Book Review - The Outlaw Demon Wails
I've updated IOTW with a book review on Kim Harrison's book The Outlaw Demon Wails. Go and check it out.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I've updated IOTW with a book review on Kim Harrison's book The Outlaw Demon Wails. Go and check it out.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Now that Erin is done with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows I will tell the world what I think.
First, Harry DOES NOT DIE. I never thought that J.K. Rowling was writing a book where her principle character would die; and, moreover, was extremely pleased when I got to the end of the book and the dude was still alive. I've said, for a few years, that the prophecy that everyone thought was meant to kill Harry (and Voldy) really meant that Harry could not expect a normal life if Voldemort was still alive. Voldy is the one who misinterpreted the prophesy and, as a result, made a mess of things.
With that, Voldemort dies. Yup. You heard me correct. Voldy dies. I thought, "Great, about time." I also thought, "Interesting that Rowling is allowing all of the principle kid characters have a chance at defeating a piece of Voldemort." Since Voldemort had divided his soul in to six parts and Dumbledore destroyed a couple of those before dying (in book six, shhh... don't tell anyone) that left one for Harry, one for Hermione, one for Ron, and one for Neville.
I thought that Ron running away from Harry and Hermione when the going got tough was not good. Moreover, I found that ENTIRE section of the book to be boring and far too much exposition. It was like slogging through mud filled with leaches while I was bleeding.
With that said, I thought it sucked the Dobbie died.
I didn't like the fact that Fred died and was a bit off-put by it.
Percy returning to the fold was more a matter of time, for me, than something that wasn't going to happen. I think it was forced in to it.
Having Harry become remus Lupin and Tonk's son's godfather was nice, then they died. Which sucked.
I liked how Harry faked death and that the Malfoy's helped him, semi-redeeming themselves after supporting Voldy.
Moreover, I loved the fact that I was right, all along, about Snape. Snape is a good guy and was under Dumbledore's orders - even if meant that Snape HAD to kill Dumbledore. I loved it. Moreover, I really liked what kept Snape good, and that was Harry's mother Lilly, whom he loved.
Pretty much, I am ruining anything to do with Harry Potter. I might write more later, but, in the past month if you haven't read it; well, it's your own fault.
Erin is a bit nicer than me.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond
I think it was about a year ago I was reading Neil Gaiman’s website and he mentioned he’d purchased a book titled Adventures in Unhistory. I ordered a copy because I liked the title and the premise (though I think most names beginning with the prefix un- are kinda lame) and as a result have had the book sitting on a shelf between, now, three different apartments and one house.
Well, several weeks ago I picked up my copy, placed, gently, the dust jacket on a shelf, and started to read it. I have, at the same time, found it interesting and not a page-turner by any stretch of the imagination; though the book is interesting enough in the information it attempts to impart that it does draw me back again and again and again. I can’t say this about a lot of books I read.
Not like I don’t have stacks of books to read. Every once in a while I think, “I should add some kind of applet to the sidebar to show people which books (non-school) I am carrying around and working my way through,” and then I realize that is one more thing to try and update; and, for the most part, it’s a list that is actually very boring. Most of those books are on writing. Fiction, mostly. Picked up one last night on writing magazine articles. I am thinking that I’ve had some ideas for articles and, as a result, want to get out there and see what kinds of markets exist for that aspect of freelancing. Specifically, there is an article about Maine for a Maine publication I want to write. As I looked at the publications information, the other day, their guidelines indicate that I not talk about it in advance of my attempting to get them to take me seriously.
Anyway, most of what I am working through are non-fiction works specifically on writing and, unless you are really in to the whole writing thing (like me) they are boring books. Though, with that said, I plan to talk about them more on inordertowrite.com (.net, .org) – which, also, incidentally got a facelift as I realized that for CMS I prefer blogs and of the blogging software I am currently running, wordpress seems to be the most user friendly for the things (and changes) I want to be doing. Plus, it took little/no effort to uninstall the CMS I was using (mambo) and install Wordpress on the website(s).
And yet, that doesn’t talk about what I want to be talking about, now does it?
Specifically, Adventures in Unhistory is a book that takes some popular mythologies, fantasies, and then dissects the etymology of the myth in to aspects that make it possible for the story, creature, or character to have existed in some form or another. Take, for example, my current favorite item in the book, the phoenix.
Basically, the author (Avram Davidson) takes apart the pieces of the phoenix and tries to explain them. For example, the color of the phoenix is red and a brilliant blue. There are only a handful of birds, and none native to the middle east, that are this color. He posits that for a bird to be this color it would have to come from a remote location, and, one of those locations would be China where a specifically red hued and were also protected by the government… it would make sense that if this bird were to escape or be smuggled out rarely, it would also make sense the idea that the phoenix dies in fire and is reborn every 500 or 1000 years.
Anyway, there is a lot more like anting. I did not know that birds, especially large wild ones, anted. Or that anting even existed. This is, for those that don’t know (I am assuming this is everyone) where a bird takes an object, ants in ancient times, and rubs them all over their bodies and especially under the wings. It causes the bird to go into an almost orgasmic state after which the bird frequently falls over. That’s interesting, but what is more interesting is that a lot of large birds actually like to do this in and around fire all without burning themselves or singeing their feathers. And then the bird falls over.
For hundreds, nay THOUSANDS, of years no one has actually witnessed this happening, or no one of enough authority with some kind of video or photographic evidence. And then someone with evidence did see it happening and suddenly, it is possible for a bird to dance in flames and fall over to be a part of the origin of the phoenix myth.
Davidson begins his book with Sinbad the Sailor and I am currently reading about the origin of dragon mythologies and how most peoples (ancient) had a dragon guarding something (gold) in different directions (e.g. north, south, east, and west) with the Chinese actually having a dragon for each of these (Green dragon was for south, kind of baffles me as south, in my mind, is more indicative of a different color, like blue or yellow; but then, that is me).
Anyway, the book is very interesting. I like it.
Thought I’d take the time and share that with y’all.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond
I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows last night. It’s taken me, what?, a week to read. Not too bad given that Erin and I have this impending wedding-thing happening on Friday (10 a.m.). And I work a full-time job, and I am writing the first draft of my Alicia Grey novel (a book that is book one of (at least) five). And I am trying to finish moving my stuff from my apartment to the married apartment.
However, at some point in between waking up and getting to the married apartment yesterday before church I decided it was time to sit down and finish the story which, though in excess of 700 pages, was not taking a long time to read.
As a result, I finished, last night, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. The book was, at the same time, very good and very hard to read. It was good in the sense that J.K. Rowling is very good at story telling, and very hard because, in order to move the action forward, she uses a lot of expository story telling where she goes in to a lot of details, sometimes on the edge of being boring, to describe what is meant to be happening between periods of action. This is not bad, it is also something, in some cases, I thought could’ve been toned down a lot to do two things: 1) make the book shorter; and 2) move the story along a lot faster.
For example, I didn’t think we needed to spend a LOT of pages working through the trials and troubles that Harry, Hermione, and Ron experience while following Dumbledore’s last quest for Harry (from the previous book). Though, at the same time, as they are searching for the various Horcruxes (again, the accomplishment of the quests is pretty interesting/exciting).
Even with the slowdown of the story for the exposition, which is used to move the story forward, I thought the book was very good. It accomplished what Rowling set out to accomplish. The Harry Potter series is a semi-epic adventure that takes a boy wizard, the boy who lived, and moves him through education and experience until he, effectively, saves the world by destroying the wizarding world, and muggles, worst enemy, Voldemort – Tom Riddle – He Who Shall Not Be Named.
What I can say, because some people may not have read the book, is that all of my theories about where Rowling was going, with the series, turned out to be true. I didn’t know how she would get there, but I did know she would make it to the end and do what I thought she was going to do; save who I thought she would save; and ultimately, Harry would come off as victor with his friends as the ones who helped him, in many ways, accomplish the things that needed to be accomplished.
In doing that, he also made some characters who, until now, had seemed rather… flat, as heroes and (to rip off another movie) more than meets the eye. I never thought that some of these characters would be the way they ended up being, heroic; or, for that matter, that when the end came, you’d see the kinds of battles that took place. However, the story begins with and ends with Hogwarts and I think given Tom Riddles (Voldemorts) obsession with the school that it is appropriate that his fall comes there as well.
Moreover, I spent almost the entire book trying to discover whether or not my principle theory from the previous book (e-mail me to find out what it was) was actually the outcome or not. I thought it was, and was very pleasantly surprised not only that I was 100% correct in theory, but also in how Rowling chose to share with the reader the information. Basically, she makes a potentially evil and bad character in to a sympathetic character who turns from bad guy in to hero very quickly.
