Book roundup

I love to read, but I had been in a bit of a book rut for some time. The past month or two I've rebounded and gone through a lot of great stuff. Getting lost in a book is a wonderful thing. Here are some books I've read recently that are worth a look.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin 
(The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky)

Holy freaking crap. These are the books that broke my book rut. I was searching online for new authors and new books to try and found that people rave about N.K. Jemisin. I also saw that her books have won Hugos. Well, that could go either way, right? Stuffy and boring, or fantastically excellent. Lucky for me, it was the latter. These books drew me in and I couldn't put them down. The characters, the plot, the world she built- all are great. Plus, I'm a sucker for a book with a map in the front.

The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn

Timothy Zahn writes novels other than the best Star Wars expanded universe novels? Why yes, he does. I don't know why it took me so long to read one of his non-Star Wars books, but when I did, I really enjoyed it. The characters were fun and so was the story.

Wonder Woman Omnibus Vol. 2 by George Perez

Over 500 pages of Wonder Woman comics written by George Perez. What else can I say? Good stuff.

JLA Vol. 5

This is a collection of JLA comics. JLA is a great Justice League series. Also, Wonder Woman.

Wishful Drinking and The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

I'm a big fan of Carrie Fisher, beyond Princess Leia. Wishful Drinking is the stronger of these two memoirs. She made me laugh out loud. I'm heartbroken that she's gone.

Doctor Who books by various authors
(The Roundheads, Shadow in the Glass, Sands of Time, The English Way of Death, Scales of Injustice, Illegal Alien, Last of the Gaderene, and Diamond Dogs)

Doctor Who books are generally quick reads. These books had various Doctors and companions and were of varying quality, but they were all enjoyable.

Single White Necromancer Seeks Same

A friend of mine published a book. He's a brilliant writer, and I'm so proud of him! Right now it's available at Amazon.com as an ebook. I don't have a Kindle, but I can read it on my computer or download a Kindle app to read it on my phone.

The name of this book? Single White Necromancer Seeks Same. From the description:

"When Genevieve's auguries point to the imminent end of the world, she does what any modern young necromancer would do, and places an ad in the online personals. 

If you only read one Lovecraftian Horror/screwball comedy this year, make it this one!"

My own summary? In years in which a full moon falls on Halloween, good and evil battle it out to see if the world is going to end. This is one of those years.

That's my photo on the cover, too. The book is fantastic. Check it out. 

Hyperbole and a Half and depression

I like the blog Hyperbole and a Half.  It's funny.  It's creative.  It's brilliant.  The author of that blog, Allie Brosh, has a book coming out this month, and I'm looking forward to reading it.  Two of her posts really resonated with me.  They were more serious posts than usual.  The topic was depression.  The thing is, when you have depression (Suffer from depression?  Struggle with depression?  Those seem like clichés.), sometimes it helps to know that someone else knows exactly what you are going though.  It's not that I want other people to feel like this, but seeing that you aren't alone in your suffering (okay, I said it) and seeing that they can keep going, that helps.  Depression is so isolating, even a "wow, I do that, too" moment, a connection with a complete stranger, is something.  It's important that talented, creative people with a voice, like Allie Brosh and Stephen Fry, speak out about depression.  I think it's hard for people who have never had it to understand what it's like- how it's more than feeling sad.  People have told me to "snap out of it."  If only it were that easy.  Anyway, these two posts do a great job of relaying what it's like.  They are worth a read:  Adventures in Depression and Depression Part Two.

Since this subject is such a departure from my usual blogging, I will punctuate this post with photos of the gentleman beagle.

He wrapped himself in my TARDIS blanket. I did not do this.

I think one of the reasons I admire Allie Brosh's posts about depression so much is that it's so hard to write about this.  Where does one begin?  It's something that's all-encompassing.  It's not always the same.  It's feeling black depths of sadness or feeling nothing- like being in a numb fog.  A character in a book I read years ago said how at least bi-polars got to experience the highs; the best we depressives get is approaching normal.  Alas, that line stuck with me, but the book's title did not.

The beagle wants belly rubs.

My depression has been with me so long, I can't say when it began.  It has certainly been all of my adult life.  There are times when it is worse than others.  There are times when I feel almost normal.  It has been particularly bad of late.  That's the kind of bad that sucks the joy out of things you normally enjoy, that makes you not want to get out of bed because there is no point.

He likes to eat stuff outside and pretend that he didn't.

It has been worse.  Thoughts of suicide often accompany the worst periods of depression, and I have not been immune to that.  When the pain and the self-loathing and the feelings of worthlessness are overwhelming, you get to thinking, well, I just want it to be over.  I just want peace.  I don't have a good answer as to why I haven't done it.  I never had the guts?  I couldn't be bothered because of the enormous apathy that accompanies my depression?  Because I'm an atheist, so I know this is the only shot I get at life?  Because my friends send me top ten lists of why I am awesome?  (Yes, that has happened.  I have some great friends.)  Those are all factors, but I think that the real reason is that because as hopeless as I feel sometimes, there is a nagging in the back of my brain- you can't do it because things might get better one day.  It's like that grain of sand at the end of The Neverending Story.  It's all that's left of Fantasia, but it's enough.

