House of Rain

House of Rain by Craig Childs

Category: History (sort of) Grade: A-

Childs has really written three different books in putting House of Rain together. Two of them are implied in the book's subtitle - "Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest" - while the third is sort of a side effect.

The first book - the one that caused me to buy the biij - is about the Anasazi. For those of you who aren't up on your Native American history, the Anasazi were a civilization of cliff dwellers in the southwest -- southern Colorado and northern New Mexico/Arizona. Legend has it that, one day in the 15th century, the entire people just disappeared. Its been a major area of research by archaeologists in that part of the world. Its hard not to be stunned when you seen these incredible constructs. Probably the most well known is in Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado, but these amazing little cities, or at least their ruins, appear all over the place. Its not completely clear what the cliff dwellings were used for - living space, defensive installations, religious sites or, most likely, a combination of all the above. Childs, in this book, ends up talking to lots of prominent archaeologists, and gets many theories on the table of what happened. What comes out is a picture of a migratory people who moved back and forth across the landscape and, seemingly, ended up heading further and further south, mostly as a result of drought. It remains a mystery, but probably not the cut-and-dried "disappearance" that is the popular story.

The second book - the side-effect book - tells the story of the methods that the archaeologists use to do their research. In a lot of ways, this was the most interesting of the three books. Its amazing what can be gleaned (guessed?) by looking at the design and decoration of pottery. Practical stuff carries a very different message than ornamental (and, therefore, probably religious). By tracking, where pieces of pottery show up and when, archaeologists can get a pretty good picture of migration patterns of various peoples. Other techniques that I found especially interesting:

• by taking a core sample of wooden pillars and beams, scientists can analyze the rings from the source trees and use them to provide pretty good accuracy as to when the construction took place.
• in one of my favorites, scientists take advantage of the fact that isotopes in teeth are deposited as the teeth are created, but isotopes in bones turn over about once a decade. By using the teeth and bones found in ruins, scientists can identify where people were born (teeth) and where they migrated to (bones) - again providing a method for tracking migration

The third book actually turns out to be the most interesting. It's essentially Childs' journal as he walks the Southwest from Native site to site. His bio on the jacket lists him as a naturalist and adventurer and this definitely comes through in his narrative. He talks about following hunches and traces of water as he wanders through the wilderness sometimes going days or even weeks without other people. He talks about coming out of the wilderness in to pueblos or Mexican villages afters days of walking. His lyrical writing really makes you feel like you're going along with him. Some of the writing is just plain beautiful. I thought he was going to fall in to a common writer's trap at the end of the book when, in the fourth chapter from the end, he writes a perfect ending for the book. Like some, less than successful writers, I was disappointed that, after that perfect ending, he kept going. To my surprise, the ending of the next chapter was just as good as were the ends of the last two chapters.

If you have any interest in Native history, archeology, early civilizations or just good writing, this is a book you might enjoy.

The Looking Glass Wars

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

Category: KidLit Grade: B+

I tend to be a sucker for books like this. Beddor has taken the story everybody knows of Alice in Wonderland and written a fantasy (aimed at teens) that purports to tell the "real" story. It turns out, according to Beddor, that Lewis Carroll actually mangled the story told to him by Alyss Heart (even misspelling her name). Alyss ended up in Victorian London after escaping from Wonderland during a the battle in which her Aunt Redd forcefully took the crown of the Queen of Hearts from her sister, Alyss's mother. Carroll's silly version does, however, turn out to be just enough of a clue for the head of Heart Security, Hatter Madigan (get it?), to find Alyss and help her get back to Wonderland to reclaim her crown.

OK, I grant you it sounds silly, but its actually a lot of fun. Beddor has used the characters of Carroll's book as a a starting point to create some great characters and a really amazing world in which people travel by looking glass, card soldiers are real and the main aristocratic families of the world are the Hearts, the Spades, the Clubs and the Diamonds. The story is engaging, especially when it has characters from Wonderland trying to make their way in "our" world. Beddor gets a little carried away when he's over describing some of the weapons in the world and that kept him from getting an A, but he's definitely got my attention and I eagerly await volume two of this trilogy.