I guess rooting for the underdog (not Harry) proved to pan out.
Anyway, because people would complain, a lot, if I gave away a lot of the details of the book I will leave my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows at this: I liked the book; I thought it was worth reading; I think that if J.K. Rowling had started her series with a book like this, she would NOT be a billionaire today and more than 95% of her readers would never have started the books; and I am glad she left the histories and the people open, that she didn’t describe every little detail of every person’s life… or, for that matter, allow the readers in to what careers, what trials and travails, they go through to get from where they started to where they ended up -- 19 years later.
Read it. Enjoy it. Say, “Good-bye,” and be glad that someone out there created something like Harry Potter and Hogwarts and the wizarding world of England because, in the end, I think we’re better off with it than without.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond
Neil Gaiman, for whatever reason, has become one of my more favorite authors. He hasn’t produced a lot of the stuff I like to read, meaning, he wrote a lot of comic books once upon a time and I don’t feel like acquiring them to read them; but his novel writing is some of the best in the business… well… for fantasy writing.
Some years ago, I was asked by Jack to go to a book signing where I was to have the author sign the copies of his books. At the time, Jack did not tell me he didn’t expect me to stay the many, many hours to have his books signed. He told me, later, that he actually expected me to abandon the task and head home before the books were signed. But, at the time, I was being paid and I probably wanted/needed the money, and I had little else to do except sleep; so, you know, I stood in line for four or five or more hours to get Jack’s books signed.
Because of the people around me, that day, I was not willing to explore Neil Gaiman as an author. Basically, the people around me were… uhm… rather freakish. It was the middle of summer. I was wearing as light a t-shirt as I could. And yet, there they were, all of them (a majority of them) in blacks and purples and other dark colors. It was… weird.
And then I moved to New Hampshire.
And then I needed something new to write.
And then I started flipping through, one day, Neverwhere.
And then I found what the attraction to Neil Gaiman was. I was hooked. I discovered the writing he’d done, up til then, and further discovered movies and other things he’d been working on. It was an awakening. (Of course, at the same time, I also discovered other writers and topics I’d avoided for a variety of good (in my head) reasons, so… New Hampshire was a change for me.)
Recently, though, I picked up a mass market paperback copy of his book Anansi Boys. The plot, basically, is the African trickster god, Anansi, is living in Florida and was married and had a son named Fat Charlie. Fat Charlie and his mother leave Florida for England and eventually, when Fat Charlie grows up, Anansi has a heart attack and dies. This leads to Charlie learning that he has a brother, Spider, and they are reunited.
In his normal life, Charlie works for a crooked talent agent, has a fiancé who is marrying him because her mother doesn’t want her to. Charlie has a life, but not really much of one. When he left his father, at the age of ten, his life became, intentionally, boring – just the way Fat Charlie likes it.
And then Spider enters the picture and Fat Charlie’s life takes on an entirely different hue. His boss feels it is time to, permanently, take care of Fat Charlie. His fiance’s mother feels it is time to actively convince Fat Charlie he would be better off not marrying her daughter. And then there is the police who have reason to believe that Charlie has broken some laws; Charlie’s penchant for singing; and Anansi who may, or may not be dead – along with a bunch of old women who seem to know about Charlie, Charlie’s father and family, and the magic that surrounds him than Charlie does and who he keeps having to go back to see again and again and again in order to get the right answer this time.
This book is a wild romp through magic, gods, more magic, sibling rivalry, love, and a lot of other things and is absolutely enjoyable. It follows, pretty nicely, in the vein of his previous novel American Gods which was a rather delightful romp through the various gods that were brought to the Americas.
If’n you’re looking for a good read, and you want something that touches into worlds that Gaiman has written in the past, then this is a good launching point for his work.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Denny Crane | Bond. James Bond
I have very few things I like to call, “guilty pleasures,” but I do have some out there. One of them, and one that I was excited to spend money on a few weeks ago, is Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series of books. I’ve written about these in the past as I picked up her first book, Dead Witch Walking and loved it. Then bought the second book, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, and, at the time, the third book Every Which Way but Dead and read them back to back. The last time I found an author I could do this too (outside of the Zachary Johnson series of books) was J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series of books… I read the first three within a couple of days and then waiting six months – plus – to buy book four.
Then there was book four, A Fistful of Charms , which only added to the guilty pleasures of the series. Basically, Rachel Morgan is a witch in an alternate timeline Cincinnati, OH where it is 40 years after a genetically engineered disease was spread through tomatoes killing off the majority of the human population. For the first time in the history of human/interlander relations, humans did not radically outnumber the interlanders and, as a result, fairies, witches, vampires, werewolves, and other magical creatures came out of hiding and started to live with humans side-by-side.
Enter Rachel, she is a witch who is an independent runner. Someone who is hired to go out and take care of others of her kind (witches, vampires, werewolves, etc.) that are getting out of line and need to be taken care – without killing them. She lives with a living vampire, someone born with the vampire virus in her system, but not dead, yet, like a real vampire. Therefore, the living vamp can walk around in sunlight and still has a soul.
In this installment of the series Rachel owes two different demons a favor. On top of which, the main demon baddie is in her church and is tearing it to bits looking for something. This causes Rachel to believe that Newt (demon) is looking for an artifact that will change humans in to werewolves. The weres in the community want that artifact to increase their numbers; the vampires want to maintain the top spot of the interland community. In short, the vampires want to sit at the top of the foodchain and the weres ability to change humans into werewolves would challenge that authority.
On top of this, different werewolves are showing up dead. Rachel’s alpha, in the were pack she is the alpha female for (witches cannot be weres, in case you wanted to be even more confused) believes he is changing women into weres, and is accused of murdering both the male and female weres in the area.
To top it all off, Rachel has finally found the evidence that will put Trent, an elf in hiding, behind bars for good – something she’s been trying to do since book one. Rachel’s 1000 year old elf friend, Ceri, is falling for Trent and Rachel’s roommate Ivy has been called back to her master’s side after he was released from jail to contend with Al, another demon, who was running rampant on Cincinnati.
Got all that?
Well, the basic premise of the series of books is that Rachel is a dead woman, she just doesn’t know it yet. Her father was killed, or just disappeared, when he went into the Ever After to look for evidence or DNA of the elves before they came to this side of “the lines”. The lines are lines of magic that run through areas. In this case, Cincinnati. In the first book it was expected that Rachel would just be killed because she’d chosen to leave the IS (interland security), or the police force for all of the mythical creatures.
She survived.
And then she was hooked up with a career criminal. Changed into a ferret and entered into an underground animal fighting tournament.
Then she ended up with the artifact that causes the changes to weres and ended up at the Great Lakes defending her status as an alpha female in a were pack by changing herself into a wolf to fight another female were all before helping kill a vampire to make the world believe the artifact (call it a Focus) was thought to be lost in a river but was really being stored in her alpha weres freezer (his name is David).
On top of that she flirts with her roommate over sharing blood, is dating a living male vampire, and, with the release of an actually dead master vampire, Piscary, her life is pretty much forfeit.
Yeah, lions and tigers and… oh wait, witches and vampires and werewolves oh my. In spite of the subject material I really enjoy these books. It is not a series of books you can just pick up anywhere and get all the nuances, but, if you’ve got the time and desire, it is definitely a series of books that are totally worth reading. I like them. I like them a lot.
Like I said, guilty pleasures.
Plus, Kim Harrison has done it again by creating another book that adds to the intrigue and mystery, resolves issues that have been hanging for a couple of books, drops more issues that will (probably) come back and haunt Rachel in future books, and proved that for the kind of series it is, Kim Harrison is someone to be watched (as a novelist) for the future.
As an aside, I am interested in seeing what she does when she tires of Rachel Morgan and starts somewhere else with another central character. Like J.K. Rowling, I think that we will truly get to see what kind of a writer Kim Harrison is once she gets past what is making her famous and into new, and for her, uncharted territory. On top of this, I’d love to see Rachel Morgan made into, at least, one movie because this is the kind of witch/werewolf/vampire movie that would be interesting to explore.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Denny Crane | Bond. James Bond
I recently found some software that I was thinking I wanted; but not before I tried the software out. Some of the things I’ve been looking at, lately, are rather specialized (and I’m a writer – go figure) requiring me to really think about what I am trying to accomplish and the associative cost before I jump into the river of spending and spend the money that needs to be spent. Anyway, came across a piece of software based off of a writing philosophy, found a demo for it, and decided the writing philosophy and the software (after trying the demo) was worth my time (and effort) in pursuing it.
