Slower Reading

Well, I have read far fewer books so far this year. On one hand this makes me sad, on the other I have been reading many different books and stories. Rather than reading 2 books a week for class, I am reading short stories and developing lessons for them. I’m also reading a lot of books and articles about teaching, but that type of reading doesn’t tend to lead to full readings.

Then there is the fun reading.

Simply put, I am reading some very long books!

I started reading the Saga of the Seven Suns, by Kevin J. Anderson, last year. That is a heavy bit of reading! It took me 4 months to catch up and read the 5 books that had been published and now, 9 months later, the next two books are available. I have one of them and will probably finish it up over the next few weeks.

Last summer I read a number of books before getting bogged down in Snow Crash. This year I jumped right ahead and got stuck in a long book right away. I picked up a copy of Pandora’s Star before going to Maine and, after laying another sci-fi novel aside somewhere around New Jersey, I dived in. And I kept swimming. And gurgling right along. Now, three months, two audiobooks, and over 900 pages later I have finished! Wow, Peter F. Hamilton is certainly a prolific author. So. Much. Text! If I have time, I will try to post a review of the book in the next few weeks… though it is so long and complex that I don’t know if I will have time.

More posts soon. Been thinking on music and literature a lot recently.

-Otto

A Little Poem

Given the nature of this poem, I don’t think that the author would mind me posting it. This was found in the introduction to O Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun by Willard R. Espy.

Enjoy:

“I bring my bona fides forth
That all the world may marvel;
For I researched my facts in North,
Who borrowed his from Carvel,

Who owes his evidence to Morse,
Who filched from Connolly,
Whose source was Bevan, who of course,
Stole his research from me.”

-Willard R. Espy

-Otto

Free Book

Just a quick note to point you in the direction of Neil Gaiman’s blog where, in honor of its 7th anniversary, he intends to post the entire text of one of his novels… for free! Full details are available on the site. This week he is holding a vote to determine which novel will be released. Personally, I am rooting for Anansi Boys or Neverwhere… but right now it looks like American Gods might win out.

Go. Vote. And get yourself a free book.

-otto

48 for 2007

Only 48 books! I shame myself.

OK, perhaps that really is a respectable number. Not everyone reads anywhere near 48 books in a single year. This number only feels small to me because I remember reading twice as many when I was a teenager. Of course, back then I was a home-schooler with lots of time on my hands. And I was reading far more 200 page Hardy Boys Mysteries and Ladd Family Adventures. These days it is rare for a book that I read to have fewer than 300 or 400 pages. This list also excludes the thousands of pages that I read each year on the computer screen, as well as instructional manuals and guidebooks, which I peruse frequently, but do not count as fully read.

The List
Alphabetical by Author

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
-Douglas Adams

Hidden Empire
A Forrest of Stars
Horizon Storms
Scattered Suns
Of Fire and Night
-Kevin J. Anderson

Emma
-Jane Austin

The Rover
Oroonoko
-Aphra Behn

Lady Audley’s Secret
-Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Rule of Four %
-Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

Treason
A War of Gifts
-Orson Scott Card

2010: Odyssey Two
The Light of Other Days (with Stephen Baxter)
2061: Odyssey Three
Rendezvous With Rama
-Arthur C. Clark

Sailing Alone Around the Room
The Trouble with Poetry
-Billy Collins

The Moonstone
-Wilkie Collins

Next
-Michael Crichton

Moll Flanders
-Daniel Defoe

Great Expectations
-Charles Dickens

The Mill on the Floss
-George Elliot

Neverwhere
American Gods %
-Neil Gaiman

Mary Barton
-Elizabeth Gaskell

Julie of the Wolves
-Jean Craighead George

Mona Lisa Overdrive
Spook Country
-William Gibson

The Adventures of Eovaai
-Eliza Haywood

The Dark Path
-Walter H. Hunt

Velocity %
Forever Odd %
-Dean Koontz

Mainspring
-Jay Lake

The Book of Fate %
-Brad Meltzer

Paradise Lost
-John Milton

The Missionary
-Sydney Owenson

Making Money
-Terry Pratchet

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
-J.K. Rowling

Snow Crash
-Neil Stephenson

Gulliver’s Travels
-Jonathan Swift

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (I should get credit for reading this 5 or 6 times, as I read it with each of my 7th Grade English classes, plus reading ahead to prepare the lessons).
-Mark Twain

