Just finished reading...

...HERE by illustrator Richard McGuire.

Well, "read" is a bit misleading as this is a graphic novel. Look? Watch? See? How does one absorb a graphic novel? No matter as this is unlike any graphic novel you may have encountered before. Absorb is a much more apt description.

In 1989, McGuire created "Here," a short, 6 page illustrated story which was published in RAW, a comics anthology edited by legendary graphic novelist and cartoonist Art Spiegelman along with Françoise Mouly. The narrative was simple enough: a meditation on a single home and all the people who have lived there and things that have transpired on that spot at different points in history and time. But the execution was something the comics world had never seen. McGuire effectively deconstructed the comic format, something that had not been done before. It proved so revolutionary that, in his book READING COMICS: HOW GRAPHIC NOVELS WORK AND WHAT THEY MEAN, author and critic Douglas Wolk wrote that its "influence has echoed through art comics for decades."

The idea was so profound, McGuire greatly expanded on it and published HERE, a 300+-page version of the story, in 2014 and I am so glad he did. This is a deeply moving, thought-provoking book which keeps the same basic premise but covers even more time.

Imagine a film camera set up on a single spot, filming everything that passes in front of it. Imagine that camera has been there for a long time. I mean a long, long time. And imagine that it will stay there for a long, long time to come. Now imagine you get to flip through moments this camera has captured over this time span...past, present, and future. After all, physics tells us all time is simultaneous. We begin in a house, camera pointed toward a corner...window on the left, fireplace and mantel on the right. People come and go, families live there and pass on. They may be related, they may not be. People celebrate holidays, people have parties and dance, people get angry with each other, people misplace keys and wallets, people have children, people lose loved ones. But before the house was there, the location was there...and so was our camera. The angle and placement of our view never changes. And never will.

As you can see, the story unfolds simultaneously, in windows--sometimes small, sometimes large--that show us glimpses of what was, what is, and what will be, identified by the year in the top left corner. The windows move around in our frame, showing us something in this corner, that corner, by the fireplace, all around the space. It is a startling premise, one that proves to be truly transcendent. The cumulative effect is one of impermanence and permanence at the same time. When you step out of the subjective time stream, it all looks so fragile and beautiful: the grandeur and the daily minutiae is heartbreaking. Embedded in the change is a sense of eternity.

This story resonated with me deeply because I basically grew up in my grandmother's house in upstate New York. The house itself was built on the site of a previous home. My grandparents bought the plot of land and the shack that was on it for my grandfather to tear it down and build a new home for his bride. He dug the basement and poured cement and fitted rocks for the walls and foundation. This was during The Great Depression and materials and money were scarce so he had to be inventive. An indoor miniature golf attraction at the edge of town had recently closed and the raw pieces were being sold off so he sourced the wooden floor boards to be the floor boards in their new home. An occasional golf-ball-sized hole is still visible if one stands in the basement and looks up. My father and his siblings all grew up in that house, my grandfather died in the house he built with his own hands--so much love and resentment and laughter and joy and tears and new life and death all contained within a small structure of wood and glass and metal--and the home stands there to this day, with new occupants who have no idea how the house came to be, what has transpired in it, who lived there, or how much it means to certain people who are still alive, and who would love to step into it once more. I actually got to walk through it several years ago when it was between owners, and the smell of the kitchen was the exact same as when my grandmother lived there. Yet the backyard had changed. A small hill had been filled in and a flower garden and extensive vegetable garden had been eliminated. It was all just grass, no trace of the strawberries, sweet corn, and crunchy peas I used to nibble on as a child. The charming white fences had been destroyed. My aunt, who grew up in the house as well, had a chance to rent it recently but discovered that the house has not been cared for the way it should have. She moved away. Ever since I was young, I have tried to imagine the little shack that stood there before the home that I know and love so well, the home that occupies my dreams at night. I try to imagine what was there before the town existed, the First Nation people who lived there. And the ice sheets before that...all the way back to Pangea, to a molten ball of lava, to the formation of our solar system and galaxy. And there, the little house sits now. What will become of it? And what will become of us? We will all be eliminated and destroyed like the flower and vegetable gardens and fences. But your spot will remain.

Recommend? Absolutely. Buy it and absorb it. It is a quick "read"--about 20-30 minutes. But once you are done, wait a few days and then go back and ponder through it again. You will pick up more each time. It's just gorgeous.

http://www.richard-mcguire.com/

Just finished reading...

...the powerful All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

A good friend and I have started our own two-person book club since we have challenging schedules and busy lives--two of us seems more manageable than a whole gaggle. We read, we email our thoughts as we progress through the book, and then we meet for a lunch (or several!) to discuss. For our current book, she suggested Doerr's novel All The Light We Cannot See. I had not heard anything about the subject of the book, so I dove in.

Ostensibly, we follow two separate plot lines: 1) a young blind girl, Marie-Laure and her father who are forced to flee Paris when the Nazis come, and 2) Werner, a young German orphan whose only love is science and who, for that very reason, gets snapped up by the Nazi party to work on radios. I must say that when I started the book, I was a tiny bit reticent since this is very familiar territory. There have been so many books, films, and plays about WWII that it almost seems--and I do not mean this disrespectfully to those and their descendants who were destroyed or touched by the war--that there is a little bit of a saturation point on the subject. This has nothing to do with the subject of the war itself but the way it is appropriated and packaged for sale by industries, especially Hollywood. But it only took a few chapters to see that this story may take place during WWII but is actually about so much more. It is effective, especially with a war that is still fairly recent and that still gets a lot of cultural coverage, to tell it from a smaller point of view, from the perspective of two children. It's always more effective to tell grand stories from smaller points of view: HISTORY when told as such is HISTORY, but when it is an individual, it is of course easier to identify with, to see the impact on actual lives. But if our protagonists are kids, as they are here, it is all the more effective since war is generally, on a psychic level, incomprehensible--and it is certainly incomprehensible to children. And the sad part is that we watch them come to comprehend what it all is, as the daily details of war tighten into them, making notches, taking from them their childhood.

