Library Day, Oct 4, 2010

So, I did GO to the library on Monday, and I even checked out some books. But then Monday evening I had a meeting, and all day yesterday, my internet was out (stupid Time Warner!). Thus, I'm posting this from work.

Jennifer Fallon - Palace of Impossible Dreams 

This is the 3rd book of Fallon's Tide Lords series. Fallon is an Australian author, which means that we here in the US get her books months after the lucky folks below the equator, which is agravating. The books are fantastic (also, fantasy), excellent world building, well thought out characters, lots of politics, but enough action to keep things moving - and there's a 4th book coming, which prompts both glee and despair - glee, because it means there's more story, despair because it means waiting several more months for the next installment.

Alexander Mccall Smith - Corduroy Mansions

Smith writes oddly inflected humor novels involving interactions between bizarre characters. This is a new set of bizarre characters - an odd group of British types sharing an apartment building. There's a dog. There's often a dog.

Friday Book Review on a Saturday, 10/2/10

Perhaps I should get used to reviewing books on Saturday. This semester, I am teaching on Fridays, and I'm often not coherent enough at the end of the week to actually write a book review. I'll think about it.

Anyway, two books, and a note, this week.

Larry Doyle, Go, Mutants!


(Mutant)Sex! (Alien) Drugs! (Atomic) Rock and Roll! Doyle's premise is fairly simple - what if the events of the classic B movies of the 1950s and '60s - saucers from space, giant insects, Gojira, sentient blobs - had actually happened, and all the futuristic technologies - atomic cars and personal jet packs and moving sidewalks and all of that - existed. That's the concept which is wrapped around a pretty basic teen high school story - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back - except that boy is the son of an alien who tried to take over the world with the power of his brain, and is friends with an ape-man and a blob who thinks he's a boy. Doyle uses B movie-esque titles for his chapter titles, and additionally stays pretty true to his central premise. Beyond that, the novel was actually kinda thin - it was lots of fun, but certainly not life changing in anyway. I did enjoy the speculation about things like triffids - yes, they'll eat you, but if you smoke them, they'll make you high! - and the ways in which 1950s and '60s rock was affected by the B movie events - similar, but not identical, lyrics, for instance.

Donald Kingsbury - Psychohistorical Crisis


I didn't actually read this. I started, but I couldn't get into it. Kingsbury is writing an homage to Asimov's concept of psychohistory - the idea that, given a large enough group of people and a long enough period of time, a psychohistorian might use mathematics, psychology, statistics, and sociology to make relatively accurate predictions about what the group will do in the future. "Large enough," for Asimov, constituted a Galatic Empire of humanity, and "long enough" was multiple generations. Additionally, the group could not know that it was being monitored, because that would cause it to act for the psyhcohistorian. Anyway, Kingsbury is working on a continuation of some of those ideas. His protagonist is an ex-psychohistorian who, in punishment for an undefined crime, has had his cybernetic memory removed - that is the element which Kingsbury is introducing, all of the members of his advanced Galatic Empire have cybernetically enhanced memories, which doesn't make them smarter, exactly, but allows them to remember things more accurately and thus use the rest of their brain more efficiently. The book would seem to be the story of this ex-psychohistorian attempting to figure out what his crime was, without the aid of cybernetics, and, presumably, clear himself. The second chapter wanders away from this protagonist, however, to look at the work of his mentor, who, also a psychohistorian, uses his position within an academy to get his research assistants to collect images of ancient military starships  - so he can make huge accurate models of them.

I think there is some story potential here. I haven't returned the book to the library yet. But, the book is a tome - at least 500 pages long - and, in the first chapter, I saw nothing in the protagonist that appealed, and in the second, nothing in his mentor which seemed redemptive. So, I may return, but given that, 2 chapters in, I already don't care what happens to the characters, it seems unlikely.

Webster Kitchell - God's Dog: Conversations with Coyote


Kitchell is a Unitarian Universalist minister in Santa Fe. This is the first of a series of books of sermon/meditations centered around conversations with the Native American trickster, Coyote. Kitchell addresses ideas of spirituality, modernity, war, and the struggle between the human desire for company with the human desire for solitude, among many other things. The tone is light, but the subject matter is not. In the UU congregation we attended in Virginia, these sermons were often modified, and were always amusing. I'm not really sure what else to say about this book, actually. It was thought provoking, in a philosophical way, but not in a way which is easy to describe. If you like trickster stories, you may well enjoy this, and if you like zen, or zen-like, philosophy, you may enjoy this.

