December 2014 Reading List

Got through more this month than I thought I would.  Standout for me has to be The Martian -- can't stop thinking about this story.  Though 1Q84 would be a close second!

1. The Martian by Andy Weir
2. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. At the Mountains of Madness by H P Lovecraft
4. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
5. Guernica by Dave Boling
6. Persuasion by Jane Austen 
7. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
8. Galore by Michael Crummey

The Martian f***ing rocks!  That's what Mark Watney might say.  I'm glad this book is going to be released as a movie because it has all the hallmarks of a great scifi/action/drama.  A NASA astronaut finds himself abandoned on the surface of Mars and uses an almost endless array of creative ideas to survive while NASA tries to get him home again.  What makes this book more enjoyable is that all the MacGyver stuff seems technically feasible.  A romp of a read and the main character of Watney is funny as hell.

Lowlands, to me, seemed like a novel-length short story.  Or perhaps a series of related short stories that told a bigger story.  It also seemed like everyone in the story lost something rather than reaching some kind of fulfilment.  It was just ok for me.

Having finished Mountains of Madness and looking at when this story was published I had to wonder if the Aliens vs Predator movie and the Antarktos saga by Jeremy Robinson borrowed from Lovecraft's twisted imagination.  Very descriptive and very good at creating tension.  It seemed like it was difficult to maintain that tension until the very end but it certainly gave it a good try.  I'd like to try more Lovecraft works.

In hindsight perhaps I should've started with Kafka on the Shore instead of 1Q84 as my entree into Murakami's works.  Don't get me wrong, I loved 1Q84 but it left me wondering if certain aspects of style were normal or just part of this overly long novel.  I could put this book down for weeks at a time and when I resumed I would be reminded of events that had previously taken place by the repetitive internal dialogue that the main characters engaged in.  Also, to me there were a lot of loose ends.  Who were the Little People?  Why did they build air chrysalises?  Was the troublesome NHK Collector the spirit of Tengo's father?  But with all that aside, the story is awesome in its scope and creativity.  Part romance, part sci-fi, part thriller -- if you have the right amount of patience there are rewards for your perseverance.

One of the enjoyments of reading an historical novel is learning something about the past while being entertained from the fictitious stuff.  Such was the case with Guernica.  I'd never heard about the misfortunes of this place at the start of WWII and certainly did not know that Picasso had painted a large piece depicting the events that took place.  But this book took me a long time to finish.  The storyline before and after the events surrounding the ill-fated Guernica were just not compelling to me and at times I felt like I was watching a made-for-TV movie.

I have mixed feelings about Persuasion.  On one hand some of the satisfaction that comes from reading a book like this is just figuring out what the heck is going on from all the "proper" language and actions of the characters from the early 1800s.  On the other hand the machinations of romance from those times are so frustrating to someone nearly 200 years later.  "For goodness sakes just tell him how you feel!" is what I want to say to Anne.  Sheesh!  No more Austen for me.

Ocean is classic Gaiman stuff.  Short but punchy with great plot ideas and narrative.  Told from a child's point of view it is interesting to note that the protagonist is just able to accept everything happening to him that an adult might balk at.  This brief story is definitely up to the hype I'd read about it.

Galore on the other hand reminded me of the Kings and Queens of Roam that I also had some trouble with.  The narrative seems to basically follow one character for the duration of a chapter but the meandering back and forth in time really lost me at times.  Unlike other multi-generational novels I've read, Galore was not cohesive to me -- except for perhaps the beginning and the end.  I found the somewhat magical happenings interesting but it wasn't enough to keep me glued.  I see that Crummey has just published another novel called Sweetland which seems to promise more of the same formula -- I won't be tackling that.

November 2014 Reading List

A varied bunch of books this month:

1. The Great Siege by Ernle Bradford
2. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
4. The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg
5. Waking Up by Sam Harris
6. Still With Me by Thierry Cohen (translated by Summer Robinson)

 The Great Siege was a great historical retelling of the siege that took place on Malta in the 16th century between the Turks and the Order of St John.  I know!  Who knew about this event, right?  And yet it is an incredible story about the underdog winning an impossible war against incredible odds.  This account was written well over 50 years ago but still seems as fresh as anything from today's historians.  An awesome read and totally recommended.