Through the many years of WWII, our children, for various reasons, end up in the French coastal town of Saint Malo for the cataclysmic siege the city suffered in August and September of 1944 at the hands of American bombs and British gunfire. Some critics have suggested that it is obvious that these two will eventually meet and that the device is predictable, even hackneyed. But I did not see it that way and to those critics I say you are not looking at it the right way--you are hobbled by a linear point of view. The story itself is told not in chronological order. We hop back and forth between their childhood, the start of the war, the siege, the middle of the war, back and forth, circling the events through time. I felt that it was more about following the thread backward--the two meet, yes, but what are the incredible, improbable, heartbreaking, and sometimes joyous paths that lead to such a meeting? I often contemplate this idea in my own life by looking at a meeting with someone or a particular event and tracing it back. I'm sure we've all done this in our imaginations: if I hadn't gone to _____ or known _____ then I would never have gotten here, now. Our lives are a connected chain of such what ifs. So for me, it was not so much that it was "inevitable" that they meet but that, at a certain point in the time stream, they did meet. Now, let's examine how and why that happened. All time is simultaneous. When you stand outside of it, you can observe from any angle, and such an approach is cosmically thrilling.

There is a marvelous juxtaposition between the literary and the cinematic in Doerr's writing. His style is certainly literary--but in a powerfully simple, straightforward way. It is not florid writing. Author JR Moehringer says, "Anthony Doerr sees the world as a scientist, but feels it as a poet." And this is true. While stunningly poetical (often breathtakingly so), it is completely direct and this helps the swift pacing. The entire novel is composed of short chapters that act as quick cuts in a film which is unexpected by ultimately pleasing. It brings a compelling rhythm to the story. If it were a film, such little bursts of story, flitting back and forth, would bring a lot of very effective tension. And it is the same in the book, back and forth, back and forth, not only with time as I have mentioned, but with location and character. We are sort of breathlessly putting together the puzzle of this story. His directness also plays up the completely heartbreaking aspects of everything happening to and around these kids. I confess that, as a writer, I might have been tempted to find adjectives that would describe heartbreak and misery and fear, to try to describe all of that and GIVE it to the reader...but that would have been the wrong approach. It is enough to see these children in this situation. The rest happens in our hearts.

There is some lovely poetry in the title too: "the light we cannot see" being Marie's blindness and by implication, how she maneuvers in her world of darkness (there are some gorgeous passages from her point of view, encountering natural elements) but also how Werner learned about the invisible world around him. He loved that the air is filled with wavelengths, infrared light, ultraviolet light, and especially invisible radio waves, all this static that is in the air every second. And then there is all the lightness we can't see while things are so dark and horrible...where is the lightness of the world when such a war rages? Where is joy when people can be so deliberately cruel and monstrous, when Germans wanted so to punish, to destroy, so full of anger at the entire world. It reminds me of certain quarters of this country today where people are SO angry and want to lash out to hurt and destroy...all the leftovers from the Tea Party and evangelicals with their twisted, aimless fury, lips curled in a snarl and veins bulging in their necks. The target of such rage does not matter. There is also the abstract idea of the light we cannot see being those invisible paths and threads that lead us forward, to a meeting with a special person, to a place that becomes a part of us.

And finally, I will say that I love how science is presented, as something real, important, powerful...more powerful than politics or petty hatred. It can be used by anyone and everyone, it does not play favorites or take sides. Science exists above and beyond--or rather the objects of science, the radio waves, wavelengths, electricity, magnetism. These things exist whether there are Nazis or not, whether evangelicals deny them or not. There is a purity to it. I like that Werner strives for that, and his allegiance is to a truth that is actual and exists no matter what, no matter if it is believed in or not. And Marie-Laure loves the natural world, the scientific aspect of zoology and marine life and shells and phytology and botany. The way that both of these kids look up to this system of recognizing and understanding the world around them is beautiful and frankly refreshing, and this leads me to reflect on our current time, here and now (shouldn't good art do that? make one think about one's own life and time?). I lament the anti-science movement in this country, the anti-vaxxers, the evangelicals who think that the world is only 4,000 years old and that fossils are decoys planted by Satan to detract from "God's word." Thankfully we have people like Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson who are champions of the sciences, but come on, we should not have to have someone to "champion" science. It should--and IS--self evident. But only if one is not blinded by religious superstition. So, it's lovely to see science portrayed as something NOT up for debate, something that is granted, something that is a given...

Recommend? YES. It is a beautiful, fulfilling achievement of literature, but also philosophy and spirituality. There are a few passages toward the end that deal with the enormity of life and this reality in a concise but jaw-dropping way. It didn't win a Pulitzer for nothing...

http://www.anthonydoerr.com/books/all-the-light-we-cannot-see/

Just finished reading...

...Mary Renault's THE LAST OF THE WINE.

After I read Mary Renault's THE MASK OF APOLLO last year (reviewed here), I was eager to start this novel by Renault, her first one set in ancient Greece.

In THE LAST OF THE WINE, written in 1956, we follow our narrator, Alexias, from early childhood to adulthood. And I must say, it was a rather dry start. I just don't recall MASK being dry but perhaps the fact that she wrote it in 1966 gave her a good ten years to adjust and refine her story telling technique for her ancient Greek timeline.

As I made my way through the book, each chapter struck me not so much as literature, but a list of facts: this happened, then this happened, then that happened. Renault was not an indulgent writer. She clearly did not believe in taking time to truly develop characters in a spiritual or psychological way (I wonder what she thought of Virginia Woolf?). Events and action. That was her modus operandi for this book. And to my surprise, her method does have a kind of cumulative effect. Reading accounts of our narrator's life--his participation in the Olympic games, his friendship and love affair with Lysis, his studies with Socrates, his military service, all against the back drop of instability and war between the Greek city-states--actually does build a character. She has a way of getting it all to accrue and to matter so I ended up caring about our narrator and his life when I thought I did not! Whether that is an accidental by-product of Renault's writing or whether it was carefully planned by the author is still a question I have.

I am torn between the idea that, at least in light of this novel, Renault is a kind of surface-y storyteller skimming along the top, and the idea that she knew what she was doing and measured out a careful and effective pace of action and time. I can't tell...and maybe that is not such a good reaction to have. Maybe it shows a flaw in the writing.

