perspective (other than canned media presentations which aren’t illuminative). However, I did enjoy learning about those minor Galaxy players — a book about them would be more interesting than this one. But the book’s biggest flaw is that its structure makes it sound like a bio or documentary but the ending is more like an essay with the author clearly making his point that he thinks the David Beckham signing was a mistake and has been a disaster. That is poor writing on two levels, one in that it is switching genres in mid-book, and another in that the conclusion is seriously flawed because the “Beckham experiment” is not yet finished. This book is doing the equivalent of judging a race at the halfway point: there is still much to happen and we don’t yet know the final outcome. Really, in the case of Beckham, the final judgment will have to take place a decade or two from now when we can see the overall impact he has had on U.S. soccer. How he fares for a season or two with the Galaxy is minor in comparison to that lofty goal. Note that I don’t disagree that the Beckham signing has been mishandled in some ways and there have been problems; I just don’t agree with the conclusion that it was a mistake. It seems to me Wahl is wanting to make his book more controversial or dramatic by concluding that, possibly on advice from his editors (it feels like a tacked on conclusion). Unfortunately, the bottom line is that this book doesn’t get you much (if any) insight into Beckham, most of the material is soccer history you already know if you’ve been following MLS and the Galaxy, and the conclusions of the book are misguided and premature (for instance, the Galaxy is having a good season this year but that is not in the book). Still, it’s an interesting read for the soccer fan, but I would much rather see this book rewritten in twenty years to give us a more objective perspective.

Author: John Grisham

Okay, I’ll be honest: this is a horrible book. There are several reasons for that, but to explain them, I will have to spoil the ending, so if you’d rather not know, skip these comments. The book, overall, has a simplistic plot: it’s set in Mississippi where a giant chemical corporation has poisoned the well water of a small town and given hundreds of people cancer. A sympathetic husband and wife team of lawyers has been fighting a wrongful death lawsuit against the company for four long years and when the verdict comes back in their favor it seems like good news. Unfortunately, it’s just the beginning of the battle, for the corporation will appeal and it may be a couple more years before justice is served. That starts the second half of the novel, where the corporation begins machinations to elect their own anti-litigation candidate onto the Mississippi supreme court so that when the case comes up for appeal, the court can rescind the verdict. The book is long and detailed, going over every filing in the case and nearly every speech and promotion in the campaign. It is tedious and boring, and in the end, nothing happens. The chemical company’s guy gets elected and votes against the lawsuit and none of the cancer-striken victims get any justice. Grisham write the novel this way in order to stir up the reader’s anger at the supreme court election process (which is obviously ridiculous), but while it might be realistic, it does not make for a satisfying novel. Part of the problem is that Grisham goes so far overboard to make his hero characters sympathetic and good and his villains truly evil that the reader is naturally expecting justice in the end. The whole time you are reading the book you are motivated by the justice you know is coming and you can’t wait to see the bad guy get his. In the end, he wins, which is outrageous. I’m sorry: I don’t like predictable endings but when you set up a stereotypical storyline you need to follow-through with a stereotypical Hollywood happy ending. The odd thing is that Grisham’s case against the election process and the evils of big corporations killing people was already made: a happy ending wouldn’t have made us less outraged, just more satisfied readers. As it is, this is another “message” novel by Grisham, horribly disappointing, and it’ll unfortunately make me think twice about buying any of his novels again. (It reminds me of his horrible The Chamber, an anti-death penalty rant with no story.)

Author: Philip Margolin

This is a breezy read, a thriller about a President who might have committed several murders. While there’s not much depth here, and nothing truly surprising happens, it’s still quite compelling and very pleasant. The author, while not a master, is competent and puts together characters and scenes and action in such a way that you speed from one chapter to the next, eager to confirm what you think is going to happen. There are some twists, but nothing that dramatic, and though the book deals with grave topics, it doesn’t feel at all series. Fun.

Author: Shane Hipps

This is a remarkable book. The author is a former advertising executive who examines media at an unusual level, exploring how it shapes society and religious faith. As a technologist and a Christian (and amateur sociologist), I found this fascinating. The basic premise is the concept of “the medium is the message,” a phrase you’ve heard but probably not understood. Shane breaks it down to reveal things like how printing (and phonetic language) change the way people think. For example, printed material by its nature encourages linear thinking, and it creates a different culture than an oral society. Today we’re awash with new communication methods, from radio to TV to the Internet, email, blogs, podcasts, cell phones, instant messaging, Twitter, and who knows what to come. If the medium is the message, what is the message? And how does technology influence your faith? Great questions.