Monday Library Post - on MONDAY! (9/27/10)

Will wonders ever cease?

Only one book today:

Chris Ewan - The Good Thief's Guide to Las Vegas
This is the third in the series, which began with The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and continues with the guide to Paris. They are caper novels (the protagonist is a robber, the plot involves him stealing something, that's what makes a caper novel) and they are travel narratives (the thief travels to different cities and talks about what is different about the new city - that's what makes a travel narrative), and I love both caper novels and travel narratives, so this series is like candy.

Donald Critchlow - Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade

So, ok, Critchlow is an historian, and this is a scholarly historical work - as such, it might not appeal to the casual reader interested in the grassroots conservative movement or Mrs. Schlafly. You have been given fair warning.

That being said, this was a surprisingly interesting book on a subject that I know not very much about. One of the things I found interesting was that I found myself becoming sympathetic towards Schlafly. As is often the case, Schlafly's story is quite complicated - a staunch conservative, she contended that a woman's place was both in the home AND in politics - that women were and should be the moral arbiters in the US political arena. For most of her career (which isn't necessarily over yet), Schlafly was an advocate of conservative positions within the Republican party, and a strong supporter of a dominant nuclear policy, but not really a public figure. Her stance against the ERA in the 1970s put her on a much bigger public stage, but that stance was entirely consistent with her position about the role of women in society. She (and many others, women and men) felt that the ERA undermined the unique position of women within American society as arbiters of morality, and stripped women of numerous social and legal protections, especially the protection against being placed in combat, and protections against being placed in dangerous industrial jobs. (This position, incidentally, was shared by a number of women within the labor union movement - although they wanted to see the sort of protections which covered women extended to their male counterparts, and Schlafly doesn't seem to have had an opinion on that issue one way or the other.) Schlafly's opposition to the ERA is clearly marked by her privileged position as a middle to upper-class white woman - she will never have to choose between taking a lower paying (but safer) job, or fighting for a higher paying (but less safe) one - but the supporters of ERA were often equally privileged, fighting against systems which keep women out of professional work rather than the system which protects them from dangerous industrial labor.

The biggest revelation for me was the idea that, if Schlafly had won her election as president of the National Federation of Republican Women, the US would be a much better place. After the 1968 election, where Schlafly campaigned for Barry Goldwater (who lost), she was effectively drummed out of the NFRW by moderate members in leadership. Those moderates made heavy handed use of non-democratic methods to get Schlafly out - but if they had not done so, Schlafly would have had both a bully pulpit AND a responsibility which would have kept her busy. Plus, any situation which results in increased democracy can't be all bad, so any situation which reduces democracy must be at least partially bad.

blog? I have a blog? What? (very late Monday library post for Sept. 20)

Beth Fertig - Why Can't U Teach Me 2 Read?


So, I'd seen this before, and pondered it - it's a story about a teacher teaching three kids with learning disabilities to read. They sued New York City to ensure that they were taught how to read. Apparently, it's about the problems with all of the possible ways of teaching students to read - what is the best way? Anyway, I rejected it the last time I saw it, but the topic of "the right way" to teach came up somewhere recently, so when I saw this again, I grabbed it.

I'm also waiting on a pair of other books, which will hopefully arrive before the end of the week. And I'm almost finished the Phyllis Schlafly book, which is more interesting than I expected. (and also useful re: dissertation.)

All I intend to say about Elizabeth Moon re: Park 51

1) Her history, both in regards to immigration into the US and Islam in the US, is badly wrong. Her statements are based on wrong assumptions about the history of immigration and about the history of Islam in American. I can go into a little more detail if necessary, but really, if the underlying assumptions are wrong, then the statements are going to be wrong, and cannot get less wrong without revising the underlying assumptions. At this point, she seems unwilling to do such revision.