So, I found a benefactor (I am poor) who would front me the money (his name is…) and then ordered the software on Amazon.com. However, when I got the confirmation in my e-mail that the software was ordered I noticed that the actually charged amount was about $50.00 less than was supposed to be paid. Then I looked closer. When I looked closer I noticed that the $50.00 was actually the outstanding balance on a roommates gift certificate he’s been using to buy books for school. This, by the by, is/was/and will never be a good thing.
My reaction: I tried to cancel the order so I could process a new order without using the gift certificate.
Time involved (so far): less than three minutes.
When I tried to cancel the order Amazon.com told me that the order was already in process to be shipped and that I couldn’t cancel it. So, I found a way to call their customer support number (which actually has them call me) and spoke to a lady who, I presume from her accent and decorum, was in India. When I explained what was happening and why I was calling and that I needed 100% of the amount of the order to be placed on the credit card and that the gift certificate wasn’t mine to use she told me I had to options.
Option One:I could get the package in the mail (on Tuesday) and then return the package and get a full refund.Option Two:I could order a second copy of the software, spend twice as much money, and when I got the software on Tuesday I could return it.
I don’t know about anyone else, but that feels like the same option, repackaged, and presented twice. And, in the second option, twice the money is spent rather than a single amount. Neither option was acceptable. I said, “These are the only options I am willing to accept. Either, the total for the order is charged to the credit card and the gift certificate is not touched; or, you cancel the order as I made it (at this point) less than ten minutes ago. There is no way on God’s green Earth that the order is already shipping.”
She said, “That would be very difficult,” and then proceeded to explain to me why it would be very difficult.
I said, “Let me share with you the vernacular you are using. You have said, repeatedly,” because at this point it was repeatedly, “that what I am asking for is difficult, not impossible, so, you will either cancel the order or you will make sure that the credit card is the only thing charged. If you can’t do it than I want to speak to someone who can. If you have to speak to someone who can authorize this, fine. But, you have said that it is possible, just not easy, so, make it happen or put someone on the phone who can make it happen.”
She paused. Then she said, “I need to talk to my supervisor.”
I said, “That’s fine.”
She said, “Will you hold?”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “If I can’t get approval for this you may have to talk to my supervisor.”
I said, “That is fine. I will hold. Go talk to your supervisor.”
Imagine, now, twenty minutes and a strange secondary phone call where someone was speaking (recording) in Spanish and me hanging up on the phone call. Me surfing the internet (which, most people actually can’t imagine). And then, just about the point I am actually mad and not just frustrated, the woman coming back on the line. She said, “This time only, my supervisor has approved me to refund the money back to your gift certificate.”
I said, “Thank you.”
She said, “Amazon will only charge you the $140 (something) that is being charged to the credit card.”
I said, “You don’t have to do that. Just charge the full amount to the credit card.”
She said, “We cannot do that. To do what you have asked us to do, we have to credit the money back to the gift certificate. We cannot charge you the full amount on your credit card.”
I said, not wanting to belabor the point, “Thank you. You have been very helpful. I appreciate what you’ve done.”
Now, truth told, I don’t pay for shipping. When I shop at Amazon.com I have unlimited two-day shipping for everything I purchase through Amazon.com’s marketplace. I like this. I’ve paid for Amazon’s Prime membership many, many times over this way (I buy a lot of books) and since you get a discount on the books you buy AND it doesn’t cost me anything to have them shipped to me (over, say, Borders or Barnes and Noble) it makes sense (at least to me) to use this service. On top of which, they have been very, very, very good to me since I decided to push most of my discretionary book spending (and movie, and music) to this online retailer. In short, I am happy. I want to see Amazon continue to succeed and exist. It is in my interest.
So, when I say I am complaining about the outcome (today) I really am. Granted, I am one buyer in (probably) millions. My purchase (today or normally) isn’t going to make or break the bank for them. What happened wasn’t really acceptable to me. I appreciate it. I am grateful that the software (which normally retails for $270.00) is being sent to be for just shy of $150.00, but, I think, that is probably the point in all of this. You lose margins when you do what Amazon did today.
I am happy with the company and I am looking forward to the purchase, but, at the same time, I am a little taken back by the nature of how things may have been handled. I wanted to pay the amount that I was quoted. I don’t think that something that is moved into a shipping status should be entirely unchangeable. Rather, I would’ve been better off had the CSR said, “Yes, we can do that for you. Hold on. Yes. The gift certificate is not going to be touched and the entire balance will come from your credit card.” I would have been happy with that.
Instead, I get to be persnickety and point out that I am paying a considerable amount less than I should. I should be happy and a part of me is jumping up and down in glee and joy and other happy words. And yet, there is a part of me that wonders if Amazon.com hasn’t started down the path toward a slick and happy solution to most things where most margins will cover a situation like this? I mean, moving customer service to India is definitely a money saver, but speaking to the woman, and to be clear, I had to drop most of what is normal American speech patterns to be understood and to make sure she, without question, understood what I was asking. The complains is that I REALLY would have preferred to pay more, not less; and the paradox is that I am happy to have paid less than more.
Yes, Amazon.com has achieved another level of customer satisfaction (in my book) with what happened; but I wonder if, soon, they might not be more like Wal-Mart than I am comfortable with? Will I have to find another online retailer (or revert to spending a ton of money in a big-box bookstore) to fill my entertainment and reading needs? This is an interesting question for me.
John Hattaway | Alicia Grey | smokingpen | Ansel Adams | Denny Crane | Bond. James Bond
I woke up this morning (after four or five hours sleep) to my alarm so I could go to class. It was a late night. I’m not sharing why. However, as I opened the lid on my computer and looked at the e-mails that had arrived overnight, I saw one that threw me for a loop.
I got an e-mail from John Zakour.
John Zakour is the co-author of the three science fiction books The Plutonium Blonde, Doomsday Brunette, and Radioactive Redhead. He is the sole author on Frost-Haired Vixen. If you’re interested, his website is available here. When I do the great link re-organization I may add it (and other authors) for easier access.
Apparently, in the last couple of days John Zakour did a web search (I am guessing about this), came across my review of his books. He felt inspired to respond to me. After an e-mail I sent him, today, I’ve included his message to me this morning.
Here it is:
Hi:I saw your review of The Frost Haired Vixen. First off, I want to say I'm really glad you liked the first three books. I knew some people would be bummed and disappointed with Larry leaving. It's been an interesting spread. Some people notice a difference but don't mind as the books are still enjoyable, some people say the books are better without Larry, some say the are worse.
I knew there would be some fallout from Larry leaving as well, four eyes and two minds are better than two eyes and one mind.
I hope you do at least try to finish Vixen.
Thanks for reading and writing. I do plan to improve with each book.
John Zakour
I don’t know why, but this made my morning. Keep in mind that I go to author-run websites all the time. I enjoy seeing how people work and, when they are willing to share, how they got their breaks and what made them into the writers they are today. It’s fun to see and read about (for me). However, in all the years I’ve been a “fan” of different authors, I’ve only ever written one; well, I sent an e-mail. The author is relatively new on the novel scene. I liked his first novel a lot. I couldn’t, in his blog or online, find information about forthcoming books, so I wrote to ask if he had anything else coming out.
I’ve spent some time reviewing movies and books. Probably more books than movies as I am more apt to be interested in the books I am reading and can be somewhat critical of what I am reading to the extent that I want people to know. With that said, I don’t always have a sounding board to bounce ideas off of when I am reading something. Erin became a sounding board, of sorts, when I’d gotten frustrated with Frost-Haired Vixen, but because of the nature of the type of book, she’s interested only in that I am interested in the material; and not actually interested because she likes the subject matter. (More on this later, maybe.)
In all the time I’ve been doing the website (what, three, four years?) I’ve received less than a handful of e-mails originating from the site (not counting my mother who uses the link as a means of e-mailing me); and never from someone I’ve written about. This was a neat experience for me as, regardless of anything else, I enjoyed the first three books and, according to the authors website, he has been contracted to write three more Zach Johnson novels (I’ve taken to calling them The Bombshell Books). I am excited for this.
Anyway, in a quick response to my e-mail John Zakour stated that he had no problem with being critiqued and that it was okay with him for me to post his e-mail on the website. I thank him for that.
Can I just say that, in a fan-sense of the word, this is really cool? With that said, I won’t ever show it more than just being excited that my little website was found and my review read. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished a little something along the paths and goals I am working toward.