For answers, Shane shows how technology has influenced things in the past. For instance, the telegraph dramatically changed the speed of information, but that itself changed the value of it: instead of information’s value coming from its quality or depth, its timeliness became the most important thing. (You can see similar things happening today with blogs being valued over well-researched books.) There are profound lessons there.

I want to point out that while this is a book about the religious aspects of media, it’s not overly religious: I really appreciate that the author doesn’t come across as preachy. Instead he merely tells great stories and provides examples and information about his perspective. I would recommend this to anyone, even skeptics, because it’s all about how the medium influences your thinking and the lessons learned can be applied to anything in life.

My great-uncle sent this book to me and I started reading it the moment I got home from the post office this afternoon — I couldn’t put it down. I read it cover to cover in one sitting! I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that with a book (not since childhood, that’s for sure).

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Fantastic novel, very different from Kurt’s humor stuff. This one is the story of a purported Nazi criminal from WWII told first person from his prison cell in Israel where he awaits trial and execution. As his story unfolds, we learn new pieces of information about the guy that make him sympathetic (i.e. he might have been a double agent working for U.S.). We learn about the good things he did as well as the bad, and he’s quite willing to accept the blame for his faults. There are a number of little twists in the story, which keeps it moving, but the main thing that makes it work is the personality of the narrator. It’s a remarkable story. It gets a little convoluted toward the end, but the ending itself is thought-provoking and makes you wonder question absolutism.

Author: Jeffery Deaver

This is another Lincoln Rhyme detective novel, with Rhyme up against perhaps his most formidable foe yet. This time he’s going against an information guru, a guy who knows everything. He’s an identity thief who uses computerized info about people to commit crimes and set up the perfect fall guys who are convicted of the crimes so he’s never caught. Since he knows everything about people, his frame-ups are amazingly air-tight, but in this book he makes the mistake of setting up Lincoln’s cousin, which brings Lincoln into the investigation and of course that sets up his downfall. The book is quite thick and long, as Deaver’s books usually are — this one moves pretty well but feels too long and it should have been about 75% of its length. For the most part I enjoyed the action, and the computer/tech stuff was, except for a few odd errors, pretty accurate and interesting. A large part of the novel centers around the debate over consumer privacy, and the book raises a lot of good concerns (not the least of which is the killer’s ability to know everything). Unfortunately I was not as big of a fan of the ending of the book, which has too much of Deaver’s typical manipulation (just tell us the story and stop trying to be clever and screw with our minds), and the climax is pretty much a big fight which is anticlimactic. I would have preferred a more tech-oriented ending, something more worthy of the intelligence of the opponent than a mere fight. But all that said, this is an above average Lincoln Rhyme novel, and worth the read if you’re a fan.

Author: Robert Heinlein

Though I’m a huge Heinlein fan, this was not a book that ever caught my interest. I’m not sure why: it turns out the plot is fantastic. It’s about a moon colony launching a rebellion against their masters on earth and is filled with history, politics, technical information, psychology, and more. Sometimes it gets tedious and slow (it’s a long novel), but I loved the whole underdog story and it’s amazingly realistically presented. A few things are funny from the modern perspective: for instance, they have a lot of advanced technology, but still use wired phones and print newspapers. That’s a minor nitpick and doesn’t interfere with the story. Excellent.

Author: Lee Goldberg

Much better than Mr. Monk Goes to Germany, though peripherally similar. This one takes place in Paris but has a much more satisfying murder investigation, though there’s still much too much tedium about Monk in a foreign country and Natalie writing about visiting tourist landmarks. The plot is a bit novel in that Monk “witnesses” a murder in pitch black restaurant and figures out that everything’s linked to the “Freegans,” a group of hippies who live underneath Paris and live off trash that others throw away (a lot of gourmet food, considering it’s Paris). Clever and interesting, though the books are starting to feel too similar. (Of note: I read the Kindle edition of this on my iPhone!)