Find the beagle.  He is in there.

What else does depression make me do when it's at its worst?  I hibernate in my bedroom.  I turn down offers to do things with friends or family just so that I won't have to see people or go outside.  I curl up under the covers with my dog and want to be left alone.  I don't have the energy to do anything.  It's not always like this, mind you.  And sometimes even when it is, I force myself to go out and do things, and it makes me feel a little better.  Seeing my friends helps.  Traveling helps.  Taking photos helps.  Watching the Red Sox win helps.  Okay, I threw that last one in because they won game one of the World Series tonight.  GO SOX!

Again, he did this himself.  He likes my blankets.

Shall I end on an optimistic note?  That would be so unlike me, but I'll try.  I have been letting depression dominate my life lately, and that's going to stop.  I have a plan as to how I'm going to accomplish my goals.  Hell, I HAVE goals.  Now is the time for me to fangirl a little more over Hyperbole and a Half.  Here are two of my favorite posts.

The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas

The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

They're funny!  Read them!

Pride and Prejudice is 200

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Pride and Prejudice begins with what has become one of the most recognized opening lines in literature.  My favorite book among those written by my favorite author, Pride and Prejudice celebrates the 200th anniversary of its publication today, January 28th.  What was happening in 1813 when this novel was published?  James Madison was president of the United States.  He was only the fourth president!  The U.S. was fighting the War of 1812 against the British.  Wait, what?  The War of 1812 went from 1812-1815?  What the hell?

Jane Austen

The above is one of the few recognized images of Jane Austen.  She was first published in 1811 (Sense and Sensibility) and died six years later in 1817.  Too young.  She left us with only six completed novels.  Her writing is witty, clever, and smart.  Calling Austen "chick-lit" is doing her a great disservice.  Also, let me state for the record that the definitive adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is the 1995 BBC miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.  Don't bother with any other.  That one is perfect.

When I was in England so many years ago (okay, fifteen), I was lucky enough to be able to visit some Austen-related places.  I'll share some photos I took of the area.  They were scanned and don't look too hot, but they still relay the feel of the place.  First up was her cottage in Chawton.

This is a "cottage."

Austen lived in Chawton Cottage for the last eight years of her life.  Much of her writing was done here.  I walked through the garden imagining that Austen had done the same.  A few months before she died, Austen moved to a house in Winchester in order to be closer to her doctor.

Austen's Winchester home

The plaque above the door reads, "IN THIS HOUSE JANE AUSTEN LIVED HER LAST DAYS AND DIED 18TH JULY 1817."  I visited the house in which she died in Winchester, as well as Winchester Cathedral, where she is buried.

Winchester Cathedral

Austen is interred in the floor of the cathedral.

RIP Jane

I also went to Lyme Regis, a seaside town that plays an important role in her novel Persuasion.

Lyme Regis

Austen used to visit this hamlet with her family.  Lyme Regis has a scenic, rocky coastline.

Young Jen!

I don't usually post other people's photos on my blog, so I pixelated my friend's face.  I enjoyed Lyme Regis immensely.  I can see why it is so popular with Brits past and present.

Lyme Regis

Southern England is beautiful.  Look, sheep!

Is one of you named Shaun?

This has nothing to do with Jane Austen, but it was around the same area as the rest of these places, and it amuses me.  The Cerne Abbas Giant.

Naked guy carved in a hillside!

My friend and I came across this by chance while driving around southern England.  A 180-foot tall, naked chalk man tends to draw one's attention.

Alright, back to Jane.  I have tried to resist calling her Jane up to this point, but I have typed it several times and have had to go back and replace it with Austen.  Fans of Austen's work often refer to her as Jane.  Why?  Do we feel a greater sense of connection with her?  When I talk about Neil Gaiman or Margaret Atwood, it doesn't occur to me to refer to them by their first names.  Yet, I refer to Austen as Jane without a second thought.  Thanks, Jane.  Two hundred years ago you gave us a novel which continues to delight readers and which remains relevant even after two centuries.

A is for Asimov

Being the geek that I am, being the devourer of books that I am, with decades of reading under my belt, one would assume that I had read the works of the man some consider the greatest science fiction author of all time.  Nope.  How I got to this point in my life without reading anything by Isaac Asimov is a question I can't answer.  I suppose I thought that the ideas contained within the books would be brilliant, but that the writing itself would be stuffy and overly wordy.  I've had the three books of Asimov's Foundation trilogy sitting in my to-read pile for a couple of months now, but I've been hesitant to pick them up.  I bought them because I saw them in a used bookstore and thought, well, I should have read these by now, and for less than ten dollars I can find out if Asimov is all he's cracked up to be.  The Foundation books did win a special Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series," after all.  It was the only time a Hugo was awarded in that category.  The Foundation series beat Tolkien's Lord of the Rings!

The trilogy books, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, were the first of the Foundation series to be written. Four additional books followed, two of which are prequels.  No, I'm not reading them in "in-universe" order.  I decided to read the original trilogy first.  If I liked that, I could read the following two books and then get to the prequels last.  The first three books were written in the fifties, but the others weren't written until thirty years later, with the prequels the last to be published.  So, I'm reading them in order if you take into consideration publication order.