The Castle of Otranto
-Horace Walpole

Serenity: Those Left Behind (graphic novel)
-Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews & Will Conrad

All the Rage
-F. Paul Wilson

iWoz
-Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith

Of all the books that I read this year, I was most surprised, in a pleasant fashion, by the Saga of the Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. A scifi epic, currently comprised of six hefty novels (with one more to come), this series kept me entertained throughout the fall. I have yet to read book 6, but I will as soon as the local library acquires a copy (I see no point in purchasing it, when I do not own books 1-5. I will, perhaps, buy the set and re-read them when the final book comes out over the summer). I also enjoyed some of Neil Gaiman’s books. Much of his early work consisted of vaguely horrific comics (horror and comic both being a count against for me, as I don’t much enjoy either), and I will confess to being mildly creeped out by portions of Fragile Things, but not enough to stop me from wanting to finish the collection some time. Of the Gaiman books and short stories I have read, I would say that Neverwhere is my favorite (beware the poorly filmed BBC mini-series upon which it is based!).

Let us not forget the past. The Moonstone is one of the best detective stories I have ever read and, if you can tolerate the horribly depressing final chapter, Gulliver’s Travels is the height of imaginative satire. And if you can slog through it, or enjoy the language of epic poetry, Milton’s Paradise Lost is truly incredible (especially if you pause to remember that he dictated the entire poem after going blind). At the opposite end of things, if you ever win an argument that the entertainment industry has always been smutty, not just for the last few years, look no further than The Rover or Moll Flanders for an (un)healthy dose of sex, drugs and… well, no rock and roll, but only because it hadn’t yet been invented.

I could go on but, due to the lateness of the hour, I will close with a promise to soon post comments on my favorite, and least favorite, books of the year.

Now that we have begun a new year, I will begin a new list of books. I already have a stack to read and am very much looking forward to several of them. The only thing that is of concern to me is that I am torn between continuing to organize books by author or listing them in the order of completion. Perhaps I will do both. Or use parenthetical notation to indicate the order of completion.  There is still plenty of time to think about that though, as I do not anticipate finishing another book for a day or two.

Spook Country -William Gibson

Most certainly, this is a book that I will have to read again. Not because I loved it, but because I was so immensely disappointed that I can’t but think that I am wrong.

I have loved the work of William Gibson since I first encountered it in Neuromancer. From the opening lines, he had me: “The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel. ‘It’s not like I’m using’ Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. ‘It’s like my body has developed this massive drug deficit.’ It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke.’ Something about his descriptions, his characters, and the sheer madness of his settings captured me. I devoured everything I could find at the local library. The Bridge Trilogy utterly captivated me with its image an America and Japan brought to the brink of self-destruction by viral infections, natural disasters, failed government experiments, crime, and lawyers, only to be rescued and reformed through the emergence of sentient nanotechnology.

Later. Pattern Recognition was a brilliant, hypnotic depiction of the new world in which we find ourselves. A world where where Gibson’s cyberspace matrix has been rendered obsolete before it even existed. A post-9/11 universe deeply affected by the media and advertising, online video, blogs, and viral marketing (and all of this written before YouTube or the like even existed).

So you can understand why I would have high expectations for Gibson’s latest novel, Spook Country. All the more because I followed its writing closely on Gibson’s blog, where he posted brief excerpts over the course of the year leading up to publication.

The reason that I must read Spook Country again, after an appropriate interlude, is that the characters are certainly compelling and the story is interesting enough that I feel there must be something I am missing. The story follows three main characters (Hollis Henry, Tito, and Milgrim) as their lives twist through the worlds of locative art, international intrigue, and private revenge until everything collides on one eerily silent, radioactive night.

It is these characters that make the story worth reading, and will pull me back for another read.