Author: Lee Goldberg

While I’m a huge fan of Goldberg’s Monk books, this one has too little mystery and too much exposition. The problem is that to get the paranoid Monk to Germany is no easy task — and we, the reader, have to sit through every tedious minute of him traveling, freaking out at foreign stuff, etc. It gets tiresome and old after just a few pages, and yet that’s most of the novel. Yes, he does solve a few murders, but they are few and far between. I don’t know if the series is running out of steam, but I’d like to see a lot more mystery solving and less “Monk is weird” stuff. While extremely well-written, it’s just not that interesting.

Author: Orson Scott Card

This is an unusual book by scifi author Card — it’s a modern political drama based on the premise of a new American civil war. Could that happen? How? Card answers those questions in a way that’s chillingly possible: as soon as any one group feels violence is the only tool they have left in their arsenal, they’ll use it, and the states will be divided. But the story’s extremely uneven, with scenes of crazy action (the President gets blown up) glossed over in a few pages followed by many pages of political dialog and analysis. While the history lessons are interesting, they feels like they belong in a textbook, not a novel. Still, the concept is unusual enough to be worth reading, and the political reality is sobering enough to make it worth your time.

Author: Neil Gaiman

Cool little book. I’d bought this years ago and it’s been on my to-read this forever, but with the film coming out, I had to read the original version first. It tells the tale of a little girl name Coraline (not a typo) who discovers a magical door that takes her in a mirror world. At first it seems cool and better than the real world, but then she discovers it has serious drawbacks and is actually an evil trap. She has to figure out how to escape and rescue others trapped there as well. Very well done, though in places the foreshadowing’s heavy-handed making things too predictable, and the story as a whole feels rather slight in the end. Still, it’s fun, and extremely well-written with terrific descriptions. (My favorite was this: “It wasn’t the kind of rain you could go out in—it was the other kind, the kind that threw itself down from the sky and splashed where it landed. It was rain that meant business, and currently its business was turning the garden into a muddy, wet soup.”) Delightful, though perhaps a bit ominous for younger kids. I can’t wait to see the movie.

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Another terrific Gladwell book. This was his second, which I read third, but I think it’s of more practical use than Outliers or The Tipping Point. This one deals with the topic of “thin-slicing,” or the human ability to make snap judgements. Malcolm argues that this is an instinct and innate skill we all have and use regularly, but because the process is hidden within our subconscious, we aren’t aware of what we are doing or how we do it. He demonstrates via entertaining stories, the benefits and dangers of thin-slicing, and shows that thin-slicing is a skill that can be taught and learned. The stories are for the most part, dramatic and interesting. For instance, we see how cops can use thin-slicing to instantly assess a situation and decide if a person is hostile or benign, and the bad things that happen when cops fail to thin-slice and over-react. There are also many prejudices that are exposed via thin-slicing, where stereotypes make us assume something that isn’t correct — that’s the danger of thin-slicing indiscriminately. When thin-slicing is used correctly, it can be terrifically useful, ranging from sales people who can instantly assess a potential customer to military decisions, and including activities like dating and interviewing job candidates. Well worth the read.

Author: Robert Heinlein

I’ve read almost all of Heinlein’s stuff, this one had eluded me, I’m not sure why. It’s pretty cool. It’s written first person female, about an “enhanced” woman’s adventure’s in the future. She’s sort of a spy/assassin, very capable, and the story’s about her getting in the middle of a planet-wide coup attempt and an elaborate plot against her life. It’s a bit muddled, and the story’s not all that compelling (it’s more of a rambling tale than a structured plot), but what makes it work is hearing Friday’s voice: she’s a fascinating character with an interesting and unique personality, with a great sense of humor. It’s a blast to read and worth it just for that experience; the plot doesn’t really go anywhere and has some serious conceptual flaws. (For example, it was never made clear why she couldn’t have been killed on the planet where she escaped to — the explanation that the bad guys would just let her go at that point was not convincing.) But overall, this was fun and entertaining, if light.