Aside from the mechanism of her writing itself, the book, like MASK, is impeccably researched. Renault was a true scholar and she spent a lifetime studying ancient Greece so she knew what she was presenting. The structure of life in ancient Greece--or contemporary Greece to our narrator--feels true and fleshed out. My reaction to her portrayal of ancient Greece in this novel is a little paradoxical (and has nothing to do with the story itself): it seems so different, a universe away from our own daily existence, with slaves and temples and women treated as property and hand-to-hand combat, and all the details specific to ancient Greece--and then as I was reading, I continually realized nothing has changed. Women are still treated poorly and in parts of the world, still considered to be property. We are all still at war--not with city-states obviously (although some backward states here in the United States are having a very hard time joining the culture of the 21st century, and make occasional noises about seceding), but with other countries, and with differing religions. How tiresome; when will we ever, as an entire species, get rid of this specter of "God?" "God bless America?" How about "God bless the world." Don't people want the whole planet to succeed? They live on the planet with everyone else after all; or better yet, how about "We bless ourselves"...how about people find the value in themselves that they want their god to find? Alexias and many other characters made offerings at the temples of different gods to ask a favorable outcome of something or other. And we, as a culture, tend to do the same. Instead of relying upon help from a supernatural force, it might behoove us to help ourselves.

I guess that is the universality at the core of the story, but there is something about it that feels different from the usual "universality" of something like Shakespeare: oh, jealousy or love is the same through the ages, yes yes yes, but when I live in Renault's ancient Greece, there are differences. The whole hand to hand combat thing is pretty horrific and immediate, and so reminds me of some of the harrowing battle passages in WAR AND PEACE. There are in that novel, and here too, depictions of a kind of war we as a species have not known for several hundred years, since the invention of the cannon and gun. These depictions are disappointing though, because I end up at the same place: it might not be hand to hand, but here we are, STILL at it, hacking away at one another. And another difference: the sexual logic is interesting as well. We know that it was common for younger men and older men to have mentor and sexual relationships. But what confuses me is how, at least as Renault shows it, a deep relationship can grow between two men, but then there comes a time when they both must abandon that for the younger man--or both men, soldiers for instance--to marry a woman. Maybe it is that I am looking through the eyes of someone who has fought for gay rights, and in this day and age when gay men (and women) are more and more accepted, I find it disquieting that these men, in a culture that did not frown upon homosexuality, were both somehow by turns encouraged to have and discouraged from having gay relationships. But perhaps that is the issue: for them, that is how it was structured and for me in 2015, I get to make up my own mind. I don't have to choose one thing or another because an arbitrary societal or cultural construct simply says I have to. But having said that, one of the biggest and most valuable pieces of the story is the enduring relationship between Alexias and Lysis. They start their relationship as a younger/older mentor-friend-lover structure, but as they pass the years, fight side by side in battle after battle, and after Lysis takes a wife, they remain entwined, head and heart. And that is a lovely thing.

Recommend? Hmmm. I'm not sure. If you are interested in ancient Greece, this would be a good way to learn about life in that time period...and as I have previously hashed out, it does manage to take hold of one. But if you are looking for literature and not just historical fiction, no, skip it.

Just finished reading...

...SKIN GAME, the most recent novel in the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher.

In a past review of another Dresden book, I was going to write that the Dresden Files books are a guilty pleasure of mine, but when I stop to think about that turn of phrase, I simply don't feel guilty. I like them--even though I am not a "fan-boy," a role-playing gamer, or a Comic-Con attendee. Jim Butcher has created a total world with a stunning variety of creatures, animals, people, places, and history that are all based on or around ideas of "magic." For those unfamiliar, Harry Dresden is a Private Investigator and modern day wizard in Chicago, and across fourteen--now fifteen--books, we have discovered wizards, monsters, vampires, fairies, ghosts, goblins, ghouls, angels, shape shifters, and other supernatural beings, in a sort of hybrid of Sam Spade and "The X-Files." Lest this sound a tad too Dungeons and Dragons/ role play for some, Butcher has a wonderful way of presenting these stories rooted in reality. He makes everything seem so utterly possible and believable... and I will tell you again that I am not a D&D fan. What I particularly like about the Dresden series is that everything is true: Butcher puts in everyone's gods and monsters, from across all time and all cultures. Greek gods are real, Norse gods are real, Native American beliefs are real, there is a heaven and a hell, but then the rest of the world as well as the supernatural world operates as if there is no heaven or hell. It's all true and it all exists side by side. I wouldn't be surprised if, in some future book, we meet Krishna, Shiva, or Ganesh!

This newest installation in the series, SKIN GAME, is just as fast (it moves at break-neck speed), fun, entertaining, suspenseful, funny, and wildly imaginative as the fourteen that came before it. Jim Butcher is one of those writers who knows exactly how to end a chapter so that you can't wait to start the next one... which leads to many late nights ("Oh, I'll just read one more chapter, then go to bed..." and this is of course followed by, "Well, just this one more, this will be the last one..."). He has a talent for ending chapters in mid-action, mid-plot, mid-secret-being-revealed, so one MUST start the next chapter. As you can imagine, this makes it hard to actually turn the light out and go to sleep when reading at night.

If you haven't followed any of the Dresden books, I certainly recommend them and it is not too late to get caught up. Butcher plans twenty-ish books in the Dresden Files series which will be finalized with a trilogy he has already titled (and presumably outlined!). In this installation, Harry, in his role as Winter Knight to Mab the Queen of Air and Dark, is loaned out to a rival to pay off a debt. But the rival turns out to be a demon Harry has fought in the past. And this demon's plan is to break into a vault and steal one of the most precious and powerful objects in all space and time. Regular readers have the pleasure of catching up with old characters, some of whom come to occupy a very central place in the supernatural world once again. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling the twisty plot and surprises. Even at four hundred and some pages, it was a fast read, for precisely the reasons I mentioned above.

Recommend? Yes! But just like anything in a series, you must read the others first. None of the Dresden Files books are stand-alone affairs. The series is a continuing unfolding of events and you need to be up to speed. It makes no sense to come in without any prior knowledge: you need to grasp the importance and history of certain places, people, and things. Go to Butcher's site and see the list of HARRY DRESDEN books in order, starting with STORM FRONT:
http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/

Just finished reading...

...the third installment of Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam Trilogy, called, naturally, MADDADDAM.

After reading ORYX AND CRAKE and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD (which I reviewed here and here), I was extremely eager to finish up the story with her final book in the series, MADDADDAM. I liked the first two captivating books a lot...

