RJ's Book Blog

Review: Swing, Brother, Swing

2011-07-04T21:35:00.004-05:00

I hate accordions. They remind me of the boys in the back alley, yowling for me to come out and play when I'd rather curl up by a nice warm monitor.

This little book, a quaint little Ngaio Marsh murder mystery, features a dead accordion player. No, not someone who plays dead accordions; an accordion player who...

(pauses to wash behind her ear)

Where was I? Ah. Swing, Brother, Swing is the tale of an obnoxious accordion player named Rivera who falls down dead onstage when he was only supposed to pretend to fall down dead. The prime suspect, one Lord Pastern, is the guy holding the gun full of blanks. Maybe. Something like that.

Anyway, detective Roderick Alleyn comes on the scene and tries to make sense of it all. Lord Pastern doesn't help matters with his eccentricity -- I suspect he and Gomez Addams were separated at birth -- and seems intent on incriminating himself.

I won't tell you Whodunit, but I will tell you that there's a lot of fun to be had in this book.

Review: Watchmen

2010-06-30T23:02:00.003-05:00

(glances at next item on the Book Blog To-Do List) Ah, yes. Watchmen.

I read this in fits and starts (and naps) back in February-March of 2009, when Astreja K. was laid up in bed with the Mesopotamian Death Flu. The beautiful madness of this book somehow dovetails with the delirium of those few weeks, and at the same time stands out as something really solid.

This is a comic book, but it is not an easy book and it is absolutely not for children. The origin story of Doctor Manhattan stands out as one of the most chilling things I've ever seen or read, and yet it's a critical part of the plot. The other members of the Watchmen superhero team -- The Comedian, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias and Rorschach -- all have their roles to play in this epic story, roles that bring them in conflict with each other and with a world that really doesn't want superheroes running around mucking things up.

It goes beyond mere dislike: After the 1977 Keene Act, which banned superheroes outright, only the Comedian, Doctor Manhattan and Rorschach are still actively fighting crime. The Comedian and Doctor Manhattan have the backing of the government; Rorschach is a vigilante acting in defiance of the Keene Act.

The story opens with the murder of the Comedian; then, things get really ugly. Someone wants the Watchmen out of the way.

Meanwhile, on the global front, the doomsday clock is ticking towards midnight and towards a fight that nobody can win.

"Tales of the Black Freighter" is a story-within-a-story, a pirate-themed horror story read by a kid who hangs around a newsstand in New York City. I see it as an allegory for good-intentions-gone-bad, the proverbial staring into the Abyss and having the Abyss stare right back.

All in all, Watchmen is a challenging yet approachable story that is a bit too real to be escapist literature.

Read this book, but be aware that you cannot unread it. Read it anyway.

Review: Cat's Pawn

2010-06-30T22:39:00.002-05:00

Leslie Gadallah's Cat's Pawn is a nice little read: One part political intrigue, a smidgen of social commentary, and three parts space opera.

Set in a not-too-distant future (just add spaceship), the story revolves around the relationship between human linguist Bill Anderson and Orian diplomat Talan. Bill is stranded on Orion because of a heart condition, and would like nothing more than a ticket home to Earth. Talan and his fellow Orians are giant bipedal cats (think kinder, gentler Kzinti), a people, uh, felininity with a Dark Secret.

(hears Astreja K. mutter something under Her breath) Well, 'felininity' is a word now. (twitches whiskers) So there, nyah.

I could have done with a little less politics, mind you, and a little less social commentary, but overall it didn't hurt the story. There are lots of narrow escapes, double-crosses, and explosions. Not an "A" list SF by any stretch of the imagination, but great fun. Definitely worth a look if you spot it at your local second-hand bookstore.

Review: Zen in the Art of Writing

2009-03-10T22:55:00.004-05:00

Here's something a little bit different for the writing community. Unlike many other "method" books by established authors, Zen in the Art of Writing captures not the nuts and bolts and howtos of the craft, but the underlying emotions that drive a writer.

This is a series of eleven little autobiographical sketches cleverly disguised as essays. Each one stands well on its own, but collectively they tell the tale of how Mr. Bradbury discovered his voice as a writer. One surprising element: He's a strong advocate of poetry and recommends that writers read a poem every day.

It shows in his writing. There's some wonderful imagery in this book...

...Oh, and a very, very cute black cat across from the title page, too. I give this book two paws up.

Review: The Book on Mind Management

2009-03-10T22:43:00.004-05:00

This is a self-help book on the general theme of "Control your thoughts, control the images in your brain, control your life."

Although a lot of what's in here has been said by... Well, by just about everybody in this particular genre... There is one particular gem nestled away on Page 190:

At a seminar, one of the participants protests to the author, "What you are having us do isn't real. We're just making this stuff up."

The response from Mr. Deaton: You're right; we are making it up... Just like we've made up all the other stories that rule our lives. "The question becomes," he goes on to say, "which movies are productive?"

If you don't care for anecdote after anecdote, this probably isn't the book for you. It also would have been nice to have a bibliography and a bit of research on how we use visualization in our lives. That said, this is an easy enough book to get through, and at very least it's a comfortable and thought-provoking trip.

Review: Lords and Ladies

2009-03-06T23:40:00.002-06:00

Crop circles.

Angry bees.

Elves. Killer elves. Loose on Discworld...

This book fits into the "Witches" mini-series of the Pratchett canon, due to the presence of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick. In this book, as Magrat prepares for her Midsummer Eve marriage to King Verence II (q.v. Wyrd Sisters), amateur witchcraft and outdoor theatre combine to provide a gateway for some rather nasty entities.

Lords and Ladies has a surprisingly dark tone, more horror than in previous Discworld novels. Offsetting this is the usual banter from Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, and a rich cast of supporting players that includes a contingent from Unseen University and the world's second greatest lover, the dwarf Giamo Casanunda.

And, thanks to some exemplary work by Greebo, the quantum physics of Erwin Schrödinger will never quite be the same...

Review: The Mindful Way through Depression

2009-02-15T20:56:00.002-06:00

This book, subtitled "Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness", is a not-too-thick, no-nonsense volume that bridges the gap between talking about meditation and actually doing it. Being a cat, I knew most of this stuff already; but Mindful Way explains it really, really well.

Better yet, it explains without religion, without strange languages and secret handshakes, without a whole bunch of Seventh Level Yoga Hopping Trances or other such woo-woo. There is a yoga exercise in here, but if you want to call it "Paying attention to my arms and legs while I move them around", go right ahead.

The authors (Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn) do an excellent job of staying in the same room with the reader: Each chapter is a good, balanced mixture of anecdote, theory, exercises, and things to consider while you're trying the exercises. It's also an easy read.

Despite its title, Mindful Way isn't just about depression. I think that you could use it to deal with just about any problem of People Who Think Way Too Much... Stress at work; procrastination; chronic multitasking.

Quite possibly one of the best beginner-level books on meditation ever written.

Review: Warm Worlds and Otherwise

2008-08-23T00:10:00.005-05:00

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of science fiction writer Alice Sheldon (1915-1987). This collection of short stories and novellas dates back to the late 60's and early '70s and translates fairly well to the '00s.

(Except, perhaps, for that carful of stoned anarchic hippy xenophiles driving around Washington, DC. But I enjoyed that story, too.)

This is not, repeat, is not a book for very young or sensitive readers. My People informs me that she would have been too embarrassed to read many of these tales when they first came out.

Tiptree/Sheldon spins a fast-paced and rollicking good yarn, but expect to be titillated, horrified and challenged.

Challenged, especially. So much so that I feel like I've grown a second head --

(pauses and looks around)

-- Mea culpa. The second head belongs to my brother Walter. (yanks WW&O out from under a quietly snoring silver tabby) Hey! Get your own blog.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon):

"All the Kinds of Yes"
"The Milk of Paradise"
"And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways"
"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain"
"Amberjack"
"Through a Lass Darkly"
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In"
"The Night-Blooming Saurian"
"The Women Men Don't See"
"Fault"
"Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death"
"On the Last Afternoon"

Review: Dragons of Spring Dawning (Part 2)

2008-08-03T00:54:00.003-05:00

Dragons of Spring Dawning, Part 2 completes the Devil's Due Publishing serialization of Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance Chronicles. Part 1 was reviewed here back in April 2008.

Most of my comments about Part 1 still hold true: The slower pacing of Spring Dawning works much better than the mad dash through the first two novels in the trilogy. The art is good, and also stable -- The characters look like themselves and stay looking like themselves. And, for the most part, the dialogue is spot-on.

Astreja K., who has several gazillion Dragonlance books lying around the house, has spotted one typo, one missing mini-subplot involving a door lock, and one green dragon who must've been on his coffee break when the pencil artists came by to rough out the scene. She also found the artists' rendition of Raistlin a bit jarring (being accustomed to the Larry Elmore and Matt Stawicki portraits), but admits that this version much better explains the average Krynnish person's reaction to Mr. Majere.

