Bragan's 2011 Reading, Pt. 3

KeskusteluClub Read 2011

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Bragan's 2011 Reading, Pt. 3

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1bragan
marraskuu 2, 2011, 1:37 pm

Since the last one was starting to get a little long, I figured I'd start up a new thread to take me through the last two months of the year. To kick things off, here's an obscure little fantasy novel I'm sure none of you have ever heard of:

133. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling



Having started re-reading this series, I figured I might as well keep going, even if it is taking me a while.

I definitely did find this one a bit more engaging than book one, although, even in retrospect, I don't exactly see it brimming over with mega-hit potential. Personally, I'm largely inclined to credit the series' success more to luck and chaos theory than to any special brilliance on J.K. Rowling's part. But it is an amusingly written story, and the plot is entertaining enough, even if it does feature a bit too much of characters neglecting to share information (a personal pet peeve of mine) and end with something of a deus ex machina. Rowling is clearly working on fleshing out her world and its backstory a little more at this point, which is nice, except that the more world-building she does, the more inclined I am to nitpick at it. (Like, how believable is it that the magical world is such a well-kept secret from us Muggles when there's so much intermarriage, and Muggle-born children regularly enter wizard society? Does Hogwarts have any safety standards at all? And why are the rules of Quidditch so stupid?) Which makes re-reading this a weirdly conflicted experience for me, because Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the funny, fluffy little kids' book, really doesn't deserve that kind of scrutiny, but Harry Potter, the worldwide pop culture phenomenon and defining story of a generation, is positively asking for it.

Also, I am still weirdly disappointed that Professor Snape did not miraculously become the main character while I wasn't looking. In fact, my biggest reaction to reading this again now is to wonder what the heck the adults were up to through this whole thing. Surely the answer isn't "basically nothing?" I mean, Rowling obviously doesn't want us to think they're stupid, right?

Rating: 3.5/5. Although I can't decide whether that's unfairly low or not. It's become utterly impossible to judge these books on their own merits, I'm afraid.

2bragan
marraskuu 4, 2011, 11:51 pm

134. Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time by Michael Downing



This is a history of Daylight Saving Time -- technically it's not called Daylight Savings time -- throughout the world and most particularly in the United States. And ye gods, what a complicated history it is. I always thought the whole thing was a bit of a mess, but apparently I didn't know the half of it. Downing, however, does, and he carefully catalogs all the debates and the controversies, all the laws and the lawbreaking, all the various clock-altering measures and half-measures and sheer temporal chaos that people have come up with in the name of "saving" something that you can't actually change the amount of, anyway. To be honest, there were places where I found it all a little confusing, which is probably part of the point, and perhaps a little tedious, which probably wasn't. But it's not badly written, and it is extremely informative, especially in the way it clears up a few popular misconceptions about Daylight Saving Time. For one thing, it's not fair to blame the farmers. In fact, farmers were dead set against the idea from the beginning, and actually succeeded in getting the law repealed in the US for a while, sort of. It seems that cows don't pay attention to clocks, and you can't harvest your crops until the dew has dried off them, no matter what time you're pretending it is. Oh, and the idea that "saving" daylight saves energy? It may or may not actually be true. Nobody really knows, including lots of people who are positive they do, but the available data doesn't look good.

I will say that although I've never been happy with this arbitrary messing about with clocks -- to put it very mildly -- I've come out of this book actually feeling a bit better about it. Not because anything in the book made it seem like a good idea to me, but just because I now realize that it could be so very, very much worse.

Rating: 3.5/5

3bonniebooks
marraskuu 5, 2011, 3:02 am

I thought it was pretty clear that there was no savings in Daylight Savings Time? Would it cost tons of money to drop it?

4stretch
marraskuu 5, 2011, 11:30 am

I found when talking to people about the logic behind DST the illusion of gaining time is actually very powerful. I wonder if there isn't a more significant psychological component that overrides common sense.

>Bonnie: I live in Indiana which adopted an almost singular timezone and DST just a couple of years ago. Before we had a hodge podge of EST and CST counties that either practiced daylight savings or not (Term fast and slow time respectively). Traveling from one county to the next could at certain times of the year result in a two hour difference. As part of the push the state looked into the costs savings of standardizing the time. There was significant commercial and governmental cost savings when it came to everyone being on the same timezone, but the savings of adopting DST was negligible at best. There was some debate was to whether we should even adopt daylight savings since the lawmakers couldn't prove the benefits, like farmers being able to harvest earlier in the day and energy usage. In the end it came down to whether we wanted to have a uniform time with other Eastern Standard states or go our own way.

Today there are still a couple of counties that refuse to practice DST and I think 8 counties (all near IL and Chicago) that on Central Standard Time.

None of this relates to how much it would cost to drop DST all together, it's really just an information campaign. I think we would have to drop it as a whole and not piecemeal. Otherwise you'll end up like Indiana a few years ago.

5bragan
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 5, 2011, 11:37 am

>3 bonniebooks:: Not really. It'd be a bit of a hassle, because computers would need to be updated not to change their clocks and such, but no more so than when they changed the start and stop dates a few years back. (Which was a massive hassle for me personally, by the way, because I had an alarm clock that automatically changed itself on the old dates, and ended up having a whole ten minutes to get ready for work on one memorable morning. But that's another topic.) There are a lot of people who like it, though. Mostly merchants who do more business in the evenings on DST. And "But it's necessary because it saves energy!" has become almost an article of faith, somehow.