2) Moon is an author within a genre that prides itself on its inclusiveness (although spec fic has not always (indeed, often has not) lived up to its inclusive reputation). It is a genre/fandom which is filled with passionate people, and some of those passionate people are particularly passionate about the purported inclusiveness of their genre/fandom. Because Moon attacked that sense of inclusiveness, she got nuked for her statements. She deserved to get nuked. She was wrong, and she expressed little inclination to become less wrong.  She reacted in the way that one might expect under such circumstances, which is to say she retreated, pulled into her shell, and basically shut down. Now is the space in which Appeasers and Info/Logic Bombers can step in, and if the Nukers back off, the chances that Moon might recognize her errors increase. Note that I'm not saying the Nukers were wrong to nuke - they were entirely right to do so. I'm just saying that continued nuking at this juncture will almost certainly not have the desired effect (assuming the desired effect is to convince Mrs. Moon of the wrongness of her underlying assumptions. If the desire is to create another bitter writer who increasingly hates her fans and ultimately stops writing, continue the barrage.)

3) Until Moon includes a poorly written stand in for teh eeebul Moooslims in her next book, I will probably continue to read her work. As a general rule, I do not seek out the non-professional opinions of the authors I like, because, if they are truly professional authors, their non-professional opinions should not inform their professional writing. Were Moon writing a book about Islam in America (or about immigration in America), I would seriously question her qualifications to do so.

Friday (Sunday?) Review Post for 9/17/10

Two books this week.

S.J. Parris - Heresy


I really enjoyed this. A spy/mystery novel with Giordano Bruno as the protagonist, well written and (I assume) well researched. The deneument seemed to drag on a little, but that made sense given that the book was about Bruno and not really about the murders. The structure reminded me, a little, of Name of the Rose, but only a little. My favorite line (which I cannot now find in the book) was a statement by Bruno that in his theological view, at the end, even the devils would be pardoned by God. All that being said, I'm not sure what else to say about the book. It was entertaining, but I don't know that it was life changing.

James R. Benn - Rag and Bone


Another enjoyable detective novel,  this one set during World War Two. Billy Boyle is a beat cop from Boston, recently promoted to detective, and then drafted into the Army. To keep him safe, his Irish-American parents pull strings to get him placed on the staff of his distant uncle (by marriage) Eisenhower. Boyle ends up digging into the dirty little problems that Eisenhower needs fixed, but doesn't want brought to light. In this novel, he investigates the murder of a Soviet military atache in London. There is some considerable suspicion that the death of the atache is linked to reports about the Katyn Forest massacre which are just beginning to leak out into the press - the Nazis claim that the Poles killed in Katyn were executed by the Soviets, the Soviets claim that the Nazis did it. The Poles (and Boyle has a Polish friend, which complicates things) assert that the Nazis are correct in this particular moment (and the historical record, for the record, backs up the Nazis and the Poles on this), but the whole mess is dismissed in an effort to maintain Allied cohesion - the British and the Americans need the Soviets to keep killing Germans until the British and American armies are ready to land in France, and the Nazi revelation of the massacre, from the point of view of the military leadership, is a ploy to drive a wedge between the various Allied forces (also, probably, true.). In the end, the motives for the murder are far far more complicated. Benn handles the plot nicely, has well written characters who react in realistic ways, depicts Boyle's procedural techniques in a realistic way (Boyle plods through the clues, engaging in lots of footwork, making connections with people, and only through a wandering path comes to the right answer - but the answer which is both morally and factually right, which was nice), and includes a short historical note (which I appreciate in a work  based in history.) I've missed one of the books in this series, but it turns out not to matter all that much - if you've read the first one or two, you have a handle on who the characters are and can dip into the series where-ever. I expect the next book to coincide with Operation Overlord (Normandy invasion), and there will probably be one or possibly two more in connection with WWII, and possibly a Cold War extension. I'll pick them up when I see them, Benn is a good author and his characters are worth taking a look at.

Yesterday, I found myself at a library for a writing group, and picked up (without comment):
Larry Doyle - Go, Mutants
and
Donald Kingsbury - Psychohistorical Crisis


later, I was in a used book store and grabbed:
Charlie Stross - The Hidden Family
I will probably have to re-read the first book of this series (The Merchant Princes) before I can read this one.