The included collection of comic book covers, particularly those by Jeremy Roberts, are a nice touch.

But I may need a bit of help trying to calm my People down -- Apparently DDP is going to do Dragonlance Legends next. (grabs Astreja K. by the ankle and hangs on for dear life)

Review: The Blind Watchmaker

2008-08-03T00:32:00.002-05:00

This book is a slow, slow read. If I had a bag of cat treats for every time my People rubbed Her eyes and put the bookmark back in place (and Her head down on the desk)... Well, let's just say I would no longer have my svelte and girlish figure.

But oh! the information in here. And not just the big words, either. Professor Dawkins has taken a lot of time and an extraordinary amount of effort to explain exactly how complex stuff comes from simple stuff.

My feline understanding of the whole thing:

If you have enough time...

...And very, very small changes are taking place as a result of chemicals and biology and physics... (pushes Cartoon Guide to Physics off bookshelf and opens it with a few nudges of her nose) ...Like these 'gamma ray' things, here...

...And you only keep stuff that works better than other stuff...

...You will eventually end up with a cat who writes book reviews.

I *yawn* rest my case. Good night.

Review: Sidney's Comet

2008-06-19T22:06:00.005-05:00

Brian Herbert's book Sidney's Comet is a very odd little story, a cotton candy apocalypse done up as dystopian fantasy.

(flips through a few more pages of her thesaurus and curls up on it, tucking her tail underneath her and primly folding her paws)

No, seriously. I really don't know what to make of this one. I mostly enjoyed it, but hated, hated, hated the setting. A cardboard cutout of a friendly evil empire, really. A parody of North American consumer culture that doesn't quite ring true... Despite being set hundreds of years in the future, it's a future that's oddly dry and stale.

Like that catfood on the plate downstairs. *ahem* I said, like that catfood...

(RJ's People exits stage right to remedy situation)

Where was I? Oh, yes. This book has it all: A nobody who wants to be a Somebody (Sidney Malloy, the eponymouse of the title). A Threat to All Life As We Know It, namely the comet co-star. Love. Bureaucracy. Aliens. Plots and counter-plots. Jargon. Acronyms. Dogs and cats, living toget... Oops, wrong story.

When the book observes the characters directly, the result is generally funny and mostly succeeds. When it falls back on slogans and other futurebabble, it just plain gets in the way of the storytelling.

The framework is clunky, too... Telling the story as history? Too distracting. Getting rid of the "Sayerhood" mystics altogether, or integrating them into the main time line, would have produced a much tighter story. As it was, I kept imagining the cast of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy as school patrol kids on a field trip to the roller rink.

And that can't be good.

(watches in horror as Astreja K. dashes back into the room and scribbles down 'Foundation Trilogy, roller rink, NaNoWriMo')

Um... If you'll excuse me... (jumps off thesaurus and runs for dear life)

Review: The Cartoon Guide to Physics

2008-06-07T02:18:00.005-05:00

Being a feline bibliophile in a house full of books is rather edifying. Especially when my People buys books with lots and lots of pictures.

The Cartoon Guide to Physics, by Larry Gonick and Art Huffman, is a really good read for cats like me who don't know the first thing about science.

The helpful cartoons, in a "George Herriman meets Patrick McDonnell" style, helped me calculate the acceleration on that mouse-on-a-string toy that's hanging from the bathroom door. (At least until Greyscale sat on it.) Explained those bright shiny things called 'photons' that happen when a People throws a light switch. Oh, and quantum physics. Gotta have quantum physics.

(pushes scientific calculator off desk) Gravity is a lot of fun, too.

Review: A Game of Thrones

2008-05-29T20:51:00.003-05:00

A story lives or dies by its characters. It's trivial to write about dastardly villains and brave heroes; not so easy to give the characters depth and make them into real people that we actually care about.

In A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin accomplishes this difficult task and makes it look easy. Dealing with a veritable army of leading characters from several noble families, Martin uses the simple but entirely appropriate technique of devoting each chapter to a single character's point of view.

Most of the vignettes in Game feature the Stark family, a clan with their home at Winterfell in the northland. The Stark motto is "Winter is Coming", and as the story opens, a summer many years in duration is quickly fading towards a time of cold and darkness. North of Winterfell lies the Wall, a massive ice structure that protects the kingdom from attack, but inauspicious signs suggest that the kingdom is not safe.