After I started reading Foundation, I discovered that the trilogy is an interconnected compilation of short stories.  They weren't originally written as novels.  The books span hundreds if not thousands of years (haven't read that far yet).  In each new section, time jumps forward, and the main characters change.  In a way, that is a little frustrating, because you start to like these characters and then their part in the story is over.  However, the books are driven by the plot, not by character development.  That's not to say that Asimov doesn't know people.  The events of the books show a depth of understanding of human nature that other authors would be hard-pressed to equal.

I have not described the plot.  It's hard to say what these books are about, because doing so does not convey how addictive they are.  A description of the plot makes them sound like they could be boring, when that couldn't be further from the truth.  I can't put these books down.  Granted, I'm only on Foundation and Empire right now, but I blew through Foundation, and I don't see how I'm not going to have to go out as soon as possible and get the rest of the series, ignoring the to-read pile of books as it glares at me for buying new books when I have unread books sitting right there.  The premise is this: the Galactic Empire is in decline and has been for some time, although the residents and rulers don't see it.  A man named Hari Seldon not only warns of the fall, but also, using mathematics and science, predicts that there will be 30,000 years of dark ages (chaos, war, loss of technological and scientific knowledge) before a Second Empire will rise and restore peace and civilization to the galaxy.  Unless.  Seldon has a plan.  His predictions also show that there is a way to shorten this interregnum to 1,000 years.  He establishes two Foundations.  They are on the fringe, at opposite edges of the galaxy.  Their mission is to preserve and advance science, art, and technology.  They will bring about a better Second Empire's rise from the ashes of the first.

So far, the books have only dealt with the first Foundation and the crises they face as they wind their way along Seldon's path to the Second Empire.  I probably should have waited until I finished the trilogy to blog about the books, but I am THAT excited by them.  I don't know if I know many people who have read Asimov's books.  Geeks are aware of his laws of robotics and acknowledge his greatness, but how many have read his work?  This needs to change.  These books are brilliant.  Asimov was brilliant.  I wish had known sooner.  The bright side is that now I have his whole body of work ahead of me, and he was a prolific writer.  Both his Robot series and his Empire series he later connected to the Foundation series, bringing the total number of novels taking place in this universe alone to fourteen.  It's time to stop writing now and go see if the Foundation can handle the next crisis...

I don't want bookstores to die

I read a lot.  I read far more books than those I blog about.  I'm the kind of person who reads books more than once.  I know that the wish that bookstores wouldn't die is futile, that most bookstores are gone now, but I wish it anyway.  I could spend hours in a good bookstore.  I used to go to bookstores all the time before they started vanishing.  I like to browse.  I like to discover new authors and new books with which I may not be familiar.  I like to walk among the shelves and pick up a book and flip through it to see if it interests me.  Browsing is a lot harder when you are limited to a computer screen.  What about the helpful booksellers?  I used to be one.  It was great!  Now I'm limited to a computer algorithm suggesting titles I might like?  No, computer.  Just because I like Pride and Prejudice doesn't mean I want to read Fifty Shades of Grey.

The bookstore in which I worked part-time closed.  It was the start of the vast closing of bookstores across the country.  I was left with a choice of Borders or Barnes & Noble.  I liked Borders a lot.  I didn't like Barnes & Noble so much.  The selection in Borders was always good, and the booksellers were friendly and helpful.  B&N was pretty much the opposite.  At this point there are so few booksellers in B&N that you'd be hard pressed to find one to be unhelpful to you, but at that time you could spot one on the floor occasionally.  Of course it was Borders that went under.  

What I really want is a good independent bookstore to open near me.  The greatest bookstore that exists is Harvard Book Store.  This isn't the bookstore of the university.  It's a locally owned, independent bookstore in Harvard Square, Cambridge.  It's enormous!  It has those knowledgeable booksellers I like.  It has a used book section in the basement.  It is everything a bookstore should be.

The closure of Borders and the memory of Harvard Book Store caused me to make another effort at finding a decent independent bookstore.  I should have looked sooner, because I had been missing out!  There was a great used bookstore nearby all along.  Cathy's Half Price Books is pretty fantastic.  I haven't shopped in used bookstores too much before now.  I just didn't come across very many.  Cathy's has a great selection for a used bookstore, and most of the books are far less than half of the cover price.  A good many of them don't even look like they've been read, they are in such perfect condition.

So it looks like if I want to shop in person for books, I'm left with a choice of Cathy's Half Price Books or Barnes & Noble.  I do buy books from Amazon now, too, so I've become part of the problem.  It's what happens when choices are limited.  What does the future hold for used bookstores (and bookstores in general) when more and more books are being read electronically?  None of those will be traded in or sold to places like Cathy's, and you don't need a physical store to download a file.  I'm not interested in e-readers.  I like the feel of a book in my hands.  I prefer reading a page to a screen.  I like to look at my bookshelves and think about the books I've read and maybe decide that my next book will be something I've read before.  I don't want to have to worry that the battery is going to die when I'm ten pages from the end and nowhere near a place to charge it.  I'm okay with being in the minority on this.  I'm not okay with bookstores being a thing of the past. 

