Book Review

Wait…Is There Magic?

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I had been hearing good things about Ann Patchett and so when I walked by the book share at work and saw The Magician’s Assistant, I decided to give it a try. I didn’t know much about either the author nor the novel except that I was supposed to read her, so I was quite surprised when I started reading.

First off, the book starts with the magician’s death–and not in any spectacular fashion, but a brain aneurysm. And then Sabine, his assistant for over 20 years and his wife for less than 2, is left to deal with the loss of the man she always loved, but who was gay. So there wasn’t much magic, except for some dreams that I’m not sure were supposed to be simply her subconscious trying to help her cope, or an actual spiritual experience and she was connecting with her dead husband’s dead lover. On top of dealing with this loss, she also comes to find out that her husband had lied about his family: they were not dead, but living in Nebraska. And they want to get to know her and, through her, the life their son led.

But beyond this rather odd set-up, the writing was beautiful. I didn’t want to put the book down because it did such a wonderful job spinning the fragile world that Sabine found herself in. And there was just enough hint of magic to keep it from becoming too heavy. In fact, I feel the whole novel can be summed up in how she describes Sabine during a particular magic trick…levitation. She had to hold herself completely rigid and was under incredible stress in order to make it look like she was effortlessly floating on air.

The whole experience was a rather pleasant surprise and I’d definitely suggest reading at least this novel. And now I need to go track down Bel Canto as I’ve been told that’s her best–though after this novel, I can’t imagine how things can get better.

Cover of The Magician's Assistant

More Murakami

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Alright, since I loved 1Q84 so much, I thought I’d tackle one of Murakami’s smaller novels, Kafka on the Shore. In this novel, we are again following a dual storyline (not sure if this is a pattern in his novels yet or not, since I’ve only read two and two data points does not a correlation make) but this time it is a young boy who has run away from home and an unusual older gentleman who talks to cats and seems to be a conduit for the young man’s actions. They never come together in the book, except in that their actions work together in an odd sort of way.

As you can probably tell by now, I have to admit I was a bit confused by this one. I really enjoyed it, the writing was again fantastic and the story was engrossing but…I’m not really sure what…the point was? I feel like I’ve just read 400 pages of dense Tao proverbs that should be inspiring and transcendental but they just went completely over my head. I got to the end of the novel, turned the last page, and went…”And…k? Hmm…”

And, as with 1Q84, there are some rather distinct fantastical elements to this one, perhaps with a slightly more science fiction bent due to the sighting of an unknown craft just before events that make our old man as odd as he is. And, again, Murakami feels he needs to point out to the readers that he is not engaging in something as trite as genre fiction when a secondary character, Oshima, says, “What you’re talking about, Kafka, is just a theory. A bold, surrealistic theory, to be sure, but one that belongs in a science fiction novel.” Which is basically what this is. But I’m not going to get into another genre discussion today.

Overall–even though I have no idea what happened at the end of the novel or what I’m supposed to be taking away from it–I truly enjoyed this novel and found myself satisfied with my slightly puzzled response. At least you can say I’m still thinking about it and trying to puzzle through the rather mystical events and connections that permeate it and just what, exactly, they were trying to tell me. I think it might be important…

Cover of Kafka on the Shore

The New Vonnegut

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I got really excited a few weeks ago when it was announced that a never before published Vonnegut novella had been discovered and was being released. Sadly, it was only in ebook format (though super cheap) because Vonnegut is one author I really do prefer to read in paper. But nevertheless, I waited until April when I had another free book to read through Amazon Prime and promptly downloaded Basic Training.

Vonnegut apparently wrote this novella fairly early in his career–as was judged by the address on the manuscript–but I think it’s as eloquent as anything he wrote. I was thrown by the utter realist nature of the piece (no time traveling aliens or Ice-9) but it was engaging and imaginative. The story focuses on a young boy who’s parents have been killed and he move in with his uncle and cousins on their farm. The uncle is a veteran called “The General” by everyone he knows and he runs his farm as though it were a military unit. The young man, Haley, is a slight boy who aspires to become a professional piano player and the rough physical life of the farm is quite a shock.