John Hattaway | smokingpen
A few months ago I picked up books two and three in the Zach Johnson scifi detective series. These are books that are not, inherently, a detective series and my not have been intended to be more than a single, stand alone, book: The Plutonium Blonde.
The problem I encountered, at the time, was that I could buy books two and three (Doomsday Brunette and Radioactive Redhead respectively), but book one had become quite scarce. Truth told, even though it had been printed less than four years ago, it appeared to no longer be in print. Amazon.com kept promising they were going to get it for me; but after several weeks (a couple of months) of waiting, and Amazon.com constantly lengthening the delivery estimates out (I get the impression they don’t like to say, “We aren’t going to be able to fulfill that order,”) I cancelled the order, placed a new one with an independent distributor who claimed to have a new copy of The Plutonium Blonde and had the book within a week.
That’s background. I bought the books because I liked the covers (think pulp covers) and I liked the idea of what it was I would be reading. At the same time, I was not willing to delve into books two or three until I’d purchased and read book one, so, I got to sit on these books I was a little excited about for some time before I actually got to read them. Being a full-time student did not help.
Then I went to Massachusetts. Before leaving I’d opened book one, started reading it, found myself pleasantly addiction to reading it, and, by the time I’d been in Massachusetts twenty-four hours, had devoured the book and loaned it to Erin’s dad. I then pulled out book two (Doomsday Brunette) and proceeded to read it. Again, a delightfully romp into old pulp-style storytelling and an addictively fun read. I was hooked.
By the time Erin and I were back in Utah I’d moved on to book three (hooked does not denote that I read all the time) and again found myself really, really, really enjoying the experience. The two authors, John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem, were doing a wonderful job AND before Christmas I’d purchased the fourth book (dropping money on Frost-Haired Vixen) to read when I was done with two and three.
So, quick recap, books one, two, and three were all good.
Basically, they follow a simple premise over a course of three-hundred (or so) pages. Specifically, Zach Johnson is the last private eye on the planet. He is occasionally hired to detect things in a world that is highly connected to a network of computers. The network of computers is also how television is broadcast. As a result of his position as the last private detective AND the gadgets he tests for one of his buddies, he is a semi-successful HV (think television) star who people are always trying to kill.
Enter the damsel in distress. One hot, tall, busty woman who needs Zach to do something for her. Find a clone. Stop some bad guy from destroying the world. Find the murderer of a nearly immortal sister, yadda, yadda, yadda. The story isn’t complex or hard to follow. They don’t, generally, offer enough clues to give you exactly who the bad guy is AND at the same time, the authors also make things pretty transparent. It is what they call a guilty pleasure. These books aren’t literature. Zach Johnson doesn’t come off as a real person. And the whole purpose in reading the books is the enjoyment factor.
Got all that?
In the end, this might be a surprise, Zach gets his man/woman/android/cyborg.
It’s all pretty simple. I like this kind of story telling. Seriously, guilty pleasure.
Now, there is some attempts at depth to the stories, specifically Zach has a girlfriend he is in love with who, in her turn, is jealous of the super-hot women he has as clients. She’s also a doctor who is a retired kickboxing champion (go figure) who has a niece who works for Zach who can read minds… oh, and did I mention the computer AI that is directly connected to his cerebral cortex through his eye? No? Well, then there’s HARV.
The books go from heavy action to slow drama back to heavy action pretty quickly. They are fun to read. They don’t take up a lot of the cognitive abilities. And the outcome is that you are done reading and feel okay about being alive.
Then you hit book four. I’m still reading this one. It occurred to me, as I was pushing things around last night looking for something on my floor, that I’d not picked it up in a while. The reason, it’s not very good. The first three books were done by two writers working together. You get to the fourth book and, even though one of the authors is still doing the writing, Zach and crew all feel… well… like the author is writing about different characters. It’s not as good. In fact, it pretty much sucks. Granted, there’s a part of me that is NOT done reading the book as I want to find out the who done it but I am not as interested. The characters (who you get to REALLY know over three previous books) don’t feel as alive and the writing, which was good in the first three books, is now sub-par.
Basically, this book follows the same pattern, it is holiday themed, but it follows the same pattern without succeeding. I have to admit that this reminds me a lot of what Disney has been doing for the past decade or more. They found a pattern that allegedly worked (for them) and then proceeded to kill that pattern by making people who may not have been strong-enough storytellers go in and tell stories based off of the pattern. In this case John Zakour, in losing his partner, lost something that was integral to the whole idea of the Zach Johnson stories.
I don’t have any idea who is supposed to be the bad guy. I have no idea who to suspect. I have no desire to really care about who to suspect and a part of me wants to skip to the end and find out the who done it ahead of the process simply because Zakour isn’t up to the task of keeping people interested in what he’s writing about. He’s a good writer, but not a great writer in this area.
That might be sad as I really enjoyed the first three books; but, sales and DAW publishing schedules may prove me wrong. However, if I were to be asked my opinion on whether someone else should read these stories I say yes, with a bullet, and strongly suggest that you stop at Radioactive Redhead and not fall into the trap of further Zach Johnson adventures.
Finished.
It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to look at my bookshelves and see what is new, what is on the cusp of being read, and what needs to be reviewed. I am sure, to be honest, that there are a lot of things that need to be reviewed and probably won’t be, for some time if ever, as my life has taken several interesting and weird turns and as I can see, for the foreseeable future, I won’t have the time necessary to review books or anything else. On occasion I may come across something that I find noteworthy, but for the most part, I will remain a hostage to schedules that include school and work and work.
With that said, I acquired a stack of old pulp mystery and science fiction novels a few weeks ago. Well, Rebecca purchased them for me for like two bucks at a Friends of the Library sale in Dolores, CO. On top of that my friend Denton gave me stacks of books on playwriting, play theory, plays in general, and what appears to be an excellent copy and translation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. A book I tried, and failed, to read a year or so ago, and one that I, on occasion, pick up to read and, again, fail to get into. I don’t know if it’s the book or the translation – at present I am blaming the translation; which really reinforces the need to acquire copies of The Modern Library translations of books and titles that I like to read. There are many reasons to own Modern Library editions, not the least of which is that they generally have really good translations as well as notes and essays that reinforce the content of the book. I haven’t purchased a modern library edition of anything in quite a while; though when browsing through Barnes and Noble the other day I noticed that Barnes and Noble have their own imprint and are playing on the spine style of Modern Library editions with the one exception being color scheme. Modern Library, in trade paperback, uses a brown and tan color scheme. Barnes and Noble is using a pastel color scheme. No one should use pastels as a color scheme.
So, let's think about something....
In February of 1995 I was a missionary and we were doing service helping 12 years read. In that class we were reading a book that, for the life of me, I couldn't remember the title. I really liked the book.
As a result of a call this morning and the need to get into the journal from my mission I flipped open the binder and discovered two things.
First, I wrote some pretty stupid things in my missionary journal.
Second, the name of the book is: Dragonwings by Laurence Yep.
As a short side history to this search, I've asked bookstores, librarians, teachers, self-proclaimed experts in children's books; I've spent inordinate amounts of time sorting through databases, all for this books.
Amazon sells it. Here's the link to the book.
I have recently finished reading Kim Harrisons currently available series of books: Dead Witch Walking, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, and Every Which Way but Dead. This is a series of books that follows Rachel Morgan, an Earth Witch, in an alternative modern day Cincinnati, OH. Basically, the background is that 40 years ago (from 2004, which puts us at 1964) genetic manipulation that caused a pandemic around the world, carried through genetically manipulated tomatoes.
The only people that werent affected were creatures that are, in our world, considered mythical. These creatures include: witches, fairies, pixies, trolls, weres, vampires, and elves. I am sure there are more, but as yet, we havent been introduced to them.
What ended up happening is that the human population (non-magical) was descimated down to the point where the hidden mythical population equaled that of the human population. In order to save humanity the mythological population came out of hiding, came out from hiding among the humans, and introduced their races as really existing.
Enters the reader to the modern day and Cincinnati.
The other night I finished the latest book Ive been reading. Its called, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, and is written by Tim Pratt. This book is Pratts first foray into novel writing, at least, the first foray into writing and publishing a novel and I have to say I was very impressed by what I read. The book was really good.
Basically, the Strange Adventures of Rangergirl is a story about a girl, Marzi, who inadvertently opens a door into another world where a demi-god or an almost-god lives in captivity. The very act of Marzi opening the door changes who the gatekeeper of the door is and inadvertently Marzi becomes the gatekeeper of this particular portal. The previous gatekeeper was someone who you hear about throughout the entire book.