The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Golden Apples of the Sun is a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury.  My only exposure to Bradbury's writing prior to this was years ago when I read Fahrenheit 451.  I expected all of these stories to be science fiction, but they weren't- only about half of them were. 

I wanted to read The Golden Apples of the Sun for one reason and one reason only:  it contains the story "A Sound of Thunder."  I'm fairly certain that most people are familiar with this story, even if they don't know its name.  It is often referenced when it comes to time travel.  This is the story in which a man goes back in time, steps on a butterfly, and changes the future.  Knowing what happened did not make this story any less outstanding.  This was definitely the best in the book.  Bradbury uses vivid descriptions to paint exact pictures of the characters and their actions in his stories.  Here is the appearance of the object of the time travellers' desire:

"The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings, murmurs, and sighs.
Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door.
Silence.
A sound of thunder.
Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came Tyrannosaurus rex...
It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs.  It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest.  Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior.  Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh.  And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys...Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers.  Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger...its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight.  It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons."

The reader feels as if they are there looking at this dinosaur themselves.  There is a sense of the enormity and power of the animal and of the terror it inspires.  The story also has one of those perfect last sentences that makes one think, wow, this is fantastic. 

The other standout story from the collection was "The Fog Horn."  It was the first story in the book.  Bradbury captures the despair and isolation of a lonely creature drawn to the surface from the depths of the sea by a lighthouse fog horn.  The rest of the stories ranged from good to okay.  I liked the science fiction stories better than the others.

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

I have written previously about how much I like the work of Philip K. Dick.  I just finished a collection of his short stories, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick.  It is almost 500 pages of excellent storytelling, with only a few stories, for me, not living up to the rest.  This collection also contains several tales which were made into movies.  Often these adaptations fall flat (the main exception being Blade Runner), and I have to wonder if it is because they deviate so much from the originals, which are all quite good.  Many of these stories revisit common ideas in Dick's writing- war, Mars, reality, time travel.  Some of the stories are utterly bleak.  I'll highlight some of the stories I liked best from this compilation. 

"Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog"
If there is a talking animal or an intelligent dog, it is probably a story I will like.  The Wub is a Martian pig-like creature who tries to convince people not to eat it.  Boris the dog tries to save his oblivious owners from the Roogs.  These two stories were both very short but entertaining.

The next three stories were my favorites.  They were so good that the rest of the collection seemed to go downhill from here.  "Paycheck" and "Second Variety" were two of the longest stories in the book, giving Dick more room to develop the characters and plot.  They were 40-50 pages, whereas the rest averaged around twenty.  "Impostor" was the one I liked most.  

"Paycheck"
A man agrees to work for a company for two years for an extraordinary sum, but at the end of his contract, the memory of these two years will be erased from his mind.  The story starts as he goes to collect his compensation.  He finds that instead of the money, he has elected to take an envelope containing a few seemingly worthless items as pay.  He soon learns that these trinkets are vital to his survival and that he must find out what he has been up to for the past two years.  Philip K. Dick's portrayal of the power of corporations in this story is incredibly prescient.  I enjoyed this story immensely.  I've never seen the movie, but after reading what happens in it, I don't want to.  The movie guts the heart out of the story and takes away its deeper meaning.  It changes the characters and ideas which are at its very foundation.  It becomes the exact opposite of the story upon which it is based. 

"Second Variety"
Like many of Dick's stories, this one takes place on a future Earth which has been decimated by war- this time between the U.N. and the Russians.  Earth is a wasteland, and only small groups of troops remain, continuing the war.  The Americans have started a new colony on the Moon and direct things from there.  The tide has turned in their direction because they have developed a new weapon.  It is a flying sphere with blades, it attacks anything alive, and it is made in automated robotic factories underground.  They call them claws.  The U.N. forces have wrist transmitters that keep them safe, but anything else is killed by the claws.  A Russian soldier brings a message to the local U.N. base, getting killed by the claws in the process.  There must be a meeting between the two sides immediately.  It's urgent.  The highest ranking officer traverses the wasteland to the closest Russian base and makes contact with the only three people there left alive.  What they say startles him.  The claws have started to make new varieties of themselves, and these new varieties are like people.  The don't just look like people, they are indistinguishable from people.  The remainder of the story involves the American and the Russians trying to get back to where the American came from to warn them about the new varieties of claws.  I thought this story was great, even though the reader can see the twist ending coming from a mile away.

"Impostor"
This story revisits a recurring theme in Dick's work, the nature of reality.  Spencer is on his way to work in the morning with his best friend.  They both work on a special project for the war against Alpha Centauri.  His friend has brought someone new along with him today.  All of a sudden, his friend and the stranger are arresting Spencer, telling him that he isn't Spencer.  They tell him that he is a robot from Alpha Centauri who killed Spencer and is now impersonating him.  They tell him that he has a bomb inside of him and that he will be killed.  Spencer knows this isn't true and must do everything he can to escape.  He knows that there was a forest fire in the woods near his house, and he thinks the robot's ship must have crashed.  If only he can get to the woods and prove that the robot was destroyed in the crash, then he could save his life.  This story was outstanding.  The reader doesn't know if this is really Spencer or a robot who thinks he is Spencer, and yet you feel sympathy for this character even though it could be an assassin with a bomb.  This is truly Dick's writing at its best.  The last sentence gave me chills. 