From what I know thus far of Vonnegut’s style (I’m still very much an amateur, but I’m working my way through his books) this novella is pretty representative. If you enjoy his outlandish set-ups and precise prose, you’ll definitely enjoy Basic Training. Even without aliens and world-ending scientific discoveries.

Cover of Basic Training

How Can We Be on 18 Already?

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Janet Evanovich is another author I can reliably go to for a popcorn quality read. Her books are fluff and air, but fun from start to finish. And just recently, her eighteenth book in the Stephanie Plum series hit the shelves.

Cover of Explosive Eighteen

Explosive Eighteen is the most recent in a long line of ridiculous bounty hunter fun. Stephanie just can’t do anything right and this time is no exception. When the book starts, apparently something fight-like happened between her two long-time lovers in Hawaii and she has accidentally become the target of several head hunters. Literally, they’re ready to scalp someone for the information they are after.

I had been worried after the last couple of Plum novels as Evanovich’s writing seemed to be flagging, almost as if she were tired of the characters and the style, but she has recovered in this one. She is back to her funny and devil-may-care self. You’ll never catch me saying she is high literature, by any means, but for an entertaining afternoon, she’s perfect. (Literally, afternoon. I think it took me three hours total.)

Anyway, not much more can be said about entertaining fluff books (literally, it’s like eating spoonfuls of Marshmallow Fluff–empty calories, guilt-inducing, yet somehow utterly satisfying) but I’ll take a moment here to address the movie adaptation of her first Plum novel while I’m here.

Movie Poster for One For the Money

So, the first worry with movies like this, for me at any rate, isn’t the writing. It’s the casting. After 17 books worth of living with these characters, I have very particular images of what some of these people look like (particularly the hotties…). I have to say, the casting of Stephanie, Morelli, and Ranger were all spot on. They were absolutely perfect. The two I was a little unhappy with were Grandma Mazur and Lula. I really really wanted Betty White for Grandma Mazur and someone like Queen Latifah for Lula.

Seriously though, wouldn’t that have been wonderful?

And I do have to say one thing about the writing. It stuck wonderfully close to the novel, but that is actually its downfall. The transitions from scene to scene were rather abrupt and awkward and it took me a moment to realize that this was entirely because whoever the screen adapter was didn’t bother to make it screen friendly. They basically just turned the novel into dialogue but forgot to translate it for screen. The same devices and lines that work perfectly well on the page often look stiff and awkward on the screen. Something to keep in mind, aspiring screenwriters. It has to look and sound authentic when someone actually says it.

Finally Done with the Dragon Tattoo

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So in that marathon of junk reading that I was doing during sick-time, I finally managed to finish the Millennium trilogy (or as it’s better known, those Girl With a Dragon Tattoo books). For all those books are overly long, they really don’t take much time at all to read. Maybe that’s because I just skim all that irrelevant detail that makes up over half the book, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

All told, now that I’ve finished the entire story arc, I have to say the story and character through-lines are well constructed and engaging. There is a compelling story there and I can tell why people loved his work. You do come to care about Lisbeth and her freedom. And when the evil psychiatrist is getting his come-uppance, you can’t help but feel viciously satisfied. But that is far from saying that I am completely happy with the books.

For a diversion, they function just fine, but there is one major problem with the work: Stieg Larsson has an unhealthy obsession with details. Here’s the thing. I do not need to know every step our character made as he gets up in the morning, does his morning toilet, prepares breakfast, and then walks to work. Maybe if this functioned as a carrier for his inner monologue–no, probably not even then. It’s just not relevant. All we really need are a sentence or two, with a couple details, that enable the reader to fill in the gaps. We do not need four pages detailing his morning actions that have absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. This man desperately needed someone to hack away at his manuscripts with a judicious red pen and the books would have been half the length. This would not only be a service to the reader, it would also help keep those slow parts of the novels from dragging quite so much.