Now, I do want to say before I go further, that I did enjoy MADDADDAM... it is engrossing just like the first two installments. But perhaps there is something about already knowing the lay of the land, so to speak, that takes some of the novelty and astonishment away. Atwood did a spectacular job of creating a complete and total universe in ORYX AND CRAKE and FLOOD--albeit a horrifying world based solely on technology that currently exists. This is why her social and science fiction is so penetrating and successful: because she simply looks at the current position and trajectory of the planet and moves the timeline ahead to a logical outcome. And the outcome is pretty damn scary. She explored this possible world so thoroughly and we followed characters barely surviving it all, and honestly, there was nowhere new to go. In this way, MADDADDAM is not really a stand alone story, it is more of a denouement. ORYX AND CRAKE is Part 1A, and FLOOD is Part 1B since both stories ostensibly take place at the same time, but just from the perspectives of different characters. And MADDADDAM brings all these characters (human survivors and genetically modified creatures) together in the world Atwood created for the wrap-up. All the characters that were leading parallel lives are finally joined. It is very satisfying to get answers to questions, and to be let in on why characters got to be the way they are, or why certain events happened as they did in the first two books. It is all tied together nicely. But there is something about the last few chapters that feels rushed. Bing-bang-boom, a big final event, and then we are done.

But again, I am not complaining, merely describing my feelings. And I will say again that I am not unsatisfied with what Atwood created. There is no other way the story could have gone. And without giving anything away (this is not a direct spoiler), it is nice that the dark universe she created has a bit of hope at the end: creation and the sheer seething tenacity of life cannot be stopped.

Recommend? Yes, if you have read ORYX AND CRAKE and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD. Otherwise, it won't make any sense to you. If you have read the first two, you have to read MADDADDAM!

http://margaretatwood.ca/

Just finished reading...

...one of Mary Renault's historical novels, THE MASK OF APOLLO.

Because I am an actor, a friend of mine sent this book to me after I recently appeared in an historical stage play. She said it was about the birth of theater, but in that respect, it is really about the birth of the commodification and the business of theater, since the form of theater happened far earlier, with man primeval re-enacting adventurous or dangerous hunts by firelight as the rest of the tribe looked on. Theater can be traced back to rituals in caves.

In Renault's book, we follow Nikeratos, an actor in ancient Greece, as he navigates not only the everyday world of ancient Greece (not ancient of course but a contemporary world to him--Renault must have spent so much time researching aspects of daily life in this time and place), but also of political intrigue between city states and other countries. Our narrator might be an actor but the world of the theater becomes secondary to a larger, more encompassing story. Along the way, he meets Plato (yes, the Plato), Dion of Syracuse, and a fourteen-year old Alexander the Great.

It is a fascinating glimpse into a culture and a time past that in many ways bears little resemblance to how we live today, but in other ways, the universality and timelessness of the human condition (love, hate and all in between) are present as well. Renault makes it come alive.

Recommend? Yes, it is interesting from an historical perspective, and I learned a few bits about ancient Greece, but it is interesting from a human perspective as well. Could be a good summer read...

Just finished reading...

...Virginia Woolf's second novel NIGHT AND DAY from 1919.

I love Virginia Woolf's work and have listed TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, a stunning piece of literary artistry that literally made me weep, as one of my favorite books on my "Important Books That Have Influenced Me" list to the right on this blog. But I recently realized that the Woolf I love is the Woolf of the deconstructed novel, the Woolf of the stream of consciousness narrative device, the Modernist Woolf. So in an effort to rectify this perception, I have been reading some of her earlier works. I started with her first novel, THE VOYAGE OUT which I wrote about here, and now I have just finished reading her second novel, NIGHT AND DAY.

There are some differences between this early Woolf and the Woolf who later produced master works like THE WAVES and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Most notable is the relative lack of the stream of consciousness device, the internal monologue, the deep study of the psychological state of an individual through their thoughts, perceptions, and reactions to the world. This highly stylized internal approach had not yet been explored by Woolf but one can see the beginnings of it in NIGHT AND DAY which is mostly composed of relatively straight forward exposition and dialogue. But lengthy passages are devoted, in her exquisite, angelic way of using language and description as a tool to induce a meditative Alpha state, to lyrical interludes that foreshadow her method of slowly exploring a psychological, metaphysical state. So both the traditional narrative device and Woolf's later stream of consciousness device are at work.

The title NIGHT AND DAY is itself a reference to two different modes of thinking, being, perceiving. It speaks to the idea of two people being as different "as night and day," a way of being part of convention or of blazing one's own trail, of accepting staid rules of behaviour or accepting one's own ideas of how to respond to the world, the oh-so-British preoccupation with the differences between class (I have said that every piece of British literature produced after 1750, or any British film, is really about the class struggle in English society...and I am only half joking), even of the difference between what traditional ideas of what "masculine" and "feminine" are supposed to be and how the qualities that are assigned to each gender do not actually have gender themselves (it is possible for a woman to be analytical and mathematical and for a man to be emotional and artistic, without either one suffering). Woolf's exploration of these themes came at a time in world history when societal mores were shifting, the suffrage movement was gaining traction, and the cobwebs from the Victorian era were being cleared away. The traditional ideas of the origin and function of love, relationships, and marriage are questioned in NIGHT AND DAY, but not so much as to actually upset the patriarchy. Woolf would later write more forcefully and convincingly of women's rights and the destructive effects of the patriarchy in works like A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN. I don't fault her for just getting started in NIGHT AND DAY.

In the novel, we follow four, then five characters who are alternately drawn to each other, fall in love with each other, are repulsed by each other, become engaged, become unengaged, fall in love, and become engaged again. This rather old-fashioned, nearly operatic structure (if one were not paying close attention, one could almost confuse it with Mozart's "Così Fan Tutte") is reminiscent of Shakespeare... and not by accident. The mother of one of our main heroines adores Shakespeare and there is frequent discourse about him... late in the book, she even goes on a pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon only to return with an arm load of flowers she says are from Shakespeare's grave! But unlike Shakespeare's light hearted, identity-confusion love stories, NIGHT AND DAY is full of poignant observations, longing, and yes, love. But a more realistic kind of love filled with doubt and fear. Though some in the story never stray from a well-worn route and thus are sort of guaranteed a "happy ending" as it were, others never really commit to that route. True to the personalities and natures of these individuals that Woolf created, they appear to want a life that has yet to be created, a life that does not yet have a blueprint. By the time the novel ends, we certainly have the sense that these characters and their struggles will continue on well past the last page as they discover and create a life for themselves that has nothing to do with anyone else.