To the south, other battles rage: Intrigues among noble houses, rival claims for the throne of the realm, alliances and betrayals, cunning and idiocy.

Game is illuminated by the theme of being true to oneself, of trusting one's instincts and acting upon them. Some characters succeed in doing this; others do not. Internal conflict and difficult decisions make this a mesmerizing story, with startling reversals of fortune coming out of seemingly isolated events.

Highly recommended.

Review: Dragons of Spring Dawning (Part 1)

2008-04-08T01:39:00.004-05:00

My People is in a really good mood tonight. That comic book she's been waiting for is finally here.

Dragons of Spring Dawning, Part 1 (from Devil's Due Publishing) collects the first six issues from the comic of the same name, continuing two prior book editions that covered events in the first two novels of the Dragonlance Chronicles.

Unlike the first two graphic novels in this series, this one isn't trying to tell an entire novel's worth of story. This makes it possible to use near-verbatim sections of dialogue from the novel. The exchange between Raistlin and Astinus is particularly good.

There are a few minor typos, but nothing serious. The art is vastly better than the art in the 1980's DC adaptation of the trilogy. And, unlike that earlier version, it looks like this one will actually be finished someday.

Speed reading for cats (and humans, too)

2008-04-01T02:53:00.001-05:00

It has come to my attention that my People has been doing odd things with books lately.

Just yesterday afternoon she was reading Sidney's Comet and chapter 6 of The Blind Watchmaker with a piece of paper in her hand, moving down the page sentence by sentence, covering up the finished parts. I tried it, but I couldn't hold onto the paper because I have no thumbs.

So then she showed me another way, drawing a diagonal line from left to right. (I guess you would go the other way if doing this with Hebrew or Arabic.)

All I know is that I couldn't get settled because she was turning the pages so fast. I'm not so sure I like this 'speed reading' business.

Review: The God Delusion

2008-03-25T01:15:00.001-05:00

Finished TGD yesterday evening in an epic session at desk... Previously I had been reading it piecemeal, in bed. Much more satisfying to read in proper light, in a solid chair.

The chapter "The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?" I found edifying, as it provides a collection of reasonable non-religious explanations for human morality via an evolutionary mechanism. (I apparently fit neatly into the 'Tit for Tat' category... Give everyone the benefit of a doubt once, but avenge the bad stuff.)

"Childhood, Abuse and the Escape From Religion" was a painful chapter to read because it documents the emotional damage that indoctrination can do to kids.

But overall, I got the most out of the chapter "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God", which contains the "God-as-Ultimate-747" argument: A pre-existing being capable of creating an entire universe would be more complex than the complex thing it supposedly "explains".

However, I see no reason that we can't one day evolve into gods. Hey, I'll sign up for that. ;-)

Welcome to RJ's Book Blog!

2008-03-25T00:33:00.000-05:00

On behalf of RJ-45, the lovely little black cat pictured in the corner, welcome to Astreja's list of books... Ones I'm reading, have read, or intend to read Real Soon Now.

Just as soon as I get this *oof* cat off this page...

Now Playing as of 2008-03-25:

Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
Breaking the Spell - Daniel C. Dennett
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
Principia - Isaac Newton (Stephen Hawking, editor)
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel Levitkin
Sydney's Comet - Brian Herbert
The Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan

Completed in the not-too-distant past:

The End of Faith - Sam Harris
Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Dragons of the Highlord Skies - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
The Belgariad - David Eddings
Paddling South - Rick Ranson
Water - H.E. Taylor
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
Turning the Mind Into an Ally - Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Flow - Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Insight Meditation - Joseph Goldstein
Why Christianity Must Change or Die - John Shelby Spong
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Common Sense, Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings - Thomas Paine
No Plot? No Problem! - Chris Baty

Not yet published, or not yet procured (but near the top of the list, and liable to pre-empting all other reads when they do show up):

Dragons of the Hourglass Mage - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Losing Faith in Faith - Dan Barker
The Function of the Orgasm - Wilhelm Reich

As you can see, there's a bit of a pattern to this list. Some science fiction, some epic/serial fantasy, a bit of psychology, a few Zen and Vipassana how-to guides, a couple of books related to writing and music, and a lot of stuff related to secularism, religious criticism, and science.

This list, and this blog, will hopefully provide some much-needed focus and get more of those books into the "completed" category. Because unread books just take up shelf space.