"Adjustment Team" and "The Minority Report"
"Adjustment Team" poses the question of what is reality.  A man is late to work and stumbles upon a team of people changing the details of reality.  If he had been on time, he wouldn't have noticed.  He would have been changed, too.  "The Minority Report" is about the head of the Precrime unit.  There is no murder anymore, because three precogs can predict who will commit a murder and who the victim will be.  The murderer is then arrested and put in a camp before the murder can take place.  But the head of Precrime's name comes up for killing a man he doesn't even know.  Is the system flawed?  Is he being set up?  If three different reports of the future are turned out by the precogs, which is true?  These stories were both good and both much shorter than I thought they would be, considering they were made into movies. The movies were not very much like the stories.  They took the main premise of an adjustment team and precogs predicting that someone in Precrime would commit a murder and veered dramatically from there.  I really didn't like either of these movies.  I thought they both started off well and got worse and worse until they were outright terrible by the end. 

"Precious Artifact"
This story is about a man who is helping to terraform Mars after a war between Earth (Terra) and Proxima Centauri.  He's called a reconstruct engineer.  He is finished with his section of Mars, but he suspects something is wrong.  He suspects that Terra actually lost the war and that the Proxmen are posing as humans to get the reconstruct engineers to work for them to make Mars habitable.  He sees a psychiatrist about his worries, who suggests a trip to Terra to ease his mind after the strain he has been under while he has been on Mars.  The story follows his trip home and what he confronts there.  I liked this story a lot, but it had another gut-wrenching ending, as so many of Philip K. Dick's stories do. 

"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"
I mention this mainly because it's the basis of the movie Total Recall.  A man goes to Rekal, Inc. to have fake memories implanted of being a spy and having an adventure on Mars.  At Rekal he finds out that his life is actually all a fake memory and that he IS a spy who went to Mars.  I don't remember the movie too well, so I can't comment on similarities or differences.  This story was good, but it wasn't one of the better ones in the collection.

"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts"
This is the story of America's first time travelers, or tempunauts.  They run into a little problem, though.  Instead of going one hundred years into the future, they only go about a week.  They turn up after they have all been killed on reentry to the current time.  The government wants them to go to their own memorial service, while one of them is convinced that they are stuck in a time loop and have repeated this same journey countless times.  This whole story has a melancholy air because the entire time the three tempunauts have the spectre of their own deaths hanging over them.  Although, you could say that many of Dick's stories are depressing in that often the characters are in hopeless situations and things don't turn out well in the end. 

The above are only half of the short stories in the book.  It is filled with compelling tales, plot twists, and original ideas, everything you'd expect from the writing of Philip K. Dick.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, so it's probably shameful of me not to have read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency until last week.  I love The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, whether it be the books, tv series, or movie.  (I haven't listened to the radio shows yet.)  Adams did great work on Doctor Who as both a writer and a script editor, penning some of my favorite episodes.  And yet, for some reason I had neglected his two Dirk Gently books.  When I saw the new British tv show loosely based on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, I was reminded of my oversight.  

Dirk Gently is a private detective who believes in "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things."  He uses these connections between sometimes seemingly unrelated people or events to solve his cases.  Dirk could be described as eccentric and his methods unorthodox.  Most people just think he is nuts.  The police think he gets in the way.  In this book he has to deal with a ghost, a time traveler, a monk who happens to be an android, and the possible extinction of life on earth.  Plus, there is the matter of the lovely horse who inexplicably appears in an upstairs bathroom. 

This being a Douglas Adams book, it's more science fiction than mystery.  I was surprised to find elements of the Doctor Who stories "Shada" and "City of Death."  The novel is funny, and it's filled with great characters.  Douglas Adams was excellent at creating well-drawn, interesting characters.  I expect the sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, to be just as good.

Sadly, there are only two Dirk Gently books.  Douglas Adams died in 2001 at the age of 49, having only completed eleven chapters of the next Dirk Gently story, The Salmon of Doubt.  Although those chapters were published posthumously in a collection with some of his essays and other writings, readers will never know how Douglas Adams intended that novel to end. But to me, Dirk Gently will always be out there, using the interconnectedness of all things to explain the impossible and the improbable.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I blew through Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in virtually one sitting.  This is the book on which the movie Blade Runner is loosely based.  I was surprised to see how different they were.  The main character's name is Rick Deckard.  He "retires" humanoid robots.  That's about where the similarities end.  They kept some of the characters' names the same in the movie, and Deckard does have a test that he administers to determine if someone is an android.  They aren't called replicants in the book, and they aren't on a quest to find their maker, like they are in the movie.  The term "blade runner" only exists in the film.  When Deckard goes after the androids, he is referred to as a bounty hunter.

Both book and film deal with the subject of what makes us human, but they do it in different ways.  The book really hits home the fact that humans have the ability to feel empathy, and androids do not.  Animals, real and artificial, play a large part in the novel.  Animals are a luxury because most of them died after the world war which made a large part of the earth uninhabitable and caused people to emigrate to off-world colonies.  Nonetheless, everyone feels they must have an animal to look after, even if it is an android animal.  It is mentioned that any time an android has tried to keep an animal as a pet, it has died, because the androids don't bother to care for them.  There is even a scene in which a human who is with three androids finds a spider and gets very excited about having this living thing around.  The androids take the spider and, wondering if it could still walk with fewer legs, proceed to cut the legs off of the spider with scissors.  The human gets very upset, but the androids don't understand what the problem is.  The androids don't even really care what happens to other androids, and yet Deckard comes to realize that he needs to find a new job when he starts developing empathy for his targets.

The androids don't come off very well in the book.  I felt more for Rutger Hauer's character at the end of Blade Runner than I did for any of the androids in the novel.  His Roy Baty is nothing like that of the book.  None of the androids in the book come close to any kind of "tears in the rain" speech, nor do they seem capable of it.  The replicants of the film are much more complex emotionally. 



The author Roger Zelazny wrote the introduction to the edition I have of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I'd like to quote him here:

"His management of a story takes you from here to there in a God-knows-how, seemingly haphazard fashion, which, upon reflection, follows a logical line of development- but only on reflection.  While you are trapped within the spell of its telling, you are in no better position than one of its invariably overwhelmed characters when it comes to seeing what will happen next."

Zelazny ends the introduction with this:

"...that which is left of a Philip Dick story when the details have been forgotten is a thing which comes to me at odd times and offers me a feeling or a thought; therefore, a thing which leaves me richer for having known it."

Fragile Things

I like short stories.  I know a lot of people who like to read, and most of them stick with novels and don't give much thought to short stories.  I think people are missing out if they don't give this literary form a chance.  All of us have had to read short stories in school- Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Lady, or the Tiger?" by Frank R. Stockton, various tales by Edgar Allen Poe or Guy de Maupassant, or the majority of stories starring Sherlock Holmes.  I like all of these, but they were written a long time ago, and there is still good short fiction being written today.  One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, writes a fair amount of short stories.  I just finished reading his second collection of short stories and poems, Fragile Things. 

I had read his first short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors, a while ago.  It's great, and it contains one of the best short stories I've read, "The Wedding Present," hidden in the introduction to the book.  It's his twist on a Picture of Dorian Gray-type theme.  So, I read Fragile Things, and the book turns out to have another of my all-time favorite short stories, "A Study in Emerald."  You may notice the title resembles that of a Sherlock Holmes story, and yet it is set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft.  "A Study in Emerald" is available to read on Neil Gaiman's website here. The book also has a fantastic poem, "The Day the Saucers Came," which you can see the author reading below:



Hearing Gaiman read his poem is a real treat.  For those who liked his novel American Gods, there is a novella featuring Shadow, the main character, called "The Monarch of the Glen." It was outstanding, and just like American Gods, it left me wanting more stories about Shadow.  I also liked how it revisited two characters from an earlier story in Fragile Things.  Reading the book was worth it for this story alone.

A few other notable stories include "October in the Chair," in which the months of the year sit around entertaining themselves by telling tales, "Closing Time," about four boys and an abandoned playhouse (which made me want to sleep with the lights on that night), and "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," in which the girls at the party are not what they seem. 

Gaiman's introductions are interesting reading- not just because he hides short stories there.  He takes each story or poem and explains why it was written or the inspiration behind it.  In the blurb on "The Monarch of the Glen," he talks about an unfinished novella which returns to the world of Neverwhere, "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back."  He says he will finish it one day.  Sadly, Fragile Things was published in 2006, and "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" still has not seen the light of day. 

As with any collection, there are hits and misses, but Fragile Things was enjoyable reading.  There were only a couple of things I didn't like that much, and it comes down to one's personal taste, anyway.  It's safe to say that anything Neil Gaiman creates will be well-written and imaginative.

North and South - this time it's the book

I finished North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell some time ago, but I wasn't sure what to write about it, or even whether to write about it, because I liked the miniseries better.  It's a fairly rare occurrence when I like the television or movie adaptation better than the source material.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, North and South is about a young woman who is forced to move from the agrarian south of England to an industrial town in the north.  The book concerns her trouble acclimating to her new home, her friendship with the mill workers, and her turbulent relationship with one of the mill owners.

I think the main character, Margaret Hale, is much more likable in the miniseries.  She was more of a downright snob in the book.  The miniseries gives us a new scene at her first meeting with the love interest, John Thornton, which explains her instant disdain for him.  In the book, it's pretty much entirely because she is a snob looking down on someone who works in trade and who isn't a "gentleman" in her sense of the word. In this regard, it makes the reader have less respect for John Thornton.  It takes away from the character for him to continue to be madly in love with someone who repeatedly treats him with contempt and indifference.  I kept wondering why he cared about her at all. 