This also pertained to the exacting directions Larsson gave us everytime one of his characters took to the street. You could almost use the book as a map for finding your way around the major cities, but it’s just not needed. Yes, I’m impressed with your familiarity with the surrounding area. No, you don’t need to prove that you have a map pinned to the wall next to your computer. I do too, but you don’t see my writing riddled with extraneous geographical locators. It’s enough to say “From the office, he went to such and such hotel” instead of spending two paragraphs walking us through it.

But overall, that’s my only complaint about the novels. I may have felt they were a bit needlessly graphic at times, but that’s less of a concern to me then the criminal waste of verbs and names. I almost feel bad saying I’m okay reading the scenes which are a startlingly vivid portrayal of rape and torture compared to the long tedious descriptions, but that’s just me. At least in the rape scenes, the plot is moving forward…

Cover of Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

They left me Hungry…

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So, when you’re queued up for tests involving sedation of any kind, it’s best to pick up a book you don’t care if you remember anything about. I’d read The Hunger Games back in September but had no great urge to read the sequels, but low and behold you could borrow them for free on the Kindle and I didn’t care about whether I remembered them or not. They foot the bill perfectly.

It took a grand total of three days to read the second two books, and that was around hospitals and work. So, I think I estimated that I spent five hours on each one. They were diverting and entertaining, but I think that’s about the best that can be said for them. Here’s why (SPOILERS TO FOLLOW):

Katniss is just a tool. Yes, she can be badass when she wants to. No, I would never be able to accomplish the feats of willpower and strength that she does. HOWEVER. In the second and third books she is constantly being manipulated, kept out of the loop, and is, in essence, a pawn for both sides of the revolution, regardless of the fact that District 13 keeps pretending she’s their queen. She’s not. And by the time you reach the end of the third book, she’s no longer even an active participant in anything. It’s not her who breaks down the stronghold, she just gets to watch her sister die. It’s not her who catches and kills President Snow. She’s around, but what she does makes no actual difference to the revolution. In fact, President Coin keeps trying to off her because she thinks the Mockingjay would make a better martyr than figurehead.

And so, at the end, we’re left with a broken and ineffectual girl who, when they try one more time to use her–this time as Snow’s executioner–who finally makes a difference and kills the harpy Coin instead. The one decent act Katniss was given in the entire latter half of the third book.

I spent a lot of time asking myself if I would have made different choices as a writer and what the choices that Collins made actually did for the characters and the story. In The Hunger Games, I feel like the author actually did make the best choices for story and character. Katniss, while being played by her sponsors and the government, was still and active character making a difference in her world. Collins strips this away from her towards the end of the trilogy and I found that extremely disappointing. I probably would have decided to make her the damn hero and sure as hell wouldn’t have killed her sister. The only point that had was to make her choose one boy over another and it just ended up feeling contrived.

All that being said, I will definitely make the case that I would prefer to have children reading these books over Twilight ANY day. They’re bloody and vicious, but are very well written at a sentence, paragraph, character arc, cultural enrichment level. I may dislike what Collins did with Katniss’s character, but I still think she was on to something with all of this. Maybe not quite as strong as Harry Potter, but definitely in the running for good books for young adults to read.

As for the movie? It did a pretty good job sticking to the first book, except for cutting a few unnecessary characters and having one riot too early. Otherwise, my only complaint was that Peeta wasn’t hot enough. Especially if she ends up choosing him in the end…

A sign at a theater saying, "Due to limited ticket availability, guests will be chosen at random to fight to the death in our area."

Fantasy and Passion

/ Rebecca Demarest / 4 Comments

I will be the first to admit that when it comes to poetry, I am a bit of a Victorian junkie. Tell me what you will about the strict rhythm and rhyme forms, or the sappy nature of the poetry, I don’t care. I love the obvious and cadenced rhythms because they speak to me on the level of a percussionist and I love how very easy it is to understand what they’re talking about. Yes, there is metaphor and symbolism, but at the same time, it is not random words sprinkled on a page with no discernible pattern or reasoning. (Disclaimer: My liking of this genre of writing from the timeperiod should in NO WAY indicate any interest in any of the fiction writing of the time, or even most of the non-fiction writing. I can’t stand that stuff.)