6bragan
marraskuu 5, 2011, 11:48 am

>4 stretch:: I think you probably have a point there. The psychological effects can be big, and they can be weird. One of the things Downing points out is that a lot of people seem not to really understand what's actually happening when you change the clocks at all, or why it's done. I get the definite impression that some people really do think that it actually creates more hours of sunlight, even though I suspect -- or hope -- most of them would realize the impossibility of that if they actually stopped and thought about it. Which they don't, because it's just too darned confusing.

Downing also talks a lot about Indiana, and I hadn't realized just how big of a mess your state was until recently. Which is one of the things I was thinking of when I said "it could be worse." And based on what I've just read, dropping it whole and not piecemeal is essential if you're going to drop it. Apparently for quite a long time there was no Federally coordinated DST. We went onto it for a year, then a lot of farmers complained, and it was repealed. At which point, anyplace that liked it and wanted to keep it just did. So within one state, different cities could be on different times. Sometimes even different buildings were on different times, e.g. federal government buildings kept Standard Time in cities where everybody else was on DST. It boggles the mind. I have no idea how anybody managed to get anything at all done.

7bragan
marraskuu 5, 2011, 1:35 pm

135. Planetary: All Over the World and Other Stories by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday & Laura Depuy



A collection of comics about a trio of super-powered "mystery archeologists" who travel the world on behalf of a shadowy organization, seeking to map out "the secret history of the world." Apparently the secret history of the world is very pulp fiction-y: we've got a Japanese island full of (now-dead) monsters, a ghost cop bent on vengeance, a team of astronauts who came back from a secret journey to the moon as something not-quite-human... That sort of thing. It's a terrifically fun concept. And the artwork is excellent, the characters at least potentially interesting... And yet, it just really didn't feel very satisfying to me, mainly because the stories themselves are so very, very slight. Mostly the team shows up, sees something interesting, goes, "Hey, that was interesting!" and leaves again without ever doing much. (Author Warren Ellis is clearly aware of this flaw, too, as he has one of the characters constantly complaining about it.)

So now I'm debating about whether to continue on with this series. This volume didn't leave me with a burning desire to read the rest of it, but it is only three more collections, and there are at least hints here that things might get a bit more involved, so maybe I'll give it another chance.

Rating: 3.5/5

8bragan
marraskuu 9, 2011, 3:25 am

136. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman



Stuart Kauffman elucidates his ideas about the principle of self-organization, in which large systems can spontaneously arrange themselves into surprisingly ordered and complex states. The general principles, as Kauffman presents them, seem to involve a lot of the mathematics of networks, with a bit of chaos theory thrown in. Mostly he concentrates on the biological sciences, though he also dabbles a tiny bit in the social sciences toward the end. Major topics include the development of cells in embryos, the patterns of evolution, and a possible mechanism for the origin of life. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I really have the tools necessary to evaluate the specifics of his arguments properly. My knowledge of organic chemistry, for instance, is just not good enough for me to be able to tell whether the assumptions and simplifications he makes about autocatalytic enzymes are reasonable or ridiculous. But most of what he has to say does sound very plausible, or at least very promising. Of course, this book was first published in 1995, so for all I know it's all a bit dated by now.

I do have to say, though, that something about Kauffman's writing rubs me the wrong way a little. I think it's mainly how he tends to intersperse careful scientific/mathematical analysis written in a slightly dry but serviceable style with occasional passages of poetic-bordering-on-pretentious prose in which he almost seems to be evangelizing his approach as if it were a religion. The thing is, I don't even really disagree with what he has to say in those sections. If his hypothesis on the subject is correct, then life is a very common and natural process in the universe, and that's an emotionally profound thought. But, you know, it's one thing to be pleased by the possible philosophical implications of your ideas, and another to be over-invested in them as sources of some kind of spiritual comfort. And while I doubt it's entirely true, Kauffman does give off a slight vibe of the latter, which causes skeptical alarm bells to ring faintly in my head.

Rating: 3.5/5

9bragan
marraskuu 9, 2011, 8:48 pm

137. Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan



Fifteen little tales -- vignettes, really -- in which the Australian suburbs are home to the odd and the fantastic. Here we meet, among others, a wandering figure in an old-fashioned diving suit, an exchange student who lives in a cupboard, and a dugong stranded on a lawn miles from the sea, as well learning what happens when every home is equipped with an inter-continental missile and what really becomes of discarded poems. It's wonderfully strange, frequently charming, and surprisingly evocative. It's also gorgeously illustrated, although calling it "illustrated" is really misleading, as the visual elements are often intrinsic parts of the stories. Highly recommended for adults and kids.

Rating: 4.5/5

10bragan
marraskuu 18, 2011, 6:35 am

138. Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip



This omnibus volume contains all three books of the Riddle-Master trilogy: The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, and Harpist in the Wind. Which is nice, because this is definitely one story in three parts, rather than three related but self-contained stories.

Back in my youth, when I was a much more avid reader of epic fantasy, I'd heard this one mentioned as something of a classic of the genre, but somehow I never got around to actually reading it. Now seemed like a good time to finally rectify that... except that it turned out not to be a good time at all. The nice, long chunks of reading time I expected to have ended up being chock-full of interruptions, and various stresses and distractions -- nothing too awful, just lots of little things adding up -- made it extremely hard to concentrate on the story. And I know that made a difference to my ability to enjoy it, because when I was feeling stressed-out and/or was only able to read about two pages at a time before being interrupted, I kept thinking that the magic used in the story was irritatingly vague and the history of this fantasy world was insufficiently explained. Whereas when I was feeling more relaxed and was actually able to read entire chapters at a sitting, the magic and the world-building instead seemed subtle and interestingly mysterious.

