America The Beautiful, Moon Unit Zappa

Title:		America The Beautiful
Author:		Moon Unit Zappa
Rating:

I was attracted to this book for two reasons:

1. I have always been a fan of Frank Zappa, and wanted to know more about him and his family.
2. Another review on Doug's book review site.

I didn't have any huge expectations going into this book, but a quick glance convinced me that it would be a quick read, and thus good for a time just before I start up a new class at the local community college, rather than get wrapped up in something more weighty.

That off-the-cuff assessment was right on target. The story concerns the trials of America Throne, daughter of a famous painter, and unsuccessful at anything she's tried so far. We follow her starting (essentially) when she is dumped by her long time boyfriend and watch her flounder as she tries to regain some sense of herself and control over her life.

I divide the book up into three parts:

1. In which the main character whines a lot.
2. In which the main character doesn't wine so much.
3. In which the main character has her life come back together.

That's no doubt overly simplistic, but it covers the highlights. As you might suspect, while I was engaged enough to finish the book and wonder what would happen to America next as I read, I wasn't that really into it all that much. There were a number of issues here that bothered me:

• I always assumed - based on the content of much of his music and some of the between song commentaries - that Frank Zappa was an avowed atheist. Perhaps I was wrong in that assumption, though I am certain that he had no love of any organized religion. Regardless, Moon Unit seems to have more of a spiritual side to her than I would have expected, and while I didn't find it overbearing, it certainly stuck in my craw from time to time while reading this.
• In addition, she seems to have a fixation on just about every bodily function possible, and a willingness to describe them all as needed. I didn't find they advanced the story much.
• The end (perhaps the last 5th of the book or so) was just too trite. The new love interest was expected, and everything came together too simply for me to be comfortable with it. I am a sucker for a happy ending, but this was too simple given the build up of the previous 4/5ths of the book.
• I kept wondering how much of this book was autobiographical. But my reaction may be backwards from what others would expect: the more of it that is true, the less I think the story should be told, really. If it were entirely true, then (to my mind) it is entirely too personal to share, given it doesn't also (as far as I can see) tell a higher level story or expose some deeper truth.
• Finally - and this may be the root of the problem - I am pretty sure that I am not even remotely the target audience for this book. I suspect I have just read my first bit of "chick lit" - a genre I didn't know existed until perhaps two months ago. The target audience is definitely female, and probably younger than me. After too much whining about her relationship breaking up, I just wanted the main character to shut up. That, I suspect, is not what the author intended.

I am not averse to a good, inner, psychological story, in which the characters go through (and even whine about) horrible things. But if that happens I want to see there is some point to it all in the end; some reason for telling the story. I didn't find that here, alas.

I may have to watch things get blown up in a movie tonight. A dose of testosterone to offset this book seems in order.

This Day All Gods Die, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		This Day All Gods Die
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

This Day All Gods Die is book five - the last book - of Donaldson's Gap series. I have reviewed the other four elsewhere (links provided below) but this review will cover the whole series, in addition to the final book. Having finished them all, I feel the need to review the entire series as a unit.

For the record, the books in the series are:

1. The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story, 220 pages, 20 page afterward, review link
2. The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge, 455 pages, review link
3. The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises, 518 pages, review link
4. The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order, 674 pages, review link
5. The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die, 688 pages

About the last book itself: I think it is the best of all. Of course it benefits from being the volume that resolves the conflicts and lose ends, thus tying up the overall story. More importantly, the reader learns where the various characters wind up, and how they respond to their individual fates. Once I started reading it, I finished it all in just two days, despite other commitments. (In fact, I have to finish this review and then get back to the rest of my life, which I've left on hold for too long.)

Of the whole series, I have refined my thoughts about it over time. I called it a "space opera" in a previous review, and that is correct, but it's also misleading. The term fits because of the setting (space ships, faster than light drive, conflict in deep space, etc.) and characters (some of whom are well oversize, driven, conflicted, etc.). But there's much more to these novels than just telling a story about some people in space and their arguments.

Donaldson has a tendency to write about complex things. In my experience, he really hits on ethics and redemption. Hard. He hammers on his characters as they go through their story. Often they don't understand the forces and motivations driving them, so they have to discover (or make up) reasons for things as they go along. And all his major characters have significant flaws they must overcome, or not. They tend not to be "nice" people - not even remotely.

The Gap series follows that pattern. There are perhaps six or eight major characters, about whom we learn a lot and who we see change over time. There are another ten or so characters who we see in some detail, and who also grow, but we don't concentrate on them quite as much. Donaldson is telling the stories of those people - all of them, to some depth - as the whole story unfolds. It is the individual stories of those people that are really important. The overall plot is a vehicle or place where he can let his characters evolve and change.

Donaldson uses an interesting literary device in these books. The chapter titles are just the names of the characters. All they tell you is which person's point of view you're getting in each chapter. The story is linear, so in general the chapters don't overlap much. As a result, you see each character handle certain pivotal situations personally, rather than from outside. This makes the impacts of events more personal and gut wrenching for both the characters and the reader.

As I stated in my review of The Real Story, that book could be read as a stand alone tale. (It's almost short enough to be a novella.) However, of the five books, it is the weakest. And it is only the huge expansion on what we know about each of the characters that puts the needed perspective on that first novel. (I listed the number of pages in each book above just to give a sense of how much more story their is after that first book completes.)

I could quibble with a couple of nits in these books. Science fiction is hard to write in a way that will keep someone well trained in science happy all the time. And I think Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books are somewhat better, partly because they avoid those issues entirely by virtue of their fantasy setting.