So, starting with that admission, you will more readily understand why I was ecstatic to lay my hands on a first edition copy of Fantasy and Passion by Edgar Fawcett. I saw a first edition volume sitting on the shelf during a tour of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house this last summer and fell in love with the maroon cloth with  gold relief sun filigree and desired one of my own. Abebooks kindly provided me with the necessary means to this end.

The poetry certainly didn’t disappoint, either. It is clean and crisp and flows off the tongue like the best of the sonnets, and I wanted to share a couple of my favorites here with you.

Heat-Lightning

The land is bathed in drowsy light,
And breezes move, with drowsy sigh,
From out that primrose West where now
The long day takes so long to die!

I watch the deepening dusk, I watch,
With soul to languid fancies given,
Night close the starry flowers on earth
And ope the flowerlike stars in heaven!

Not seem with more than transient look
If random glances near it stray,
Huge in the hueless East there hangs
One rounded cloud of stagnant gray.

The moments pass; a rapid bat
Traces black zigzags on the sky;
A beetle, bringing us his deep
Basso Profundo, journeys by.

Down in the dim swamp, firefly throngs
A brilliant soundless revel keep,
As though beneath their radiant rain
Another Danae slept her sleep!

The mild night grows; through meadowed ways
The globing dew makes odor sweet,
And slowly now, in that dark cloud,
A pluse of gold begins to beat!

With fitful brightenings, brief to last,
The tender flashes come and fly,
Each winning forth from vapory depths
A dreamy picture, rich of dye.

Drenched to its core with gentle fire,”
The cloud, at every mellowing change,
Shows tranquil lakes and lovely vales
And massive mountains, range on range!

And standing in the summer gloom,
With placid rapture I behold
These luminous Andes of the air,
These ghostly Switzerlands of gold!

So, besides of a criminal overuse of exclamation marks, I really love the stuff in this collection. If you have a love of Victorian type poetry, like I do, grab a copy of Fawcett, he’s constantly being reprinted. In fact, I think there was a new one sometime earlier this year, so you don’t have to get a first edition, I just wanted one!

Cover of Fantasy and Passion

Just a Geek

/ Rebecca Demarest / 1 Comment

So, when we started cleaning out our offices at O’Reilly Media, we had an epic ton of books that needed to be disposed of. New hires like myself and our intern set about scrounging in the pile for anything that might possibly strike our fancy and came away with mountains of books, including two by Wil Wheaton. I couldn’t hide my joy when I stumbled across these two personal essay collections by Wil–especially since I had just started rewatching the entire Star Trek The Next Generation from start to finish (while studiously drawing figures for all sorts of geektastic books). For me, the bridge of the Enterprise just isn’t complete without Wesley Crusher on board. And I’ve been loving his appearances on things like The Big Bang Theory and The Guild. So, I decided to sit down and read these memoirish books. I’m sad I’ve only started working with O’Reilly and missed the opportunity to work on these books with him, but just knowing I’m now only two degrees of separation away from Wil Wheaton is pretty dang cool.

So, the two books are Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot. Just a Geek is a fairly long and comprehensive look at this life and career after ditching the Enterprise and Dancing Barefoot is a small volume of stories that basically wouldn’t fit in the larger volume. I read Just a Geek first, so I guess I’ll start with that one.

Cover of Just a Geek

I have to say, I was a bit unprepared for the amount of angst that is in the collection of reminiscence. Wil was deeply and truly unhappy with his decisions around TNG and some of the impact that the show had on his life for a very long time. I thought it would be a career launcher, but apparently Wesley Crusher is what prevented him from getting a lot of jobs later in life. That, and not being “edgy” enough. I found the whole thing to be a fascinating journey from angst and loathing to acceptance and happiness. He’s got a great family, loves writing, and finally loves the cons, too. And yes, he’s as much the uber geek as he claims, and that is truly wonderful.

I found the writing style to be a bit informal for my taste, but that has a lot to do with the fact that a good portion of the book is pulled from his old blog site and simply cleaned up. It didn’t interfere with the experience of the book, but it was an interesting choice. I feel like the five stories that comprise Dancing Barefoot are more polished and of a more conventional memoir style.

