April and May 2015 Reading List

It's been a harrowing past couple of months. The loss of a loved family member unsurprisingly dampens any desire to distract oneself through reading.  Prior to these events I did get a bunch of books read and towards the end of May I started up again.  But my comments on these books I am only just getting to now.

1. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
2. The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
3. Founding Brothers by Joseph J Ellis
4. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
5. Heft by Liz Moore
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

 I have to admit its been some time since I read The Magician by Grossman.  I found that similar in concept to the freshman Potter novel where the whole world that is Hogwarts needed to be set up.  For that reason I wasn't overly impressed with the first of Grossman's novels.  However I had purchased the 2nd book in the series so I decided to read it.  I'm glad I did because I loved it! While the plot seems like any other fantasy adventure on the surface of things, it reveals an undercurrent of much more sinister goings on.  And the many references to pop culture idioms by the characters is just hilarious.  I've already bought the 3rd in the series and can't wait to read that now.

The Speed of Dark is a near future scifi story about a highly functioning autistic that is given the opportunity to be "cured" of his condition.  Moon does a good job describing the pros and cons of such a choice.  However aside from this interesting speculation there isn't much else to the storyline that compels the reader.

Founding Brothers is a book I read half of recently and then forgot all about it.  So this month I completed it when it turned up on my pile.  This piece explores the premise that after the war of independence had been fought and won, the future of the fledgling USA was anything but assured.  So many other revolutions have not been sustainable throughout history and the US one had similar challenges.  Ellis walks us through the events of roughly the first 30-40 years following the victory and identifies the challenges that Washington, Adams and Jefferson faced.  I found the accounting fascinating and informative and my attention never wavered.

Ender in Exile seems largely superfluous -- but I read it anyway being the die hard that I am.  It seems safe to assume that the careful reader of Speaker for the Dead inferred most of the content of Exile from the narrative.  Its nice to have the actual content validated but I found it mostly unnecessary.

 Heft is familiar sort of story based on an unfamiliar protagonist.  Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and has been confined to his house for quite a number of years.  Without giving away too much else the story created by Moore defines an unusual family based around Arthur's re-emergence into the world.  Things don't go as smoothly as you might expect in a "movie version" of the story.  The book also ends just when you might think that things are getting interesting.  Perhaps there's a sequel in that but I found it to end just at the right point.

Aside from A Christmas Carol, I've never read much Dickens.  I know, right?  Reading A Tale of Two Cities was therefore surprising in its familiarity - like I've read it before.  Sure, some of the lines are so familiar to us that they're almost cliches.  And yes, this is obviously a book written well over 100 years ago so it is a little more challenging because of it.  But I found Dickens straightforward,  entertaining and gratifying.  I have more on my shelf so now I am looking forward to it.

At first I thought A Dog's Purpose was just cutesy.  And then in the first few pages the protagonist dog died! What?  Fortunately the dog is reborn again and the story continues.  Enough of the spoilers.  As the story unfolds and you wonder where it's headed next you ultimately realize at the end what the dog's "purpose" is and you look back over the story and feel glad for having read it.  At least I did.  Mr Cameron has found the right combination to pull on your heart strings (being a dog owner myself).  For goodness sakes, don't make this into a movie -- it's fine the way it is.

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March 2015 Reading List

Definitely a mixed bag of some good / some not so good in this month's haul:

1. The Storied Life of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
2. Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler
   
3. One Second After by William R Forstchen
4. The Sensory Deception by Ransom Stephens

I love stories like AJ Fikry -- a book about the love of books (amongst other things).  These stories are uncomplicated but leave you feeling good -- even if they contain tragedy and don't have Hollywood endings.  These kinds of stories pull you in and make you part of the flawed characters they contain.  They make you laugh and perhaps even bring a tear to your eye.  I'd recommend this book if you're into all that.  And into books too!

Calling Me Home was just the opposite.  A worn-out mechanism for telling a story.  Well perhaps it wouldn't be worn out if I hadn't read so many books of late that use it.  That is, relating a story from the present and the past, flicking back and forth in alternate chapters.  Clever use of this mechanism will gradually reveal details in one period of time that have a bearing on the revelations of another (The Forgotten Garden does this very well).  But alas there's none of that here.  Additionally it was during the reading of this book (and the completion of AJ Fikry) that I realized I was tired of female protagonists.  Don't get me wrong, I LIKE female protagonists -- I've just read way too much of it of late so I'm gonna try to restore the balance a little with new books that I purchase.

I've had One Second After on my shelf for a while but decided to blow the dust off of it this month and get it read.  The basic premise here is that "the apocalypse" is not caused by nuclear detonations but instead a near silent release of a few strategic nuclear warheads above the atmosphere such that an EMP burst fries anything with a solid state device in it.  Infrastructure as we depend on it is gone.  This book follows the lives of a North Carolina community as it deals with this scenario.  I was expecting the usual kind of bland near-sci-fi narrative but instead I read something akin to Alas, Babylon and Earth Abides that describes the harsh realities that could be expected in such a scenario.  Yes there were times when things were perhaps a little melodramatic or preachy but overall I was genuinely moved.  It is interesting to note that a threat assessment of this type of attack came out the same time as the 9/11 report and was subsequently eclipsed.  Sadly so because we should be more prepared for this type of threat.  (Read more at http://empcommission.org/ )

Stephens' Sensory Deception story was just ok to me.  I enjoyed the relatively quick (thankfully so) romp through just a near futuristic virtual reality caper.  The aspect about it that put me off was too much of the importance on just about every ecological cause going on right now.  Sure its good to highlight one or two but the crusade became a blood bath.  The characters too seemed one dimensional and lifted from a comic book.  Perhaps this was intentional and meant to be tongue-in-cheek.  But if so, I missed it.  Stephens' technical knowledge however did make the narrative entertaining so that I could at least finish the book with some sense of satisfaction.