What I can say, at least, is that this is definitely a cut or three above your usual Tolkien rip-off. For one thing, the writing is better. And while there are a lot of familiar fantasy elements -- wizards and ancient powers, a young man with a Destiny, a struggle involving the fate of an entire realm -- what McKillip does with those elements feels rather different from the usual. There's very little swordplay, for instance, and the grand battles, such as they are, mostly happen off-screen, while the narrative concentrates more on the personal level. I also quite liked the way the second book puts the focus squarely on the female characters, who are neither damsels in distress nor improbable warriors in chain mail bikinis.

Which isn't to say that it's a flawless book, even putting aside any criticisms attributable to my unfortunate mental state while reading it. The pacing, I think, is a little odd. And my stress levels, sadly, are in no way accountable for McKillip's horrible incapacity with names. (Calling a country "Hed," I'm afraid, is the least of it.)

All in all, I would definitely recommend it to fantasy readers who haven't encountered it yet. Just try to read it some time when you're actually able to curl up with it and read it properly.

Rating: It's a bit hard to rate this, under the circumstances, but I'll call it 4/5.

11bragan
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 20, 2011, 12:33 am

139. Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything by Stephen Baker



This is the story of Watson, the Jeopardy! champion computer. I generally found the descriptions of Watson's development, his matches, and the possible future applications of this kind of technology to be interesting. (Although that last one is also a little scary, involving as it does lots of ideas about how to mine personal data for profit.) But, while I'm no computer science expert, I really would have liked just a bit more technical detail on the machine's workings. And, especially in the first few chapters, Baker occasionally goes off on some odd tangents -- the architecture of the IBM building, the history of Wheel of Fortune -- that left me wondering at times whether the book ran short and had to padded.

Bottom line: If you're a Jeopardy! fan looking for some background on Watson, this book will probably give what you want. For those more interested in the artificial intelligence aspects, though, it may be mildly disappointing.

Rating: 3.5/5

12bragan
marraskuu 20, 2011, 1:19 am

140. Matchless by Gregory Maguire



A short, illustrated retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," which weaves Andersen's story (or a very slightly altered version thereof) into that of Frederick, the little boy who steals the freezing match girl's slipper, and shows us what happens next. It's nicely written, in its own very simple style, but I'm left at the end with the vague feeling that if there's a point here, I'm missing it. Admittedly, though, Andersen's original never did all that much for me, either.

Rating: 3/5

13avaland
marraskuu 20, 2011, 5:25 pm

>12 bragan: I still think Wicked was Maguire's best book. Nothing I have read since reaches the complexity and depth of that particular "retelling" (ah! the 90s! it was just right for the era)

14bragan
marraskuu 20, 2011, 7:12 pm

I had really mixed feelings about Wicked (for which the touchstones, oddly, do not seem to work). I generally really love retellings of kids' stories and fairy tales, especially more adult and more morally complex retellings. But while intellectually, I appreciated what Maguire was doing, it turns out that Oz was way to close to my inner child's heart for me to be entirely comfortable with seeing it get that treatment. Plus, I wasn't at all fond of his "Look at me, I swallowed a thesaurus!" writing style. So I was left without a burning desire to read anything else by him. But, well, Matchless was there in the bargain bin for a couple of bucks, so I figured I'd give it a shot. But while I didn't have the same issues with it, I'm afraid I still have no burning desire to read more of his stuff.

15bragan
marraskuu 21, 2011, 8:42 am

141. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris



A high-powered lawyer finds himself overcome by a strange condition that no doctor can explain, in which he is compelled to walk, sometimes for many hours, in some direction not of his choosing before collapsing in a random spot to sleep.

It's hard to know quite how to describe this book. It's partly about the difficulties of illness, especially unexplained illness, partly about the stresses and graces of married life, partly about the conflict between the mind and the body, and no doubt partly about a number of other things, as well. It's a decidedly odd story, but also oddly compelling, and even if I'm not entirely sure what to make of it in the end, I did find myself sitting up reading it much later than I should have.

Rating: 4/5

16GCPLreader
marraskuu 21, 2011, 3:54 pm

oh, I cried my eyes out reading the Ferris. wonderful, wierd story

17bragan
marraskuu 21, 2011, 6:11 pm

I didn't cry; I think my response to it was a little less emotional and a little more intellectual. But even on that level, it really did keep my attention.

18lyzard
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 21, 2011, 7:27 pm

>#2

Had to hop into this one! :) We don't get the "it saves energy" line here (I'm sure no-one thinks they're "saving" anything), but my observation is that daylight saving delivers a powerful combination of psychological uplift and actual increased activity. Having an hour or two hours of light at the end of a working day, replacing the spirit-dampening leave-in-the-dark, get-home-in-the-dark winter situation, not only gives the sense of having more time, but encourages people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do - having friends over, going for a walk or just putting on a load of washing.

19bragan
marraskuu 21, 2011, 7:47 pm

Apparently the energy-saving argument gets made a lot by politicians and policy-makers, at least in the US. Despite the general lack of actual evidence. Not that making arguments without much evidence is all that unusual in government, really.

According to the book, the areas where you see real changes with Daylight Saving Time are indeed more the sort of thing you're talking about. You can't exactly measure how many more walks people are taking or how often they're having friends over, but they definitely do more shopping in the evenings, and they play a lot more golf. Merchants and golf courses have apparently been some of the biggest lobbyists for DST.