Recommend? Yes but I am aware that the book may be too slow for some, and the hemming and hawing and back-and-forth, maddeningly indirect nature of Edwardian courtship could try the patience of those more used to a 20th or 21st century approach to relationships and romance. But it is a useful glimpse into the highly structured, rigorously tight-laced culture of the past. And Woolf's gorgeous prose and sublime skill in phrasing and exploring abstract matters that normally remain floating in our heads is worth the price of admission right there.

Just finished reading...

...COLD DAYS, the fourteenth book in the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher.

I devoured half this book on the plane to France and finished it off the first week I was there. I was going to write that the Dresden Files books are a guilty pleasure of mine, but when I stop to think about that turn of phrase, I simply don't feel guilty. I like them. Jim Butcher has created a total world with a stunning variety of creatures, animals, people, places, and history that are all based on or around ideas of "magic." For those unfamiliar, Harry Dresden is a Private Investigator and modern day wizard in Chicago, and across fourteen books, we have discovered monsters, vampires, fairies, ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and other supernatural beings, in a sort of hybrid of Sam Spade and "The X-Files." Lest this sound a tad too Dungeons and Dragons/ role play for some, Butcher has a wonderful way of presenting these stories rooted in reality. He makes everything seem so utterly possible and believable... and I will tell you that I am not a D&D fan.

This newest installation in the series, COLD DAYS, is just as fast, fun, entertaining, suspenseful, funny, and wildly imaginative as the thirteen that came before it. Jim Butcher is one of those writers who knows exactly how to end a chapter so that you can't wait to start the next one... which leads to many late nights ("Oh, I'll just read one more chapter, then go to bed..." and this is of course followed by, "Well, just this one more, this will be the last one..."). It is pointless for me to try to provide even a summary of the plot so I will simply say two things.
1) To those who are fans of the Dresden Files, dive right in, you'll love it.
2) To those who have not read the Dresden Files, gather together the first ten or so books... they make excellent summer reading. Ready, set, go!

Recommend? You betcha.

http://www.jim-butcher.com/

Just finished reading...

...NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK by Fredric Brown.

I have heard Brown's name bandied about in fantasy/sci-fi circles as a sort of legendary writer who worked within a classic framework of the genre. Prolific in the 1950s and inspired by pulp novels of that period, he wrote short stories that were part mystery, part fantasy, part sci-fi. And I had come across several mentions of his novel NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK as a kind of shining example of his oeuvre. And being a Lewis Carroll fan myself, I decided to give it a go. But I was unprepared for how rooted in reality the book really is. In a very small town, a newspaper owner (and sole editor/writer) gets embroiled in a single evening of organized crime, small town pettiness, and a murder mystery. Although there were touches of fantasy to it, it sure read like a pulp novel... a hard-boiled mystery/crime story... it felt like "The Big Sleep" meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez... Sam Spade tries to find out who did it and why. It ends up being a clever little story, tightly told without much excess or flourish. It is definitely "hard boiled."

I must also make an amusing observation. I downloaded a copy for my iPad and it came with the very inconspicuous light blue cover you see at the top. Had I seen one of these original charming covers below, I would have been much more in the correct mind set...

Recommend? Sure, it's a quick read, it bounces along and it is worth a laugh...

Just finished reading...

...WAR AND PEACE by Tolstoy.

It’s been a while since I have written about any recently read books, and there is a good reason for that. I always try to include a classic among the many books I read each year, and this year I decided it was time for me to read WAR AND PEACE. Which took a little while. But my goal was to finish it before the end of the year, and I read the last chapter last night.

First I want to say that, at least here in the United States, this legendary book has taken on a meaning of its own, beyond what the book is, or is about. It is a stand-in for something that is insufferably long, something that one must slog through. Often that idea has a comedic meaning as well, a punch-line of sorts: “I could have read WAR AND PEACE waiting in that check-out line!” Its reputation is that it is a dreary, dreadful affair, the kind of bone-dry, academic book that no one really wants to read, the kind of book high school students are forced against their wills to read. But since ANNA KARENINA is one of my favorite pieces of literature, I had faith in Tolstoy’s story-telling powers, so I plunged in. After all, the book of a thousand pages begins with Page One. And honestly…it’s just a book…paper with some ink printed on it…nothing that threatening.

I will admit that WAR AND PEACE is long, but it is in no way dry or dreary. Like ANNA KARENINA, the breathtaking scope of the narrative is epic and sweeping, incorporating many different characters over the course of many years, from 1805 to 1820. The WAR of the title is of course the Napoleonic wars in Eastern Europe and Russia. But the PEACE is just as important, to serve as a counterpoint, and a way to illustrate the approach of the upper classes and Tsar Alexander I toward Napoleon and the invasion.

The story traces five families throughout this period, and how their lives are changed and shaped by the waves of war that ebb and flow during this period of history. And just like in ANNA KARENINA, Tolstoy has a masterful way of drilling deep into the mind and soul of a certain character, capturing the texture and thought process of a particular person, only to do the same with the next character. But it is shocking to see how thorough he is in his portrayals. Just when I accept as normal certain concerns, certain outlooks, certain beliefs as the tone of the story, he hops into the mind of another and the tone is turned on its head as we explore the concerns, outlooks, and beliefs of this next person. He is dedicated to making these characters come alive, whether they are good and noble or selfish and petty. All are worthy of exploration since they all exemplify the human condition.

The concerns of the women left at home range from situation to situation, but as one might imagine during that period, generally the women are left to care for children, elderly parents, or homes, or, if they are younger, wonder about attending dances and whom they will eventually marry. We bounce between these domestic and social scenes in Moscow and Petersburg and battlefields scattered across Eastern Europe and Russia.