Margaret's time in Milton changes her, and she becomes less arrogant.  The book improves as this happens.  She didn't have quite the same snob hurdle to overcome in the miniseries.  This is not to say I didn't like the novel.  I thought it was okay.  I suppose the book fell short of what I had expected.

Hunger Games mania!

As most people are probably aware, the Hunger Games movie is coming out soon.  There has been a huge marketing blitz, even though there is already a big built-in fan base because of the books.  The Hunger Games is everywhere.  It's the kind of thing that might usually get on my nerves, except...I loved The Hunger Games. 

I'm going to admit, I hadn't heard of this trilogy of books until a few months ago when my aunt suggested I might like them.  I was skeptical at first because they are technically "young adult" novels, aimed at teenagers.  Then I thought, A: my aunt doesn't normally steer me wrong when it comes to books, and B: I liked the Harry Potter books, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline and The Graveyard Book, and they were all aimed at younger readers, too.  I'm glad I gave them a shot, because The Hunger Games and its two sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, were fantastic.  The books take place in a dystopian North America, where the Capitol rules over outlying districts who each provide two "tributes" every year, a boy and a girl, picked by lottery, for a fight to the death in a televised spectacle called the Hunger Games.  Twenty-four tributes go into the arena, and the last one left alive is the winner.  This is a punishment to the districts for a previous rebellion and serves as a yearly reminder to them who is in control.

The main character in The Hunger Games is Katniss Everdeen.  She lives in District 12 with her mother and younger sister.  When her sister is chosen at the lottery to go to the games, Katniss volunteers to go in her place.  Katniss is a talented archer from years of hunting to provide extra food for her family in their impoverished district.  Reading about her skill with a bow and arrow made me want to take up archery myself!

Katniss, in the movie

Here's the thing about Katniss- she is the kind of strong female character that I'd like to see more often.  The media is hyping the movie as another Twilight and playing up the love triangle angle with her friend Gale and her fellow District 12 tribute Peeta.  No.  Stop that, media.  This book is not about some mopey girl mooning over a choice between two guys and defining her life based on them.  Katniss takes care of her family and herself, and she is too busy being tough and trying to survive to spend a lot of time dwelling on Peeta vs. Gale.

I could not put this book down, and although The Hunger Games was my favorite of the trilogy, Catching Fire and Mockingjay were page-turners as well. I cannot recommend them enough. 

Lady Oracle

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors.  Lady Oracle was written early on in her career, but it still displays the mastery of prose which Atwood possesses and which shines through in her later works.  It's hard for me to pick a favorite book from all of those I've read by her.  A Handmaid's Tale is probably the most well-known, and it is stunning.  I'd put Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and The Blind Assassin alongside that one.  Alias Grace is also very good.  I didn't like Lady Oracle as much as those, but I did enjoy reading it.

The story begins with a woman escaping to a villa in Italy in order to start a new life for herself.  She has faked her own death, and we find out about the life she has left behind in flashbacks throughout the book.  She has left a husband and the crushing success that has come with a poetry bestseller.  She has left a blackmailer. What she has kept is something no one knew- a second identity under which she writes "costume" romance novels.  She intends to support herself by continuing to write these books.  

The flashbacks don't only reveal the adult life she is leaving behind.  They also disclose her adolescence, her difficult relationship with her mother, and how she became the woman she is now.  Lady Oracle has a much less serious tone than other books I've read by Margaret Atwood.  I don't mean that as a slight.  It's just different.  I liked it, but I'd recommend starting with another of her books if you haven't read one before.

The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is a book written by Philip K. Dick.  Before now, I was familiar with his work solely through movie adaptations of it.  Minority Report, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, and most famously, Blade Runner, are all based on his books or short stories.  I decided that my first Philip K. Dick book should be something completely new to me.   

The Man in the High Castle takes place in a world similar to our own, with one startling difference in its history: the Allies lost WWII.  The United States as we know it has ceased to exist.  The western states have become the Pacific States of America, occupied by the Japanese, and while the east is still referred to as the United States of America, it is controlled by the Germans.  There is a free, independent area in the Rockies, and the South is barely spoken about and only as a place where people would never want to go.  The Reich rules almost all of Europe and Russia and has taken over all of Africa only to eliminate the entire population in something described as an experiment gone wrong.  All of the atrocities of Nazi Germany continue unabated, and Americans are second-class citizens in the P.S.A. and the U.S.A.  I don't think I can express how unsettling this was to read.  Dick describes this world so well, it is frighteningly real.

Most of the book takes place in San Francisco (in the Pacific States of America), with some parts in the Rocky Mountain States.  There is a new bestseller in this world, banned in the Reich, called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.  It chronicles an alternative history in which the Allies win World War II.  The way in which one of the characters talks about this book, with such hopeful desperation, if only F.D.R. hadn't been assassinated and could things have been different, is heartbreaking.  The author of this book is "the man in the high castle," supposedly locked safely away in the Rockies to keep him safe from those who want him dead for writing it.

