The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Title:		The Sparrow
Author:		Mary Doria Russell
Rating:

If I have my facts right, The Sparrow is Mary Doria Russell's first work of fiction. She was an academic before turning to writing for a living. It won several awards, and I can see why.

It's a story of mankind's first contact with intelligent life from another world. In this case we encounter radio broadcasts from a planet in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri, and an entirely private expedition is mounted and sent there by the Jesuit order before any other body can get things rolling.

Only one of the crew - Father Emilio Sandoz - survives and returns to earth, and the controversy around his return is challenging, to say the least. The book tells the story of the expedition to Rakhat, alternating between the present - after Sandoz's return - and the past - following the expedition directly.

On the plus side, Russell's writing is quite good, and her characters are, by and large, extremely vivid. Though this is a science fiction story, what it features is people and how they deal with events well beyond their control or understanding. We feel for Sandoz in his struggle to come to terms with what happened to him on Rakhat, and for those in his order trying to find out what those events really were.

The alien planet and culture are well described and believable, at least for me. Rakhat is different enough that understanding it isn't trivial, and yet similar enough that there is the basis for some understanding at all. This isn't Star Trek; everyone doesn't speak English.

In general the story is well told, well plotted, and well written, but I have two issues that hold me back from giving this book a really great review.

First, Russell disposes of some of her characters to abruptly, even some we have followed for a long time. Yes, real people do just die, sometimes unexpectedly, but I found that a bit frustration here. I had come to care about these characters over many pages, and found the parting more than abrupt in some cases.

Secondly there are some issues of logic and practicality that Russell ignores. The expedition makes no effort (that we are told about, in any case) to avoid contaminating Rakhat with organisms (of any size) originating on earth, nor do they adequately protect themselves from anything potentially hazardous to humans upon arrival. As a pragmatic manner, even a completely privately funded expedition of this nature would need to take a lot more precautions than are documented here. In truth, such precautions would probably have made the story impossible to tell, though. Contact and linguistic understanding would have taken years, not weeks, and much of the story would not even be possible. In that light I understand the lack of caution, but I lost the willing suspension of disbelief in a few places as a result.

I wish I could bring complex characters like Emilio Sandoz to life on the page the way Russell does. It gives me something to aspire to, I suppose.

Recommended.

See No Evil, Robert Baer

Title:		See No Evil
Author:		Robert Baer
Rating:

See No Evil is the true story of author Robert Baer's time in the CIA, with a particular emphasis on the middle east. It was published after 9/11 but it appears to have been written before then, which makes much of what it has to say even more relevant. I found it a very good read and profoundly disturbing on two different levels.

First, and mostly to Baer's point, is the disintegration of the CIA that he describes. Though the CIA started out as an entity responsible for obtaining information about foreign governments, it should have been our best defense against the attacks of 9/11. Instead, by the time those attacks happened it had little ability to get hard information from actual people. The typically American love of technology, bureaucracy, and general ass covering had taken over. We had lovely satellite pictures, but no one on the ground who could actually tell us what was going on.

Baer's complaints aren't unique. After 9/11 we heard about the CIA's lack of agents and information over and over again, from many sources. Baer manages to give that disintegration a personal spin, though. He loved his job but hated what his employer had become, which is something many of us can probably relate to, even if we do it in much less serious circumstances.

On the other hand, Baer's description of the actual job - running agents and the risks entailed - makes me wonder why anyone would do it at all. The things Baer can actually describe in detail - the book was censored by the CIA, as required by Baer's employment agreement, and the black bars of redacted passages are left intact - are enough to make me rethink the entire business. How much risk is too much? Where do we draw the line on what is and isn't allowed? Who can make those decisions when time is extremely limited and the people involved are under enormous pressure?

There are no easy answers here, as in much of life. Baer doesn't sugar coat his disdain for the CIA's unwillingness to take risks as his career progresses, but at times I really wondered where the right answers were.

I recommend this book, and suggest we all think about these things. Since 9/11 we all know the US's intelligence infrastructure has grown and changed, but what has it really become? There's no good way to know, short of becoming part of it in some way. I wish we didn't need it at all, but that isn't the real world.