Who has been living under a rock (or maybe in a sewer?) and has not seen or heard the well known Phantom musical from Lloyd Webber.  But you might be forgiven for not having tackled the book upon which the musical is based.  I decided to give it a crack.  The story was written/published a little over a century ago and it's style is typical of stories written at the time.  Partly based on historical events Leroux wrote his book as if the entire thing were a true story and is recounted from the testimonies of some of the characters.  After completing it I was satisfied that Lloyd Webber did an ok job of converting the story into a romantic drama.  The movie version of the musical even more so.  But I will say the original story is just creepier and more disturbing than either retelling.  Measured up against today's standards however, it is a mere trifle.

Gone Girl on the other hand is what mystery and roller coaster rides are all about! I read this novel in preparation for seeing the movie (which I have not yet done as of yet).  Without revealing any spoilers in case you're one of the ten people on the planet yet to read the book or see the movie, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns of the story.  The only aspect I was disappointed in was the ending.  Perhaps it was appropriate given the journey but I am interested to see how it is Hollywood-ified.  Don't tell me though!

Moonlight Palace was one of those impulse buys.  I like historical novels because I learn a little about another time and most often about another place too.  In this case its a coming-of-age story taking place in Singapore during the 1920s.  I found the historical stuff interesting but the rest was a bit predictable.  Just ok.

I have read all of Sam Harris' books and I really like his intelligent and unique observations on issues that the majority of us are conflicted about (or might never have considered!).  I have to admit I had no idea that Harris was an accomplished practitioner of meditative techniques.  So I was also surprised how linked his practice with the concept of spirituality.  Waking Up goes further and examines the whole understanding of self and consciousness, which are topics that Harris has explored before.  However, the integration of these concepts via meditation is something new.  As always Harris leaves me with plenty of substance for rumination.

I have to admit that Still With Me shook me up a lot.  Looking into the background of the book I understand that Cohen used the writing process to help him deal with the suicide of a friend.  The consequences of the protagonist's act get harder hitting as the book goes on.  It's a delicate subject and has had a lot of media attention recently.  So reading this book helped me examine how suicide affects those who are closest to it but being honest it is impossible to truly know unless you are directly impacted.  For that reason I think this book could easily polarize readers but I think the effort would be worthwhile.

October 2014 Reading List

A slow month, book-wise.  Where does time go sometimes?  Well, I did get started on a couple of substantially longer novels which should be in next month's list once I finish them.  Here's October's:

• Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer
• The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
• Where She Went by Gayle Forman

I found Soffer's book enjoyable even if a little predictable.  For a story that revolves around a regional Iraqi recipe and cooking, I found the frequent use of food-related metaphors very clever.  The characters were well developed and had all endured their own tragedies.  However, the unfolding of how their lives were linked seemed to reveal too much too soon such that I couldn't believe the outcome was going to be where the story was headed.  But like I said, I still enjoyed it a great deal.

As I mentioned last month regarding Ship Breaker, I'd purchased Drowned Cities before realizing it was a sequel.  I need not have worried.  The only aspects of this story that were linked to the first novel were the character Tool and the post-Global-Warming future that Bacigalupi has imagined.  This novel is about war and the impact it has on this new paradigm -- especially on children and how they're used in conflicts.  The graphic nature of the narrative is all too real with our own times.  Bacigalupi is using the story to point back at ourselves and pitching the novel at a YA audience to hopefully effect change in the next generation's attitude towards the senseless loss of life we see today.  Although the story is easily accessible to a YA reader, they'd better have a strong stomach.

I had hoped to read War and Peace this year.  It now seems unlikely to happen.  So I gave myself the concession of reading Ivan Ilyich, as I had not heard of this novella by Tolstoy before.  Tolstoy begins at the end as Ivan Ilyich's contemporaries evaluate the man and then quickly moves into the life of the man as he moves forward to his end.  What struck me was Tolstoy's skill in describing Ivan Ilyich's suffering.  While Tolstoy does not mention cancer, it certainly seems as if that is the terminal illness involved.  What also took me by surprise is considering what it must've been like to have such an illness in those times where doctors could not peer inside a patient's body.  Instead we get a diagnosis like a "dislodged kidney" -- whoa.  A good if brief read.