20lyzard
marraskuu 21, 2011, 8:22 pm

And dog-owners, I should think, not that they're in it for the money. Honestly, packs of 'em... :)

21bragan
marraskuu 23, 2011, 12:40 pm

142. Idiom Savant: Slang As It Is Slung by Jerry Dunn



A collection of slang and jargon from various professions, hobbies, and subcultures. It was published in 1997, so it's no doubt pretty dated now, as is obvious by the fact that most of the surfer lingo has gone completely mainstream, and "computer users" no longer count as a group separate from the general public. That aside, I can't comment on the accuracy of most of it. I can say that the section on bowling, an activity I spent a lot of time on in my youth, is about half full of phrases I'd never heard in my life, although I'm willing to believe that somebody somewhere uses them. And the section on science fiction fans features an oddly random selection of words and generally has a very old school sort of feel to it, while the subsection on Star Trek fans is even more random and contains one small but significant inaccuracy. Basically, I would not try to use this as a reference book. It is, however, somewhat interesting to browse through. The darkly humorous euphemisms employed by various people in the medical professions were particularly entertaining. Way too much space devoted to sports for my taste, though.

Rating: 3/5

22baswood
marraskuu 23, 2011, 12:55 pm

Where do you find theses old books? Do you raid the bargain bins in the second hand shops or have you collected them over the years and they finally come to the top of your to read pile?

A fascinating selection of reading.

23bragan
marraskuu 23, 2011, 3:29 pm

Some of both, actually. In the case of Idiom Savant, it was the latter. I'm not sure how long I've had that particular book, but I know it's been a long, long time. I have more than a few volumes that have been sitting on the TBR pile for decades now. It's a little bit of a problem. I've actually been making more of an effort to read the older stuff this year, with some help from the Books Off the Shelf group, which is why more of this kind of thing has probably been showing up on my reading lists lately than usual. With that one off the pile, the number of unread books I've had since before I joined LT in 2007 is now all the way down to... two hundred and nineteen. Sigh.

24wandering_star
marraskuu 24, 2011, 8:55 am

Crikey - I wouldn't like to count mine up. I should maybe try next year to figure out what the very oldest ones are and read them! I definitely have some unread books I purchased when I was an undergraduate (early 1990s)...

25bragan
marraskuu 24, 2011, 10:04 am

It was almost depressingly easy to count them, since LJ helpfully records the date you cataloge stuff. I was a little shocked when I found out the number.

26bragan
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 26, 2011, 3:47 pm

143. Columbine by Dave Cullen



A very thorough account of the 1999 Columbine school shootings, including the killers' personalities and preparations, the question of what was going through their heads (and why it's not what most people assume), the details of that day's events, the sometimes problematic media and police response, the aftermath for the survivors and their families, and the influence the incident has had on society at large. It appears to be very carefully researched, and Cullen never indulges in sensationalism, points fingers of blame, or shows a vested interest in any of the mythology that has sprung up around the event, but instead attempts to evenhandedly lay out the complex and messy truth, as far as that truth is known. It is, unsurprisingly, very difficult to read, and yet it's also highly compelling. Every time I put it down, I had trouble making myself pick it up again, and every time I picked it up, I had trouble putting it back down.

Rating: 4.5/5

27bragan
marraskuu 28, 2011, 7:04 pm

144. Z.E.O.: A Zombie's Guide to Getting A(Head) in Business by Scott Kenemore



A parody of business self-help books that purports to teach you how to climb the corporate ladder by taking as your role model the humble zombie. After all, they're implacable in the pursuit of their goals, right? And running a company really is a lot like eating brains...

The second half of this book, which offers a step-by-step guide to taking over your company with the help of a metaphorical (or perhaps semi-metaphorical) zombie horde is fairly funny, and would have been pretty entertaining on its own. Sadly, though, there really just isn't nearly enough humor in this premise to carry an entire book. Too much of the first half just seems to regurgitate a lot of ordinary business advice, then add some far too contrived reason why, hey, it's just like what zombies do! Or, perhaps more often, why you shouldn't do that because, dude, it's totally not what a zombie would do! After a few pages of that, I was already getting tired of the whole conceit.

Rating: 2.5/5

28bragan
marraskuu 28, 2011, 11:11 pm

145. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline



It's sometime in the 2040s, and the real world is in bad shape. Fortunately, most people don't have to live in the real world because there's a whole virtual universe to inhabit instead, in the form of the Oasis. Think of it as a sort of three-dimensional Second Life, with some of the gaming aspects of World of Warcraft and more users than Facebook. The Oasis was created by -- what else? -- an eccentric computer genius, who reveals upon his death that he's planted a hidden easter egg somewhere in this immense online world and has willed his staggering fortune to whoever can find it. This leads, of course, to a massive worldwide obsession with hunting for the prize. It also leads to a massive worldwide obsession with 1980s pop culture, since said eccentric computer genius was himself obsessed with the subject, and he left strong hints that it would feature heavily in the puzzles players must negotiate to reap the reward. After five years of absolutely no progress, though, only hardcore devotees are still actively searching for the answer... until one day a poor, low-level high school kid solves the first clue. Suddenly the race is on, and some of the players are not interested in playing fair, or in using the prize for the betterment of humanity.

I could come up with a few nitpicks here. Like, the narrator spends a lot of time explaining things that nobody in his own world would possibly need explained. And the first clue really does not seem difficult enough to have stumped thousands of dedicated enthusiasts for five years. Things like that. But, you know, I don't think it really matters. The book works, anyway, mainly because it's just plain fun. I found myself quickly getting surprisingly caught up in the high-tech, high-stakes quest. Honestly, I never expected to feel this kind of tension just reading a description of someone playing Pac-Man.

There is, admittedly, something very sad about the idea of a world where people retreat from a decaying reality to spend all their time in virtual space wallowing in nostalgia for a decade most of them aren't even old enough to remember, and which, let's face it, wasn't exactly a perfect golden age, anyway. But even acknowledging this, it's still completely impossible not to enjoy this indulgent wallow in the pop culture of my youth, a youth in which an Atari 2600, a Trash-80 Color Computer, and repeated viewings of WarGames featured quite heavily. I imagine anybody more than a few years older or younger than my own just-turned-40 is likely to find less to appreciate here, but it seems I am exactly in the sweet spot for this, age-wise, and for me the constant, completely unapologetic blast-from-the-past feeling to it all was even more fun than the story itself.

Rating: 4.5/5. Which is probably a bit generous, but, hey, what it does, it does very well.

29dchaikin
marraskuu 29, 2011, 8:59 am

I'm just behind you in age, but within your few-years window and understand almost completely. Catching up from way way back. Very nice to see a Shuan Tan here. Columbine has been on my wishlist for awhile, I have some kind of weird need to read that particular book.

30bragan
marraskuu 29, 2011, 10:29 am

I'd never read anything else by Shaun Tan, but I'm thinking that perhaps that should change in the future.

And I definitely recommend Columbine. Again, it's very tough to read, but I do think it's worth it. I hadn't realized how many myths I'd bought into.

31bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 1, 2011, 2:55 pm

146. Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual by Christopher Riley and Phil Dolling



This book has the appearance of one of those automotive repair manuals, leading the reader to expect some kind of faux do-it-yourself guide to servicing your vintage Apollo spacecraft, an idea whose charm is truly irresistible. Alas, though, it's not really anything of the kind. Inside, it's a perfectly ordinary book, albeit one with a lot of pictures and diagrams. I found the first section, which gives an okay but unremarkable history of the space program and introduction to the people involved in the moon landing project, downright disappointing. However, once it gets into a discussion of the mission hardware, which is the main focus of the book, things improve significantly. It covers every system involved, including the Saturn V rocket, the communications setup, and the spacesuits. The level of detail is good and pretty thorough, without being so technical that you need to be an engineer to understand it. I wouldn't call it an essential book for the space travel enthusiast, but it's probably worth a look if you're interested in the hardware.

Rating: 3.5/5. Although it's possible that it might have been higher if they hadn't set the reader up for disappointment by getting overly clever with the title and the cover.

32bragan
joulukuu 4, 2011, 5:35 pm

147. Bet You Didn't Know: Hundreds of Intriguing Facts about Living in the USA by Cheryl Russell



A collection of demographic statistics about various aspects of life in the US, collected from various sources and presented in a one-fact-per-page format. A few random examples: 90% of Americans have at least one sibling. 20% of people who have been married admit to having cheated on their spouse. The average American household is $55,000 in debt. 54% of legal immigrants settle in California, New York, Florida, or Texas. Etc., etc.

Demographer Cheryl Russel doesn't just report these facts; she also offers up a little bit of commentary and analysis on them. Not necessarily a whole lot, though. Again, each statistic gets one whole page, so there isn't exactly room for a lot of in-depth discussion, although many facts put together do sometimes end up painting a bigger picture. And while some of them are interesting, on the whole I never found any of it quite as intriguing as the subtitle promises.

Also, this book was published in 2008, and in many cases the most recent statistics it cites come from 2006. This is bad timing when it comes to taking an economic snapshot of the country; I can only imagine that a lot of the housing and employment statistics and so on had changed significantly by the time it hit print. It does show some of the seeds of today's economic discontent pretty clearly, however.

Rating: 3/5

33bragan
joulukuu 5, 2011, 5:05 am

148. Going Bovine by Libba Bray



Cameron Smith is an ordinary misfit teenager until he starts seeing weird, fiery visions, which he's told are symptoms of the inevitably fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob (aka mad cow) disease. He is confined the hospital as the disease progresses, but from there he finds himself embarking on a strange, hallucinatory road trip/quest featuring powerful music, quantum mechanics, bad teen television, snow globes and Disney World. He's accompanied by a hypochondriac dwarf, a lawn gnome who is also a Norse God, and, occasionally, a pink-haired angel.

It's a rather strange book, but an entertaining one: breezily written, clever, and more layered than it first appears to be. While Cameron's journey may be surreal and purportedly random, it's got its own dreamlike logic that works surprisingly well, and if things sometimes get a little wacky, they never actually feel silly, if that distinction makes any sense. I'm left feeling a bit bemused by it in the end, but in a good way.

Rating: 4/5

34wandering_star
joulukuu 6, 2011, 10:36 pm

Intriguing! I think I might like it too.

35bragan
joulukuu 6, 2011, 10:59 pm

It's probably not for everybody, but for those to whom that description sounds cool, I'd say it's worth checking out.

36bragan
joulukuu 8, 2011, 11:10 pm

149. On Language by William Safire



An old collection of William Safire's New York Times columns on English words and their correct usage, most of which also feature short letters of feedback from his readers.

The question of what, exactly, constitutes "proper English" and who gets to define it can be a hugely contentious one. Personally, I believe that having and following rules (or having rules and breaking them judiciously) is a fairly important thing when it comes to communicating smoothly and effectively, and that people who wr1te liek, this!!! can't really be said to be behaving in a particularly civilized fashion. On the other hand, I have a vanishingly small amount of patience for people who try to impose arbitrary and ill-fitting rules on language, deride any usage they haven't known since childhood as barbarous, and get their kicks by wagging their fingers gleefully at their supposed linguistic inferiors. Safire makes an attempt to avoid being one of those second kind, but he does nevertheless tend to wander back and forth across the boundary of what I consider to be annoying prescriptivism. He's still interesting, though, and often entertaining to read, and I have come away from this thinking a little harder -- perhaps even a little too self-consciously -- about my own word choices.