And it is these war scenes and battlefield accounts that really took me by surprise. I am not now, nor have I ever been fascinated by war. I know history and I know about the major wars, but I do not study battles the way Civil War groupies do in this country, I do not pore over the History Channel documentaries about Hitler and WWII, and I do not gravitate toward war films. But because I know such people and their peculiar (to me) predilections exist, I suppose I am used to a kind of American view of war. And that view turns war into a hobby, something to be studied for fun or as a pastime, something to be re-enacted, and by extension, something to be held up with positivity, something to be glorified. I do not share this view, but it was still shocking to come across vivid descriptions of the reality of war. Tolstoy shows us that war is not what it seems, even to those in Moscow or Petersburg. War—especially hand to hand combat—is something slow and messy and personal and confusing. It takes a lot of fortitude to run up to someone and bayonet them or swipe at them with a saber. Nicholas, one of our young men we follow in the story, takes down a French officer in a battle, but once the enemy is down, Nicholas is alarmed to see that the officer is actually a young man, much like himself or his school chums, a young man with a dimpled chin and light-blue eyes filled with terror, apprehension, and uncertainty about what will happen to him, to his life force. It is a shocking moment, not only for the readers, but also for Nicholas who is profoundly shaken by the encounter and actually becomes quite depressed, confused about the meaning of “heroism” in war (afterward, Nicholas says to himself of the encounter, “So others are even more afraid than I am!”), wondering what the point of war is, and why men follow leaders who make war. And there are many such scenes which look unflinchingly at how any battle seems nonsensical and surreal to those actually in it. I liken it to a car accident. We see such scenes on television and in films: the angle is perfect, the lighting is good, and the soundtrack captures a true “cinematic” moment. But until you are riding in a car and are struck by another vehicle so entirely unceremoniously, and you hear not a soundtrack or a special sound effect, but simply the dull thud of fiberglass against your door, and a ripping sound followed by the sound of shattering glass, and you feel the absolute nonsensical, surreal, confusing feeling of the trauma to your body, you can’t possibly understand how immediate it all is, how quickly it can be over despite feeling as if it is happening slowly, and how truly destructive it can be.

The effects of war are shown as equally destructive with one of our major heroes being taken prisoner by the French, and losing a few other characters to enemy fire (I was quite saddened at the death of one character I had grown particularly fond of since his temperament and philosophy reminded me of my own). Later in the book, Tolstoy devotes chapters to trying to understand the reasons for war, the particular successes or failures of one side or the other, and what makes men make the decisions they do. Tolstoy examines such things from a very philosophical, even metaphysical, point of view. He claims that winning or losing, success or failure of a war cannot be traced to a single battle, cannot be traced to the will of one man, such as Napoleon or Alexander I. Such things are due to innumerable causes traced back hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years. He says that historians try to examine all events in a vacuum, away from anything else, but there can be no beginning of an event since all events flow into one another and are connected. It is possible to strategize about where to move your left flank or to give commands or orders to advance a regiment, but it is impossible to see through time and space, through the will of every living human, and to plot a winning war. As Tolstoy says, “Only unconscious action bears fruit and he who plays a part in an historic event never understands its significance.”

I also received an unexpected world history lesson in this novel. I was vaguely aware of the Napoleonic Wars, 1812, The Battle of Borodino, etc., but I suspect that my high school World History class was woefully lacking. It was fascinating to check up on historical facts as I followed these men and women through the battles and the awful aftermath, like the burning of Moscow!

The only small critique I will dare to put forward is that toward the end of the book, these philosophizing chapters examining the cause and effect of war and historians' lack of ability to grasp the real meaning, the higher meaning behind it all, tends to overtake the story. In fact, the Second Epilogue is entirely a treatise about this very subject, the main story having ended in the First Epilogue. Perhaps this is where the novel gets its reputation as something dry and academic. But truly, it is a small part of the experience.

Recommend? Yes. Just jump right in. It might take a bit of commitment to keep with it, but it is worth it.

Just finished reading...

...two graphic novels by the marvelous French artist Nicolas de Crécy, SALVATORE VOL.1 and SALVATORE VOL. 2

Taking place in a kind of alternate universe where animals rule and people are pets, this humorous and often poignant story concerns two divergent and convergent plot lines about a lovesick dog trying to go from France to South America to rejoin his first love, and a myopic mother pig who is missing one of her twelve newborn piglets. By turns touching and thoughtful, and critical of modern culture, this cinemtically-told story is made all the more fascinating and delightful by de Crécy's scratchy, intricate art work.

I can't wait to get volumes three and four to find out if our little doggie finds his lost love and if our mama finds her missing baby!

Recommend? YES!

http://www.nbmpub.com/comicslit/glacialperiod/glacialhome.html
http://500dessins.blogspot.com/

Just finished reading...

...DEADLOCKED, the twelfth installment of the Sookie Stackhouse series.

I have read all of Charlaine Harris' Sookie books which are the basis for HBO's wildly popular series "True Blood." And I have watched every episode of "True Blood" but creator Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") has deviated significantly from Harris' narrative. The consequence for my poor imagination is that these two parallel worlds bleed together in my head. When watching the TV show, one thing I do miss is the amateur detective/Nancy Drew quality of the books. Sookie is always presented with a crime and a mystery that needs to be solved. True, most of them involve her, but that makes the need to solve the mystery all the more urgent. And this most recent book has Sookie trying to figure out a murder. Of course the deeper she digs, the more she learns of plots and schemes around her, some that betray her trust.

Harris has said that DEADLOCKED is the second to last Sookie book that will be written. She intends to stop at thirteen (pun intended, I am sure). And although she solves the immediate murder and plots that involve her supernatural family, this book leaves Sookie in limbo with her love life. A constant thread through all the books has been Sookie's relationship with first Bill Compton, vampire, and then with a succession of werewolves, were-tigers, and another vampire. Sookie is such a likable, sweet character, and we end up rooting for her to find happiness.

The series is meant to be fun and this book is the light, speedy read that all the other books are. This is not gourmet literature, it is a hamburger and fries and a cold lemonade on a hot summer day.

Recommend? Sure, if you have read all the other Sookie books. If you haven't, give them a try. They are fluffy and entertaining.

http://www.charlaineharris.com/

Just finished reading...

...AN EVERLASTING MEAL by Tamar Adler.

With a forward by Alice Waters, founder of the legendary Chez Panisse and allusions to beloved food writer M.F.K. Fisher, Tamar Adler’s first book is an odd thing. She has written passionately about food from cover to cover and although the book features some recipes, it’s not a cookbook. It’s not really a memoir either (despite the aforementioned references to Fisher), yet it contains a few fleeting reminiscences. It’s not a novel because there is nothing “created,” and no “story line” to speak of, except with the possible exception of the progression of a meal; well, at least the last chapter is about desserts.