My wife and I had another long road trip this month up to Northern California.  My wife wanted to learn what happened to Mia after she awoke from her coma in If I Stay.  So we got the audiobook version of Where She Went.  The beginning of the story is surprising given where Mia and Adam are at but once this is understood the rest of the plot is expected (hoped for?).  Given that expectation there is no doubt that Forman is a captivating writer and keeps the frustration level down while allowing the story to unfold.  Not totally my cup of tea but my wife was satisfied with the outcome.

September 2014 Reading List

I lost momentum this month. I blame the move to our new house. Tried to do most of the work myself. Boxing, driving, lifting, cleaning, unboxing -- ugh! Still, I did manage to get the following read:

1. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

2. The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card

3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

4. A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

5. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Initially I got the sequel to Ship Breaker before I realized there was a #1 to the series. I'd read Windup Girl before and loved it but didn't realize this new book was YA fiction. Still, I'm beginning to realize what types of YA fiction I don't like and it wasn't far into Ship Breaker that I knew it was going to be enjoyable even if it was straightforward.  I like Bacigalupi's vision of a near-future where global warming has taken hold and sea levels have risen to wipe out much of the planet's land mass.  The gap between those with money (swanks) and those without is wider than ever before.  And this vision sets up a story between a rich girl and a dirt poor ship breaker boy.  I still have the sequel to read.

Talking of sequels, Gate Thief is the follow up to The Lost Gate that I read a little while ago.  Card takes the all-mythological-gods-are-related idea a few steps further by tying in Satan/Bel into the plot as the uber-bad guy that everyone was trying to stop in the first book.  He does a pretty good job setting this up but I have to admit that by the end of this second installment I wasn't feeling the despair that I should be this point.  Danny is down but not out and capricious Wad isn't likely to just run off without helping.  I like the stories Card creates but this one seemed a little over long in getting to the point.  Still I await what happens in book 3.

What an odd story Metamorphosis is!  We start out in the very first sentence with a matter of fact observation that our protagonist, Gregor, has become an insect overnight.  What happens between him and his family from that time and over the next few months is what Kafka explores.  Gregor is unable to communicate with his family.  Furthermore his appearance to his family fills them with increasing disgust.  The resulting alienation and eventual outcome is Kafka's metaphor for how people change -- growing up as well as dealing with social differences.  Literally the story is just weird but metaphorically it is much food for thought.

A Calculated Life also explores social differences.  A futuristic utopian society has engineered a class of humans with IQs off the charts to help in big business big data number crunching.  The key to having these hyper smart beings stay manageable is to deprive them of memories of growing up and to keep their immediate environment free from distractions.  As Jayna explores society outside this perfect control she asks more and more questions that make her behavior unpredictable.  Her growing self awareness takes her to an exciting conclusion.  Well that's the direction of the story.  In the process Charnock examines the ethics of such alteration and the growing gap between the haves and have nots.  Average.

I have a couple of books on my shelf by Lahiri and this was the first I tackled.  Its actually a collection of short stories about the cultural clash of Americans and Indians living in each place.  Lahiri draws on the pain of missing family and tradition when undertaking this journey to a foreign place.  The differences in culture basically jump out at you especially when children identify more with their new found home than from their parents' roots.  I find short story anthologies jarring with their rapid fire character changes so I look forward to reading a novel by Lahiri and see how such superb character developments unfold.

August 2014 Reading List

1. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
2. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
3. The Translator by Nina Schuyler
4. The Humans by Matt Haig
5. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
6. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
7. Journeys on the Silk Road byJoyce Morgan and Conrad Walters

There were times when I was reading Flamethrowers that I was reminded of The Family Fang with its almost ridiculous instances of artistic expression.  Perhaps in the 70s art was really like that but I couldn't avoid laughing out loud.  That being said, Kushner really knows how to turn a phrase.  Its as if the manner in which she describes a scene is her art and the images are both beautiful and poignant.  However, jumping from description to description does not a story make and while there is a great story here it feels like it is obscured by such artistic vistas.

I really didn't know what to expect as I started Salmon Fishing but it wasn't at all what I got.  The book starts in that typically British form of humor where events quickly spiral out of control in a comical way.  The story is told using written items like diary entries, transcripts, news headlines, etc which I think is always very clever.  I tore through the book quickly and enjoyed it a great deal.  I now want to watch the movie version and see if the producers preserved the near perfect ending.