The Meaning Of It All, Richard P. Feynman

Title:		The Meaning Of It All
Author:		Richard P. Feynman
Rating:

The Meaning Of It All is a transcription of three lectures the famous physicist gave back in 1963, as part of the John Danz Lecture Series at the University of Washington. This book was published in 1998, ten years after Feynman died of cancer.

I am of mixed minds about this book. I have to cut it some slack because it appears to be a transcription of the lectures, lacking only the "uhms" and pauses of speech, but including the digressions and spontaneous things that happen when speaking only from notes or off the top of one's head. As a result, some of what is here is hard to follow or mixed up. I cannot fault anyone for that, and I am sure the lectures themselves were just fine because they included his gestures, pauses, and so on that added the nuances lost in the transcription. Setting aside the limitations of the format, though, there are pluses and minuses to what is here.

Feynman was brilliant, of that there is no doubt. He was also something of a polymath, with a wide array of interests and the willingness to explore many topics that other scientists of his day ignored. I admire him for those qualities.

Further, he's eminently rational in most instances discussed here. For example, in the third lecture he dismisses a slew of pseudo-sciences (astrology, quack medicine, and so on) and just plain dishonest behavior that still plague us today. All to the good. But there are times where he gets things wrong, or defines things in unusual ways.

Getting something wrong - as he does when he equates mind reading with telekinesis - I can mostly ignore. Maybe it was just something that came up spontaneously in the lecture. (Note that he effectively dismisses both items, apparently only confusing the names.) More problematic for me is when he says that religion and science don't conflict. To come to that conclusion, though, he defines religion in a particular way, and effectively excludes a lot of Christianity in the process, such that his effective claim is more like science has no conflict with some smaller subset of Christianity. In our highly polarized age, where the non-religious feel like their world is shrinking every day, and where the religious feel the same way for entirely different reasons, his statements didn't ring true.

In summary, I'm sure these lectures show something about Feynman himself and his approach to the world, but I found them a bit disorganized and not as profound as I'd hoped. Maybe I am not giving him enough credit, though. I'm quite certain that he was a lot smarter than me, and the times are very different now.

Superfreakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Title:		Superfreakonomics
Authors:		Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Rating:

Superfreakonomics is the follow-on to the original Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner. Oddly, this one feels at once both less and more significant, but retains the style of the original.

Why less significant? Hard to say, actually. Some of the subject matter - much of which concerns prostitution - just felt less important and interesting to me. Yes, of course, it is a business and economics applies, but I didn't get any new insights as a result of this information.

On the other hand, some of the material - particularly that discussing global warming - felt more important than anything I recall in the first volume. The discussions about how one might approach fixing global warming were interesting and enlightening.

I consider myself something of a realist on the global warming front. It seems pretty clear to me that the planet is warming up, and that humanity is at least somewhat responsible, but the important thing is what we do about it, not the placing of blame or even the fingering of specific causes. And as usual with the media there is a lot of hype and cruft on both sides of the argument, making it difficult to separate truth and falsehood.

It seems likely that we'll have to do something about it in the end and it is interesting to read the proposed mitigations here. The authors appear to think getting to carbon free energy sources is a good idea as soon as we can make it happen - for any number of reasons - but that getting there will probably take longer than we want to wait for those energy sources, or for the carbon we've already emitted to be reduced back to normal levels. I tend to agree on all counts.

In one way this book is much better than the first. I didn't come away feeling that the authors were out to promote themselves, which they did a bit of the first time around.

In a nutshell this is a good but lightweight book. If it, like its predecessor, causes people to think about new things in economic terms, that's a good thing.

The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum

Title:		The Bourne Identity
Author:		Robert Ludlum
Rating:

Published in 1980, The Bourne Identity tells part of the story of Jason Bourne, a man who, well... this gets a bit complicated.

First of all, the book and the movie of the same name, while related, tell very different stories. I have a fascination with the conversions of novels into movies, and it was only after I watched the movie (9 years after it was released) that I bothered to track down and read the book, mostly to see how it had been converted into a movie.