I can’t think of much else to say about this book right now. I am simply too confused. Too disappointed in either the story, or my own lack of appreciation for it…

A War of Gifts -Orson Scott Card

NOTE: This review contains spoilers if you have not yet read Ender’s Game. If you are such a person, stop reading right now and go get a copy of Ender’s Game. Read it. Twice if you have time.

I admit: Ender Wiggen is one of my favorite characters in modern literature. What other character “saves” the world as a child and goes on to explain to all of humanity that the world didn’t actually need saving, and does such a complete job of it that future generations regard him as a villain. And then, after revealing the truth of the Formic War to humanity, he goes on to spend much of his life seeking the truth behind people’s actions and reconciling broken families and societies. Oh, and along the way his actions form the basis for a compassionate, humanist philosophy. And that brief summary hardly does him justice.

What I am getting at here is that I have every reason to either love or hate A War of Gifts, because if it is even acceptable I will eat it up, and if it is bad I will detest it as only a fanboy can.
It is a good story.

Now, I say story because A War of Gifts is hardly a book. Indeed, if I were to use formal literary terminology, I would have to call it a novella. The hardback edition that I read checks in at 126 pages, divided into 10 chapters.

The setting is Battle School (except for a brief introduction on Earth). Card introduces us to a new character named Zeck, a self-righteous little brat raised by an anti-technology Puritan minister with a mean streak. Like all the children at Battle School, Zeck is special. He has an eidetic memory and strong observational skills. Unlike the other children, Zeck refuses to fight. He won’t even participate in Battle Room exercises.  By his inaction, Zeck hopes to be deemed useless and returned home.  His teachers, of course, have different plans.

On the night of December 5th, Zeck witnesses two Dutch students observing Sinterklaas Day. Embittered by his self-imposed exile from the other students, and remember his father’s many sermons on the evils of Santa Clause, Zeck reports the boys to Colonel Graff. In response, the children of Battle School begin a campaign to spread good will and Christmas spirit.

On one hand, A War of Gifts is a Christmas story set in the Ender universe. Similar books come out every year, featuring popular detectives, sci-fi characters, and such.

That said, it is a very good little Christmas story.

Card gives his usual attention to detail and full, if over-psychological, character development. We even get a scene of young Ender helping to heal a wounded soul, which will be of interest to any fan who longed to know more of Ender’s emotional development during Battle School.

If you have never read the Ender books, or were only mildly entertained by them, this is probably not a book for you.  If, however, you find the Enderverse as deep and fascinating as I, you will not be disappointed.

Mainspring -Jay Lake

Look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is incomparably better arranged, and adequate to movements more admirable, than is any machine of human invention.
-Descartes

Many people have used the analogy of a clock to describe the universe. For some this is an argument in favor of a loving God, intimately involved in the creation of this complex universe in which we live. For others the clockwork precision of physics argues against any such spiritual elements. In Mainspring, Jay Lake makes the analogy inarguably real and physical. From his first description of the majestic brass curve of earth’s track curving upwards into the morning sky, to the terrible precision of the twenty mile wide gears, milled to incalculable precision by God’s own hand, which grind intractably along their way, bearing the earth along its orbit, there is no doubt that Lake has reinvented our word in a radical way. Even the angel Gabriel is wrought of clockwork metals, from his finely scaled brass limbs to the razor edged feathers of his wings.

Mainspring tells the story of Hethor, to whom the brass angel Gabriel has given the task of saving the world. The mainspring in the heart of the planet is winding down and someone, some human, must find the Key Perilous and journey to the south axis of the world to re-wind the stalling planet. Of course, as a 16 year old apprentice clockmaker, Hethor has no idea how he will reach his destination, let alone find a clockwork-Christian relic that everyone he asks considers to be little more than a legend. Undaunted (and given a jump-start by being kicked out of his master’s house), Hethor sets out on his quest. Along the way he will encounter fantastic creatures, majestic palaces, noble savages, and more than his fair share of treachery.