Trouble

Trouble by Jesse Kellerman

Category: Fiction Grade: F

This was a lay down. Jesse, the son of authors Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, doesn't have any where near their talent. He relies on shock value to keep the reader interested and it doesn't work. The book tells the story of a surgical intern who, supposedly saves a woman's life from a street attack by killing her attacker. There's plenty of nauseating detail about surgical procedures. If that weren't enough, the woman he saves (sorry for the spoiler) turns out to be a masochistic psycho-chick. The descriptions of violent sex finally turned me off completely and I put the book away. Only go here if you've got a really strong stomach (and don't tell me that you decided to read the book - I don't want to know).

Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid

Palestine; Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

Category: International Affairs Grade: B

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this review. I don't usually talk politics publicly - its really a no-win thing to do. Former President Carter has just been lambasted by the main stream press and American Jewish leaders. There's a lot wrong with this book, but the reaction reminds me a lot of the broad inter-generational attitude in the 60s summed in the bumper sticker slogan - "America - Love it or Leave it". Alan Dershowitz commented on Carter's book - "he blames everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians". Unfortunately, as in the 60s, there's a strong push, in the United States, to take the opposite view. The strength of the American Jewish lobby has defined the slightest anti-Israel statement as fundamentally anti-Semitic. Disagreements and discussions that are fairly common within the Israeli people - settlements or no settlements, land for peace, the wall - are condemned without discussion in the United States.

There is strong international support, reflected by repeated UN resolutions and repeated multi-party agreements, that Israel, as a country has a right to exist in peace. Carter never suggests otherwise. While his biases are clear and, as I gather from a little research, sometimes wrong, his fundamental point seems simple and, to me, pretty obvious. This area of the world will never know peace unless some just solution is found for the million plus refugees that have been created by the creation and expansion of Israel. Whether the expansion is justified, and what the Israeli borders should be doesn't change this basic fact. Maybe expelling these people from their homes and settling them in foreign countries, long term refugee camps or occupied territory is a necessary evil for the long term security of the Israeli people. It doesn't change the fact that a million rootless people are a permanent breeding ground for unrest and international terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is not a battle that can be won with missiles and tanks. Its a hearts-and-minds battle. Creating a permanent underclass in the region is not a viable solution.

One of the best things about the 60s was that it taught people that love of country did not require unconditional acceptance. Rather, the survivability of democracy requires constant skepticism about the things done in our names. The lesson for today is that, especially to an American Jew, support for Israel can not demand blind allegiance. Don't accept the branding that Carter has received. Read the book for yourself; do the research; make up your own mind. Otherwise, don't criticize.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Category: Classic Fiction Grade: A

And so we continue with the effort to try to read some of the classics that, when we had to read them as kids or college students, we hated.

Almost everybody knows the basic premise of this book -- painting ages, real person doesn't. The theme has been used repeatedly in various formats, but this is the first time (or at least the first time I remember) that I read the original. The first really surprising thing is that the book reads like it was written last year, not 115 years ago. I guess it shows that true "wit" is ageless. Wilde is an amazingly good writer. Wilde was one of the leaders in promoting a hedonistic, i.e. pleasure first, lifestyle in late 19th century England. Of course, the homosexual undertones of the book had to be masked enough that publishers would accept his book for publication. Wilde eventually ended up imprisoned because of a homosexual affair he had about five years after writing this book.

The common view of the book - an aging painting leaves the subject young and beautiful is actually only half the story. As the book develops, the painting becomes far more than a stand in for Gray's beauty. It becomes first his conscience, then a repository for all the less-than-beautiful things that make up Gray's hedonistic life. It's unusual in that, essentially, Wilde ends up condemning the life that he himself lived.

This is one of the books that will encourage you to continue finding all the classics that you really should read before you die.

The Ancestor's Tale

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins

Category: Science Grade: B+

Well, we have a first. Occasionally, Dan will recommend a book to me and I've learned over the years that he likes to read on a different intellectual plane than the rest of us. I've tried reading Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess and just couldn't get going. I guess they fly right over my head. But finally...