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

This is a terrific collection of Vonnegut short stories. I liked that they reflect the wide variety of topics and styles. Some are more serious, almost dramatic, while others are merely quirky, and a few outrageous. But almost all are wonderful. My favorite is a surprisingly tender love story set in a small town about an anonymous man who comes to life each year as an actor in the community theatre. He literally becomes the character he’s playing and changes completely, and in the end a beautiful woman falls for him and it’s a delightful, magical romance because every week they read a new play together and he’s a new person. I just loved the way Kurt captures the magic of the theatre and performance and combines with a clever story.

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

I loved Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and this is his latest. Though the title’s awkward, it’s about leaders — people outside the norm, who stand out. Gladwell’s goal is to change the way we think about such people. Our assumption is that they are extraordinarily gifted, geniuses, but he reveals that it’s much more about hard work than talent, and that luck, timing, and culture play huge roles in who we become. He destroys the myth of the “self-made” man, the idea that someone can rise from nothing to be extraordinarily successful, showing via statistics and stories and scientific studies that talent or genius alone is useless without the proper environment for that to grow. For example, he reveals that overwhelmingly kids in Canada’s hockey league are born in the early months of the year. That same trend follows through school and into the professional league as well: most are born in January, February, and March. Why is that? It’s not that talented hockey players aren’t born at other times, but that they never get a chance to develop. That’s because the enrollment cut-off for the league is January 1, so kids born in those early months tend to be the biggest and strongest, and stand out. Thus they are given more training and attention, are groomed to be stars by putting them into more competitions and special programs, and of course they use that extra experience and go pro and succeed. This effect is seen not just in hockey, but all sporting programs all over the world. Gladwell shows that similar things happen in education and even historic events: if you were unlucky enough to be born at the wrong time, for instance, you might have reached age 18 right as a major war was in progress and been drafted, or a tragedy like the Great Depression or an epidemic could have completely changed the world available to you. Gladwell shows how tech leaders like Bill Gates succeeded not because they were that much more brilliant than anyone else, but because they had the right set of skills at the right time, catching the computing revolution as it was being born.

What does all this mean to you and me? It means that we need to rethink our views of success. We need to change how we educate. In one study he shows that kids from lower income areas do just as well as those from higher income areas, but only if they work harder (for instance, going to school year around instead of taking the summer off). It turns out that kids with economic advantages are simply given more opportunities to learn year around, while those from disadvantaged homes tend to be stuck watching TV instead of having books and workshops and summer camps and such. Once you get both on the same playing field, their chances of success — of getting into good colleges and good careers — are about the same. Speaking of that, it also turns out that going to an Ivy League college is not necessarily a guarantee of success, nor is graduating from a lesser school. You just need “enough” schooling; the specifics aren’t as significant. All this means that everyone can succeed if they work hard, which is a far cry from the general assumption that some people are just “smart” or that some people just “get” math, etc. In truth, it’s all about how hard you work, and taking advantage of opportunities that come your way. If you’re not prepared when those doors open, you’ll miss them and miss out.

This is a fascinating book — highly recommended. I will point out one caution, however. I read this while flying to and from California and there’s a whole section about the causes of airplane crashes that might make for uncomfortable reading if you’re a nervous flyer. (It didn’t bother me — I actually found it comforting to know why planes crash — but I might have picked a different book for my trip if I’d known that was in there.)

Author: Lee Goldberg

Another excellent Monk book. In this one Monk has to find the killer of the creator of a 1970s sci-fi TV show with a cult following… basically a clone of Star Trek. Monk has a real hard time relating to these “freaks” who dress as aliens and have their ears surgically altered, but it gets worse when he discovers that his brother Ambrose — a shut-in who hasn’t left his house in 30 years — is a huge fan of the show and has written half-a-dozen books about it (including a language guide). To solve the mystery Adrian must use his brother’s expertise of the show. As usual, there is plenty of Monkism, and the TV show stuff is funny, but though extremely well-done, everything’s a bit milder than usual — I didn’t find myself laughing out loud the way I have with other Monk books. Perhaps I’m just getting used to the character or expecting too much? The murder mystery part of things is also well-done with clues and good Monk solutions, but it too felt a bit too basic. I also wasn’t crazy about the action-involved ending, which had Monk in jeopardy for his life as he insanely confronts a hit man. That doesn’t sound too Monkish to me — he’s terrified of pillows, so wouldn’t he call for backup? But still: this is classic Monk and it’s never bad and if you’re a fan of the series, you’ll want to read this.