That said, however, the Gap series does make the reader think about the gray areas of morality and ethics in much the same way that Covenant does. What does it mean when you have to do bad things to get a good result in the end? What if you have to use people - in the most horrific of ways - to achieve that end? Donaldson even approaches the question of possession here - something he dwells on at length in The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Is possession ever acceptable? And again, does the end ever justify the means?

In fact, I think Donaldson's questions around possession are better presented in the Gap series because I can imagine the devices he describes that allow possession actually being possible. Possession though magic is never going to happen, but possession though technology... now there is something that could become all too real.

I admire Donaldson immensely. His work is powerful stuff, and it takes some stomach to get through it. But coming out the other side is, for me, always transformative. I believe that is his intent. I think his goal - if he has one beyond simply telling the stories of his characters - is to make his readers think deeply about the ways people treat each other, in the hopes that we'll all be better at it in the end.

I strongly recommend these books, but if you start, you need to finish them all.

Chaos and Order, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		Chaos and Order
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

Chaos and Order is book four of the Gap series. Mostly, I am posting this review just to acknowledge that I finished it, and claim credit for it. I think I will have to do a full review of the entire series when I finish the next (and last) book, This Day All Gods Die.

Never-the-less, I will say that I continue to enjoy these books. Good stuff.

More when I finish the last one.

A Dark and Hungry God Arises, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		A Dark and Hungry God Arises
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

A Dark and Hungry God Arises is book three of the Gap series. It continues the story of the three main characters: Angus Thermopyle, Morn Highland, and Nick Succorso, as well as introducing (and/or developing) several more. Book two left things at a major cliff hanger; here things aren't left quite as open, but there is clearly a lot of the story still to tell.

I am enjoying these books quite a bit. Donaldson's handling of the space opera setting is better in books two and three than it was in the first. I suspect he requires a complex plot and setting to do his best work, and he simply hadn't figured it all out while writing the first volume. As always, his characters are still very dark, full of conflicts, and most are stuck in the bad side of humanity much or all of the time. Never-the-less, they grow on you, in a weird way.

There are two more left in the series, and I'll start on book four very soon. Perhaps tomorrow.

In short: recommended, but as I mentioned in my previous review, I haven't read the entire series yet, which means I can't yet address the entire thing as a whole. I'll have to do that when I review the last volume.

Forbidden Knowledge, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		Forbidden Knowledge
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

Forbidden Knowledge is book two of the Gap series. Book one - The Real Story - basically stood on it's own. Book two, however, is clearly an introduction. Donaldson sets his board up carefully, and then it ends, leaving you (or me, in this case) hanging, and needing to go read the next book - A Dark and Hungry God Arises - which I will do shortly.

The writing in here is well done, and well paced. As with the previous volume, this is a space opera, and the story is getting larger. Many of the things that I wondered about while reading The Real Story are now explained, or at least fleshed out in enough detail that I have a clue about them.

I enjoyed this, but frankly I expected him to end it without a huge cliff hanger. He's got major characters in peril at the end of this, and then, poof, it's over. Thankfully I own the next volume already.

If I have any complaints, they are pretty minor. Donaldson didn't anticipate the rate at which digital data storage would grow. He writes (in one location) that a particular kind of storage device contains "thousands of gigabytes." He wrote that in 1990 or 1991. But even then, I suspect that the term "terabyte" was being thrown around in various places, and it would probably have been better if he's just avoided mentioning data capacity at all, and instead said it was gigantic. But that's a nit, really.

The other concern I have, if you want to call it that, is that I keep thinking there must be some other solution or way out for his characters. To make an example from a book I dearly love and that I probably can't spoil for anyone: why did Frodo and the rest of the members of the original quest party have to walk all the way from Rivendell to Mordor? Gandalf had connections with the eagles, and could, in theory, have called in some favors, and had them all flown there in record time. Why did they walk?

I haven't found a plot breaker in the Gap series yet, but for some reason I keep feeling like there might be one there somewhere. Don't get me wrong. I am enjoying these books, and will plow on into the next one ASAP, but at the back of my mind, I keep wondering if there isn't something obvious that I (and thus the author) have missed. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Oh, and one more thing. Like all of Donaldson's works that I've read, and as I mentioned in my review of The Real Story, none of his main characters are simple, nice heroes or heroines. They're all a mess, with complex (and sometimes horrific) back stories and histories. Even the most heroic figure from The Real Story is showing his other side in many ways by the time you're half way through this book. If you read these, be prepared to deal with the nasty, scummy side of human nature.

In short: recommended, but since I haven't read the whole series yet, I can't yet address the entire thing as a whole.

The Real Story, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		The Real Story
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

This is an interesting review to write.

At some level, I am addicted to The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Donaldson. His writing in them is interesting, sometimes challenging, and sometimes irritating, but the story he tells, the characters he creates, and the Land... oh, the Land. (That may sound stupid as you read it, but for some reason - perhaps having to do with when I was introduced to these books, or perhaps because the woman who became my wife did the introduction - I love the Land.)

So, over the years, I have always been interested in the other things that Donaldson has written. He wrote the Mordant's Need books, and they are good, but I didn't think they came quite up to the level of Covenant. He wrote some short stories too, and the one volume I have of those is good, but it's been a long time since I last read it. He also wrote a set of detective novels, which are on my TBR list for this year. And finally, he's written a science fiction series, of which this novel - The Real Story - is the first.

Yesterday night, I was sitting in my living room, dog tired after a very long day of physical work at the gym and then in the yard, and couldn't bring myself to read the next chapter in the AHA manual on CPR that I have yet to finish. So I picked up The Real Story and started in.