Both the movie and the book center around an individual suffering severe amnesia who gradually discovers his past. Some of the other characters share names between the book and the movie, but the story arcs are very different.

In the book we learn that Jason Bourne is part of a plot to remove a master assassin named Carlos. He has to figure that out of course, thanks to the amnesia. As in the movie there is a woman, Marie, who helps him, though in the book she's an expert in international finance instead of a student.

Oddly - and rarely, in my experience - the movie may actually be better than the book, though it's a close thing. In the book I didn't buy the relationship between Bourne and Marie. She fell for him too easily given their "introduction" and nothing in his character made me think he loved her, even though those words were used. Early chapters bogs down in needless detail about certain financial transactions. Later chapters moved along better, but the details of some of Bourne's history got hazy, so things weren't perfect there either. And, frankly, Carlos seemed too good - and too powerful - to be true.

That being said, Bourne himself has a less nasty past in the book than he does in the movie. He feels a bit cleaner here, and possibly a bit more likable. The movie, while being more up to date in many ways, gives Bourne an uglier background, one where his motivations and origin are a lot more gray than white. It then promptly sugar coats it, though, leaving the audience happy and probably not thinking about it too much.

I guess the book is worth reading. Ludlum did get some things right, but it's not perfect.

Hiding The Elephant, Jim Steinmeyer

Title:		Hiding The Elephant
Author:		Jim Steinmeyer
Rating:

Hiding the Elephant discusses the golden age of magic, an era starting in the mid 1800's and ending somewhere around 1920. Magic shows were a major form of entertainment, the egos of the performers were huge, and they fought with or spied on each other with ferocity. And yet there was something gentlemanly about the occupation that clings to it even today.

Steinmeyer gives us a cast of about twelve characters plus supporting parts that collectively show what was going on during the times. He focuses loosely on optical illusions, particularly their history and development, but he tells the story of these magicians as well.

You will learn some of the secrets here - how a particular levitation was performed, for example - but giving away those secrets isn't the author's intent. The people are what matter. And yes, in the end we do learn how Houdini made an elephant disappear, but much more interesting is Houdini himself, and all the others.

If you like stage magic there is a lot to recommend this book. Steinmeyer knows the history in depth and shares it well. If there is a problem it's that at times he tries to share too much, and sometimes the path of the story gets a little lost.

Still, this is an excellent introduction to the time, the magicians, and the techniques they used. Recommended.

Every Living Thing, James Herriot

Title:		Every Living Thing
Author:		James Herriot
Rating:

The final book in the series whose titles are based on the famous poem, this is more vintage Herriot. Nearly all positive, warm stories that have animals at the center.

Some consider these books way too sweet, but I enjoy them. It's good to know that someone else out there cared like this.

Recommended!

Against All Things Ending, Stephen R. Donaldson

Title:		Against All Things Ending
Author:		Stephen R. Donaldson
Rating:

This may be among Donaldson's best, though I see on Amazon that the reviews are mixed. This is book three of four in The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and does what it needs to quite well.

The Last Chronicles tell a very large tale, wrapping together the entire history of the Land - and the universe it exists in - to, it appears, bring the story of Covenant, Linden, and Lord Foul to a conclusion. The first two volumes in the series set the stage, introduced the characters, and - Donaldson being who he is - put those characters under tremendous stress.

Finally we start to see some things being resolved in Against All Things Ending, though not nearly everything. And the final resolution of the story is still unclear given what has been written so far.

Donaldson's writing is meticulous, as always, and he is prone to using words most of us haven't encountered. As a result, this book - and, indeed, the entire series - is not for fans of typical, lightweight, modern fantasy. His descriptions are painstakingly vivid, he's hard on his characters, and on the reader. Some people just won't like it.

But I do, and I can heartily recommend this book, though an argument could be made for waiting until the last volume is published so you can read them all in one fell swoop, without year long gaps in the story.

The Rise Of Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Rise Of Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Well, I'm done with the Hyperion series now, and I'm glad.

The Rise Of Endymion wraps up the Hyperion books for good, or so I hope. It's not that it's a bad book, but it could have been so much better.