No, this is a monotone—NOT monotonous—meditation on food, ingredients, and meals. Subtitled “Cooking with Economy and Grace,” Adler’s book reads like a prayer, a sonorous chant, a breathy ode to the ideas of using every single scrap of food, not letting anything go to waste, and finding delicious uses for everything, even the most mundane of ingredients. She seems to be very fond of using all the leftovers in the fridge at once, drizzling olive oil, herbs, and a squeeze of fresh lemon over it all. This approach could come off as rather inelegant, like a Woman’s Day article from the 70s, but instead, she links this philosophy to the contadina (or peasant) style of cooking in Italy where, for example, stale bread is never thrown away. It can be made into ribollita (that exquisite, thick, almost porridge-like tomato and bread soup/stew from Tuscany), it can be toasted and put at the bottom of a bowl with a heaping ladle of hearty bean soup over it, it can be cut into squares and roasted into croutons.

I really like her instinctive, inventive, and holistic approach to cooking because it seems to match my own approach to food and how I view ingredients and preparing meals. I am known by many to be able to walk into a kitchen without much in it and produce a tasty and interesting meal. Like Adler, I scour the back corners of shelves for forgotten cans and jars, the ends of bags of pasta, rice, or nuts, and a bottle of olive oil. Add in a dozen eggs and some fresh lemons, and chances are she and I could come up with something comforting, filling, and hopefully delicious. She gave me a few ideas though, about new uses for some of these things: a few times this week, I have found myself in the kitchen at dinner time wondering what I am going to eat. One evening, inspired by a freshly-read chapter of AN EVERLASTING MEAL, I cooked two eggs from a local organic farm over easy and put them on top of some leftover brown rice with a handful of chopped cilantro, and some crumbled fresh goat ricotta, naturally topped off with a generous drizzling of olive oil. And voila! Adler is wont to top almost every dish with an egg, a hand full of herbs, a squeeze of lemon or a generous drizzling of olive oil—sometimes all of the above—and it works!

Recommend? Yes, read it and let her put you under the lulling spell of a constant murmur of ingredients, meals, food, and tastes…

http://www.tamareadler.com/


P. S.
Adler wrote a thoughtful article in response to the recent flap about pop culture chef Paula Deen's revelation that she has adult-onset diabetes. Read the essay here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2012/01/20/tamar-adler-on-paula-deens-diabetes-food-comfort-and-balance/

Just finished reading...

...THE LAST DAYS OF HAUTE CUISINE: AMERICA'S CULINARY REVOLUTION by chef-turned-author (and restaurant reviewer) Patric Kuh.

I am very interested in food: its tastes, flavors, textures, and ingredients. And I have always been interested in special cuisine and unusual dining experiences. I recall a meal I had with a dear friend many years ago, when I was in my early 20s, at an Ethiopian restaurant. We were seekers of taste, learning about the balance of savory and sweet/ hot and cold/ soft and crunchy, and had already worked our way through Moroccan, Indian, Italian and “nouvelle cuisine” (a local favorite of ours served a marvelous peanut butter and bacon pizza!). We would savor dishes, identifying herbs and spices so as to recreate these dishes at home. In this way, we refined our taste buds, honing in on and isolating tastes. So we found ourselves sitting in a darkened, atmospheric den listening to the lovely Amharic language coming from the kitchen which sounded like rain softly falling on the roof, and smelling fragrances both familiar and foreign... and we knew there was nowhere to go but deeper. During that meal, we discovered that basically, all world cuisine starts with the same building blocks, but each region distinguishes itself with spices. Sometimes one even finds the same set of spices from region to region, but each country or ethnicity manages to make it individual by the combination of spices and flavors, a little bit more of this taste, a little bit less of that taste.

I have sought out grander and grander food adventures over the years and have had the pleasure of dining at some of the most fascinating and unique places, some run by chefs of renown, like the legendary Cibreo run by bon vivant chef and author Fabio Picchi in Florence (Chef Picchi made me a parmesan flan with wild boar ragout that was one of the finest things I have ever tasted), or the private atelier of Dominique Bouchet in Paris (where Chef Bouchet prepared a beautiful five course lunch in front of us), or Le Versance in Paris which soars under the wild, entertaining imagination of chef Samuel Cavagnis, or rising star David Kinch’s excellent Manresa in Northern California (where I was served a mind-boggling—and delicious— amuse bouche: a sorrel sorbet floating in a juniper soda!), or chef and best-selling author Susan McKenna Grant's exquisite, glorious agriturismo La Petraia in the Tuscan countryside (where I have had several lunches full of seriously breathtaking ingredients right from the farm, served in stunning presentations), and of course, the little California Mission/Arts and Crafts cottage that started it all, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in North Berkeley, the gourmet ghetto of the West (I go here every year for my birthday).

And I am aware that such an interest in food is now “trendy” and I am aware that the slightly derogatory name slapped on me for my interest is “foodie,” sometimes uttered with a belittling sneer because my interest is seen as pretentious. But participation in the culinary world is as rewarding as seeing exciting new art, or watching a new film, or reading a book by a new provocative author. We all eat; why not eat something interesting?

So it was with great interest that I read THE LAST DAYS OF HAUTE CUISINE by Patric Kuh. The book details the shift in consciousness around food, from the days when haute cuisine was indeed haute, to our current attitude toward food, dining, and cuisine. At the turn of the century and well into the 1920s, 30s and 40s, the pinnacle of food was the French restaurant. This bastion of manners, social strata, and indecipherable menus (even for some who spoke French) was to demonstrate the superiority of French cooking. But after the war, into the 1950s and 60s, several individual phenomena sprouted and took root, changing how we eat forever. Post-war prosperity created a new class… the “Middle Class” who moved out to the suburbs, and had money to spend on products, homes, cars. Suddenly a whole new demographic could afford to eat out, and the tuxedoed men and fur-draped women, the very caricature of the wealthy straight out of a “Three Stooges” film, had to get used to sharing. But the codified and rarefied world these men and women were used to made no sense to the new comers. The restaurant world was forced to change, and those who did, thrived. Menus were no longer written in French, but English with a description of the dish itself, and not simply a region or name after it. Around the same time, Julia Child became a household name; true, she was advancing French cooking, but her passion lay in the simple rustic ingredients found in le pays, the French countryside. Indeed, the words simple, rustic, fresh came to exemplify this new way of thinking about and eating food. And out of the counter-culture revolution of Berkeley in the 1960s came a charming little experiment, Chez Panisse, run by utopian dreamers who had absolutely no chef training at all. Alice Waters had been to France and had fallen in love with, yes, the simple, rustic, fresh—and seasonal—way of eating and cooking. She and her band of merry cooks plowed head first into territory that was previously held behind a red velvet rope.