Writing a good book about science for a lay audience is really tough. Most scientists (or engineers or musicians or just about anybody), have their own jargon. Stripping out the jargon so us normal people don't get lost without stripping out the content at the same time is a task that most science writers just aren't up to. Most science books I've tried to read go to one of two extremes - they either read like children's books or they read like textbooks. Neither approach is likely to hold somebody's interest.

Dawkins has really accomplished something in this book. He's managed to explain evolution in an interesting and engaging way that keeps you reading for some 600+ pages. He's used two gimmicks to frame the science that are, in large part, responsible for keeping things approachable. First, he tells the story of evolution backwards. That is, he starts with humans and works backward through time chronicling each different group of living things from which our evolutionary path sprang. He speculates about what he calls our concestors - a creature that is, possibly, a common ancestor of us and the newly joined branch. It takes a little getting used to the fact that time is moving backwards but, given the way evolution works, each step is relatively small (in the grand scheme).

The second gimmick is to use Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a model for his story telling. At each branch point, Dawkins picks one of the creatures from the new branch and uses that creature to give us a relevant and almost always interesting lesson.

First thing I have to say about this book -- if you can read this and come away without a firm conviction that evolution is the way things happened, you're just not paying attention. Although its called the "theory" of evolution, there's so much documented evidence, so many interesting experiments, that its just inconceivable that evolution isn't a good model of how the earth turned in to the environment that we know. With the time frames we're thinking about here - hundreds of millions of years - of course, we'll never have unchallengeable proof of the theory, but its so elegant and fits what we do know so perfectly that, while there may be more and more details that we discover with better research tools, the framework of evolution is the way things happened.

Think about simple things - front, back, up, down, left and right. Most animals that we're familiar with have a front and a back. Since most animals move to find food, its logical that animals who had their food intake portal (call it a mouth) in the "front", would be more likely to survive to adulthood and breed. Once that happens, animals who's waste removal portal is the farthest from their mouths - i.e. where it won't contaminate their food supply - are, again, more likely to breed. Similarly, if you think about most environments, up is very different from down. Attacks from predators are more likely to come from "up" as is light. "Down" is usually somewhat more protected and somewhat darker. So, creatures with protection like a shell or spikes, on the "top" will breed. If you think about most fish, they tend to be darker on the top than the bottom. This would seem to be because, given that light comes from "up", this kind of shading provides better camouflage. It just makes sense if you've got millions of years to breed for the most effective bodies. Oh, and left and right? For almost all animals, left and right don't pose different threats or advantages so most animals are side-to-side symetrical!

This isn't an easy book to read. Even though Dawkins has definitely made it approachable, there's a lot of long, Latin names to get through and even a fair amount of math in some sections. If you like science, though, this is a terrific broad brush view of evolution with a lot of biology, biochemistry and even some physics thrown in.

One final note - if you're a creationist and are easily offended, skip this book. Dawkins is convincing enough that he'll make you feel silly and, on occasion, he does rub it in a little. But, I have to say, if you're a creationist because of a belief in a God who created all this - wouldn't you really rather believe in a God that could design an incredible system like evolution than a God that could make a platypus?

Distribution change

Folks -- I'm changing the way these reviews get delivered to your mailbox. You should see almost no difference. Sometime in the next half hour or so, you should get another post using the new method. If you don't see that post, check your "junk mail" folder to see if the email was flagged as junk and tell your spam filter that it's a legit email. If you don't see the message there either, drop me an email and I'll try to figure out what's going on.

The Hunters

The Hunters by W.E.B. Griffin

Category: Military Fiction Grade: A

This can be a really short review since, at this point, either you read Griffin or you don't. I counted up and its pretty clear that I've read more books by this guy than anybody else I read. He's written 38 books and I've read all 38 - all broken in to series of 6-10 books; all with military themes. They are uniformly well written and entertaining, whether he's talking about World War II, Korea, Viet Nam or even, in one series, stories of the Philadelphia police department.