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This is a terrific understated Dostoyevsky novel about a strange man who overanalyzes everything in life and proceeds to tell us about it. He’s an absurdity, with certain instrospective insights and alienation taken to the extreme limit, and the result is a classic character whose thoughts will make you ponder life, the universe, and everything. Definitely the type of thing you can read multiple times and get more from each time.

Author: Ken Follett

This is a “sequel” to Follett’s classic Pillars of the Earth. That one is an epic that covers a century or so of the building of a cathedral in 14th century England. This one is set about a hundred years later in the same town and features new characters, so it’s not a traditional sequel, but it’s an amazing story. Like the first book, it’s hugely long. I bought it in audiobook format and I’ve been listening to it for months every time I drive. It’s like six eight-hour parts! But the story is so good I wanted to drive just to listen, and sometimes I just parked in my garage and listened for a while. Follett is a master novelist and it shows with this masterwork as he artfully crafts wonderful characters from childhood to death, and he tortures us with disasters and challenges that face our heros and heroines, and he often lets bad people “win” in ways that are just like real life. The plot is slightly rambling as it’s merely the extended happenings of several people throughout their lives, but there are a few core characters and events. Basically there’s a genius builder whose ambition is to build the tallest building in England, but politics and greed seem to hamper his every progress as he struggles to get morons to heed his wise advice. The love of his life is Carice, the daughter of the town’s most prominent businessman, and she’s seemingly perfect to follow in her father’s footsteps and lead the town to glory, but when her plans threaten the wrong people, they attempt to kill her, and she’s forced into a nunnery to escape. There she discovers a new calling: medicine, as she ends up running a hospital and writing an acclaimed book on cures that actually work instead of ridiculous traditions like bleeding that weaken patients. Of course she’s constantly set back in her work as she’s a woman in a man’s world and isn’t “trained” as a doctor.

Throughout this story we are inside a wonderful ancient world that’s both astonishingly primitive and yet similar to our own. I found this educational and revealing as in a book of this magnitude and detail, you get a real feel of what live in the 14th century must have been like. There are so many tiny things we forget out in our modern lives, things we take for granted, like how our cities operate, the ability to print books and distribute information, and common medical knowledge — today even a child knows about germs and how diseases are spread. Then there’s more expert knowledge such as medieval building techniques: how do you build a spire or a stone bridge across a flowing river? Such engineering challenges with only primitive tools to work with is amazing and makes the accomplishments of our ancient bretheren that much more impressive.

I loved this book.

Author: Hayao Miyazaki

This is the seven-book series of graphic novels the animated film was based on; however, it’s so much more elaborate, it’s really a different story all together. I liked the books far more than the film, which felt generic in terms of plot. But with the books, you really get to see the elaborate and complicate world Miyazaki has created. In this future world, humanity has so poluted things that nature has taken over with huge forests, giant insects, and poisonous miasma that humans can’t tolerate. Nausicaa is the young female leader of a small, insignificant clan of people, and through an elaborate series of adventures, she uses her talent of being able to communicate with animals and her instinctual love of all living things, to halt a war and stop the destruction of the world. It’s an amazing and wonderful story and is highly recommended. The graphic novels were originally Japanese, so they read backwards, from right to left, which is odd at first, but soon is not an issue. Unfortunately, the black-and-white artwork varies in quality: most of the time it is excellent, but occasionally things are supposed to be in color (like when Nausicaa wears a blue dress) and other places the art is so sketchy and the reality so complicated that it’s confusing figuring out what is going on (like some of the battle scenes, with explosions and chaos). But that’s a niggling negative: overall this is an incredible, creative and fun, and far more worth your time than the movie. My cousin gave me the books at Christmas and I’ve been reading them every since, a few pages a day (about a book a month). Very enjoyable.

Author: Richard Matheson

This is the book the movie was based on; I listened to the audiobook edition while traveling. It’s very different: the people are vampires, not mutants, and the story is hardly even similar, though there are occasional overlaps. For instance, a dog does die in the book, but it’s not the man’s only friend like in the movie, and the woman he meets has a different role and no kid. In some ways I prefer the movie version as the vampire thing seems sort of cheesy and unrealistic. (A plague that causes vampirism? Please.) But the book’s interesting and less gimmicky in plot than the movie.