Now before I tell you what I thought about this book, I need to relate a bit of history. This book was first published in 1991. At the time, I found it in some book store, and was curious. So I opened it up and stood there - in front of the new releases shelves - reading the first few chapters, perhaps more. After maybe 20 or 30 minutes, I put it down, deciding I wasn't interested. It seemed false in some way, and unfulfilling. That is all I remember from that encounter, except a feeling of disappointment that Donaldson hadn't done better.

Fast forward 15 years.

I read half the book last night, and the other half this evening. Clearly it held my attention. Finishing it in such a short time isn't that big a surprise. In paperback form, it isn't that long; only 220 pages.

Perhaps my standards were lower because of what little I remember of my reaction from my last perusal, but then again, perhaps not. The story is interesting, and reasonably well told. I won't say it is a masterpiece. It's good, though; a solid story. It introduces some interesting characters, though it spends most of it's time on just one of them. Perhaps the largest issue I see are the references to various things that I don't yet understand, and yet feel I should. (What is "forbidden space" for example?) The world here may be well fleshed out, but I can't tell that from only the first novel in the series.

Never-the-less, I enjoyed the book. Without giving it away, it's a space opera of sorts. The plot is reasonable, though perhaps a tiny bit simplistic to my mind. None of the main characters is particularly likable - that's a trademark of Donaldson's writing, though, and I was not surprised by it. (Read the first few of chapters of Lord Foul's Bane if you want to meet a really unlikable character - and hero. Thomas Covenant has a lot to get over, let me tell you, and many people cannot get past the introduction to him and thus give up on the series. To their loss, I add.)

In short, a good story, but not a great story.

And then I came to the Afterward that I didn't know was there the first time I picked this book up 15 years ago. A 20 page afterward, from the author to the reader, discussing where he gets his ideas, and how the Gap series evolved. It doesn't give away anything big (as far as I can tell) about the rest of the books, but it was fascinating reading, encompassing many things, but including an interesting summary of Wagner's entire Ring Cycle.

That Afterward is a gold mine to me, even having only read it once, and even if I never read it again. Donaldson struggles with his writing - The Real Story went through his word processor at least six times and he was still not happy with it. When he finally figures out why he's not happy with it, it's because the story is too small, and he needs four more books to finish it.

Ah! The Real Story is essentially an introduction! And even Donaldson didn't know that when he first wrote it. Fascinating!

I've toyed with the idea of writing fiction. I've not done it since high school, though, and I'm a bit afraid of trying. Mostly because I have a lot of other commitments, and because I have a budding career as a sculptor that should be consuming much more of my time than it currently does. However, Donaldson has given me permission to do what I have to do. It wasn't intentional, but to me, he's said "this is hard" in a way that got through my brain. That lets me off my own hook for a while, so my ideas can percolate as long as needed, possibly forever.

Maybe I will write when the time is right. Maybe I won't. Either way, and without it being his intention, a master has said it's OK. He didn't think that's what he was writing in that Afterward, but that's what he told me.

I really look forward to the rest of the Gap series. I have no real expectations on content, and they may or may not rise to the level of greatness, but I've got a step up on them now. I hope to enjoy them, and analyze them too. Donaldson's writing is always worth analyzing. And it's worth enjoying too.

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

Title:		The Princess Bride
Author:		William Goldman
Rating:

If you've seen the movie The Princess Bride then you know the story: grandfather reads to sick grandson a story about a beautiful but poor girl who falls in love with a handsome but poor farm boy. The farm boy has to make his fortune in the world before he can marry the girl, so... oh, wait. Anything more would be a spoiler for those who haven't seen the movie or read the book. And I don't want to spoil it for you.

Let me say this, then. The book, which was written before the movie (book: 1973; movie: 1987), has many of the same devices in it that the movie does. I found that very amusing, actually. It (the book) is a bit of fluff, to be honest. It's a fairy tale, and it reads very quickly. The same plot holes that exist in the movie also exist in the book. However, it, like the movie, is a lot of fun. It's a very quick read, and kept me in my chair and chucking, so I'd call it a success.

What I found most interesting were the differences between the book and the movie. This isn't an "internal" story, where the author gets into the heads of his characters in any depth. It's an action-adventure-comedy, and that makes the transition from book to screen much easier, I'd guess. That said, there are differences between the two, and noting them as you read this is interesting. As an aside, the author - William Goldman - also wrote the screenplay for the movie.

If you've ever considered writing a screenplay, I suggest watching the movie and reading this book, then sit down and carefully analyze the differences. If you note what had to be changed to turn a 283 page paperback into a 98 minute movie, I suspect you'd learn a lot. The movie is #120 on IMDb's current top 250 list, so it's probably a good movie to study, if that's your thing.

In short, a fun, quick book, and a chance to learn a bit of craft if you so desire.

The White Plague, Frank Herbert

Title:		The White Plague
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

I first read The White Plague by Frank Herbert back in 1988 or '89. I had started a new job at a very strange company - one where I had no real friendships, and where any social interaction I got came from outside the company. My coworkers were brilliant people, but their lifestyle was not like mine. They'd come to the US from France to start a company. They hung out together, and did nothing but work. The company was located in downtown Palo Alto, and I took to reading on my lunch break as a way to relieve the monotony of sitting in front of my computer all day with no other breaks at all and no one to talk with about anything. Palo Alto had (and may still have) some used bookstores, and I found this book in one of them.

Picking it up to reread it, something like 18 years later, I didn't remember much about the book except that I thought it was both amazing and frightening when I first read it. I wondered if it would hold up to that standard now, or if there was something about me or my environment that made it stand out so much.

I'm glad to report it is still a good book, but I must admit it wasn't as great as I remembered it.

Of the plot, I will say basically what is on the back cover - it won't count as a spoiler. An American biochemist has his wife and children killed in a bombing in Ireland. He takes his revenge by creating a disease that kills only women and releasing it there, among other places. It's set in the "now" of the early 1980's. The Berlin Wall hasn't come down, the Soviet Union still exists, and computers are still large, central, shared objects. You have to accept the story in that time and place, or it won't make much sense.

Frank Herbert can write - and write well - in my opinion. Just look at Dune. The writing in this book is good but the problems, however, are two fold:

First, there's a lot of molecular biology double talk in here, I think. Perhaps, back in 1982, it was good enough, but this time around, I wasn't buying it as deeply as I must have before. Every time he'd get on the hairy edge of something that sounded plausible, he'd just as quickly get away from it again. I found that frustrating, and eventually just had to decide that he was doing the best he could at the time. Biology has advance a lot in 20 years, and I've followed a fair chunk of it, even if only superficially.

Secondly, there are some things happening in the last couple of chapters that feel too warm and fuzzy. It's as if he had to end the book and hadn't thought everything through deeply enough about the ending, and had a happy ending requirement like the one Hollywood usually imposes. I think a more sober ending would have been better.

There's a lot of Irish history in here, and I honestly don't know how true or accurate it is. If anyone with a deep understanding of Irish history were to read the book, I would appreciate some indication of how well Herbert did in his research.

What is scary about The White Plague, though, is still 100% possible. The anthrax scare of the 9/11 period could easily be just the tip of the iceberg. If a determined lunatic wants to do damage to our planet, it very well might not require nuclear weapons. Biology provides ample opportunities to harm vast numbers of people, and the fact is that one person's efforts could be both lethal and hidden until it is too late to counteract them.

So in summary, the message of the book is still very real, and it is something I think people should ponder. I only wish the book itself had held up a bit better over time. A good read, but not a great read.

1984, George Orwell

Title:		1984
Author:		George Orwell
Rating:

After my review of Animal Farm, I had an interesting exchange with Bea about that book. (You can see it here if you're curious.) That exchange was in the back of my head as I wrote this review. (Thanks for the inadvertent prodding, Bea.)

I knew I was going to reread 1984 when I read Animal Farm, but I remembered even less about it. Having read it now, I want to break my review up into parts:

The text of the book

This was, perhaps, the largest surprise of rereading 1984. I found some of the actual text rather annoying. Criticizing one of the masterpieces of modern literature is risky - particularly for one such as me, who can't tell an adverb from a lemon, but I have to be honest here.

Mechanically, Orwell's paragraphs are huge and often contain three or more points. That's not how I was taught to write, and I found it distracting. But beyond that, I found some of the writing to be rather dull. Some of Winston's internal monologs go on forever, and the portions of Goldstein's book - quoted at huge length in the middle of part two - are repetitive, obvious, and pedantic. I kept looking ahead to see how long they went on, and they went on a long, long time.

Again, I must state that I am probably the least qualified person on the planet to quibble with Orwell's text, but it got up my nose, so I am mentioning it here.

The ideas in the book

Here again, I was disappointed, but for different reasons. Orwell's view of the future looks really limited to me. Some things, he clearly got right. As I write this, congress is debating whether or not the McCain anti-torture amendment will be part of the current defense authorization bill, and our own version of Big Brother - George Bush - has threatened a veto if it appears there. Taken in that context, what Winston endures in Miniluv is all too possible today. However, we also have the arguments - by John McCain, no less - that torture doesn't work, and produces no useful information. (Yes, I know, the Party wasn't after information in the book; they were out to convert their opponents before destroying them. Never-the-less, I doubt the usefulness of torture as an effective vehicle to actually change people's thinking.)

Looking at the broader picture, we're headed into a 1984 style scenario now, and we're going there willingly. That's the scary thing that I think Orwell missed. He envisioned a society where the revolution came and the new leaders put the party and all of its policies and mechanics into place deliberately. We're going to get there, but it's happening at our own request. Consider:

• Does your cell phone tell the phone company where you are? Probably. Can they pass that information to the police, the FBI, or others, thanks to the PATRIOT act? Yes. Do they have to tell you if they do so? Nope.
• Is the NSA capable of listening in on your phone calls? Definitely. Are they? Who knows? Do you care?
• How many "security" cameras are posted on light standards in your town? How many are run by public vs. private entities? Just exactly who is watching you right now?

All of those things were done by our government to protect us from something at one point or another. The intent was almost certainly good at the time. The intent might still be good, but we all know what happens to those in power.

I could go on here, but I hope my my point is clear. An Orwellian future may well await us, but at the moment it looks like we're walking into it with open eyes and arms. Orwell envisioned getting there at the point of a gun.

How well it's held up over time

Here again, Orwell's crystal ball was cloudy. As a description of a repressive totalitarian regime - if you disregard the radical technological advances that Orwell had no way of predicting and extrapolate forward - it's OK.

The problem is that it discusses a society in a particular state. He discusses some of the rise of the Party, but the bulk of the story is set in the "now" of 1984. In contrast, Animal Farm showed the evolution from something familiar into something different - and yet still familiar, if you get my drift. In that way, Animal Farm seems more relevant to me now as a cautionary tale than 1984. As mentioned above, I didn't really buy Orwell's vision for how the Party came into existence, and so lost the willing suspension of disbelief.

What I worry about that might be similar, though, is a religiously inspired cataclysm. I recently discussed this with a family member, and we're both worried that some of those people who believe fervently in Armageddon (with a capital 'A') and "The End Times" might go out of their way to bring it about. That could result in many nasty things, of course, but exactly what depends on many variables. I suppose in some cases a religious government - as brutal and repressive as Orwell's - is a possible outcome. So is utter chaos, and nuclear winter with few or no human survivors, and everything in between. One thing I am not guilty of is underestimating the possible depravity and stupidity of groups of people under the influence of some set of inflexible rules. What makes things worse, of late, is that the number of people needed to unleash a really awful outcome is dropping - a lot. That partly explains why we may be willingly entering an Orwellian state, of course, but I don't like either the cause or the effect.

In any event, even with all those issues stated, I still think 1984 is pretty good, and I'm glad I reread it. Perhaps, in 1949 when it was published, it was dark and scary enough that it opened some eyes (and minds). Today, I think our (or at least my) vision of ugly futures is more "advanced" than it might have been back then.

Perhaps I need to write some of my own thoughts down. That way someone can accuse me of not having an adequate vision of the future and poor prose in 55 years. If only.

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book & Album, Terry Jones & Brian Froud

Titles:		Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book & Album
Authors:		Terry Jones & Brian Froud
Rating:

Two books:

• Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, by Terry Jones & Brian Froud
• Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Album, by Brian Froud

These were an unexpected loan from someone at my local gym. They are both funny and sick.

Pressed fairies, like pressed flowers. How? Simple: fairy lands in open book, SLAM!, and voila, you have a pressed fairy. Now imagine a whole book of them, like a diary, with a running story line about a girl in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (The first book is about one girl, the second about two, actually. Any more details would be a spoiler, so you're on your own for that.)

If you search on amazon for these books, you'll find out there are more. In addition, some brief digging on google will also get you to this web site:

http://www.worldoffroud.com/

at which you can learn that the Terry Jones credited with the text in the first book is the same Terry Jones that was in Monty Python. You can also learn that the Frouds (Brian and his wife Wendy) appear to be artists who've made careers out of fairy art of various sorts.

Interesting, funny, sick, and worth the time if you can get ahold of a copy of these books. They are still for sale, as far as I can tell, with a 10th anniversary edition of the first book (Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book) coming out this year.

The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene

Title:		The Elegant Universe
Author:		Brian Greene
Rating:

Wow. If you have any interest in physics or cosmology, read this book. Now.

My father gave it to my for my birthday a few months back. When I got to it, I discovered I was in for a treat.

The first couple of chapters give an overview of things like Relativity in a way that mostly made sense to me for the very first time. I say "mostly" because these concepts are fundamentally hard to grasp. I need to go back and read those chapters again. They were great, and they made a LOT of sense. I, however, am dense, and I was gulping the book down, rather than reading and pondering.

Then we learn about string theory: its past, present, and possible future. Wow. Greene makes this thing - which I had no real understanding of - come alive. I'd read a fair bit about it, but it was all pretty dry. Greene shows how it has grown, how it has fit into and enhanced existing theories, and where work still needs to be done. (And he's honest - there is a LOT of work that still needs to be done.)

Greene's prose is excellent, and his enthusiasm for the topic really comes through. He uses a lot of analogies to assist with the explanations, and he never bogs you down with the math. There are some hints at the math in the end notes, but the real stuff is so far out that I'm not sure how doctors Shaw and Eisworth would handle it. I suspect it would be nice to know the math, but honestly, I'd have to start all the way back at trig to get it into my brain again. And I'm the one that couldn't grasp the introduction for the layman in Doug's doctoral thesis.

Another great thing about the book is how often Greene acknowledges the people in the field. He shows just how big an enterprise string theory is, and how many people have been involved, and provides some insight into the cooperative nature of the research. There are a lot of people working on string theory, and after reading this, I hope they all get to keep at it for as long as it takes.

There is a newer book out by Greene as well, titled The Fabric of the Cosmos. I am fortunate enough to have been given that book as well, and I am looking forward to digging into it. I will put it off for a few days, though, to give me time to finish all of our holiday stuff. But then...

In all seriousness, if you have any interest in physics or cosmology, this is the book to read. From what I can tell, it provides both excellent background, history, and then follows all that up with current theory and future research directions.

Highly, highly recommended.

God's Debris, Scott Adams

Title:		God's Debris
Author:		Scott Adams
Rating:

First off, this was an entirely unexpected thing. I visited the Dilbert web site when I had a few minutes to spare and found a banner saying Scott Adams was giving a way an e-book titled God's Debris. I like the Dilbert comic strip. As an (ex-)engineer, I know that is has an air of truth to it. In fact, sometimes it is far too close to the truth - bordering on a documentary about engineering life. (I've also found that people in many other professions feel the same way about it, which I find interesting. Mr. Adams is tapping into something deep and shared in all of us somehow.)

In addition, past experience has shown me that Scott Adams has some odd (to my way of thinking) ideas.

So out of curiosity, I chased the link. I figured it might be amusing, and (even more important) it might help me in my quest to get ahead of the Rev. Dr. Shaw in the totals page again.

The link is: http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/

I don't know how long it will be good, but it's there now. If you want to read what I did, and have a PDF viewer on your computer, the entire thing is free.

Of this book, the page above says:

Why is it Free?