The Hunter is the third book in the "Presidential Agent" series. It takes place now and involves a special group of agents, led by Charlie Castillo, who work directly for the President and do jobs that aren't quite within the standard operating procedure of existing intelligence organizations or, occasionally, within the law. Castillo and his crew travel all the world turning over rocks to deal with the things that crawl under them.

Griffin's books aren't "high literature", but I'll keep buying them and reading them as soon as they come out. Hopefully, he's got another 38 books in him.

Walt Disney

Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

Category: Biography Grade: A

So, in the middle of reading this book, Liz posed the question to me - "Why do read biographies?". Good question. Ultimately, a biography is no different from any other book -- it needs to be well written, tell a good story and cover a topic that's interesting. The added plus, to anybody that likes to read history, comes when the author uses the framework of a biography to make a personal story out of the times when the subject lived. Most of the time, the subject of a biography has had some kind of major impact on the world around and has, in turn, been impacted by the things that happen in the world during his or her life. If the times are interesting and the impact is large, then you've got the potential for a great book. If a talented writer gets their hands on the story, then a biography can be full of insights that you don't find in a broader history of the times.

It's hard to imagine anyone in the arts that, ultimately, had more impact on the world than Walt Disney. My generation grew up watching him on Sunday nights showing us clever animations, interesting live-action stories and, of course, Davy Crockett. Our children's generation grew thinking of Disneyland and DisneyWorld as the most sought after vacation destination. It's pretty amazing when you think of all the "firsts" that can be attributed to Disney's company and, as you learn in this book, really to Walt himself -- first personality-based animation, first feature length animation, first "theme" park and on and on. Throughout the 50s and most of the 60s, he was America's Uncle Walt.

Fortunately, Gabler is a great writer. He's clearly done his homewhere, producing 600+ pages of detail. However, he's good enough at what he does to know that, for all the "firsts", this had to be a personal story of one man. Gabler spends a lot of time looking for the motivation behind Disney's ambition. Disney turns out to be, according to Gabler, somewhat insecure and working hard to correct for a childhood during which, he felt, he had little or no control over his own life. For him, the animations became a process where Walt was building worlds to his own specs over which he had complete control. For the early works, especially Snow White, the first feature length animated feature, Walt had his fingers on every part of the project. He could be viscious when he had to be to protect his vision of where the project was going. He pretty much never worried about money -- that was his brother Roy's problem. In fact, he worried so little about money, that company was almost always on the brink of failure until the parks started to open. The parks were Walt's ultimate effort to create a complete physical world where he could be God. He actually had an apartment above a store front on Main Street at Disneyland where he frequently stayed so he could observe.

Surprisingly, you don't learn a lot of negative stuff about Disney although you do suspect that Gabler may be playing down parts of that. Walt was definitely a tyrant on any project that he thought was worthy of his personal attention. As I've said, he had no real concept of money. In the mode of many artists, he wanted perfection and didn't really care, at least for the first couple of decades, whether Roy could manage to turn a profit as long as there was funding for his projects. He became very conservative and a staunch anti-Communist in his later days -- driven primarily by the animators strike at the studio. Walt needed the "communist conspiracy" to deflect what he ultimately felt was a betrayal by his friend's and co-workers.

This book and learning about Disney's life is probably not going to appeal to anybody much younger than 50. While the story is good and his impact was huge, the "I lived through it" is part of the appeal to a reader.

Oh - and the one downside of reading biographies? You know how they end. If you manage to push through a long detailed biography, its primarily because you formed an attachment of sorts to the subject. When the subject eventually dies, you actually feel it personally.

The Shape Shifter

The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman

Category: Mystery Grade: B

This is Hillerman's 20th mystery novel centered on the Native American community. He has done two series - one featuring Joe Leaphorn and the other featuring Jim Chee, both Navajo tribal policeman. A couple of years ago, Hillerman brought the two characters together and the books since then have featured, or at least had appearances by both. Leaphorn, newly retired in this book, was sent as a young child to a school designed to integrate Native children in to the broader culture. Part of that education was designed to wean these children away from their own Navajo culture so, as its represented, Leaphorn is fairly assimilated and extremely skeptical of Navajo legends. Chee, on the other hand, is much younger and is trying to simultaneous be a policeman in the modern world and a Navajo shaman who knows the old ways.