Slow to the point of plodding at times, we're told about character development rather than seeing it, and quite a few things are very predictable.

I've called this book "OK" purely because if you've gotten through the first three in the series you'll probably want to read this one to learn the bits of the ending that you don't already know. That said, it's not all that well written.

A major problem that inhabits all four volumes is that Simmons lets his imagination run way ahead of what he's already written. He created a particular universe in Hyperion, changed a couple of the fundamentals in The Fall Of Hyperion, changed a lot of the fundamentals in Endymion, and a few more in The Rise Of Endymion. Effectively he's rewriting the rules of the game - his laws of physics and rules of behavior - on the fly. Changing even one rule like that in the middle of a series is difficult to do well. Your readers tend to lose their willing suspension of disbelief when you pull that stunt. Simmons does it so many times you just start to give up. There are no touchstones you can return to here.

In summary, I think the original Hyperion is a pretty good book, but it has no ending, and the three that follow it get progressively less well written. It's a shame, really. Hyperion has such promise.

Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Endymion is the first book in the second part of the Hyperion series. In it Dan Simmons takes up the story of Hyperion, some of the characters from the first series, and (of course) the Shrike some 200+ years after the first series.

Religion takes an even thicker role here than it did in Hyperion and The Fall Of Hyperion, and much of the story is a travelogue, with little in the way of explanation for why the characters are traveling where they are. In fact, they all just kind of accept apparently random travel for no good reason, which got on my nerves.

In truth, though, several things seem off here. First of all, Simmons takes some major departures from things he setup in the first Hyperion novels. Flinging aside major characters - like the new pope - with reckless abandon, and recasting events in new and entirely unexpected ways. Going so far, in fact, as to basically tell us that much of what we learned in the first two books was wrong, misleading, or outright lies told by characters there.

When combined with the oppressive presence of Catholicism and the seemingly pointless travels of the characters, it got a bit old, and I even considered putting it aside. In the end, though, a couple of minor characters - the Shrike and Nemes - kept me from doing so. Well, that and the fact that I was traveling and needed something to read where I was at the time.

Sadly, Simmons's main hero - Raul Endymion - is both boring and a bit dimwitted. I'd rather he'd focused more on Aenea or A. Bettik.

And yet again we have a cover featuring a two armed Shrike. Where was the editor during the process of getting these books out? Nonexistent, apparently.

I have some reservations - some of which may or may not be resolved by the final book in the series, The Rise Of Endymion, which I am reading now - but fans of Hyperion will probably want to read it.

The Fall Of Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Fall Of Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

The Fall Of Hyperion completes the story started in Hyperion. In the first book the main characters - well, most of them anyway - got to the time tombs on Hyperion and big events are just starting to happen. You might expect the next volume in the series to pick up right there, but no. Simmons instead introduces us to an entirely new character and starts giving us his back story, gradually weaving it into with the original tale.

We eventually get the story of the last Shrike pilgrimage worked out, sort of. There are a lot of unanswered questions, though, and some less than entirely satisfactory story telling. It's not that I require everything to be wrapped up with a pretty, pink bow, but something seems to be missing.

I noted more instances where an editor would have helped, as in Hyperion itself, and the damn cover image still features a two armed Shrike, not the four armed one actually described in the novel. *sigh*

In all I am not quite sure what to make of this. It's good, but not great, interesting, but less than fulfilling. I wish Simmons had done more with it, but I can still recommend it.

Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

I first read Hyperion quite a few years ago. So long ago, in fact, that with my rust memory it was almost like reading it for the first time again. As I recall, I really enjoyed it the first time around. I remember thinking it was a great book. Really great. Sometimes it stinks getting older. This time I can call Hyperion a good book, but not a great one.

Simmons clearly has a lot to tell, and even having read it before I was still surprised that it's only half the story, completed in The Fall Of Hyperion. I found the characters interesting and the Shrike compelling, but I seem to be growing tired of the "journey as story" phenomenon. Why is it so hard to find interesting stories that don't include the main characters traveling vast distances? Here we watch the main characters travel by space ship, tramway, wind wagon, and on foot. I didn't object that much as I was reading it, but it did sometimes seem that moving the characters around was more important than the rest of the story. That got a bit old, particularly in hind sight.