Frankly, this is the hardest book in the world to market. When it first came out in hardcover, booksellers couldn't decide if it was fiction or nonfiction. Was it philosophy or religion? It's a religion/science book written by a cartoonist, using hypnosis techniques in the writing. It's a thought experiment. It's unlike anything you've ever read. How do you sell something that can't be explained?

I'm not sure those big claims are all true. I've read some interesting things in my day, and I think they can be explained rationally if you take the time.

That said, I am not going to write a review that will spoil or explain the book.

I will say that it presents a lot of unusual ideas in quick succession, and that the author himself (on the web page listed above) challenges you to figure out what is wrong with it. Frankly, I found some of it interesting speculation, a bit of it was interesting philosophy, and some of it was tripe. However, the entire thing taken together was at least interesting enough to keep me reading. I also suspect that people will differ over which parts of it were interesting, tripe, or whatever. I think Scott Adams would be happy to hear that.

It's not long - about 150 pages of large type. I read it in perhaps three hours, total. (I wasn't keeping close track, so don't hold me to that number too tightly.)

The worst thing about God's Debris is that he got some of the physics entirely wrong. (Don't worry... there are no equations, and you don't have to understand relativity to read it.) The best part is that even when he's wrong he's trying to make you think and figure out what is right or wrong or interesting from your own perspective.

Consider reading it. It costs nothing, and some of the major messages (as I read them) can only do you (and the rest of the planet) some good.

There is a sequel as well, but that isn't free. At least not yet. I'm pondering that.

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Title:		Animal Farm
Author:		George Orwell
Rating:

A TV commercial style review:

This is the point.
This is me banging the point into your head.
WHANG! WHANG! WHANG!
Any questions?

More seriously, though:

Animal Farm is one of the couple of books that Orwell is really well known for. It is a fast read, simple in content and style.

As a howl of protest against totalitarian regimes, it is still a reasonable cautionary tale. However, rereading it well after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, I think it has lost something. I hasten to add that I know there are still totalitarian regimes out there - some of them quite large and nasty. Orwell was targeting the specifics of the Soviet Union with this book, though, and that has all changed rather substantially now. I don't hold that against the book or the author. After all, Animal Farm was originally published in 1946. I think any book is allowed to age a bit after nearly 60 years.

One of the more interesting things in this book was the actual, physical, copy I read. It belonged to my wife in school, and was clearly read for some class (probably in early high school, but perhaps a bit earlier - I'm not sure). She's highlighted various passages in the book, and included some notes (things like "the provisional government exists for a while", "you must sacrifice for the state", and "purge") in places. All pretty obvious stuff, really. However, when I asked her about her memory of the book as I was digging it out, the quote she remembered was the donkey (Benjamin) saying "Donkeys live a long time." I discovered that quote isn't highlighted. So the thing that stuck with her 25 or 30 years after she read it wasn't what she'd noted at the time. Interesting how our minds work.

I read it far too many years ago as well. The only thing I remembered was that the pigs took over, and the final revision of the commandments, painted on the barn wall: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." I've used that phrase in my professional career, but no one has ever taken the amount of offense I intended by it. Funny that.

I'd like to quote Doug's review of Animal Farm from his top 100 book review: "It's never too early to start mistrusting people with power." That is an important lesson we all need to learn somewhere along the line. If this book helps drive that lesson home for you or someone you know, good.

It's a classic book, and a reread every 20 years or so is probably in order, but if you're naturally cynical like me, the message is something you keep it in mind all the time anyway. Whether we do anything about it is left as an exercise for the interested reader.

Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, Mil Millington

Title:		Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About
Author:		Mil Millington
Rating:

A while back I reviewed A Certain Chemistry by the same author - Mil Millington.

That one was funny. This one is better. Part of that is me... the main character in this book is a bit more approachable to me than was the main character in A Certain Chemistry. (My review of that book mentions that the subject matter of that book - a man having an affair - was tougher for me to read for some reason.) Both books see the author pummeling his character with all kinds of situations that would make a real person break down and cry, and yet they seem real enough that the willing suspension of disbelief isn't violated. (At least it wasn't for me.)

Though I am certain this book is fiction, Millington probably puts a fair bit of his real life into it. Mostly in the form of the arguments described between Pel and Ursula - the main characters - not in the actual plot.

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About is a comedy about, well, someone who accepts a promotion he shouldn't, I guess. It's hard to know where to start describing it, really. The contents wander all over, covering things as diverse as raising children, a car chase, remodeling a house, a Chinese triad, and many, many other items you wouldn't think were related. The writing is good, and laugh-out-loud funny at many points.

I highly recommend this one.

The Penultimate Peril, Lemony Snicket

Title:		The Penultimate Peril
Author:		Lemony Snicket
Rating:

A fun read. The stories continue in the same style and the content continues to get more and more confusing - for the reader and for the main characters - so there are still just as many questions as answers for me. (That's nearly all questions and nearly no answers.) That means book 13 will be very interesting, or it will be a total flop.

At this point I somewhat regret having given all of the previous volumes to my niece & nephew, as I'll probably want to reread them all at some point, once the series is complete.

Losing America, Senator Robert Byrd

Title:		Losing America
Author:		Senator Robert Byrd
Rating:

I heard about this book on some program on NPR a while back. I live in California, so Senator Byrd isn't exactly a local personality, but if you follow politics at all you may know that he is a very senior Democrat, and he sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He is also considered something of a constitutional scholar, and he has a reputation and a past that can be problematic. (He's from the deep south and over 80 years old now, so the race issue is "interesting" when dealing with him.) Regardless, when I hear him speaking about the constitution and the history of the country, he does seem to have a pretty firm grip on those issues. And with a subtitle of "Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency" I thought I ought to read it. So I bought it used.

My summary is that he's a better speaker than a writer. That may not make much sense at first, but it's true.

The book consists of (basically) 8 chapters followed by the text of 8 speeches he made on the floor of the Senate.

The chapters meander about, containing ideas and points that he never gets back to, or that seem out of place in the context he is trying to discuss. The speeches, however, are the opposite. They are concise, eloquent, and drive home a specific point clearly and cleanly.

While I did learn some things from the main text that I hadn't previously known, and that I will try to follow up on in my "copious free time" (tm), most of the important things are said much more cleanly in the text of the speeches.

I'm not going to launch into a political discussion here - I hope to write that up and put it on my personal web relatively soon. (I'm feeling the urge to make a statement somewhere that others might find, if they dig far enough.) What I will say is that obviously Bryd is no friend of President Bush, and he makes no bones about that here.

The things Senator Byrd has to say about how Washington is working during Bush's presidency should disturb anyone - regardless of their political affiliation. That said, I worry a tiny bit about how slanted this presentation is, and I'd have preferred some footnotes and/or and bibliography to document some of the things he says. This is a polemic of sorts, and whether it is deserved and accurate or not, I'd have preferred a bit more backing for the concepts presented. (If the Bush administration's way of handling X is bad, how did Clinton handle it, or Bush Senior, or other presidents?) I'd also have preferred a bit more openness from Byrd himself. In some cases he says how he voted on certain things, but in others he does not. The entire book could have been clearer and deeper without too much more effort. Perhaps it was rushed to press.

Regardless, Byrd's speeches are good reading, and they make sharp, concise points that I think should be heard. In theory, though, you can find them online somewhere in the *.gov hierarchy, if you dig.

So was this book worth reading or not? Yes, but it could have been a lot better.

Eats, Shoots, & Leaves, Lynne Truss

Title:		Eats, Shoots, & Leaves
Author:		Lynne Truss
Rating:

I need to be a bit careful reviewing this book. My text is always full of errors. No matter how hard I try, for example, I cannot manage to distinguish between "it's" and "its" without actually engaging the brain for several seconds on the topic. It should be simple, and it is in the case of "their", "there", and "they're", but "it's" and "its" are messed up deep in my reptilian brain.

This is a book in which Lynne Truss complains (rightly so, mostly) about the state of punctuation in our language. The American release of the book contains (essentially) the British content, so some things she does and says aren't "right" for us yanks. But that doesn't detract from the essential correctness of the content, nor the charm of her writing.

Personally, I didn't learn much that surprised me in this little volume. I did enjoy the time reading it, and it was nice to see that my tendency to put terminal punctuation outside of quotes at times is valid in the Queen's English, even if it isn't valid here. (Someone else commented on this in an earlier post as well. I will continue the habit as well.)

This isn't really a language reference book. Thus if you want to look up some of the more obscure rules for the use of the comma you'd be better off with a true style guide, rather than this book.

In short: recommended, but probably a library trip, rather than a bookstore trip, as you'll probably only read it once.

PS: Can someone actually explain the apostrophe in this phrase:

two weeks' notice

That seems entirely wrong to me, but Truss goes on and on about it. (It's a movie title - without the apostrophe - and even the photo on the back cover shows her adding an apostrophe to a movie poster; guerilla style.) To me, the phrase "that will take two weeks to do" needs no apostrophe, so why would "I'm giving my two weeks notice now" need one? Is this perhaps a British English thing, or am I missing something? Alas, Truss's text (I believe that 's is correct there) doesn't explain this issue in a way I could understand.

Amphigorey, Edward Gorey

Title:		Amphigorey
Author:		Edward Gorey
Rating:

This was a surprise. As I put Chatter back on my bookshelf, I noted the spine of this book, and I did not recognize it at all. I have no idea how we came to own it, but I've now read it, and call it #27 on my list for 2005.

Amphigorey is a collection of 15 short books by Edward Gorey. All were originally published between 1953 and 1965.

As with all things Gorey, they are macabre. His prose is as dark and twisted as his drawings.

Worth the read. Disturbing, but very much worth reading.

Chatter, Patrick Radden Keefe

Title:		Chatter
Author:		Patrick Radden Keefe
Rating:

Chatter is both profoundly interesting and frustrating at the same time. It amounts to an overview of most of the Western world's signal intelligence interception (SIGINT) capabilities, without actually having any meat available on the topic. That's not really a surprise, and the author cannot be blamed for that, as the subject of the book doesn't really want to be talked about, or even known.

Chatter should make you think about several things. Most importantly, where should the line between security and liberty be drawn? For some, the answer is clearly one way or another. For others, it's more vague. There has been no real discussion of that issue in the US as yet, but we spend billions of dollars each year on SIGINT, and errors (or deliberate aggressive actions on the part of SIGINT agencies) always reduce liberty. Is that the right approach?

I dog-eared a page near the end of the book, as it has some startling statistics on it. Assuming you accept the premise that 9/11 was a wakeup call and our intelligence gathering needs to improve, things have not gotten better. (The premise may be arguable... more on that in a moment though.) According to Chatter, in the time since 9/11, the NSA fired some people and hired a bunch of others. In order, they've hired:

• Security guards
• Polygraph analysts
• Linguists
• Analysts

Remember that after 9/11 it was made very clear that we didn't have enough linguists and analysts in the US spy agencies, and the NSA is hiring more polygraph analysts than linguists? Excuse me? The polygraph is a notoriously unreliable instrument, and there has never been a suggestion that anyone on the inside hid or damaged information that would have prevented 9/11. Why do we need more polygraph analysts?