Even though I finished Translator a couple of weeks ago, it is still resonating with me.  A middle aged woman who speaks many different languages loses her ability to speak anything other than Japanese after sustaining a head injury.  Feeling alienated at home she travels to Japan and learns much about herself while there. How she uncovers her failures in life though is done compassionately leaving room for amends to be made but not without the risk of failure.  I gained a new appreciation of the challenging work translators perform for us when we read works written in a different language from our own.  This book has finally given me the nudge I needed to start reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and translated by Jay Rubin.  I expect it is going to take a while.

Again when starting The Humans I wasn't sure what to expect. Haig handles his alien's description of life on earth with the kind of style I'd expect from Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker series.  Laugh out loud funny at times and at others Haig finds a light hearted sensitivity to describe how his alien "goes native".  Very enjoyable and just the right length.

I've read other books by Gaiman and books he also recommends but all I can say about American Gods is just "wow!".  Similarly to Card's The Lost Gate, Gaiman decided to integrate all the gods throughout history into one storyline where the aforementioned deities have all found their way to life in America for one reason or another.  And the old gods are heading towards a war with the new gods of the modern age like media, music, big money, etc.  Caught in the middle is Shadow -- just an average guy a little down on his luck who is very important for some reason.  You can feel Gaiman's  first hand observations of places and people throughout his travels within the US but then there are times when I just wondered where he gets his ideas from for some parts of the story.  Utterly mesmerizing.  Footnote: American Gods is to be made into a tv series on Starz soon.

I had often heard that the movie version of Breakfast at Tiffany's was a whitewashed version of Capote's story but I wanted to find out for myself.  I am so glad I did.  The original story is so much better than the movie.  For the time it was written it was so raw -- when society was just not ready for such a gritty take on the elements within our culture that no one spoke about.  This is my first time reading Capote and his use of metaphor is just so striking and skilled.  Masterful.

I have a fascination with books about the Silk Road -- mostly as a pet topic for a book I'd like to write myself one day.  But I had never heard of Aurel Stein, who in the early 1900s explored the area around the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts.  He was in a race to uncover artifacts that had captured the attention of other european explorers of the time.  Stein found a cache of scrolls that included the (still) oldest dated printed book known as The Diamond Sutra -- from 868 AD.  This excellent book covers his journeys as well as describing what became of Stein later on as well as his scrolls and the area as it exists in modern day China today.  I found it fascinating.

July 2014 Reading List

1. The Autobiography of Black Hawk by Black Hawk
2. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
3. Two Women of Galilee by Mary Rourke
4. The Master by Colm Toibin 
5. If I Stay by Gayle Forman

I think I got Black Hawk at some point as a freebie and its sat on my shelf for a while.  This month I tackled it -- it being a quick read.  I had no idea who Black Hawk was or his story other than being somewhat aware that Chicago's hockey team bears his name as well as a type of helicopter also shares that honor.  And honor it is!  How striking it is to understand the difference between how the native people of this country (and others that were colonized around this time) and the oncoming onslaught of immigrants perceived the idea of land "ownership".  On one side land could not be "owned" by people and on the other here was a piece of paper that made it so.  Also surprising in this story was the peaceable manner in which Black Hawk protested the loss of his village lands by refusing to move -- a precursor to later protest methods over 100 years later.  Consider this reader now enlightened by who Black Hawk really was.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Forgotten Garden. I seem to recall that I might've watched parts of the movie some years ago, and on the strength of that I obtained the book recently when it was on sale.  The story itself is like peeling an onion layer by layer.  As one piece of the mystery is unraveled more mysteries are revealed and this process kept my attention and interest level up.  It is even more remarkable that the story takes shape following three different characters over three different historical periods: The early 1900s, the mid 1970s and in the current time (circa 2005). As a small piece of the puzzle is revealed in one period, the events in other periods inherit this as a "given" and reveal a bit more.  Very nicely done Kate!  I was unaware I was reading a novel because I was so absorbed in the story.

I have said before that I like to read about novels and non-fictional pieces around the time of Christ and so I picked up Two Women some time ago.  (I am making a concerted effort to read stuff that has languished on my book shelf for years).  This book is about some of the B-list characters from biblical times.  I enjoyed the contrasting of Roman and Hebrew lifestyles and getting a sense of what it must have been like to be living in your own home and ruled by a foreign power.  Essentially Rourke kept to script though, using biblical events to outline her story.  I thought there might be room for exploration of other ideas about that time along the lines that Saramago did in his work that I read recently.