If I have any real gripes, though, they are actually less serious. There were a couple of places where Simmons desperately needed an editor. A few sections of repetitive text and a mention of a checking account (yes, really), for example, bugged me. There were also some possible printing errors in my copy, but they might instead have been writing errors an editor would have found and removed. Editing seems to be a lost art these days.

Finally though, the biggest irritant for me is the cover art. The Shrike has four (4!) arms dammit! Why on earth (or Hyperion) do we have four volumes in this series and only the fourth finally gets that little detail right on the cover? What sort of nitwit artists did these covers without reading enough about what they were painting to get it right. Gah! (Yes, this is trivial, I know, but it's amazing how it bugs me now as I sit here with the books writing reviews.)

Anyway, if you can get past these few oddities and irritants, Hyperion is a good tale. Be prepared to read Fall Of Hyperion too, though, or you'll never know how things end.

Paul Of Dune, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Title:		Paul Of Dune
Author:		Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Rating:

I love the original Dune books by Frank Herbert. Well, I love some of them and appreciate the others for what they are, even if they aren't up the quality of Dune or God Emperor Of Dune, which are the best two in the series. Sadly, however, Herbert died with the series incomplete, and left a lot of questions unanswered.

His son, Brian Herbert, picked up the tale with co-writer Kevin J. Anderson, but rather than continue where Herbert left off, they have so far set their stories before or between the original novels in the series.

I'd read another one of their works some time back - Dune, House Atreides, I think - and found it flat. Recently, though, I was given a copy of Paul Of Dune and decided to try it, to see if the earlier work was just a poor example or actually reflected the reality of what Herbert and Anderson are writing. Sadly, it turns out to be the latter.

The Dune universe provides a rich tapestry to work with: compelling characters, fascinating settings, unique technology, incredibly complicated politics, and (of course) the spice. Herbert and Anderson, though, simply cannot find anything interesting to write about here. In fact, they barely find anything to write about at all.

The story has no focus, and we go from chapter to chapter wondering why any of it matters. It appears the time Paul Atreides spends consolidating power after assuming the role of emperor is pretty dull. If this wasn't fiction it might even be true that nothing of interest happened during this period, but Herbert and Anderson could and should have done better. Alternately, if they are following notes left by Frank himself, they should have skipped this part of Dune's history and written about something else. Something that matters.

Vacuum Diagrams, Stephen Baxter

Title:		Vacuum Diagrams
Author:		Steven Baxter
Rating:

Thanks to a lot of conflicts and two crazy jobs in the past year I am behind on my book reviews. That makes writing them a bit tougher as I have to root around in my entirely inadequate memory for what I thought of these things months ago when I finished them. I'll do my best...

Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of science fiction short stories that collect and intertwine the author's larger works in a (relatively) cohesive whole. Baxter actually pulls this off better than many - Asimov and Heinlein come to mind as examples of those who should never have tried such a thing - probably because he actually did have a relatively cohesive world view as he wrote his various works.

Nevertheless, while I found these stories acceptable, they really didn't stick with me. There's something about huge, sweeping tales - these cover the entire history of our universe, and introduce a second, if that makes any sense out of context - that makes me want more than just short stories to get them to stick.

If you've read other things by Baxter and enjoyed them then this may be your thing. You can see the overall view of the universe(s) he imagines here. For me, though, these were simply OK stories without enough glue to make them work overall.

The Big U, Neal Stephenson

Title:		The Big U
Author:		Neal Stephenson
Rating:

Another one for Jeremy, but this time only because of the college setting, not because of anything specific. In fact he's expecting only one book from me, not two. (That surprise will be spoiled now if he reads this... I doubt it, but with Jeremy you never know.)

Anyway... The Big U is a farcical view of college. The setting is a major urban university. The entire place is contained in one vast building - the plex - in which myriad crazy things happen. Jeremy will not recognize the place personally as his school is nothing like the one described here at a physical level. But the people, well, I hope he will have some laughs.