Unfortunately, this book, while good, focuses on Leaphorn, with Chee only making a token appearance. What that means is the book is a fairly standard detective novel without much of dipping in to Navajo lore - the thing that makes most Hillerman books interesting. The story itself is a good one involving a "cold case" that Leaphorn starts looking in to mostly because he's bored with the retired life. The cold case fairly quickly becomes a current case with the commission of new crimes, but Leaphorn continues to work the case unofficially.

Bottom line -- nothing wrong with the book. It's entertaining and a good, fairly short diversion. It's just not the kind of multi-cultural story that Hillerman's fans have come to expect. Leaphorn is probably a character who has played himself out. It's time for Hillerman to focus on Chee and his new wife, Bernadette, also a policewoman. Hillerman can get enough of his traditional vs. modern tension between the newlyweds. Put Leaphorn out to pasture.

Hopefully have the problem fixed

Folks -- not sure how long this distribution list has been broken. Apparently, a change got made to prevent spam from being sent to the whole list and, when that happened, it stopped sending any of the posts out to everybody. Sorry.

All of the reviews for the past few months are still out there. You can always look at the whole blog by going to mseriff.blogspot.com. If you receive this email, then you should start getting the reviews sent to you directly via email again. As always, if you'd rather not get them, I'll be happy to take you off the list.

A quick overview of the reviews that you probably didn't get:

Title/Author/Category/Grade
Pillar of Fire/Branch/History/A-
The Road/McCarthy/Novel/C
Variable Star/Heinlein&Robinson/Sci Fi/B
The Wayward Bus/Steinbeck/Novel/B+
Timothy Leary/Greenfield/Biography/B-
Glass Books of the Dream Eaters/Dahlquist/Novel/A
The Innocent Man/Grisham/True Crime/B-
Thunderstruck/Larsen/History/A-
The Fourth Bear/FFord/Novel/B+
Audacity of Hope/Obama/Political/A-

In theory, you should be able to click on the title of the book to pull up the full review.

The Audacity of Hope

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Category: Political/Memoir Grade: A-

Every indication is that Barack Obama is going to emerge as one of the primary political leaders of the next decade whether he runs for President next time or not. Because of that alone, I'd recommend anybody interested in where the country is going pick up a copy of this book. Whether you agree with Obama's politics (for the most part, I do) or not, his thoughts are going to be a big part of framing the debates of the next few years.

That said, the other reason to read Obama is that he's just an amazing writer. His first book, Dreams of My Father, is incredible, especially since it was written before he became a politician. This new book is really serving a very specific purpose and you have to remember that as you read. That purpose, of course, is to set Obama on the path to the Presidency. He's not quite as candid as he was in his first book, but, for a politician there really seems to be a lot of soul baring going on.

His chapters on the constitution and politics are written by a politician. They're well constructed, informative and give you a good idea of his position on a lot of issues and also a good glimpse of what his style might be. Of course, he has relatively little power right now, so it'll be very interesting to see if his, centrist, listen-to-everybody, comprising style would last when he's got his fingers on the button.

To get a better idea of his ability as writer, though, pay special attention to the chapters on faith and family. Its really beautiful writing. If the President thing doesn't work out, he's definitely got a future as a writer.

This book ended by making me hope Obama does decide to declare his candidacy. I'm pretty sure at this point I'd support him, but, whether you would or not, you'll see that an Obama candidacy would really raise the quality of the discussion during the election. Here's hoping that the other candidates rise to his level instead of sucking the soul out of this guy.

The Fourth Bear

The Fourth Bear by Jasper FFord

Category: Nursery Crime Grade: B+

Really hardly worth reviewing this one. At this point, you're either reading Jasper Fforde or you're not. He has two series going. The first is the Thursday Next mysteries. These feature a police force that is able to go in and out of literature. Makes for some interesting twists and makes you feel pretty literary, if you get the references.