Marzi is the central protagonist the one point of view that Pratt seems to follow more than anyone else; however, there are several other key characters, most of whom you get to read what is happening from their perspective. First is Lindsay, Marzis best from her years in art school and who is now in graduate school at Santa Cruz University. Then theres Jonathan, a tall, dark and handsome type fellow who is broody but interested in the last works of Garamond Ray; Alice, Lindsays lover; Hendrix, the manager of Genius Loci; and then there is the ever talked about but never present Garamond Ray, an artist that disappeared during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
Continue reading "The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl - book review" »
I finished reading "The Colorado Kid" yesterday morning bright and way to early. Against my better judgment, given the author, I have to say that it was a really good book. Basically, the book is supposed to be crime noir, black crime, and is supposed to contain at least one hot woman in trouble, at least one man doing what men are stereotypically supposed to do, protect the woman, and someone who causes some amount of danger in the woman, and by association, man's lives. This book has none of that. Well, you can assume that Stephanie McCann is a hottie, she's 22, a student at some university in Ohio doing an internship at a local rag on a small island off the coast of Maine, and is about to be introduced to the nuances of news writing and what makes a good unsolved mystery story as opposed to one that is really bad.
Continue reading "The Colorado Kid by Stephen King - book review" »
I order, received,and read a copy of Mindswap by Robert Scheckley. This is a book writing in the 1960s and published as humorous speculative science fiction. It posits that, in the future, science will discover that the mind and the body are separatable due to the ability of transferring the essence of the mind into another body. As such, long distance interstellar travel is done through swapping minds and bodies over very large distances. Instead of physically travelingfrom one world to another all you have to do is find someone who wants to switch places with you and wa-lah, youre off like gangbusters.
Continue reading "Mindswap by Robert Scheckley - book review" »
I just finished reading, ?Digital Fortress? by Dan Brown. Some of you may have heard of Dan Brown. He wrote this little book called, ?The Da Vinci Code,? about a code left behind by Leonardo Da Vinci before he died and spread throughout his works. From what I hear, that book is a smash hit and, hands down, has made Dan Brown a very wealthy man. I?ve never read it.
Several months ago, maybe a year, I did pick up a copy of, ?Angels and Demons,? which deals with the same character from, ?The Da Vinci Code,? but covers different aspects to the Catholic Church. I liked, ?Angels and Demons.?
However, I was recently in the market for something new to read. Something I hadn?t picked up before, and I am not certain that Dan Brown was the right author to work through a certain literary malaise. In short, he was highly suggested to me and in the end I discovered that I did not enjoy what I was reading. Granted, he is a talented author, but the book, ?Digital Fortress,? had far too many tells for my tastes. In short, I picked the villain at about page fifty or seventy and then had to slog through 370 pages of filler to prove that I was right. Okay, maybe not 370 pages, but it was pretty darn close. You find out, conclusively, who the antagonist is before the end of the book; but the moment there was a code that had to be cracked and a number taken from the code?. I?m getting ahead of myself here.
?Digital Fortress,? follows the exploits of two or three characters. The one we start with is Susan Fletcher ? a brilliant mathematician working for the NSA (National Security Agency) as a cryptographer in a super-secret section that runs a computer with a million processors. Coincidentally, this computer can crack any encryption code in a matter of minutes. Throw enough power at it and you win, right?
She, coincidentally, is in love with David Becker who is a professor of languages at Georgetown University. He?s young, so is she, they are both at the tops of their fields and met when David was brought into the NSA to help decipher some supposed Mandarin Kanje code that was being transmitted. Susan stopped him to offer him a job and fell in love; she never offered him the job.
Two years later, David is being shipped off on a special assignment to Spain to retrieve some personal belongings of a, now dead, ex-operative of the NSA. The Deputy Director of Operations at the NSA felt that a civilian was best suited to handle the task ? rather than getting actual agents of the NSA?s hands dirty and potentially dragging in an highly covert organization into the middle of something that could potentially explode and cause international attention.
The premise for the book is digital encryption. There are a lot of products on the market that give people the ability to digitally encrypt their e-mail and send it, in the clear, to the intended recipient. Dan Brown is playing a fools game when writing about this technology. The fools game is that technology is constantly advancing and changing. In this case, the premise is that someone, an ex-NSA employee, has discovered a way to make all encrypted data unbreakable by ?rotating? the clear text that is being decrypted. A ?brute force? attack on a password, or encryption key, basically requires the software to notice subtle changes in the text that is being interpreted. When it changes from garbage to something clearly divisible by certain algorithms, then the password, or encryption key, has been breached and the encryption on the file is no longer valid.
This process takes a VERY long time for most computers with single processors to handle. Imagine throwing a million processors at it and then taking that same time, working in tandem, to brute force the same encryption key. You can do it a lot faster. I don?t know that it?s practical. The practicality was actually the one thing that seemed real to me, throughout the book: Uncle Sam throwing billions of dollars just to crack encryption keys.
What caught my attention throughout the book was the, now dead, programmers matra, ?Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? or ?Who will guard the guards.? That?s really the key here, ?Who will guard the guards?? Who will watch organizations like the NSA or CIA or FBI or the White House or Congress when they begin the slow encroachment on our rights? Who watches them?
The answer is simple, and it?s sort of presented in the book, but not well. The answer is the public watches the guards; or the public is the guardian of the guards. Another check and balance to a system that can, through time, be abused.
One of the characters in the book, Greg Hale, ex-military, ex-marine, now working as a cryptographer for the NSA, says something to the extent of: How can the public, at large, stand up for themselves when the government can monitor, and shut down, all forms of private communication?
There are no answers in the book. Just a lot of clues and dead ends. The author doesn?t answer the question as to. ?Who will guard the guards?? That was the purpose of the book. Will the best among us, the scholars and geniuses, watch out for the common man, or will they, in the end, decide it is for our own good whether or not we, as a people, decide it?s for our own good.
Public sentiment. That?s what the book misses. Sure, it?s a techno-thriller that takes one character to Spain and back again, but at the same time, it?s a techno-thriller that falls short because, you never worry about the protagonists and by the time the principle antagonist (and his minion) get it all you can say is, ?Thank, freakin?, goodness. It?s about damn time.?
As I said, Dan Brown is a talented writer. However, this book is probably not one of his better attempts at creating a page turner. It read more like someone who was writing for the movies. Not a book I?d suggest you run out and buy.
Well, it?s taken me about four days longer than I?d hoped for, or planned, but I finished ?Knife of Dreams? by Robert Jordan. I have to say, I like the book. I like Robert Jordan?s writing style and will, pretty much, read almost anything he?s written; but the last few books have seemed too short, and too? slow, to really carry his story forward. As I say this, I understand that Robert Jordan is trying to share a story that is multi-arced and multi-hued enough to require the length, though maybe not the style of detail. Hopefully some or all of that makes sense? maybe.
Regardless, ?Knife of Dreams? is the eleventh book in the ?Wheel of Time? series by Robert Jordan. The series follows Rand Al?Thor, Matrim Cauthon, and Perrin Aybara as they prepare themselves, and the world, for the ?Last Battle?. Basically, the entire series is about good versus evil and the grey?s that fall in between. Just because someone is a bad person, or makes bad choices, doesn?t mean they are evil; whereas, just because someone appears to be good and nice and wholesome doesn?t mean they aren?t evil.
This book, however, picks up the storyline where it left off as Rand (the principle protagonist in the story) is trying to steel himself for the loss of life, his impending death, and leaving the three women he loves to live, and make lives, for themselves with him gone. In reading of the Prophecies of the Dragon (Rand A?Thor is the Dragon) he feels that his life is forfeit in the last battle, and in reading some of the snips and pieces that Jordan drops from the Prophies of the Dragon, it would appear, to the casual reader, that Rand Al?Thor is destined to die before the book is through.
However, this book follows, more closely, Mat than it does Rand as he courts and eventually has finished his marriage to the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Proved that he still kicks serious rear during a battle, and made me think that Mat is probably one of the most entertaining, and interesting, characters in the entire series.
Unfortunately, at this point, you can?t just pick up book eleven and find yourself immersed in a story. If you want to read ?Knife of Dreams? then you have to go back about twenty (plus) years and begin with ?The Eye of the World? and then slowly (or however fast you read) make your way through all eleven books. According to the author this is the next to last book in the series before he begins a new series of books (not related to the Wheel of Time); however, he takes from two to two and a half years before he published a book; which means, we have a long wait before he?s done writing the next book, finishing the series, and ending the story he?s spent a couple of decades writing.
