Read this one on the way back from San Diego last week, enjoyed it. Should check out Ready Player One. I decided I need a break from this:
I finished a very interesting three-book series from Ann Leckie: The first one was difficulty to get a grasp on because Leckie introduces two different worlds, that of the protagonist - the remaining fragment of an AI who was once massive, centered in a massive warship but possessed of bodies in the form of modified "ancillaries" who were once human but are now part of the AI - and that of a complex intergalactic society. It has some action but not as much as you'd expect; it has bad guys and good guys but both groups are complex, and there's no clear . . . ideology. And the payoff at the end, while very satisfying, is atypical. An additional complexity is that the residents of the society - the Radch - have no gender in their speech. They have sex/gender but it is not expressed, and they use her/she as a default reference. But you don't usually know who is male and who is female, which is very interesting in addition to being something noteworthy; forming an image of a character who is not necessarily human, who is not necessarily male or female, who may or may not have additional fragments elsewhere definitely takes some getting used to. It's worth it. I recommend these for sure.
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby Enjoyed this very much. Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell I'd been meaning to try out the Wallander series for a while. I liked this but won't be in a huge rush to read the second. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell Another book I'd been meaning to read for a long time. Very good.
Bought this last weekend when I was in Gloucester Mass, home of the subject of the book, the poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) and finished it yesterday. Charles Olson at the Harbor: A Biography, by Ralph Maud. I have some general rules about literary biography, and one is, don't read the book if, in the index, a prior biographer has more entries than the subject's spouse(s) and/or children. But this book is nothing but a point-by-point takedown of the only other biography of Olson. I read it because I'm trying to get access to materials to write a biography myself, and the aforementioned takedown is a valuable lesson in what not to do.
South on Highland - Liana Maeby Recent novel about a young LA screenwriter as she battles drug addiction. Not as cringe-inducing as it could of been. Actually somewhat enjoyable.
Just finished this: Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife takes place in a near-future when the climate has gotten much hotter and US states (and city-states such as Las Vegas) wage legal and actual battles to secure water rights. A "water knife" is a specialist at cutting out the other guy (guy being a homesetader/rancher, town, city, or other claimant) in order to secure rights for their affiliate. Most of the book takes place in Phoenix where the "Zoners" are better off than people in Texas and New Mexico (which completely collapsed) but losing out to California and Las Vegas. It's a nasty and violent world, made even more complicated by rumors of the "God" water rights that stretch back to the Pima Indians. Interesting to be sure. Next up: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer, which has nothing other than a title in common with the Tina Fey movie that came out earlier this year. EDIT: Apparently the title overlap made some people mad.
Midnight in Siberia - David Greene Both a travel account and commentary on modern Russia. I liked this, but it's nothing special.
The Secret Teachers of the Western World by Gary Lachman, an interesting and fairly thorough account of various esoteric teachings from the Pythagorians to the present. Lachman's a pretty good writer, much better than I would expect from someone in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the founding bassist of the band Blondie. Though Patti Smith has a couple of solid books recently, and she's in there, too.
The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. – William Thackeray I found this boring, but here is another opinion: "I myself regard Esmond as the greatest novel in the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language, on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great pathos. " - Anthony Trollope
Finally got around to reading the first real hit from PKD. Loved it. Just as unique, awkward, and creative as it gets. Also enjoyed little tidbits I gleaned from my current study of German, like the guy who wrote the book that everyone is talking about in this being named Abendessen finally making an appearance and it's at a dinner party (abendessen is German for dinner). Excellent look at some key issues that most of society, regardless of belief system, never honestly discusses. Rhodes is a fantastic combination of hilarious and gut-wrenchingly honest. I'm barely half way through the prologue and I can already tell this is going to wreck me the same way that The Last Lecture did.
But Where is the Lamb? James Goodman After reading the sterling reviews of this book from Wankler and Ismitje, I have been waiting a looong time for this book to come in off reserve. And I finally got the book, cracked it open excitedly, and now I feel like such a rube. I couldn't get through it... The book has no table of contents, no bibliography, no introduction, and I was struck repeatedly over and over that the supposed writer of the Isaac story sounded like Holden Caulfield. Weirdest tone to a thoughtful history that I've ever read. Sigh.
I finished this . . . I think. The book sort of ends and you are left to decide how everything turns out. It was almost 200 pages before the threads started to tie together and you got a sense of what the book was really about (unless you read the text on the jacket that is). I am not sure I liked it enough to recommend it. Next up is Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants: Like World War Z, this is told as a series of interviews (well, there are some journal entries and news clippings, but the main point is there's no traditional narrative structure). I am about 100 pages in and enjoying it thoroughly as it traces the efforts of a small team of scientists and military to uncover massive pieces of a metallic body scattered all over the Earth, and then to figure out what it all means. I had hoped it was a stand alone book, but it is instead part of a planed series. I have enough series I am following, but I guess one more won't hurt.
That reminds me of http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nothing-but-the-truth-avi/1101361295?ean=9780545174152
After my Henry Esmond disaster, it was time to re-read a known quantity, and it did not disapoint. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale – Joseph Conrad "An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.”
I'm in a rut... Munch -- Steffen Kverneland A serious graphic novel on the life and influence of Edvard Munch. It was apparently important to Kverneland that he tell this story almost entirely with the direct words of Munch and his contemporaries. But there's very little narrative flow, and I guess the graphic novel as serious literature, or in this case, biography, has some more growing up to do. We learn far more about what Munch's critics and friends thought of him than we do about his actual life. The artist draws Munch both as a caricature, as on the cover, and in more realistic portraits, and I'm guessing there's some method to his madness, but I couldn't discern it after 1 1/2 readings. According to the blurb on the back: the novel debunks the familiar myth of the half-mad expressionist painter -- anguished, starving and ill-treated -- to reveal the artist's neglected sense of humor and optimism. In the single-word sentences of George Will: Well. After reading this, I learn that Munch was anguished, probably ill-treated, and I sure as heck didn't see any humor. He didn't seem depressed, so I guess that's one form of optimism.
The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino by Matt Birkbeck. A decent true crime story of interest because most of it happened in the town where I live, and a few people mentioned are still alive and active in the corruption of daily life here in these parts. Allegedly.
Highly recommended, if you like guys like Gogol, Kafka and Borges. Krzhizhanovsky had some of the most astounding ideas I've seen in a while.
Complete "impulse borrow" from the library - I saw the spine first and the title caught my eye, and then there's the beagle smoking a cigarette on the cover. So I had to give Stephen Dobyns' Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? a try: It's pretty funny. Fat Bob is a guy who rides Fat Bobs (a type of Harley Davidson) and he may or may not be the corpse of the guy who was cut in half in a collision with a truck (they can't tell because the head went flying someplace). The characters are quite interesting, especially the two detectives who are so passive aggressive with each other that it impacts their work.
An Impulse Buy at the Friends of The Library booksale. 50 cents for a good cause. Dances With Wolves, by Micael Blake. I wasn't that curious about the source of the movie. I bought it on account of the dedication: "In the end, inspiration is everything. This is for Exene Cervenka."
For fans of the Longmire tv show or book series, this collection of twelve short stories by author Craig Johnson is just right for a summer afternoon: