Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

Title:		Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Author:		Tom Stoppard
Rating:

Somehow I found the movie a while ago and I love it. The extras on the DVD told me it was a play first, so I dug up a copy of that. It's quite good.

For me, though, reading a play - any play - is tough. There's less context than in a novel, so (of course) more depends on the dialog. For me to really understand a play requires reading it many times, preferably aloud, and with different people on different parts if that can be arranged.

In this case I never got that far. I did read the play twice, and though I really enjoyed it and can clearly see at least some of the evolution from play to movie, I still don't get a couple of things. More re-reads - particularly good ones as described above - would help.

If you haven't seen the play or the movie, you're in for a treat when you do. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the story of two characters from Hamlet, entirely from their point of view. They are minor characters - almost bit parts - in Shakespeare's masterpiece, so we have very little to go on for background and their actions when they are off stage in Hamlet itself.

What we get is an existential romp, almost a farce. No one - not even Rosencrantz & Guildenstern themselves - can remember which is which, for example. They have no history, and the world is strangely out of kilter for them. There are interesting discussions of death and musings on just how predetermined things are. Of course, since we know what happens in Hamlet, their futures are ordained to end in a particular way, but the play is a discussion of our own futures too, and to what degree we are stuck playing parts.

The dialog is quick and witty, and the ideas presented are interesting and challenging.

I think everyone should become familiar with this one. See it in a theater, read it, or watch the movie. Whatever it takes. It's both funny and deep. Highly recommended.

Smiley's People, John Le Carre

Title:		Smiley's People
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

Another Le Carre. This one is the climax of the Smiley/Karla series, which means I missed one. I believe I can find a copy of The Honorable Schoolboy somewhere, though, and my guess is that the order isn't that critical. Still, my error.

Smiley's People, though, is quite good. Le Carre manages to keep the entire genre and conflict interesting even now, years after the Berlin Wall has come down and the Soviet Union has disappeared as a political entity.

If you have any interest in spy fiction, Le Carre seems to be worth a read. Recommended.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. John Le Carre

Title:		Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

Good stuff. I hadn't read any Le Carre before and I really enjoyed this. It's the first of the series in which George Smiley (in his retirement) comes back to combat Karla, the Soviet spy master.

It turns out that Le Carre (Actually David John Moore Cornwell) really worked in two British spy agencies (MI5 and MI6) so he's got a nose for making his fiction sound like truth.

I, of course, can't tell you if it's really possible - not being in the spy business myself - but I can tell you it reads well, and that's what counts in this case.

Recommended.

Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

Title:		Last Chance to See
Authors:		Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
Rating:

As everyone here probably knows by now, I love Douglas Adams's writing style. He was both funny and honest, even when writing fiction.

Last Chance to See is - sadly - not fiction. In it Adams and Carwardine document trips to see some of the rarest animals in existence - animals on the brink of extinction - along with meeting some of those working to save them. The trips took place in the mid to late 1980s, and at least the first one was for a magazine article. It is possible all of their trips resulted in articles that were later substantially rewritten to put them into book form.

Of the book itself I can say this: Adams can write. He does nearly all the writing, despite the author credit to Carwardine, and it's classic Adams in style, even if the subjects are a lot less funny than his usual.

He managed - in just a few pages - to convince me that I never want to go to Africa, for example. Maybe things have improved in the 20+ years since these things happened, but I rather doubt it, human nature being what it is. Seeing the creatures there might be inspiring, but details of getting there and the governments one has to work through render Africa a less than ideal vacation spot in my opinion.

He tells heart breaking stories about the animals and places they go see, but frames them with enough humor - mostly at his own expense - to make the presentation something I could continue reading. (I'm one of those who can't watch programs about endangered animals. They make me cringe to the point where I have to turn them off. As a member of the human race I am at a minimum guilty by association and resource consumption, and I don't like it.)

Last Chance to See is worth reading. Adams drives home some key points and shows how silly (and stupid) we are as a species in the process.

Magic Street, Orson Scott Card

Title:		Magic Street
Author:		Orson Scott Card
Rating:

I think I got this one from my father in law, and (to be honest) I'm not all that certain of his reading choices. Nor am I all that certain I like Card, for that matter. I really liked Ender's Game, but the subsequent books drove me nuts. A few other things I've encountered in Card's work have left me cold as well, so I went into this with some trepidation.

And the first chapter or two had me wondering. I almost put it down, as it appeared to be a thinly veiled religious screed, at least initially. However, I must admit I was wrong about that - at least at some level. To tell you who the characters in the first two chapters actually are would give too much away, but I can say you've almost certainly heard of them before.

Once over the initial hurdle things held together pretty well. There was another spot later on where the religious aspects started to bug me, but they were actually relevant to the plot in that case, so I let them slide.

In the end I found it Magic Street to be a reasonably pleasant if somewhat lightweight read. If you like Card, this is something you'll probably enjoy. If you like modern fantasy, it's reasonably good.

One note: most of the major characters are black and the language used struck me as "off" at times. Not being black and thus not familiar with that culture in any depth I couldn't tell you how authentic it was, but I am quite certain that times it wasn't right. While I clearly noted this at those points - occasionally thinking things like "No one would say that, no matter what color they are" - I didn't let it distract me from the story. Your mileage may vary.

The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene

Title:		The Fabric of the Cosmos
Author:		Brian Greene
Rating:

This is a book on cosmology for the lay reader. Green starts with Newton and works his way though Einstein, the various people involved in the discovery of quantum mechanics, and eventually into his own specialty, string theory.

I found Greene's book very readable and helpful in understanding those parts of physics that are pretty well established. His discussions of string theory are also well done, but here we hit a slight issue with more recent events.

The book was published in 2004, and in the time since there is a growing movement (as far as I can tell, anyway) among some physicists to call string theory a crock and abandon it. Greene isn't among those ranks, of course, and I have no way to assess the validity of the arguments on either side as the math is way, way beyond my abilities.

Still, I think the major objection is that string theory doesn't necessarily appear (and may not be) testable. Greene argues that there are things that can and will be tested. How well his arguments hold up against the growing group of people dissatisfied with string theory I don't know.

In any case, there are some very good discussions in here about Relativity, QM, Newtonian mechanics, absolute vs. relative space and time, and several other topics. If you want to know more about these things without being required to take 15 or 20 courses in advanced math, Greene's presentation is quite good.

Recommended.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenbegger

Title:		The Time Traveler's Wife
Author:		Audrey Niffenbegger
Rating:

This was a national best seller when it came out back in 2003. (Or at least that is the copyright date on the copy I have.) Reviews are a bit mixed, with many loving it and some hating it.

In something of a rare event for me I am going to come down on the side of the masses and say I really, really liked this book.

To explain why, though, I need to directly address what I think is the big complaint against it: problems that result from the main plot device. And note that I'm not giving anything away here... no spoilers.

There are two main characters - the entire book is told from the POV of one or the other - the time traveler and his wife. Niffenbegger saddles her hero with a real doozy of a problem: he can't hang onto his place in time and space with any reliability. With some frequency he just disappears to some other time and location - poof - leaving everything he was carrying and wearing behind. He'll return to the place he left eventually, but it may be hours before he does so, or just seconds. The process is unpredictable. The heroine, though, is totally normal in her relationship with time and space.

That's a challenge of a premise, and I think it - and a number of things that fall out of it - are what most of those who dislike the book are bothered by. But for those of us who like fantasy or science fiction literature, it's not a problem. The willing suspension of disbelief came easily for me, particularly because the rest of the book is so wonderful.

What The Time Traveler's Wife is actually about is the relationship between Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. It's a well written love story, with interesting characters and real situations, set against background of uncontrolled time travel.

Of course all the classic issues presented by time travel are present too. Can you meet yourself and what happens if you do? Can you change the past or the future? Niffenbegger has answers for these questions and more in her world, but they come up naturally in the course of watching a couple meet, fall in love, and build a life together.

In this case Clare meets Henry for the first time when she's only 6, and he meets her for the first time when he's 28, but he's only 8 years older than she is. Understanding that, and all that goes with it, is a lot of fun.

Recommended.

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell

Title:		Assassination Vacation
Author:		Sarah Vowell
Rating:

With Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell hits 3 of 4 with me as successful volumes.

In it she describes her researches into the history of 3 presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. It sounds macabre - and it is - but Vowell pulls it off and keeps a sense of humor about it.

She manages that by adding things to the simple dry history, things like her own opinions and musings on what those involved were saying and and thinking.

I enjoyed reading this, and I learned a few things in the process. Alas, my brain is lousy at holding on to details - I'm better at remembering emotions for some reason - so I'm afraid a lot of the actual history here won't stick with me.

Still, it's fascinating to learn that Robert Todd Lincoln - the president's son - was at or nearby during all three of the assassinations Vowell documents.

I will take a few other facts away from this, too: McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was a depressed anarchist. Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, was probably clinically insane. And Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, actually thought he was doing good for the country.

I recommend Assassination Vacation for it's quirky humor mixed with Vowell's opinions and real history. An odd but nice blend.

Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard

Title:		Get Shorty
Author:		Elmore Leonard
Rating:

This is another in my occasional series of readings that come from wanting to know how the movie differs from the book. Exactly why I want to know that isn't clear even to me, but it is the case.

Get Shorty - the book - is fun. I read it in just a few days and took it to work to read over lunch time. That was a good sign given my recent string of books I haven't been all that enamored of.

The story revolves around Chili Palmer, a movie lover and shylock who is tired of that business - for various reasons. He finds himself getting involved movies when he goes to Las Vegas and then LA to look into some loans that are past due.

There are, of course, all kinds of complications. Chili winds up dealing with some local drug dealers who are laundering their money through a B movie production company, and so on. It's well written and well paced.

For those who have seen the movie, it differs from the book in both small and medium sized ways. Example: the drug courier's father is never mentioned in the book, and never makes an appearance. Nor does the wife of the writer - Doris, played in such outrageous fashion by Bette Midler - exist in the novel.

Other semi-important changes include the fact that it isn't Harry Zimm who causes Ray Barboni to go to LA, and there isn't even a confrontation between Barboni and Zimm, so that hospital scene - "Who wants to take a crack at wiring Mr. Zimm's jaw?" - doesn't happen in the book either.

The smaller changes are too numerous to mention, and yet don't add up to anything all that important.

In all I'd have to say that the conversion to the screenplay was done with skill and attention to detail.

The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker

Title:		The Mezzanine
Author:		Nicholson Baker
Rating:

I'm not at all sure what to make of this one.

Is it philosophy? It examines the meaning of life through the study or our simple, daily activities and thoughts, so perhaps.

Is it humor? It clearly points out some of the oddities of human nature in ways that make the reader laugh, or at least crack a smile.

Is it satire? Certainly some bits - like the long footnote about footnotes - can be thought of that way.

Is it meditation? Nothing "of the world" discussed here is particularly important, and yet, something about the presentation makes the whole something greater than the sum of its parts.

Is it some kind of high art? Well, maybe, but I'm not sure I could defend that description.

In my opinion, The Mezzanine is a novel written in the style of Jerry Seinfeld, only extended. Seinfeld's comedy has been described to me as being "about nothing", or at least about nothing important.

The Mezzanine - in which the entire plot revolves around the author's thinking over one escalator ride, with extensive diversions into things related to those thoughts - is Seinfeld's comedy on steroids.

Instead of a few lines about broken shoe laces, we get whole pages with footnotes and later references. We get an interesting discussion of the frequency of the author's thoughts about various topics, and the idea of comparing that data with similar charts for others. We get expositions on cashier efficiency and polishing the handrails of escalators. In all, it's a disordered and unrelated group of chapters, very loosely bound together by the author's occasional reference to his return from lunch.

But in the process of writing these un- (or barely) related blurbs we actually examine the way people think. There is amusement, at a minimum, in these pages as a result.

In all honesty I don't know that I learned from The Mezzanine. I already assumed that everyone had crazy thought patterns similar to my own, but different in their specifics. Still, I did enjoy it. Recommended.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

Title:		The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Author:		Carson McCullers
Rating:

This is one of those reviews in which I let Doug down. If memory serves he loves this book.

Frankly, I didn't particularly like The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. From what I've read elsewhere, it's a classic of American literature, but it didn't work for me.

I found it to be a disorganized presentation of several barely related stories, all of which were bleak, dull, or both.

I felt a small attachment to only one character - Mick - over the loss of her music at the end. Truth be told, though, none of the characters discussed seemed particularly real to me, and their struggles weren't all that important.

None of McCullers's characters grows much in any way during these pages. They just soldier on, suffering through their lives - we follow 6 or 8 of them for a year - and learn essentially nothing.

On a technical level I have to appreciate what McCullers did, though. As a rule I dislike excessive use of writing in the vernacular of the characters. When an accent or speech pattern gets to the point of inhibiting comprehension, I get frustrated. In this case the author walked a fine line. The southern speech was understandable, but because she wrote it in the vernacular it could never be called great English prose. Despite that her writing was pretty good. I give her credit for striking that balance.

I just wish the story had something in it for me. I didn't learn anything new about the human condition or about these people. I can't even tell you how the title is related to the contents.

In a week or two I'll have forgotten it all, and I won't be sorry.

Don't let my dislike stop you from reading this, though. There are a lot of things in the world that others love but which just aren't for me. This may be another in that category. A lot of reviews - and Doug's opinions - strongly support that theory.

Gardens Of The Moon, Steven Erikson

Title:		Gardens Of The Moon
Author:		Steven Erikson
Rating:

Gardens of the Moon is book 1 of a projected ten volume fantasy series. It's full of action and warfare, magic, political intrigue, assassins, thieves, and so on. It was recommended by a friend, so I ordered a copy from paperbackswap.com.

As it happens, what we have here is a HUGE pile of back story. Erikson's history is vast and deep. His notes about any single place he mentions - and he mentions a lot of places - must include at least 5 or 6 conquests spread out among the various races that have peopled his planet. If you want a world with history, this one has it.

But that's about all it's got. His characters are mostly cardboard cut-outs, with very little in the way of real depth, and despite the fact that they live in a world with all that history, we never understand it. Facts from that history are thrown at us as if we should know them, but there is no cohesive way to piece them together. And it gets worse. There are maps at the front of the book, but they don't cover everything described, and it was only at the very end that I learned one of the major characters was "2 continents away" from where she'd started out. Excuse me?

There are many different groups or individuals that could be viewed as major characters, but we have very little to go on for motivations, and they mostly react to things going on around them. Some of those potential major characters are on stage only briefly throughout the course of the novel, so we don't really even know if they're important. And as for that plot they're supposed to be a part of, it's almost a random series of events. Things - sometimes very improbable things that we as readers have no way to know anything about or anticipate - just happen, and these people (or creatures, or gods, or whatever) are bounced about like pieces on a checker board during a 6.5 earthquake. Whenever one of those potentially important characters winds up in a precarious position, we find ourselves introduced to a new player who gets him or her out of the jam. Sometimes those new players are mortals, other times they're not. Usually we had no idea they even existed when they are slapped in our face.

Another thing that pushes characters about is magic. Vast quantities of totally unexplained magic. We don't even get good descriptions of what is going on when magic is involved. And (of course) there are a zillion different types of magic - and a flock of gods, some current, some ancient, and some dead, but all (apparently) capable of other types of magic - that we're supposed to keep track of. Or maybe Erikson doesn't care that we can't keep track of it. I honestly couldn't say.

In a nutshell I couldn't follow the story, I got tired of the "here's something you didn't know" method of dealing with things, the characters (who could have been memorable) aren't, and it was all just too contrived.

So why did I finish it? I could have quit after 50 or 100 pages, but I didn't. I did regularly put it down - sometimes mid sentence - simply because I was sick of it, but came back and finished it in the end. (It took a while... I've been busy and this hasn't been a fun read.)

At some level I think Erikson has affected me in a manner similar to Martin's Fire & Ice series. There are major issues with it, but I kept reading in the vain hope that I would figure things out, or that it would all make sense at some point. Sadly that point never came.

With Erikson I don't think I'm going to bother continuing. Reading a few reviews on amazon.com I am convinced that the later volumes are more of the same and I have far too many other things to read to bother with them. That's a shame, but such is life.

Some people will love Gardens of the Moon, but not me.

Dead-Eye Dick, Kurt Vonnegut

Title:		Dead-Eye Dick
Author:		Kurt Vonnegut
Rating:

This book didn't exactly win me over. Unlike much of the Vonnegut I've read, this one actually had a recognizable plot, though, which was something in its favor. The premise, however, was pretty thin, and there just wasn't much meat here.

I finished reading it 3 weeks or so ago and I honestly don't remember all that much from it. Flipping open to a few pages at random I am reminded of things, but the whole work doesn't snap back to me.

What I am learning from my efforts at reading Vonnegut is that he's really a hit-or-miss writer for me, and this was a miss.

Sorry fans. I can't recommend this one.

Don't Panic, Neil Gaiman

Title:		Don't Panic
Author:		Neil Gaiman
Rating:

Subtitle: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion.

This was written in 1988, after So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, but before Mostly Harmless, and long before Adams died.

I can't find an ordered list of Gaiman's works all that quickly, but this one feels a tad off. Perhaps it was an early work, or maybe he just didn't take it all that seriously. Regardless, it doesn't feel like he put a lot of effort into it.

That said, there is still some good info in here for Hitchhiker's fans everywhere. I learned a few things, and seeing some of Adams's wit on display again was good. I need to acquire the BBC radio series, though, and listen to them. Believe it or not I haven't done that yet.

As always, I miss Douglas Adams. A lot.

Order of the Stick, Rich Burlew

Titles:		Order of the Stick Vol 1: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools Vol 2: No Cure for the Paladin Blues Vol 3: War and XPs Vol 0: On the Origin of PCs Vol -1: Start of Darkness
Author:		Rich Burlew
Rating:

What is The Order of the Stick?

Well, I'd never heard of it either until recently, but my gaming past is somewhat limited. In any event, OOTS is a webcomic that follows a party of D&D adventurers as they try to accomplish a large and difficult quest.

The books are essentially graphic novels. The art is deliberately simplistic - stick figures, in fact - but Burlew uses that to his advantage and lets the story shine with it.

If you were ever a gamer you'll get a good laugh out of the D&D rules jokes, particularly if you had campaigns cross rules editions. But beyond the rules jokes - which actually diminish over time - the story gets bigger and grander. At the end of War and XPs you've watched a huge battle - on the scale of things seen in the LOTR movies - and the outcome was not good for the heros. Still, there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments in these strips. Burlew is a good writer, and knows how to tell a story.

These are recommended, and you don't even have to buy them. you can read them all online at: http://www.giantitp.com/.

Suggestion: The titles above are listed in proper reading order, at least so far.

Woken Furies, Richard K. Morgan

Title:		Woken Furies
Author:		Richard K. Morgan
Rating:

Woken Furies may be the best Takeshi Kovacs novel so far. Once again it's a cyberpunk novel set in the fairly distant future, but this time I feel like Morgan has really hit his stride. The writing is crisp, the settings interesting, and the story well thought out. We learn a lot more about the motivations of the hero this time, which I found intriguing.

A short summary that doesn't give things away: Kovacs is on Harlan's World on "personal business" (my phrase, but I don't want to give away what he's doing there) when he gets involved with a group of people who specialize in destroying mechanized, semi-intelligent warfare equipment left over from a previous conflict. Each member of the team he falls in with has a slew of modifications to help them perform this work, and the commander is particularly well linked in with just about anything networked. She, however, goes down during a skirmish and Kovacs finds himself protecting her. He also learns that someone is coming after him, someone he knows very well and has reason to fear. And that's saying a lot for an Envoy. Soon, however, he discovers that he's not actually the primary target, and things get even more complicated.

Morgan covers a lot of ground here. Philosophy, violence, technology, surfing, weapons, rock climbing, sex, diving, you name it.

Recommended.

James Herriot's Cat Stories, James Herriot

Title:		James Herriot's Cat Stories
Author:		James Herriot
Rating:

A short review for a short volume. These are extracts from his earlier works, specifically about cats. They're nice, and I like his introduction - which was new with the volume - but overall I found the dog stories book a bit better, and the original books better yet. Still, these are warm, enjoyable stories. Don't hesitate to read them if you come across the book, but I don't think it has anything in it that you won't find in his longer works, except the introduction.

The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

Title:		The Hot Zone
Author:		Richard Preston
Rating:

I don't remember why I ordered this one from paperbackswap.com. Something about it caught my eye and I have a ton of credits built up over there, so I requested it. Then it sat on my TBR shelf for a while, and got picked up a couple of days ago because it looked like some light reading.

And it turned out to be light reading, but not in the usual sense. I think it's written at about a 6th grade level, making it simplistic to read. The sentence structure got a bit repetitive at times, but the information it was interesting - and dark - so I didn't give up on it.

This is the true story of the first outbreak of Ebola in the US in 1989. What? You didn't know we'd had an Ebola outbreak here? You don't remember news stories about people dying in hideous ways? Well, I didn't either, and the story is interesting in various ways. We got very, very lucky in this case. I won't spoil it, though.

The story covers the historical background of Ebola and some other viruses. Some - like Marburg - are related to Ebola, while others - like AIDS - aren't related but came from the same area, and so share some of the same background.

On the whole this book was good, despite the simplistic writing style. It brought home the risks we face as a result of new viruses. Bird Flu is a new one - not mentioned in the book at all - that shows the planet actually is a really big petri dish, and we're just potential carriers for the next nasty disease to come along. One note: If you can't read about animals suffering, this is not a book for you. Monkeys play a major role here, one they did not willingly chose for themselves.

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Title:		Cryptonomicon
Author:		Neal Stephenson
Rating:

This was an interesting read. At a bit over 900 pages in an oversize paperback edition, it was a huge, long read as well. That's part of why you haven't heard much from me lately. Well, that and work.

I enjoyed this book a fair bit, actually. The first third or so might have been a bit slow - it took me a long time to get through it - but the rest went reasonably quickly. This is a geek book, though. It discusses any number of topics in depth, possibly far more depth than you're interested in reading if you're not a geek. Happily I am a geek and it worked well for me.

The plot revolves around the interconnected lives of several people at two different times: during the second world war and now. In particular we follow a marine in WW II, and cryptographer and mathematician working in WW II, and a programmer working now. Others factor in, of course, but those are the three main points of view. The marine winds up doing and seeing all kinds of interesting things during the war, some of which are never adequately explained, the cryptographer is more straight forward in some ways, and the programmer could be any of a number of people I know, at least in terms of background.

I think that - apart from it's sheer size - Cryptonomicon is an approachable book by Stephenson. I've read two others by him Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. For my money, this may be the best of the three. If you're looking for something substantial to read, this might be it. I ought to get credit for 3 or 4 regular books on page count alone.

Programming in Python 3, Mark Summerfield

Title:		Programming in Python 3
Author:		Mark Summerfield
Rating:

I didn't finish this and I don't think I ever will.

We're thinking of doing development in Python 3 at work. For those who don't know, Python is an object oriented scripting language that has had a lot of people saying nice things for some time now. And Python 3 is the absolute latest version thereof.

Interestingly, Python isn't necessarily compatible between major versions, and since we hadn't been using much Python before, we decided to go straight to the latest. Given that I didn't know Python at all, I went looking for a book specifically about Python 3, and this was the only one I could find.

What a waste. I'm a reasonably good programmer, and this is a terrible book. It can't be used as a reference, so forget that. His examples and overview stink too, though, which means that newer programmers who need more to get the gist of things are out of luck as well. I was over 100 pages into it, for example, before I ever saw anything that showed how to open and read from or write to files.

At this point I've resorted to the documentation on python.org. If you're considering Python, I suggest you do the same and give this book a wide berth.