Somewhat surprisingly, the fact that this was published in 1980 and consists of material written in the 70's actually makes it more worth reading rather than less. It was sort of fascinating to see what words and phrases he reports as being new and strange now seem perfectly ordinary and unremarkable, which have long since disappeared without trace, and which just feel old-fashioned.

Rating: 3.5/5

37bragan
joulukuu 11, 2011, 1:39 pm

150. Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture edited by Stephen H. Segal



Stephen H. Segal has gathered a collection of quotes from a wide variety of sources that don't have much in common except that they can all be described as "things enjoyed by geeks." So we've got Yoda and Kurt Vonnegut, Inigo Montoya and Nikola Tesla, Rod Serling and Carl Sagan and Monty Python and two different characters named Morpheus. For each, there's a little page of commentary on the quote or the character or the source material, relating it to some aspect of life, the universe, and everything. (And yes, of course, Douglas Adams is in here, too.)

As someone who deeply loves the stuff of "nerd culture" and who is infinitely more likely to ask herself "What would Mr. Spock do?" than "What would Jesus do?", this seemed right up my alley. But I'll admit I was a little trepidatious going into it. There are so many ways something like this can go wrong. It could be another insipid attempt at "inspirational writing." It could be painfully over-earnest or embarrassingly self-mocking, or even just a cynical attempt to cash in on an audience that tends to be enthusiastic to the point of obsession. I've seen stuff like that before. I don't remember All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek very well -- which may be for the best -- but I do remember thinking it was terribly lame.

So I'm delighted to be able to report that this book avoids every one of those pitfalls. It really is genuinely thoughtful, sometimes even surprisingly insightful, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, either. In fact, it's got a terrific sense of humor; I repeatedly found myself laughing out loud. And the author is plugged into geek culture in a way that's impossible to fake. I can tell he loves this stuff just as much as I do, and that alone is enough to make this entertaining in much the same way as those long-ago dorm room conversations in which my friends and I would sit around analyzing Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.

And who knows? Maybe the next time I'm feeling in need of a little nugget of geeky wisdom, I'll pull it back down off the shelf, flip it open, and see if Gandalf or Galileo or has something worthwhile to say.

Rating: 4/5

(Note: This was an Early Reviewers book from August.)

38Mr.Durick
joulukuu 11, 2011, 3:18 pm

LibraryThing thinks with low confidence that I probably won't like Geek Wisdom. But I think with high confidence that I will, so I have added it to my Wishlist.

Barny Noble is screwing with our wishlists; it might be time to copy them all off line. This would have gone on my Waiting-for-the-Paperback wishlist if they had let me.

Robert

39bragan
joulukuu 11, 2011, 6:38 pm

I think it may have improved since, but I used to find the LT recommendations rather reliably predicted the exact opposite of my real preferences, and started taking its assurances that I would hate something as a point in favor of reading it.

I used to keep my book wishlist on Amazon, but I got so fed up with not being able to search it, and with things randomly disappearing without trace if Amazon stopped selling them, that I imported everything into a wishlist collection here. And then added another 300 or so books to it afterward...

40RidgewayGirl
joulukuu 11, 2011, 8:47 pm

I have an off-line wishlist. I had, quite happily, kept the whole thing on an online site, but it seems more secure to have it in more than one place.

That Apollo 11 book sounds like it would be a hit with my engineer SO. Thanks for the gift idea!

41bragan
joulukuu 11, 2011, 9:42 pm

I got the Apollo 11 book as a gift last Christmas! Yes, that is how backed up I am on my reading, that I only just got to it now. But I can attest to the fact that it makes a nice gift.

42bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 13, 2011, 9:07 pm

151. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann



When a shepherd is mysteriously killed, his sheep take it upon themselves to solve the case. But, being sheep, they have some unusual and sometimes mistaken perceptions of the things they see and hear. (They're a lot better with the things they can smell, though.)

This is kind of a strange book. I don't know why that surprises me, since it's about sheep attempting to solve a murder. But somehow it does, anyway. I think maybe it's because it's such an odd mixture of humor and attempted seriousness. The humor, I will say, is often quite funny in a nicely subtle way. The less humorous stuff might have worked better if I didn't have problems taking the whole sheep thing seriously enough. I don't know why that was an issue for me; I didn't have that problem with the rabbits in Watership Down. Maybe I just have more trouble relating to sheep. I also had some trouble getting into the mystery plot; I never did work up any real interest in the question of whodunnit. Still, there was a certain charm about it all, and I can't help thinking that I really should have enjoyed it a lot more than I did. I suspect that I just wasn't in quite the right mood for it.

Rating: 3.5/5

43bragan
joulukuu 18, 2011, 4:44 am

152. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible -- and Other Journeys Through Knowledge by James Burke



The pinball metaphor of the title is very apt, as James Burke sends readers of this book bouncing through history -- mostly the history of science and technology -- in truly a dizzying fashion, connecting events and ideas together through links that range from obvious to tenuous. The first chapter, for example, starts out with the invention of the permanent wave hair treatment, takes a surprisingly small step from there to borax mining, moves on through the California gold rush to Yankee clipper ships, the Irish potato famine, British trade restrictions, the invention of the postage stamp, French economic reforms, the building of canals and aqueducts, trench warfare, the American revolution, the rise of steamships and the advent of the luxury liner. All in the course 22 pages. And that's probably one of the simpler chapters; there's a lot less science in it than most.