The Master is my first read of a novel by Toibin and I am glad to say it won't be my last.  There is a line in an early part of the book where it is said "All the Irish are natural writers, my wife says, it comes naturally to them."  I put Mr Toibin in this category.  There are times this novel reads like a biography and times when you think it could be an autobiography.  I was convinced I was hearing the thoughts of Henry James.  The Master of psychological works is himself subject to a master of a psychological work.  Obviously this book is well researched and although I have not read any books by James, I will be in future.

Ok, ok -- I said I'd never read another YA novel -- ever!  My family and I just went on a road trip to Paso Robles and we wanted a book to listen to in the car.  My wife and daughter both wanted to listen to this book so I downloaded it from Audible real quick and off we went.  My faith in such novels has been somewhat restored.  I mean this story is still clearly aimed at teens but it is written with sensitivity and genuine feeling.  The first person narration doesn't get cloying like many other teen novels I've read.  I was moved in parts -- and not just during the soppy teen romance ones! My wife thought the ending was unfulfiling but I thought it was just fine.  However, she was very happy to learn that there is a sequel that tells us what happened to Adam and Mia.  Sigh.

June 2014 Reading List

I am late this month in getting this out -- books read this past June:

1. Wool (Omnibus Edition) by Hugh Howey
2. The Fracking King by James Browning
3. Misquoting Jesus by Bart D Ehrman
4. Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson
5. A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin
6. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

 When it comes to Wool, I was a little behind the 8 ball.  Howey self published his book and Amazon were offering it up really cheap to begin with.  But with new authors its really hard to know whether something is good or not.  Well it wasn't until this book was picked up by a publisher that I thought there must be something to it.  So with that said I have to admit that Wool is fantastic!  From the end of the first short "book" I was stunned and hooked.  I devoured the rest as quickly as time permitted me.  The silo world that Howey creates is unique and a fresh spin on the usual apocalyptic genre.  I will be reading more by him in future including some of the other books about the Silo.

The Fracking King was a quick read bringing together two subjects that I would never have guessed at -- scrabble and fracking.  There's plenty to learn about both and so this novel has a good message to bring to the fore.  But I found myself getting lost at times in the narrative and just wanted to get to the end.

I've written before about my fascination with how Christianity came about from an historical perspective.  Ehrman is one of my favorite authors in this area and Misquoting is, I think, an essential book to read to understand how historical researchers establish their findings from ancient manuscripts.  It is amazing to learn how the modern Bible came about and surprising at how the faithful take for granted so many mistakes as truth.  I respect all people's faiths but I think that anyone that takes this type of research seriously, even Christians, will challenge their faith as Ehrman did and come to some unsettling conclusions.

With the release of Wilson's second robot apocalypse novel I decided it was probably time I read the first one.  The premise started off well but I quickly became disappointed with learning how the story was going to unfold.  I couldn't help but think that the mostly first person narrative was a little melodramatic.  That perhaps I was visualizing a video game where your objective was to be the various characters and take out Archos.  I removed the second book in the series from my wishlist.

What can be said about Game of Thrones that hasn't already been said?  I've been chugging through Dance for several months now (I always read more than one book at a time) and this month I finally finished it.  When I first started it I had no idea it was contemporaneous with Book 4 so I was confused until I read online about it -- then all made sense.  I enjoyed Book 5 so much more than 4 though and am anxious to get on with Book 6 now.  I read recently that HBO plans to finish the Series with 3 more seasons.  That means that they must cover Books 4 and 5 and two more unpublished books to do so.  Obviously that will be without the last two books coming out first.  This explains much of what I observed in Season 4 where aspects of the plot were coming forward in time, out of sequence with the other pieces of Book 3's plot.  I therefore now have different expectations of the tv series than the books but still enjoy both.

I was after a few quick reads this month and Reluctant Fundamentalist was in my sights.  Especially since a movie version was released recently and I was interested to watch it.  I didn't know quite what expect but this story was not it. Especially the ending. I thought the protagonist was overly hung up on his girlfriend but perhaps his nationalistic pride would come out in any of us. The end though was out of sorts with the deeds. So it was just ok for me.