I thought The Man in the High Castle was great.  You get to the end and realize that it's so much more than just an alternate history novel. The characters are interesting.  The book isn't filled with caricatures of evil Nazis and Japanese oppressors.  In fact, I ended up liking a couple of them better than one of the Americans.  It didn't seem right!  I'm eager to read more of Philip K. Dick's work.

The Code of the Woosters

What ho!  It's time to talk about Jeeves and Wooster.  The Code of the Woosters is one of many books written by P.G. Wodehouse featuring these two characters.  There was also a television series based on the books, with Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster.  Yes, Hugh Laurie from House.  He's British, and he's hilarious.  I saw an episode of House once, and it was jarring to see him with an American accent and acting grumpy. 

Jeeves and Wooster

In the U.S., we might call Jeeves a butler, but Wodehouse describes him as Wooster's valet, his "gentleman's gentleman."  He helps Wooster get dressed and undressed, picks out his clothes, makes tea, prepares meals, runs Wooster's bath, answers the phone- generally anything that Wooster needs done, Jeeves takes care of it for him.  The Jeeves and Wooster stories are told in the first person by Wooster.  They usually revolve around Wooster and his friends getting into trouble, whereby they rely on Jeeves to get them out of whatever mess they have created with some ingenious plan.  None of them have jobs and they have plenty of money, so they have the time and the resources to wreak havoc in each others' lives. There is a recurring cast of minor characters who show up among the different Jeeves and Wooster books, such as Wooster's aunts Agatha and Dahlia, and friends like Gussie Fink-Nottle and Tuppy Glossup.  Wooster quite often ends up accidentally engaged to a few of his female friends, although he has no desire to marry any of them.

As with other Jeeves and Wooster stories, The Code of the Woosters is very funny.  Wodehouse is clever and witty, and there were times when I laughed out loud reading it.  Actually, I can't just leave it at that.  Wodehouse is a master of language.  The way he turns a phrase is remarkable.  For instance:

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

Also:

'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, "Do trousers matter?"'
‘The mood will pass, sir.’

It would almost do it a disservice to describe the plot, with all of its twists and turns and misunderstandings.  It involves a silver cow creamer, a lost notebook full of insults, and more than one on-and-off again wedding engagement.  The characters are likable, and the book is light-hearted and fun to read.  Even the antagonists aren't really bad.  They're more comical than anything.  I'm looking forward to reading as many Jeeves and Wooster stories as I can get my hands on, and luckily for me, P.G. Wodehouse was a prolific writer.

And what is the code of the Woosters?  "Never let a pal down."

The Neverending Story

The Neverending Stoooor-y!  Aa-aa-aah, aa-aa-aah, aa-aa-aah!  Everyone my age knows that song, from the movie of the same name.  I love this movie.  I loved it as a kid, and I love it now.  It was in the rotation of movies that I watched again and again, like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the Star Wars movies, part of a triumvirate of fantasy movies with The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

I think this movie hit the mark with me even more because I was and am a big reader.  I know what it's like to get lost in a book.  And if you are a Gen-Xer and say you don't want to ride on Falcor the luck dragon, you are LYING.

It also has the coolest accessory this side of a lightsaber, the Auryn.  Atreyu wears the Auryn on his mission to save Fantasia and its Childlike Empress.  I've never been much into jewelry, but I'd be a happy lady if I had an Auryn. 

It was time I read the book.  I picked up a hardcover edition first published in 1997 which alternates green and black text depending on whether the story is in the real world or in Fantasia.  I found that to be a great effect, and it was helpful in the sequences which quickly switch back and forth between Atreyu and Bastian, the main characters.  The movie covers the first half of the book and sticks pretty close to it.  There are some differences, which is to be expected.  Fantasia in the movie is Fantastica in the book.  In the movie, you pass through two gates to get to the Southern Oracle, and in the book there are three, along with a completely different Southern Oracle.  How Atreyu and Falcor meet is different (and it's Falkor with a "k" in the book).

 I was happily reading, and then I got to the part where Atreyu is introduced with his horse, Artex (or Artax).  I thought, OH, NO.  The scene.  There is a scene in The Neverending Story that I haven't seen for years.  I always fast forward through this scene.  It is the scene where Artex sinks into the Swamps of Sadness.  I suppose in order for Atreyu to be free to ride Falcor, he had to lose the horse along the way, but did he have to die in the Swamps of Sadness??  I started riding horses when I was eleven.  This scene is very upsetting to me.  There was no way to fast forward through it in the book.  To make it worse, Artex can talk in the book, so you get to hear their parting words.

Halfway through the book Fantastica is saved.  The second half of the book is about Bastian in Fantastica.  Atreyu and Falcor are minor characters.  It pains me to say this, but the second half of the book isn't that great.  Bastian is completely unlikeable and becomes more so due to the power of the Auryn.  I understand that the Auryn was influencing him and that this was necessary for the plot, but he started out unbearable and got worse.  He at least should have been sympathetic at first so that you could see the transformation.  From the second he gets to Fantastica he is awful. I did end up liking the book, but I was a bit disappointed.  It felt as if I had read two different books rather than one long story.  I would still recommend reading it, though.