Burke's stated goal is to make readers appreciate the intricate, interconnected web of history, and I do think he manages that fairly well. He also does a good job of presenting scientific and technological discovery as the messy, gradual, often partly accidental process that it is. And many of the historical and scientific tidbits he discusses here are important, or interesting, or both. Unfortunately, though, this kind of rapid careening from subject to subject can get more than a little disorienting and doesn't lead to a truly satisfying understanding of anything. It's pretty much the print equivalent of browsing around Wikipedia and following a new link every few minutes. Considering that this book was published in 1996, maybe Burke deserves some credit for creating the experience of random-walking through Wikipedia well before Wikipedia existed. In fact, he even includes notes at many points in each chapter indicating which bits of other chapters they can be linked into, and invites the reader to flip back and forth and skip around. I'd be very surprised if anybody did, though. This sort of thing pretty much requires hypertext to work properly. I guess maybe Burke was just a bit ahead of his time.

Rating: 3.5/5

44dchaikin
joulukuu 18, 2011, 3:54 pm

Before reading this post I almost believed I was about the only person to read this book...based somewhat on his Connections/the day the universe changes TV series. I mean the book and TV series simpy have never come up with anyone else I know. : )

45bragan
joulukuu 18, 2011, 5:56 pm

Yeah, I noticed I was the very first person to review it! I did read and watch The Day the Universe Changed and Connections, ages ago. I remember thinking much the same thing about those books as I did about The Pinball Effect: interesting, but a little too disjointed to really work properly. I admit I don't remember the TV version very well, but I have the vague feeling that maybe it worked a little better in that format.

46bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 23, 2011, 4:47 pm

153. Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas



The story of an ordinary (if rather strong and feisty) young woman living sometime during the last ice age, as related by her after she has died and become a guardian spirit. Despite the supernatural element, which works surprisingly well, the story is mostly concerned with very ordinary things: births, deaths, the little scandals and quarrels of small groups of people living in close quarters, and the never-ending search for food. But it's consistently interesting and very readable, partly because it's just plain fascinating to try to imagine what kind of lives our ancestors might have led twenty thousand years ago, and partly because the characters feel so believable and so recognizably human.

The cover blurb declares that it's "for everyone who loved The Clan of the Cave Bear!" It's been a long, long time since I read that one, but I'm willing to venture the opinion that this book is the better of the two. It's certainly better than The Valley of Horses, which is the point where I gave up on Auel.

Rating: 4/5

47dchaikin
joulukuu 23, 2011, 10:47 am

I understand you rejection of Auel. Valley of the horses is essentially pornography...at least that's what I thought in high school.

48RidgewayGirl
joulukuu 23, 2011, 4:14 pm

Well, that's why we all read it, isn't it?

49bragan
joulukuu 23, 2011, 4:46 pm

Yeah, but it wasn't even good pornography. And I think I was too far out of high school when I read it.

50bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 24, 2011, 2:38 am

154. Urban Legends: 666 Absolutely True Stories That Happened to a Friend... of a Friend... of a Friend by Thomas J. Craughwell



This collection of urban legends contains not just the usual poodle-in-the-microwave, killer's-hook-on-the-car-door and spiders-in-the-hairdo tales, but also ghost stories, UFO sightings, e-mail scams, celebrity rumors, and just about anything else you can think of that could possibly come under the "urban folklore" heading. They're told very simply and without any attempt at analysis or verification/debunking, except for a short introduction and the occasional note about where a story originated or what variations exist. I think the author makes a bit of a mistake by making up lots of dialog for these stories, though, as it's very stilted and puts the style somewhere between the casual "so, then the guy goes" speech that you'd get with actual oral retellings and a genuine attempt at literary dramatization. It's not a very comfortable middle ground.

Still, I found the first hundred pages or so fun to read, even though I'd already heard a lot of these before. Some of them are such great stories, with such perfect little ironic twists, that you can't help almost wishing they were true. After a while, though, I found myself getting rather bored. I don't know if that's because the best stories are to be found towards the front of the book and the editor started scraping further towards the bottom of the barrel after that, or if it's just that there's a limit to how many of these I really want to read, even in bite-sized chunks.

Rating: 3/5

51bragan
joulukuu 23, 2011, 7:42 pm

Doggone it, why are my touchstones not working properly?

52bragan
joulukuu 24, 2011, 5:48 am

155. Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story by Wally Lamb



A short-ish, humorous novel about the life of a ten-year-old Catholic schoolboy in 1964. It's reasonably amusing, but pretty slight. The main character is an extremely believable and realistic ten-year-old boy, so credit to Wally Lamb for that, but I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing, since ten-year-old-boys are kind of obnoxious.

I was hoping that this would help get me into the Christmas spirit -- goodness knows I could use some of that about now -- but I think calling it a Christmas story is a little bit misleading, as it starts before Halloween and doesn't really get to the Christmas stuff until more than halfway through the book.

Rating: 3.5/5

53baswood
joulukuu 24, 2011, 7:30 pm

Merry Christmas bragan

54bragan
joulukuu 24, 2011, 9:30 pm

Thank you! I'm having a pleasantly quiet Christmas Eve.

Happy holidays to you!

55bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 27, 2011, 2:45 am

156. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain



As Susan Cain points out in this nuanced and balanced exploration of introversion and extroversion, both personality types have their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, American culture in general, and American corporate culture most particularly, tends to emphasize and even idealize the extrovert approach above all else. This is problematic not just because it means that charisma is often valued over competence, but because it leads to extrovert weaknesses going unchecked while introverts' strengths remain largely untapped. And while introverts are encouraged -- indeed, often uncomfortably pressured -- to adopt the more useful traits of extroverts, the extroverts seldom have the opportunity to learn any of the useful abilities of introverts.