In the end, I didn?t really get where the title, ?Knife of Dreams? came from. Normally, Jordan will reference the title somewhere in the text of the book. The title comes from the action that is happening and the outcome of that action to the characters in the book. However, this time I came across no direct reference to ?Knife of Dreams? and could really only justify the title due to the notion, throughout the book, that life is a dream state, and death is the knife that ends that dream state. I am probably way off, but it seems that Jordan has often written about the reactions men (and women) have on the loss of life and how it affects them. In this case, death would seem to be the reason for the title of this book. As I said, though, I couldn?t find a reference to it anywhere.
I?d read the book again, and am considering re-reading the series. Over the next two years. I felt that this was a return, though not total, to the style of writing that got me hooked on the series and was also true to Jordan?s current style of writing. The book was excellent.
Number seven may write a review in the near future.
I read Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen. This is my first foray into the works of Carl Hiaasen and I have to admit that, other than the provocative cover and title, it was worth my time. The book is billed as a comedy that takes the reader on a humorous romp into attempted murder and extortion in south Florida. You go into the Keyes, the Everglades, get some history on the biggest river in the world (the Everglades) and pollution. In truth, I wasn't really expecting a lot from the book and ended up being pleasantly surprised.
For starters, the book starts with Chaz Perrone throwing his wife overboard on their second anniversary cruise. He'd wanted to do it earlier in the voyage, but the weather, being good, stopped him from doing that and he had to wait until they were nearly back to Florida before he could perpetuate the crime. Attempted murder is a bad thing. He'd done some research, and by all accounts the reader is led to believe that his research may even help him get away with it.
An interesting side note is that most homicides that are actually solved because the family member or friend ends up feeling bad about what they did and confess. Otherwise, most homicides go unsolved. So, what we're dealing with here is fiction. In reality, Chaz would kill his wife, feel bad, tell someone, and then be arrested. In this story he hides the truth from everyone, including his mistress and his evil employer.
Joey Perrone is the victim. By victim I mean she is the one thrown overboard and left for dead. She doesn't die in the fall (she turns it into a dive) and then begins to tread water and swim toward the Florida coast line, which she can see. Instead of making it to Florida (all this is in the first several pages of the book by the by) she gets tired, cold, and ends up clinging to a bail of marijuana floating in the Atlantic before being rescued by the protagonist Mick Stranahan. An ex-cop and state investigator who lives a reclusive life on an abandoned island in the Keyes. He doesn't much like people and has a history with women. A real winner. And in truth, he is written as a real winner.
The plot of the book follows Chaz and Joey in their various endeavors. Chaz is trying to avoid being caught in the murder attempt (and the pile of lies) and Joey is trying to make him think he is going crazy, while at the same time give him his comeuppance while trying to figure out why he did it. Chaz thinks she's dead and attributes all of the things happening around him to someone else, while Joey, with the help of Mick, masterminds the messing with Chaz's mind and all of the junk happening around him.
To add to the cast of characters is Tool, a large goon who develops a heart of gold after meeting an invalid in a nursing home, a police detective that will not leave Chaz alone, or the case - who also has two pet pythons and is moving back to Minnesota because it's cold up there, Chaz's principle mistress (and potential murder victim later in the book) as well as various other odd and unique characters that show up at different times throughout the story.
In truth, as I hit the last several pages of the book, the last couple of chapters, I'd been really grooving with the story and really hip on what was happening and then Chaz was discovered. Joey'd come out of hiding. Ricca (the mistress) had developed really well, and Tool had developed a heart and the story just kept going. Instead of Chaz being arrested he's abducted, and instead of prison or the chair the story is left up in the air with yet another unique, and twisted, character leading him off through the swamp and the implication being that Chaz wouldn't survive for very long. However, the book ends with Chaz naked, in the Everglades, scared, and dirty and you don't know what is going to happen to him.
The ending was a little hard to get through, especially at midnight when you have to be awake first thing in the morning, and at the same time the story was fun to read. The twists just kept coming. And every time I thought I had Hiaason figured out, I didn't. The twists I figured he was writing into the book ended up not happening and by the end he's tied the plot up into a neat little package and sent it off to its recipient. By the end, he'd written a very good jaunt through Florida, corruption, and naked women treading water.
Now, with all that said, this book drops into long passages where there is a lot of swearing and vulgarity. If that affects you (it does me) than this may not be the best book to read because the author uses a lot of language. To counterpoint this one of his topics is sex and he never graphically describes anything going on. You are treated to the periphery but the characters are left with their dignity (can you do that?).
This week marks an anniversary for me. I will be writing more when that anniversary hits. Just be prepared for me to sit down and write something about what is going on in a few days.
Second, I am working a lot. Had my first manager review today and got scored pretty low, comparatively, on the call we listened to. That was fine, I didn't really expect to nock the ball out of the park on this review. The next one is a different story.
Went Candlepin Bowling on Saturday night with a group of friends from my branch. They are all single adults and we had fun. Candlepin bowling, for those that are like me and have no clue, is bowling with a small wooden ball that is slightly larger than a botchy (sp) ball, slightly heavier, and thrown, hurled, sent down a wooden lane (like in ten pin bowling) to knock over ten pins. There is a level of skill that three games and more than an hour of playing didn't sink in. Some of the people I was with seemed to pick it up, or remember it, far quicker than I.
I did purchase Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Saturday and enjoyed the book, yesterday. Not a long book and not what I was expecting. People told me that if my expectation of the book was based off of the kampy movie version than I was going to be disappointed. I have a vague memory, mostly nightmares, of the oompa loompa's from the kampy movie version, beyond that… not much of anything. I don't recall ever having read the book before, or at least not all of it, and after reading an article on Roald Dahl in the New Yorker the other day I felt that I needed to see what this subversive writers style was all about. Needful to say, I liked it.
Basically, the article in the New Yorker was specifically on Roald Dahl and his writing. Apparently, mothers and adults everywhere have, at times, been up in arms about his writing because the child generally comes out on top in the end, children are not just miscreants who are to listen to adults and eventually do what they say, and in the end potty humor combined with an overactive imagination leads to a ton of books sold worldwide (and six movies) based on one mans children's books. Roald Dahl's books are some of the most published and widely read books on the planet. Since he didn't write series (apparently this is extremely important) it is against type for him to be so popular.
For those of you that don't know what Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about, well… let me tell you. Basically we follow Charlie Bucket. A very poor child of very poor parents and very poor grandparents (four of them) trying to live on next to nothing. Mr. Bucket doesn't make enough to provide, in the beginning of the story, half of what that family needs - and later one quarter, and Charlie is the only child who never gets any chocolate bars, except for once a year on his birthday.
Willy Wonka is the owner of the local chocolate factory and world famous for his confections, and his eccentricities. He shut down the factory when corporate spies started stealing his ideas and opened the factory again when he had trustworthy workers who wouldn't sell him out.
He announces to the world that he is going to allow five children, the finders of five golden tickets, to tour his factory and to see his secrets. As a result of this each child will get a lifetime supply of chocolate and candy. The world goes crazy. Everyone begins looking for golden tickets, and in the end five children, Charlie included, find the tickets and are taken on a tour of the factory. Charlie, however, doesn't find the ticket until his lot in life becomes so miserable that he is practically starved to death and only by chance finds a dollar bill on the sidewalk and buys two chocolate bars.
The book then takes the reader through a fantastic factory where there are rivers of chocolate and mountains of fudge (literally) and blizzards of confectioners sugar, and where one child is sucked up a tube, another is blown up into a giant blueberry, another thrown down a garbage shoot, and the forth is shrunken to one inch tall. Each child gets the punishment that fits the personality, and the name, based off of their lack of willingness to listen.
In the end Charlie is told that he … well, Charlie doesn't do to bad in the end. There's a glass elevator and frightened old people and you learn that little boys are stretchy and that there's a vitamin Wonka and…. Needless to say, it's a good book even if you're an adult, no longer the child, looking at the world through mostly adult eyes. I really enjoyed this one and found it a relaxing, and amazing, Sunday read. I think I put all of two hours of total reading time into the book… you might be able to push that to three since I kept having to pause to help people at church and during meetings and for other responsibilities.
I'm also on a Hitchcock kick, in case I haven't said that at all, or enough, and watched Rope the other day. My review on that, and a whole pile of other movies, coming soon… I hope.
Okay.