Author: Jeffery Deaver

A disappointing early Deaver book, this is about a female jazz pianist who works as a paralegal at a law firm and ends up becoming an amateur sleuth when a senior attorney brings her under his wing to find him a stolen legal document. Unfortunately, the web of complicated potential criminals is far too large and there are way too many sub-plots going on. The law firm is in political upheaval as half the board wants to merge with another firm while half oppose it, so there are all kinds of shenanigans going on as different powerful lawyers try to sabotage or encourage the merger. Meanwhile we’ve got mysterious suicides and potential murder attempts. This goes on for way too many pages while we haven’t a clue what’s going on. Finally, just in time, the stolen legal document is found, the bad guy caught, and everything seems concluded… but the book just keeps on going. After several dreary chapters when nothing happens, the girl finally figures out the obvious — that a suicide was really a murder, and we’re back to our huge suspect pool. The final conclusion, with the typical Deaver twist, is not outrageous or even unlikely, but it is disappointing and feels forced and artificial. It’s like Deaver’s trying too hard. I’d recommend the condensed version of the book if you feel you must.

Author: Tracy Chevalier

I’m a huge Chevalier fan, but I was disappointed with this novel. I’m not sure where it was going or why it went there. It’s basically the story of a rural family in the late 1700s who move to London and their lives overlap with that of poet William Blake. This brings us some fascinating insight into the life of the writer — how he had his own printing press and the way that he produced his books — but the main story is about the family, and that story meanders for a while and finally drifts off into the nothing. While it’s realistic — little more than youngsters falling in love and becoming adults — I kept wating for something to happen and when nothing did, I was left disappointed. It’s still an excellently-written book, it’s just not up to Chevalier’s usual standards.

Author: Robin Cook

I’m not usually this blunt, but this is a horrible, horrible, book. Absolutely nothing happens. The title and the book jacket implied this was an exciting tale about medical malpractice and knowing Cook’s books I figured this would be cutting edge legal-medical conflict and raise a lot of interesting issues. Wrong! Instead we have what appears to be a routine death and a subsequent lawsuit that blames the doctor’s personal problems which all get aired in court. The crux of the novel is about a potential autopsy of the victim — and we literally must wade through hundreds of pages of incredible tedium as the doctor (the brother-in-law of the sued doctor) tries to fight through bureaucratic paperwork to get the body exhumed and examined. It’s so boring! As if to make up for the lack of story, Cook suddenly throws in bizarre kidnapping and assaults… apparently instigated by the “evil” lawyer suing the doctor who doesn’t want an autopsy. The assaults are so outrageous — a gunfight on a freeway — that all plausibility of the novel is lost. We’re really supposed to believe an attorney would send goons to attack the defense? I mean, come on — he’s the obvious suspect. But of course nothing can be proven and the lawyer gets away with it. Preposterous. But the final insult was the book’s ending. I had kept reading because the way the book made it sound we could expect some dramatic resolution at the end and I had to find out what would be discovered in the autopsy. What was discovered was just ridiculous: that apparently the sued doctor had killed the patient on purpose? Huh? I don’t get it. It makes no sense and there’s no explanation given. Just bizarre and totally out of character. Very odd novel, if you can even call it that. The plot would fit into a short story and even then it would be boring. I normally like Cook’s books, but I feel this book stole years of my life. I want my brain back! Gag. Just horrible. One of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Hilariously inventive novel about a bizarre science fiction author and a crazy-but-rich used car dealer whose paths overlap. The plot is slim-to-nothing, but this is all about the journey and the humorous narrating style of Vonnegut, who includes himself in the story and writes about his characters escaping his control and doing things he didn’t anticipate. I haven’t read much Vonnegut and really need to read more because I love what little I’ve read. In this book my favorite technique of his is when he explains common everyday earth things as though the reader might be an alien and not understand such things. For instance, when he mentions people drinking alcohol, he explains this is a beverage that is a biproduct of sugar-eating yeasts (tiny organisms) and thereafter refers to people “drinking yeast execrement” whenever he wants to tell about people drinking alcohol. Hilarious! Overall this is a witty, fun, and entertaining book, and Kurt wisely keeps it short so the joke doesn’t overstay its welcome.