Setting his story in an alternate history of America (and lands to the south) in 1900, Lake constructes a world where Queen Victoria rules over all of North America by the might of her fleets of majestic airships and through the administration of horology obsessed politicians and clerics. All technology, and even life itself, is ultimately based on clockworks, steam, and “electricks.” Even the wild, unfallen peoples of the south (who have never seen a clock in their lives) speak in a rhythmic language that echoes the ticks, clicks, and whirs of God’s gear-driven earth. The combination of curiously modern, old-fashioned technology and breathless descriptions of wonders is strongly reminiscent of a well translated Jules Verne novel.

Many of the most compelling passages in Mainspring consist of brief descriptions of clockwork-infused technology and history. Cory Doctrow called the book a “thoroughly engaging blasphemy” in his back cover blurb. Blasphemy? I wouldn’t go that far. Certainly the story touches upon the supernatural, and reworks history and Christian teachings to reflect its horological absolute, but there is nothing more blasphemous here than a vague conclusion, which affirms the God’s role in creation while leaving unanswered the question of his continued interest in his cosmic wind-up toys.

That ending, and indeed the concluding four or so chapters of the book, are the only flaws in an otherwise fantastic story. Perhaps I am missing the point, but I was quite disappointed when the story took a turn for the magical. It was not all bad, indeed the final 10 pages more than made up for any flaws in the preceding chapters, but some scenes had me scratching my head in puzzlement. The most notable of these are the re-appearance of the voiceless winged “savages” and the entire visit to the misty city of nightmares (seriously Lake, that felt like a bloodied-up trip to The Island Where Dreams Come True, not a steampunk adventure). And while I think it is sweet and all having Hethor fall in love with a hairy Pygmy woman in an Edenic land (indeed, their love turns out to be key in the conclusion) the page or so of sexual awakening felt perfunctory and did little to advance the story or characters.

Complaints aside, I certainly enjoyed reading Mainspring. Lake has created a truly interesting world, one that blends history, fantasy, and philosophy personified into a single, smoothly ticking literary machine.

Of Fire and Night -Kevin J. Anderson

Of Fire and Night is the fifth book in Kevin J. Anderson’s monumental Saga of the Seven Suns. After four equally dense volumes, one might expect Anderson’s imagination to wain, his plot to trip over its own entanglements, but that it not the case. In fact, Of Fire and Night is the best book since the series started in Hidden Empire.

I dare not give away too much of the plot, since following the twists and turns of galactic politics and warfare, and discovering the fates of numerous characters, remains one of the most compelling aspects of the story. On earth, King Peter and Queen Estarra continue to struggle against Chairman Basil Wenceslas. The Chairman is growing desperate, and perhaps psychologically unstable, in his efforts to maintain control of the Hansiatic League. Readers who have awaited Peter’s grasp for real power will not be disappointed. The roamers begin to recover from EDF attacks by setting up an blackmarket trade network on abandoned Hansa colonies. Mage-Imperator Jora’h of the Ildirans struggles to repair his empire after the Hyrillkan rebellion and outwit the hydrogues, who have demanded that the Ildirans aid in destroying humanity. We also learn much more about the ancient relationships (and origins) of all four elemental races, as well as some tantalizing (and downright terrifying) tidbits about the Klikiss and their traitorous robots.

Of Fire and Night is not perfect. While not as disorienting as, say, Horizon Storms or Scattered Suns, the timeline in Of Fire and Night moves rapidly and can be difficult to grasp (I was surprised to learn that the Rob Brindle and the other human prisoners in the hydrogue city sphere had been heal captive for three years and that at least a year has passed since the hydrogues ravaged Theroc). Anderson is a gifted writer with a talent for portraying the plights of individuals and nations, but he somehow fails in describing a key battle between fifty elite silver berets and thousands of rampaging solder compies. The scene is set up well, but when it comes right down to the action I can paraphrase it as “the scientists walked into the factory with fifty soldiers. Forty-seven of the soldiers dies on the way to the control room” without removing much of Anderson’s prose.

But to complain about this book requires nit-picking. With Of Fire and Night, Anderson succeeds in creating yet another brilliant novel which blends the best of sci-fi and fantasy. He even succeeds in trouncing one enemy to humanity (and the Ildirans), while introducing several others in a believable manner. And never, in all the previous books, have an old woman and a compy been such effective harbingers of doom as they are on the last page of this volume.