Stephenson's writing is light, even when things take a serious twist. His vision of human affairs in the vast place he describes is both funny and poignant. Things just happen here, usually with no repercussions. Pianos are thrown onto distant roofs, people are factionalized in crazy ways, drugs and booze run rampant, and actions rarely have any basis in reality.

Jeremy, I hope your college days are a lot better than this. Have fun, but stay sane my friend. And be sure to avoid the Crotobaltislavonians!

Doorways In The Sand, Roger Zelazny

Title:		Doorways In The Sand
Author:		Roger Zelazny
Rating:

As some of you may know, I teach stone carving. Something close to five years ago we had a high school student join the class. This was a new experience for me - the class is generally directed at adults - but Jeremy was a great addition. I learned a lot from him, and he added quite a bit to the classroom experience.

This year saw him graduate and go off to college. Over the years we've watched him get ready for this and now seen him leave. I always told Jeremy he should milk his college days as much as he can. If he needed 3 PhD degrees and a 20 year post doc, for example, he should do that, and all on his parent's dime. He says that won't happen, but in the spirit of the idea I am sending him a copy of Doorways In The Sand.

In it, the hero has managed to stay in college for something like 14 years without graduating. He gets close at times, but always changes majors or otherwise manages to escape. The reason is that his uncle's estate pays for his college education until he graduates, but doesn't contain a time limit. As you can imagine, Jeremy needs to read this. The USPS will deliver a copy to him shortly.

As books by Zelazy go, Doorways In The Sand is good, but not one of the greats. It's fluffier than something like Lord of Light, and lacks the grand sweep of the Amber Chronicles. Still, it's fun and well written. Definitely worth your time if you're into lighter SF.

The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone

Title:		The Agony and the Ecstasy
Author:		Irving Stone
Rating:

It's been months since I had the time for any reading. In fact, I was nearly finished with The Agony and the Ecstasy when the job started, and though I finished it shortly thereafter it has been a long time since I've posted here, so this review is long overdue.

All I can do now is recommend this book highly, particularly if you're a student of the arts or an artist.

Stone's research is good, and though I cannot tell you where he veered into fiction, I can tell you that I enjoyed this work a lot.

Michaelangelo is one of my favorites, and an inspiration to me as a sculptor. I learned a lot about him and his time from this book, and highly recommend it.

The Happiness Hypothesis, Johnathan Haidt

Title:		The Happiness Hypothesis
Author:		Johnathan Haidt
Rating:

This is a tough book to review. Early on Haidt had me hooked. I felt like he was heading in the right direction and that things were making sense. Then it got derailed. I suspect that was my fault, though. I choked on what I view as his overly generous and accepting position towards religion.

The first half or more of the book seems to be well supported in terms of research. If there's a problem there it's in Haidt's use of excerpts from various ancient sources - mostly religious - without a lot of context and background. That, for me, is something of a no-no, as quotations need to come with context if they are to be taken seriously. The Bible is a violent book when viewed as a whole, and extracting a few peace loving lines out of it doesn't change that, nor does it put those lines in the proper context.

But I got past that because it looked like Haidt was saying something like "Ancient source X says this semi-mystical thing Y. Modern research shows that Y is correct in the following way." (Sometimes Y was incorrect, by the way.) Given that presentation I let things slide.

Then, however, I got to the latter portion of the book and things just started to grate on my nerves. Haidt winds up making the claim that we are ultra social, somewhat hive minded organisms. Like bees in some ways. Now, I recognize that there are some interesting evolutionary drives, and maybe, in some ways, a few aspects of human behavior are similar to those of bees or ants, but we aren't all the way to a hive organism as I see it, and while I'm sure he wouldn't say we were either, he thinks the bits that are similar are a lot more important than I do, or than he justifies as far as I could tell.

And as he gets closer to these more speculative leaps the number of end notes and referenced studies goes down, just as the number of anecdotal reports goes up. (Note: I could be wrong about this. I'm documenting my response to this book, not writing a detailed study in which I count end notes, cited papers, and so on. Still, I think my conclusions are probably sound.)