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February 2015 Reading List

A very weird mixture of books completed this month:

1. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
3. The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
4. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
5. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

My second book by Murakami in as many months, I would have to say that Kafka is more enjoyable than 1Q84. Murakami's stories are just so haunting and memorable.  I am still thinking about this book weeks and other reads later.  Again I found that there are some aspects to the plot that are completely unexplained but it doesn't seem to matter - one takes them at face value.  This book was my favorite for the month.

Cutting for Stone would have to be a close second however.  It wasn't long into this story that I found the graphic descriptions of applied medicine a little more vivid than you could expect from someone without medical exposure.  Sure enough when I looked up Verghese I found he is doctor.  Furthermore he was born in Ethiopia which explains a lot more about this story's context.  Both of these aspects made the story very enjoyable and informative -- if a little clinical (if you can pardon the pun).

The mechanism of telling a story through flashbacks at the end of a protagonist's life is somewhat overused.  However, the twist with Dean's work is that the teller of the story is suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and the recollections become longer lasting as the elder version loses hold of their faculties.  I have to admit I found this aspect of the telling more interesting than the recollections themselves.  However that is not to detract from a vivid accounting of the horrors that must have been experienced by the inhabitants of Leningrad during the war years.

My second attempt at a Vonnegut story (partly inspired by my recent read of The Universe versus Alex Woods), Cat's Cradle is supposedly one of the best.  Some people rave about Vonnegut but I guess I don't really appreciate the satire.  Sure you can admire the fun that Vonnegut is poking at the nature of society and at human nature in the telling of this story but I find it just a little bit silly.  What the hell is wrong with me?  Am I missing the point?

And if Cat's Cradle is a little odd then Master and Margarita is just plain bizarre!  What a ride!  The first part of the story is just this zany collection of practical jokes played upon the populace of Moscow.  The second part, to me, made more sense even if it was less believable.  I loved the ending that brought it all together but at times I during the reading of the story I considered abandoning the book.  However I took encouragement from the many reviewers of this story stating that it was the best book they've ever read so I figured there must be something more to it.  I'm glad I did finish it if for no other reason than to claim that I have diverse reading interests.

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January 2015 Book Reading List

A very mixed bag this past month:

1. Shift Omnibus by Hugh Howey
2. Fireblood by Jeff Wheeler
3. Dust by Hugh Howey
4. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon 
5. The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence
6. Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley

Having been captivated by Wool last year I have been savoring the moment when I would consume the two sequels.  This month I tackled Shift.  This second novel is a prequel to the first and explains how the Silo world came into being and takes us up to when the events of the first book come to a conclusion.  I have to applaud Howey for structuring the books in this way in order to make the first novel allow the bizarre world to unfold in a way that is both surprising and coincident with the story.  The result however is that Shift is not as dynamic and shocking.  Yet there are still some surprises to set up things for the third in the series (Dust), which I also read this month (couldn't wait to see how it ended). I found at times that the pace of this final installment varied -- sometimes too slow.  I was in a rush to get to the end and find out what is really going on a who makes it.  No spoilers here.  The outcome was almost an anticlimax for me.  Satisfying, yes, but not very alarming.  Still I love Howey's writing style and have other books of his in my library.  For now though I am done with the Silo world.

An interesting change has taken place in me over the past two years of doing some serious reading -- my expectations for style and prose has risen.  If I'd read Fireblood a few years ago I might've been satisfied but as it stands, when stacked against the likes of George RR Martin, Murakami, and even Howey -- Wheeler just doesn't stack up.  I expect characters with more depth and imagery that makes me gasp in wonder.  For Fireblood I get an interesting new world and a somewhat satisfying plot (albeit slow to begin with) but the whole thing of a new acolyte embarking on a journey of self discovery that is nastier than they expected -- its been done better.  I'm not curious at all to read more of the series.

I've had Inherent Vice on my shelf for several years now.  I had no idea it was being made into a movie until I saw the trailer recently.  So the book moved up in my "to read" pile pretty quick.  And I'm glad it did.  Everyone who's read Pynchon seems to have read Gravity's Rainbow (which is now on my wish list) but Vice was my entree into Pynchon's canon.  Bottom line: I loved it! Some references to 1970 LA went over my head and others of the period took me back to my childhood (albeit one that was not even in the US).  I loved his wordellishments, his sense of humor and his story tangents.  The plot itself was a little meandering with its almost constant new character introductions chapter by chapter but I didn't care.  It was like imagining The Big Lebowski 35 years ago.

Alex Woods is a quirky, feel-good, coming-of-age story about a kid's life after he is hit by a meteroid.  And that is enough of a spoiler for this one. Extence seems to hit the nail on the head for what it's like to be a nerd in high school and pits Alex up against some very adult situations to which he applies his special brand of nerdiness.  The story is straightforward and perhaps a little predicable but very enjoyable for all that.  I also didn't think of it as a YA novel and I didn't bother to look it up because it really doesn't matter.

Dimension of Miracles is an older sci-fi novel written in the 50s that at times seemed to channel Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker series.  Perhaps Adams was inspired by Sheckley, whose humor  is less "in your face" and more ironic.  The "hero", Carmody, finds himself stranded in an unknown part of the universe with no idea how to get home.  We follow him through various impossible and absurd situations -- each one poking fun at ourselves.  As with any meaningful travel, Carmody learns more about himself and finds at the end of his travels and changed person.  Miracles is a short work that is nonetheless very clever and layered in a way that will keep you thinking past the end.

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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.