Cover of Dancing Barefoot

It was nice seeing these additional stories by Wil, though I’m not sure why they all couldn’t have gotten folded into one collection. I know the response to Dancing Barefoot helped to spur on the idea of becoming a professional writer, so maybe that is it. He just wasn’t ready to create the larger memoir yet.

The one thing I found interesting was his stance about having patience and tolerance for everyone, especially the fans who have paid to see you, and then he has such a mixed bag of animosity and admiration for one “WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER”. I kid you not, that is how Captain Kirk is referred to throughout the entire memoir. Including the capitalization. It just feels a bit hypocritical, but I can understand the anger he felt when he was dismissed by Shatner the first time they met. But they’d had some decent interaction since then, so…

Anyway, if you’re a fan of Wil or a fan of TNG, these are definitely a fun read. They give a different perspective on the cons, on the cast and crew, and are a unique behind-the-scenes teenage angst story.

A Perfect Blood

/ Rebecca Demarest / 3 Comments

With vampire and supernatural fiction all the rage right now, I have found the one series I can tolerate in high doses: Kim Harrison‘s Hallows series. In this series, Rachel Morgan is a witch, partnered with a living vampire and a pixie, who is dedicated to bringing the baddies down. It’s quite the fun series, cleverly written with characters who are actually multi-dimensional and worthwhile.

I’m giving you this brief summary because her newest–A Pure Blood–came out this past month and I finally got around to reading it. Once again, the plot was engaging, the action breathtaking, and I have the urge to scream at Hollywood to make them into movies. The premise of this particular novel (not to give anything away) is that a group akin to the Klu Klux Klan (here called HAPA and against all persons magical) is kidnapping witches and horribly mutating their bodies with a curse. And although her magic is currently stunted, by her own choice, Rachel is blackmailed into helping solve these crimes by the magical version of the FBI.

It was a roller coaster from beginning to end, though I was saddened by the lack of my favorite character, Al the demon. Of course, Rachel is currently blocking her magic to hide from her mentor, so it makes sense he’s not around much for this story. I still missed him. Though the budding understanding and relationship between Rachel and Trent almost made up for it. I’ve thought from the beginning that they’d make an awesome, if slightly contentious, couple.

I did, however, have a bit of a jarring entrance into the novel. I have been reading so much high literature lately that coming back to a novel written entirely for a mainstream audience hit a little hard. The amount of adjectives in this book would feed a thesaurus-rex for a month. It didn’t really interfere with my reading, once I got into the writing style again, but it was an interesting realization.

So, if you’re enamored with the vampire lit phenomena, or just looking for a good supernatural thriller, Harrison’s Hollows series is a better bet than most. Very fun, passably well written, and with a fantastic depth of character and plot that is not often found in the genre.

Cover of "A Perfect Blood"

Visible Spirits

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Since I only had one other person join me on Leap Day, you don’t get to see any new material for the next novel…yet. Instead, you get to learn about this wonderful novel by my mentor, Steve Yarbrough. Visible Spirits is an incredible racial adventure set in the south in 1902. It follows several families in a small town and the uproar one white man instigates over a black postmistress.

First of all, this is an incredibly gripping story. I had trouble putting it down at any point because I just wanted to know what was going to happen next. You could feel the tension rise so palpably, and you cringed every time Tandy did something to deliberately raise the racial tensions in the town. This book really engages its audience and sucks them in. It isn’t alienating, like quite a few novels I have read that feature the racial tensions in the south; instead, it readily welcomes the audience in to the town and makes them part of the drama.

And, of course, the writing itself is quite excellent. I love the way Yarbrough writes because it is so simple and clean that the writing fades back and leaves an vibrant community, history, and story front and center. It allows for full immersion into an incredibly detailed world.

If you’re looking for a novel that feels truly authentic to the time and place, Visible Spirits is a good bet. Between the griping plot and the clean writing, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. And, as with others of Yarbrough’s work, the climax was inevitable, yet surprising none-the-less, which is probably my favorite aspect of his work.