In addition, Haidt - despite claiming to be an atheist himself - glosses over a bunch of problems with religion. Maybe they just aren't relevant to his conclusions, but I found the act bothersome.

I give him credit for trying to synthesize something of this scope, and there are useful bits in here. For example, he makes a good case that the question "What is the meaning of life?" is pointless. "How can I live a life full of meaning?" is a much better question, and he gives some help in here if you're stuck on that issue. Not a lot of detailed help, mind you - meditate, make use of cognitive therapy, or take Prozac is the gist - but enough to maybe get you talking to someone who can move you along one of those paths. If you decide you need to.

Overall I guess this book was OK. Not stellar, not life changing, at least for me, but OK. Maybe that's because I am (I think) a relatively well balanced person who is pretty happy most of the time. If you are perpetually unhappy you might find something more useful or meaningful here than I did.

A Perfect Spy, John Le Carre

Title:		A Perfect Spy
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

This one came off my shelf to make some room, as it's a moderately hefty hard back tome. My previous time with Le Carre has been OK, and I guess that's what I'd have to say about this one.

A Perfect Spy is essentially an exercise in back story and character development. In large measure, nothing really happens in here, and I found that a bit off putting. It wasn't terrible, but I did spend a bit of time wondering if anything - other than the rather predictable ending - would happen.

In previous books I've reviewed by Le Carre I've seen an odd problem: at times he randomly changes the point of view. It can be a bit bizarre to suddenly realize that we've gone from omniscient narrator to the limited point of view of some body guard. Thankfully I didn't note that in A Perfect Spy. Instead I had different problem.

The main character, Magnus Pym, has a somewhat split personality. In his role as narrator he regularly refers to himself as if he was someone else. This gets confusing and it took me nearly 100 pages to catch on. I kept wondering if there was some other character present that I'd somehow missed. Finally, though, I got it. I may be more than a bit dense - others might have recognized what was going on a lot faster - but it really slowed me down until I figured it out.

Other than that, I didn't really note anything all that good or bad. As I say, the ending was fairly predictable, but once you meet Pym and get the gist of where he is in life the ending is just about a given.

If you're into cold war spy stories you might enjoy this. If that isn't your bag, then you can probably give this one a pass.

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Title:		Ringworld
Author:		Larry Niven
Rating:

Ringworld is probably Larry Niven's most famous work, having won both the Hugo and Nebula awards back in 1970 when it was first published. My previous experience with Niven's work, though, has left me cold. He's a hard science fiction writer and his characters have been very flat, to say the least. I hoped that Ringworld would be different.

It isn't.

It appears as though Niven had the idea for the ringworld and forced some characters and story together to give him a reason to write about the toy he'd invented. For me the result simply didn't work.

The toy itself - the ringworld - is an interesting idea, but other than some math about dimensions and spinning it to create gravity, everything else about it is pure, unadulterated fantasy. There are all kinds of impossible things going on here in the guise of "science": impossibly strong and thin wire, materials impervious to just about anything, multiple forms of FTL travel, unexplained failsafe systems, life extending substances, stasis fields, transmutation of one material into another, alien species, etc. One or even a few of these things would be fine in a science fiction work, particularly with some background and explanation, but Niven piles them up thick and just keeps going.

In short, he made up anything needed to let him talk about the idea of the ringworld itself. Everything other than the ring - characters, physics, story - was essentially superfluous. If he was a better writer I might have suspended disbelief, but that never happened. Not once.

Even worse, there were several places where the writing is so bad - or the copy I have is so poorly transcribed from the original - that after rereading a few paragraphs several times I had to give up and move on. Some things just didn't make sense at all.

In other places, despite the fact that the words and sentences held together, Niven didn't adequately describe the situation or action. After a while you just wind up accepting that he's not going to explain things well enough to make sense and forget about it. Not a good sign.

For amusement you can look it up on Wikipedia and read about other technical problems. There are quite a few.

I don't know why this book won any awards. It's not very good. My perception of Niven as a writer remains unchanged and I will avoid his work in the future. Too bad.