The bulk of this book was less personally relevant to me than I was expecting, since in my adult life I've consistently gravitated towards environments where my own introversion is much more the norm than it is in the world of business and law that is Cain's primary focus. But I can tell that her points on the subject are important and well-made, and I appreciate the way that she bases them in actual scientific research and takes the time to carefully explain the psychological details. I also appreciated the last two chapters, in which she offers some practical and fairly insightful advice on dealing with relationships between introverts and extroverts, and on parenting introverted kids. I'm not a parent, myself, but I was a painfully unsocial kid, and I wish the adults in my life had read something like this back then. In fact, while this is almost certain to appeal primarily to introverts, I rather hope that extroverts will read it, especially corporate leaders, teachers, and anyone else who has to deal with introverts on a day-to-day basis.

Rating: 4/5

(Note: This was my Early Reviewer book from October.)

56baswood
joulukuu 27, 2011, 4:50 am

#55 Excellent review, This book sounds interesting and I love the subtitle "in a world that cannot stop talking". It always amazes me how people must fill all those wonderful silences with constant conversation. I wonder if Susan Cain thinks of herself as an introvert.

I think its true that our society is based around extrovert personalities to the extant that more introverted people are looked on with suspicion sometimes.

I wonder how people who post in this group see themselves.

57bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 27, 2011, 11:03 am

Cain is definitely an introvert, and talks about her own experiences quite a bit. And, yeah, I am constantly amazed by the extrovert ability to talk... and talk... and talk. Even when they seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and the poor, trapped introvert they've cornered for "conversation" is desperately pleading with their eyes to make it stop. :)

58Mr.Durick
joulukuu 27, 2011, 1:56 pm

I've added Quiet to my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist.

Thank you,

Robert

59bragan
joulukuu 27, 2011, 2:15 pm

I hope you enjoy it, if and when! I'm not sure what formats it's being released in. The advance version I had was a trade paperback, or whatever you call softcovers about the size of hardcovers.

60baswood
joulukuu 28, 2011, 8:34 pm

Bragan your review of Quiet: The Power of introverts in a world that can't stop Talking has leaped to the top of the hot reviews.

Do you think it has struck a chord with plenty of LTers

61bragan
joulukuu 28, 2011, 8:40 pm

It has? Wow. Thanks for letting me know; I hadn't seen that. I guess it must be a topic many LTers can relate to!

62bragan
joulukuu 30, 2011, 12:58 am

157. The Spell of the Black Dagger by Lawrence Watt-Evans



A young thief, having broken into a wizard's house to steal from him, instead ends up eavesdropping on him as he teaches his apprentice a powerful spell involving the creation of an enchanted dagger. She then goes off and tries it herself, and while it at first appears not to have done very much, eventually she realizes that she's accidentally created some very dark and potent magic indeed.

The basic premise here is a pretty good one, even if the plot does then go off in some rather strange directions. And I liked the setting, especially the way this world features many different varieties of magic, each with its own unique properties. Unfortunately, the characters are somewhat less interesting. The thief has the potential for some intriguingly shades-of-gray characterization, but instead she mostly comes across as unsympathetic, improbably naive given the kind of life that she's lead, and not very bright. Not that she has a monopoly on that last one, as other characters are also guilty of some pretty big stupidities. (Apocalyptically big, in one case. Or very nearly so.) But, the intelligence levels of its characters notwithstanding, it's a decent and readable enough fantasy story, although probably not a very memorable one. In fact, I suspect that's a good description for this series in general. I know I've read a couple of the earlier books, but all I remember about them is that I liked them okay, and that they somehow involved wizards.

Rating: 3.5/5

63bragan
joulukuu 30, 2011, 4:57 pm

158. Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations by Simon Rich



A collection of very short humorous scenes and sketches, featuring such topics as the kids' idea of what people are talking about at the grown-ups' table, what the criminal justice system would look like if real life were like middle school, what that "may contain peanuts" note on food labels really means, and (my personal favorite) the canine version of The X-Files. ("Yesterday I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my testicles were missing.") These are generally more sort of modestly amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, but there's a certain kind of cleverness in its skewed-yet-strangely-rational perspectives that's appealing.

Rating: a possibly slightly generous 4/5

64bragan
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 31, 2011, 11:48 pm

And my last book for the year! I'm happy to report that I'm going out on a good note:

159. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray



This book visits each of the 118 known elements in turn, offering up facts about them, their discoveries, and their applications (if any), as well as photographs of the element in its pure form, when possible, and of some of their compounds or bits of technology in which they're used. What truly amazed me about this book is that it's not just informative and pretty, but also surprisingly funny. I knew I was in for an entertaining treat from the first sentence, in which the author describes the periodic table as "the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot," and it did not disappoint. I even laughed out loud a number of times. That sense of humor really helped to keep things interesting, even when we were moving through endless ranks of nearly indistinguishable gray metals. Who knew chemistry could be so much fun? Not even me, and I'm a total science geek.

Rating: 4.5/5

65bragan
Muokkaaja: tammikuu 1, 2012, 4:17 am

And that's it for me for the year! A bit of a year-end summary, with a list of my best and worst books of 2011, can be found on the "top reads" thread. All in all, not a bad year for me! A slightly strange year, perhaps, due to the fact that I was making an extra effort to get some of the really old books off my TBR stacks. Books, that is, that had been sitting there since before I joined LibraryThing in 2007, some of them since as far back as the late 80's. That meant, among other things, a lot of old SF and fantasy paperbacks. Some of those books I am now kicking myself for not getting to earlier, and others, well.... clearly there were reasons why I kept putting them off.

Anyway. I am very much looking forward to another great year of reading! You can come and join me on my 2011 thread here.