So, I finished reading Blowing My Cover by Lindsey Moran. I really liked this book. It did two things for me. The first was to realize that my personality is conducive with the personality that is necessary to succeed with the CIA. Second, that the CIA has problems that are so deeply rooted that it will probably take years and the destruction of the CIA - as an Intelligence body - before those problems are taken care of.
Basically, Lindsey grew up wanting to work for the CIA. Her father worked as a Naval Architect and, like many of our fathers who worked for Uncle Sam, really couldn't talk about the work he'd done. Therefore, as a child you begin to wonder if your father actually worked for the CIA or the FBI or some other organization that specialized in subterfuge. In my case I actually wondered if dad worked for the FBI mostly because I knew that he stayed stateside, we stayed stateside, and the description it seemed we were given to tell people about what he did was, "Federal Agent". As we got older that meant that he did things, "… like the FBI."
Most people would say, "So your dad's with the FBI," and instead of using all of the acronyms to describe what organization and investigative authority he worked through my reply would be, "Something like that."
Anyway, as the book begins it drew me into the similarities between my experiences and the Lindsey Moran's experience. We both grew up wanting to be like what we thought our dads were. We wanted to grow up to enter the CIA.
Like me Lindsey has gone through life jumping from one choice to another. She's studied at various prestigious universities and taught English in Bulgaria and writing in San Francisco and ended up, before entering the CIA, as a Fulbright Scholar back in Bulgaria. Lindsey gives me the impression that she has a flakey side to her that was, in part, put in line when she entered the CIA, went through all of the training, and eventually had to live under a pretty strict regime of intelligence and paranoia before realizing that what was important to her wasn't what was important to her employer.
The process of becoming a spy begins when you decide you want to work for the CIA. In her case that happened a couple of times. The first was right out of college (Harvard) and then again five years or so later when she felt that this was her way of giving a part of her life to public service - like serving in the armed forces. She took the Fulbright scholarship, got offered a job with the CIA, and spent time at The Farm learning how to be a traditional spy complete with dead drops and learning how to detect and evade tails and shadows.
Most of the book actually deals with her experiences going through CIA training. Most of her experience, with the CIA, seems to be at The Farm where she developed relationships and excelled at most things. Driving was one exception. She did not excel at the driving course.
The book begins with her trying to get in, continues through her experiences, and then spends the last quarter to a third with her experiences in Macedonia where she worked as a case officer and had taken over several informants that, we are told, were useless and that the CIA paid a lot of money to maintain. As the book moves toward its conclusion September 11, 2001 happened and Lindsey Moran began to wonder whether or not what she was doing was even useful. To answer this question she begins to talk about the experiences she had with the natives of Macedonia and the contacts she was developing for the CIA that had ties to terrorist cells and Al Qaeda. When she began the development process with these potential spies she was informed, from Washington, that she needed to cease and desist contact with them because they had ties to terrorists.
That's the problem. That was her problem with the CIA. The very people they are trying to protect were let down on September 11, 2001 and continued to be let down afterward because the old boys who had created and run the CIA wouldn't change their modus operandi enough to take into account the idea that we needed people with ties to terrorists in order to determine what was being planned in the terrorist communities and among the individual cells.
Lindsey Moran also talks about the final experiences with the CIA, her finishing up her work there, her decision to quit, and her meeting and eventually marrying her husband James. In the end, she discovers that what is really important to her, what she needs to be doing with her life, isn't what she's been doing.
This is a really good book. At the same time this book shares some of the details regarding what happens once you get into the CIA and what takes place once you are inside, the training involved, and finally what it means to be a spy.
Being a spy isn't what it's like in fiction or in the movies. It takes a lot of effort, it deals a lot with staying out late, drinking a lot of alcohol and spending time with people who are somewhat seedy or really seedy, who are trying to make a fast buck, who have nothing to offer but are desperate enough to make you think they do. Being a CIA case officer is not what the James Bonds or the Sams of the world make them out to be.
If you've ever been curious to know more about the guts of the United States intelligence community or thought about being a spy then this is the book for you. If you just want a good read then you should pick this book up. It doesn't take a lot of time and Lindsey Moran is a talented writer whose views and expression of those views help make what she is writing about intriguing and interesting.
Just finished reading Nick Hornby's, About a Boy. It is an excellent book.
The book begins by following Will. Will is a thirty-something single male who goes through relationships like most people go through underwear, jeans, or tubs of ice cream. In short, to Will, women are merely a means to an end. The end is sex. The means is filling time between waking up and going to bed.
Will is the son of the man who wrote one of the most famous Christmas songs. Therefore, the royalties that come in from artists performing his fathers song pay for whatever he needs. Music (Nick Hornby and music go hand in hand), clothes, nice cars, and other things. Almost immediately, we discover that Will is shallow, doesn't like children or Christmas, and has no interest in doing anything with his life. This guy sounds a lot like me.
To counterpoint Will we also have Marcus. Where Will is in his thirties Marcus is not even a teenager. His mum is separated from his dad (never married) and they moved, together, to London. In London Marcus discovered that the eccentricities that set him apart at his previous school as just another student really set him apart at his new school with most of the students thinking him insane or a little nutters. The differences between Marcus and Will are pretty stark.
Along with Marcus and Will is Fiona, Marcus' mother and Ellie, a girl at his school. The book jumps, back and forth, between Marcus' point of view and Will's.
Will is constantly trying to segregate himself from Marcus and his mother. Even though he met Marcus as a result of Fiona trying to commit suicide and failing (throw-up, Suzie - a friend, and other things that get in the way). At first Will felt that he could be a positive force in Marcus and Fiona's life, but because he had lots of experience doing nothing and being irresponsible he decided that was a waste of time and decided to call it off.
Marcus is convinced, at one point in the book that Will and Fiona would be perfect for each other. He said (and I paraphrase) that when two people are decent looking and single then there should be nothing that keeps them apart. To juxtapose this, he meets Ellie who is a rebel without a cause (literally) who wears a Kurt Cobain sweatshirt everyday and loves Nirvanna (Kurt Cobain is dead by the way and the book takes place in 1993 - you do the math). Because of Marcus' determination he starts to go around to see will several times a week.
Will, at some point in the book, realizes that what Marcus needs is a brother figure (who can mirror as a father figure on occasion) who can show him what it means to be a teenager.
This book was excellent. Not good enough to rocket to the top of my favorites list, but I identified with Will. There are real reasons why I am in my thirty's and unmarried. There are reasons why people get to this point and sit back, look at little children or married folk and begin to mutter things under their breath that can't be said in polite company. Don't personally know what polite company means, but at the same time I do know that some of the things that come out of my mouth around some people's children isn't polite to say, isn't appropriate, and has to be seriously edited for content.
Will reminds me of me. I do a lot of things that are dictated by circumstance. My stated desire is one thing and for whatever reason I allow the inevitable to happen. I allow things to happen that I would prefer not to happen. In the book Will is constantly trying to get Marcus to not be a part of his life and then he is. Will is trying to remove himself from responsibility and then it finds him. He doesn't want a relationship and one finds him. He makes fun of those who claim to be in love and finds himself in love.
Marcus, on the other hand, becomes less of a geek and more of a teenager. He stops being the good son. Starts to assert himself and has Will as a role model for someone who should be normal and who he should be able to emulate in social interactions. In the end Will recognizes that Marcus is this young man who brings people together, Fiona, Suzie, Ellie, Will, and others, and at the same time Will grows up and is the adult that is necessary to help Marcus and his mother through some pretty tough times.
The book was a total page-turner, which surprised me, and a much faster read than I thought it would be. As a result of reading the book I ordered (half.com) the movie that was based off it. I'm told it is good.
One of my favorite authors is Robert Littell. He wrote a book, that currently ranks as one of the best books I've read, called The Company. Recently, while perusing the mystery/thriller section of the local bookstore I came across one of his titles from about ten or so years ago. The title, The Once and Future Spy.
This is a good book. Not one of the greatest books I've read, but still a good book. Before jumping into the meat of the story I need to make an aside and say that the only book that has ever bothered me, after reading it, has weirded me out to the point that when I think about that book I still feel all odd and stuff, was The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. My problem with that book isn't that it's not well written but rather that it ends in such a way that I can't accept the outcome of the book.
With that said I found the intrigue and pace of the story to be really good. Since reading The Company I've had the opportunity to read several other of Littell's books. Most are not very long. In fact, outside of The Company none of the books are very long. However, length doesn't equate to whether or not a book is good. Everything I've read, so far, has been very good. The books are well written, paced appropriately, and carry the reader along in such a way as to make them read from beginning to end.