The Fourth Bear is the second book in Fforde's "nursery crime" series. These are sendups of police procedurals. They focus on the detective Jack Spratt - yes, of "eats no fat" fame. In this world, nursery characters coexist with "real people" and, for the most part, their actions follow the pattern. E.g. Spratt really doesn't eat any fat. His first wife, of the "no lean" fame, is dead and his second wife doesn't know that Jack is a nursery character.

The first book, The Big Over Easy, about the murder of Humpty Dumpty, was cute and entertaining. This one isn't quite as good, mainly because this is really a one joke series, but it still holds up enough to be enjoyable. Spratt is investigating the apparent murder of Goldilocks and it seems to have something to do with the recent escape of the notorious physo-killer, the Gingerbread Man. No, that's not a nickname -- he's eight feet tall and four inches thick...

OK, its really starting to sound pretty stupid, but its fun. If you haven't read Fforde before, I'd probably recommend starting with the Thursday Next series. You'll either think its the stupidest thing you've ever read or, like me, you'll be hooked and will add Fforde to your "always buy" list.

Thunderstruck

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

Category: History/True Crime Grade: A-

OK, so right after telling you I don't like true crime novels, here comes a good review for a book that is half crime non-fiction. Sorry.

Larson seems to have stepped in to a really interesting way to combine stories. He picks some major crime and some contemporary major historical event and weaves them together in to a non-fiction gem. He kind of did this in his first book, Isaac's Storm, a great book about the early 20th century hurricane that destroyed most of Galveston. He really mastered the technique in his second book, Devil in the White City. In that book, he interweaves the story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with the story of one of the first known serial killers. Great book if you haven't read it.

Although the critics haven't been as kind to Thunderstruck, I thought it was right up there with Larson's previous books. The historical part of the book tells the story of Marconi and the development of wireless communications. Its actually a really interesting story that highlights the war between scientists and inventors, international business competition and even a little about the impact of business startups on marriages. Its really something that I new almost nothing about and it could have been an interesting book on its own.

True to his style though, Larson draws you in to the story of Hawley Crippen, a patent medicine salesman (among other things). This was apparently a very famous murder case at the time. Crippen ended up being one of Scotland Yard's big investigations (and more successful that the previous one - Jack the Ripper). It was also the first big murder that was followed all over the globe thanks to Marconi's new invention.

Larson's style is light. He's a storyteller not a historian. Doesn't really matter whether you come to this book because of the murder story or the Marconi story, you'll enjoy it either way.

The Innocent Man

The Innocent Man by John Grisham

Category: True Crime Grade: B-

I'm not crazy about true crime books, so maybe I'm biased on this one, but I really think Grisham should stick to his fiction. He has definitely done a lot of research on this crime - a wrongful conviction that took place in Oklahoma in the early 70s. He's able to include lots of dialog to make this a really quick read.

There are two basic problems with the book. First and foremost, the story around the crime and the trials just isn't all that interesting. To make matters worse, the second problem is that Grisham pretty explicitly tells us how its all going to work within the first few pages. He then reinforces the direction with his comments and tone thoughout the book. There's just no suspense at all. Ultimately, I think that's why I don't like this kind of book. It takes a really talented writer to make you interested in a trip to a place you already no about. It can be done. If you want a good example of this genre, try Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song.

Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist

Category: Fiction Grade: A

This novel is pretty hard to categorize, but I'll try. Take 4 parts historical fiction, 3 parts spy/action fiction, 2 parts science fiction and 1 part (or maybe half a part) of romance novel, mix them together and you'll this terrific first book by Gordon Dahlquist. Its definitely one of the more original plot lines I've read in quite a while.

I'm not going to say a whole lot about the story since half the fun of the book is slowly figuring out what's going on. It takes place in Victorian England. The fact that there are trains but no cars, slots in to the late 19th century. The three stars of the book are a recently jilted young woman, a German court doctor to a visiting prince and a street tough for hire. They independently stumble on a strange plot that has something to do with the minerals found on the woman's former fiance's estate that is processed in to a beautiful blue glass with strange attributes. Without giving away too much, I can tell you that the breakup of the woman's engagement, the doctor's loss of his prince and the street toughs most recent job all have to do with events that surround the blue glass.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll remember a book from last summer called The Stolen Child. If you picked that one up and liked it, give this a try. It's likely to appeal to the same reader. For most of the book, the fantasy/science fiction is pretty subtle so you don't have to be a Tolkien fan to like this.