And this plays into the reason that the above 9/11 "wakeup" argument may be flawed. Perhaps SIGINT is simply not the place to spend money anymore. Or at least not the place increase budgets anymore. Our new foes (Al Qaeda and others) work the technical side well, or communicate in person. They have handbooks to tell them when our satellites will be overhead, and encryption to slow us down if they are on a monitored medium. Should we spend more money on the NSA in such a case? How would we know? Seriously... how would we know?

Before answering that, though, let's look at the other side of the 9/11 wakeup theory. We were also told we needed more human intelligence (HUMINT in the lingo) after 9/11, since clearly our SIGINT hadn't warned us in advance. OK. But according to Chatter, as of May 2004, the CIA had fewer than 1,100 case officers posted overseas. It says that is fewer than the number of FBI agents stations in the New York City field office. So perhaps we're not spending our intelligence money in the right places there either. Again though, how would we know?

And that is probably the most important point of this book. There is no way for anyone - even our elected officials - to judge the success or failure of our intelligence agencies. There are stories in here about congress members on the Intelligence Oversight Committee, and why they are there that clearly show that no one is watching the watchers. No one.

So are we getting our money's worth from the CIA, the NSA, and the related agencies? Is ECHELON worth the effort and money we (as a country) put into it?

There is no way of knowing. None at all.

Stop and think about that, fellow tax payer. I may be odd, but I am not averse to paying taxes for things that are actually valuable and provide some measure of public good. In the case of our intelligence operations, though, I honestly don't know if I am getting even $1 worth of anything from them or not. And they won't tell us. They won't even tell our congress people. We don't know what we're paying or what we're getting, or even who is being watched. I find that profoundly disturbing.

A bit more about the book itself:

To be honest I was hoping for more nuts and bolts about the capabilities of the NSA (or other agencies) from this book. There is some of that here, but not much. After reading the book, though, you know why that is the case, which is nearly as valuable as the data I'd wanted. The writing style is light and breezy, though there are end notes and a reasonably sized bibliography at the back. The claim is the book is all (or nearly all) based on publicly available information. Developing sources inside the SIGINT community is hard, I's sure, so again that is no slight against the author.

All in all, I recommend Chatter. If enough people read it, perhaps we'll get a movement together to get the intelligence agencies to open up to some degree, and at least learn if the billions we pay are doing us any good or not.

Art & Physics, Leonard Shlain

Title:		Art & Physics
Author:		Leonard Shlain
Rating:

I really wish I'd liked this book more. It's the 2nd in the pair I've been slogging through for months now. Sadly, in the end, I have to state that it wasn't remotely worth the effort.

I am not a physicist, but I have some interest in the topic. I am an artist though - specifically a stone carver. Add to those a technical background in software engineering, and this looked like an interesting read.

Shlain's thesis is that artists give advance warning of pending changes in science (or what passed for science a long time ago). To do this, he describes various events in science, and then shows how one or more artists introduced new forms that not only predate those new scientific discoveries, but also how they anticipated the nature of those discoveries and how that anticipation is visible in their new work.

As the book unfolds, I started off thinking the idea was interesting, but as the examples got more and more recent - and more contrived - I became convinced that he was stretching whatever he needed to prove his point. About halfway through I decided that Shlain really needed to learn something I was taught years and years ago:

Correlation does not imply causation.

Any doctor studying disease causes has to learn that phrase. And guess what, Mr. Shlain is actually Dr. Shlain -- "the Chairman of Laparoscopic surgery at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and is an Associate Professor of Surgery at UCSF." (Text taken from his web site http://www.artandphysics.com/). Shlain should know better than to conflate causation and correlation - it should have been drummed into his head in medical school.

To put the problem another way, it is easy to go back and find all kinds of connections between items A and B in retrospect, particularly if A and B are big, broad categories like "Art" and "Physics". Doing so is trivial with the benefit of hindsight.

Nowhere does he actually justify his coincidences, he just states them, as it the fact that they are pointed out makes them true. (Another related phrase that came to mind is "proof by repeated assertion" which I found in Peopleware by DeMarco & Lister. But I digress.) In fact, in many cases, he mentions or quotes artists and physicists saying they know nothing about the other field, as if that helps his cause somehow. It doesn't, and his ideas don't hold together.

To cap this all off, in the last few chapters Shlain goes off to find a way to explain this amazing connection between art and physics. To do so he launches into a discussion of an overmind of some sort. Using analogy and mysticism in ways I was entirely unhappy with, he suggests that perhaps we (as individuals) are part of some larger mind, which exists fully in spacetime. We're not aware of the overmind since we can only conceive of space and time separately, not as one unified whole.

Bull****.

The book finally ends in a bunch of new age (pronounced "newage" which rhymes with "sewage") psycho babble, oddly mixed with ancient Greek mythology.

Nowhere does he discuss near or far eastern art history. Perhaps this art / physics connection is unique to western society. That seems odd to me, since if he was right and artists do have some mystic connection to coming future events in science, that would be the same regardless of culture. After all, we're all part of the same overmind, right?

Before writing this review I went to amazon.com and read the reviews of the book, to see if others felt as I did. That was enlightening. Some loved the book; some pointed out gross errors in the physics. It was a decidedly mixed bag.

As I come out the other end, I doubt I can trust Shlain's layman explanation of the physics, I'm not at all sure I believe his explanation of some of the art, and I have reason to wonder about his grasp of reality.

Sadly, I suggest avoiding this book.