In The Once and Future Spy we follow a CIA analyst and programmer who has been listening in on telephone conversations from foreign nationals and some members of the U.S. Congress and press, named Silas Sibley and nicknamed The Weeder. Along with these individuals he is also listening in on the conversations and plans of his old college roommate, Wannamaker, who is also a Company man. Wannamaker has gotten himself into a potentially messy problem by working for the CIA without actually doing work for the CIA.
Wannamaker discovers, before the story begins, that there is a leak in his operation and has brought out of retirement a rather interesting Admiral and ex-chief of Naval Intelligence Operations, Toothacher.
Toothacher's sole purpose in life is to find the hole, kill the mole, and make sure that the operation goes off without a hitch while, for a pretty significant portion of the book, remaining in the dark about the operation. His sidekick is a math-wiz and grunt Huxstep who had worked for the Admiral before he'd been forced into retirement.
The story carries the reader into and out of Washignton D.C., New York City, and Boston where Weeder is allegedly being chased by a group of CIA operatives out to make sure he doesn't make public the operation they are trying to execute.
Here's where the story gets interesting. Weeder is convinced that this goes all the way up to the president, that Wanamaker is in on it, that his life is in jeopardy, and that people are out to kill him and have already tried. At the same time he meets a girl named Snow who is trying to help him find information about one of his ancestors (a Revolutionary War spy) while trying to make sure that he isn't caught by Wanamaker, the Admiral or anyone else. Snow gets a hold of a friend of hers who works for the U.S. Attorney Generals office who looks into it and discovers that Weeder left his post, is considered mentally unstable, and is on the run because The Company is about to put him into one of their hospitals. The evidence is compelling, but as the reader you are experiencing what Weeder, Snow, Wanamaker, and the Admiral are all experiencing and there is a question of doubt about the viability of the Weeder being insane.
The plot then thickens, there are more attempts on his life, Snow is involved, and eventually Weeder ends up on a ship, trapped, his life in danger and Snow re-enacts what he believes put him into danger by following the Admiral around Washington D.C. and finding his secret. A secret that I guessed early on and was not exactly happy to learn about when the story was winding itself down. Littell likes to point out, to the reader, that no matter how messed up a character is in fiction the people in real life are far more messed up than anything he could ever create. He has this one character in The Company who…. Let's just say he's pretty messed up and once you realize how you understand that Littell isn't trying to hide the nature of people.
By the time this story ends, though, you watch and wait as the companion story of Nate, the Revolutionary spy, finds himself in occupied New York City, gets married (sorta), discovers the British plans to attack Washington's troops, has sex, gets caught, is summarily tried and then condemned to die, before being hanged until he's dead.
When the story ends, though, you - as the reader - learn some rather disturbing things about Nate and about The Weeder. At the end of the book I was bothered. Not as bothered as I was after reading The Stepford Wives but still disturbed. The ending isn't what I expected and Littell does something with his characters that is completely unexpected. He has them guess on their very nature.
This was a good, quick, read. Not one of the best books I've read but still a pretty good book.
Let me begin by saying that I do have favorite books. They are, in no particular order, 'The Last Samurai' by Helen DeWitt, 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand, 'The Company' by Robert Littel and now 'Winner of the National Book Award,' by Jincy Willett. There are some books that come close to this list, 'The Count of Monte Christo' by Alexander Dumas and 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy with other ideas - more than the books - rounding out my list. For example, the idea behind 'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carol is absolutely fascinating to me and the ideas behind Pierce Anthony's 'Xanth' series intrigue the tar out of me as I peruse his latest dime store installment; however, the all time favorite books will probably remain, 'The Last Samurai,' 'Atlas Shrugged,' 'The Company,' and now 'Winner of the National Book Award.'
There is more to the reading and author list than what appears above. For example, I have favorite authors (though their books do not appear on my favorite books list). Robert Jordan, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Persig, etc. These are authors who, when they write something, I am more apt (than not) to almost run out and buy their books - quickly. That's important, not because they've written something that is earth-shattering, but that they write consistently good books (NOTE: there are some authors on the list that are dead).
With all of that said, I want to focus on 'Winner of the National Book Award' by Jincy Willett. 'Winner of the National Book Award' was absolutely, hands down, one of the best books I have read in a few years. The writing was sardonic, yet quick and well written. She uses a lot of 'large' words, which means that if you're not into words, don't have a large vocabulary and/or can't determine meaning from use, you will probably spend as much time looking at a dictionary for meaning as you are reading the book. On top of all that, the entire thing is written in the first person.
Basically the story follows Dorcas Mather as she tells the story of her sisters life, upbringing, their family, how they were born, and ultimately how her sister, Abigail, ended up where she is before the book even started. Dorcas has regretted the release of her sisters book, a book co-authored by one Hilda DeVilbiss, about the rise and fall of the passion between Abigail and Conrad Lowe. Conrad is a hater of woman and a womanizer who really uses women to his end and not because he has any respect for them or cares what they think. He was raised by a sadistic mother who was a Hollywood film star in the 1930's and an inveterate breaker of households. Conrad's father had been married, with children, to another woman in Boston, MA before meeting Conrad's mother - all characters are fictional or at least have been altered enough so that if there is any resemblance to real people it is masked in the fictional extremes these characters have achieved.
On top of all that, Dorcas is holed up in the town Library, where she works as the head librarian, ready to process in the new books, as a hurricane is threatening to walk over the state of Rhode Island. Her sister's book is one of them and she doesn't want to read it, didn't want to see it, felt she could ignore it long enough for it to go away, and ends up spending the day reading the book and telling her side of the story.
Each chapter, in Dorcas' retelling, is a chapter in the book and is often headlined by text from Hilda and Abigail's rendering. As the narration moves forward Dorcas shares what actually was happening at the time, how Hilda had gotten the information wrong, and how, in the end, Abigail was not as innocent of the crime as she was trying to get the D.A. and court system to believe. At the same time, Conrad had what was coming to him, coming to him.
We learn about Dorcas' relationship with Abigail; Abigail's daughter Anna; we learn about Conrad and his disdain for women; about Guy and Hilda, and about the small town of Frome, Rhode Island where all of this is taking place. We learn a lot about a lot of people because Jincy Willett is an amazing story-teller who weaves the entire scope of the story together in a somewhat seamless tapestry that narrates how the story went, what Dorcas felt about it, what Abigail felt about it, how it affected the people around them, and in the end who really mourns for the loss of one life.
'Winner of the National Book Award' is a rather cryptic title (subtitled: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather) that surrounds different characters who are all writers and who are all attempting to win the coveted prize of The National Book Award.
As I read the book it became very easy to get trapped in the narration and the characters. You, at least I, begin to see yourself in the very faces and flaws of each character. Do this, do that, feel this, feel that because, in some cases, it's what's expected of you and in other cases it's what's necessary to survive another day, night, week, month.
By the end of the book the reader is seduced (as is one of the characters) without ever realizing the seduction is actually taking place. 'Winner of the National Book Award' has truly leapt off the page into my consciousness and will be one of those books I return to again and again because of its simple, yet timeless, ability to tell a tale masterfully woven.
Okay, so, it's Friday and I am sitting in front of my computer having just gotten home from work where, at Borders ALL OVER the country they are honoring teachers by giving them an across the board (less for DVD's) 25% off on purchases made today, tomorrow, and Sunday. This is the second one I've worked, this is not one of those days I want to work, and still, at the end of the day, I came away about 15 cents an hour richer.
Still, work is work is work is work. That is a long run on sentence that doesn't really qualify as such; but then, I am recovering from having to deal with teachers all day. Teachers are inconsiderate and rude and they don't give a golly-gosh-damn that people know it. On top of that our Borders had a couple of folk musicians playing in the café, they were loud, I wasn't impressed, and I was happy to see the couple go.
Now for the fun of what I am doing: Another book review. I borrowed, yesterday, a copy of "Bras and Broomsticks" by Sarah Mlynowski. This is yet another young adult novel, though this time I was not attracted to two pumpkins being held in front of a balerina's chest whilst she danced across egg shells (don't think I added that last part in that review). Instead, I was drawn to the book by the name and the dust jacket which outlined a book about Rachel who has a sister named Miri, 14 and 12 respectively. They live with their divorced mother, dislike their divorced father's fiancé, oh and Miri has recently discovered that she's inherited the witch gene from her mother and now has the ability to cast spells.
The book was pretty good. Not too long. Like I said, I borrowed it last night and retur