One quick comment on the mechanics of the author put this book together. There are a lot of books out there where, apparently, the author assumed that the reader would devote his life to reading from the time he picked up the book until the time he puts it down. Long chapters; no intra-chapter breaks -- i.e. no logical place to stop when its time to turn out the light. Dahlquist gets it right here -- the book is broken in to bite sized pieces. Chapters tend to run long but, there's a defined stopping point every couple of pages. Wish more authors would do this.

Here comes catch up

I haven't forgotten you guys! Between company and my new Playstation 3, I haven't gotten to the keyboard to review any of the books I've read over the last 3 or 4 weeks, so you're about to get a short flood (well, 5) reviews. There are definitely some good ones in the list so take a close look if you're looking for reading material.

By the way, the PS3 is incredible. Amazing graphics and the games are really full blown "you're in it" movies. We've come a long way since Pong!

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary, A Biography by Robert Greenfield

Category: Biography Grade: B-

I think it kind of sums up Timothy Leary's life when you realize that pretty much nobody under the age of 30 today has any idea who he was. The "world-changing" psychedelic movement really came to nothing. I can't remember the last time I heard about LSD in any discussion other than nostalgic ones. According to Greenfield (and not a big surprise), Leary was an extraordinarily egotistical guy who went wherever the wind blew him, as long as it kept him in the public eye -- from Harvard professor, to LSD-advocate, to new-age guru, to prison escapee, to revolutionary and, all the time, to huckster.

The book somehow does manage to maintain your attention even though, viewed in hindsight, Leary's life never really amounted to much. Its easily summed up as "find a substance - take it - see what happens". Its not a very flattering biography. It does, however, include side trips to look at most of the interesting names from the 60s - Allen Ginsburg, Jerry Garcia, Jerry Rubin, Stokely Carmichael, etc. It would have been a better book if Greenfield had spent a little more time on these other folks around Leary that really made the 60s what they were. Again, you're left with the feeling that Leary was just a sideshow.

Its hard to recommend this book to anybody that wasn't a young adult in the 60s. Without that basis it'll probably bore you to tears. With the 60s as an "as-lived" background, especially if, unlike me, you were in to the drug culture/psychedelic movement, you'll probably find it interesting.

The Wayward Bus

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

Category: Fiction Grade: B+

This'll be a pretty short review. John Steinbeck is, in my mind, the best novelist ever. While this book isn't quite up to the standards of classics like Of Mice and Men, East of Eden or Grapes of Wrath, its still classic Steinbeck. Steinbeck writes terrific stories but his strength is in the way he creates characters that you feel like you know and he does it in the briefest, most visual way possible.

Just one example of Steinbeck's efficiency. In describing Juan Chicoy, the lead character, he says "He walked as though he were going to some exact spot." Think about.

If you haven't read Steinbeck, start.

Variable Star

Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson

Category: Science Fiction Grade: B

I've been reading science fiction for a long time. The time I started - late 50s/early 60s - was really pretty much the golden age of the genre. The best author of the day was clearly Isaac Asimov, but right up there with him was Robert Heinlein. He probably wrote the best single sci-fi book of the time (maybe of all time), Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein has been gone for a while now, but a couple of years ago, his literary executor discovered among Heinlein papers, notes and a detailed outline for a novel that had never been written. The Heinlein estate hired Spider Robinson, an accomplished writer in his own right, to put together a full length novel based on the outline. The result is Variable Star.

The book isn't bad. It's not up there with the best of either Heinlein or Robinson, but it's very readable. It's pretty hardcore "space opera" - space ships, colonies headed to the stars, exploding planets. It's fairly cerebral with not a whole lot of action. Interestingly, for a science fiction novel, one of the themes is music as the eternal language. Overall, a fun read.