Kuh, knowledgeable and with good insight, outlines this change in culinary culture and gives us plenty of evidence to consider. People, places, cities, restaurants, chefs, and restaurant owners are recounted in this colorful history, and I learned a lot about the gastronomic revolution of the last fifty or sixty years. But Kuh tells this story out of order, jumping around, sometimes without any warning, shifting time and place. It is a little puzzling at times. This, coupled with the fact that Kuh’s prose is often clumsy, stilted, and sometimes unnecessarily circuitous (I found myself re-reading sentences over and over to glean his meaning), makes the book sticky and sluggish in places. He also populates this history of 20th century cuisine with anecdotes from his own personal history, which while charming on their own, only muddies the waters of the larger history. He did not have to choose between writing an historical documentary or a memoir; it is possible to incorporate both into an entertaining whole. I suspect he just doesn’t know how to do that. But don’t get me wrong… these things did not ruin the story for me. I still followed the history and am now all the more educated and enriched for it.

Recommend? Yes, I think so. If you are at all interested in restaurants and culinary culture/history, you will enjoy it. It is on the shorter side and a fairly quick read, so the cons I mentioned above are easily overlooked as you enjoy the pros.

Just finished reading...

...the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by British author Julian Barnes.



Julian Barnes’ slim volume might only be 163 pages long, but it packs a life time of narrative experience and then some. It is ironic and deliberate that such a small tome should be about memory and the problems memory presents: its instability, its randomness, its untrustworthiness. We all remember events differently but what we often don’t stop to think about is that this act/ function informs our attitudes toward everything around us, and shapes our personalities. The instrument doing the remembering is not an objective machine, recording sights or sounds, but a subjective creature, recording feelings along with those sights and sounds. There is no right or wrong; our feelings are our own. Wherever we go, there we are. We can’t escape ourselves.

The story of THE SENSE OF AN ENDING seems to be simple enough. In Part One of this two-part story, we follow our narrator Tony through his life in England, his youth, his school chums, a difficult first relationship. But he is not writing as these things happen. He is writing his memoirs as a grown man, a man who is on the downhill side of his life, remembering—or struggling to remember—these people, places, and things. And Barnes has Tony tell us several times and in several different ways that memory is not to be trusted. Memory can play games. Memory can embellish, twist, add or subtract while keeping the premise similar enough to make one think one is recalling all with clarity. It is as if Tony is telling us, “Don’t trust what I am telling you. Don’t believe me.”

In Part Two, we see the return of a handful of these people and places and we learn that Tony was certainly selective in his memories. These people return to Tony’s life in a not-too pleasant way as he is forced to grapple with his own perceptions vs. the reality of his past. Like a detective, Tony is presented with a situation…a riddle he must solve. And we are right there with him both because of the way Barnes presents the information and because of the information itself. We must piece together what we are given like a jigsaw puzzle. We must sift for clues, for the complicated chain of cause and effect, through the incomplete messiness of a human life, through the remains of what we know. I must say—and this is important—that it is much like sifting through rubble after a bomb. I think this is the point of the book made manifest for us, the readers. If this book is about the instability of memory, what we remember and how we color facts with the filter of our minds, then we are living proof of this as we go back and try to remember the events, what happened (according to Tony), who said what and when. It is exactly the same effect, conversely, with Proust’s IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, a story about an enormous cast of characters, an avalanche of places and people who orbit Proust’s narrator, and his long life seeing these people coming and going, seeing changes, having illusions ripped away from reality… the sense of a life, the sense of time, the sense of existence itself. The physical length of Proust’s masterpiece is an element of the book as much as anything written inside it. The feeling we get after completing the journey with Proust’s narrator fills us with the same feeling the narrator has after exhaustively living such a life. That feeling could not have been replicated in a single novel of medium length. The actual physical manifestation of the book itself supports the psychological ideas it contains.

And so it is with Barnes’ short, sparse tale. We are left with gaps, holes, and questions. And just like life, many of these questions will never be answered. One must analyze literature, prose, and poetry based solely on what the author has presented. It is tempting, after reading this book, to fly off with theories and “what-ifs” to fill these gaps, to answer these questions. But I am a firm believer in looking at what the author has given us. He gave us what he wanted us to know for a reason. Books—literature, poetry—are not accidents. And Barnes has created a tale that, uncomfortable as it might be, leaves us unsettled, with nagging questions. That is the state we leave Tony in when we close the book. It is called THE SENSE OF AN ENDING after all… we have the sense of an ending, but not a true ending. As it goes for us all.

Recommend? Yes.

http://www.julianbarnes.com/

Just finished reading...

...GHOST STORY by Jim Butcher.


This is the thirteenth installment in Jim Butcher’s “Harry Dresden” series and surprisingly, the characters seem as fresh and interesting as the early books. This is thanks to Butcher’s willingness to make huge, sweeping changes to the narrative of the series—anything can and will happen, and no character is above being killed off, including our narrator and hero, Harry Dresden himself!

At the end of—and I mean the very last page of—the last Dresden novel, CHANGES, Harry was shot in the back by an unknown—to him as well as us—assailant. Butcher insisted that the book was not a cliffhanger. Harry got shot and died. Well, here we are picking up with Harry in the “hereafter”—which actually looks a lot like his home town of Chicago. Harry is a ghost, or in the parlance of the supernatural world in which Dresden lives, a “shade.” His spirit is sent back to the real Chicago to find out who killed him, and to right that imbalance. Easier said than done when he can’t touch or influence anything and no one can see or hear him. His first visit is to Morty, a medium Harry knew when he was alive. He always assumed that Morty was a borderline fake, but lo and behold, Morty can see and hear Harry just fine!

Harry eventually finds his other group of friends (comprised of loyal and returning characters including Karrin, and his apprentice Molly) and discovers that instead of being gone for an hour or so, he has been “dead” for six months. And he sees firsthand the emotional, psychic, and physical toll his death has had on his friends.

Of course Harry is a detective, and no detective story can ever be straight-forward, especially when the supernatural is concerned. Perhaps there is more to this “right-an-imbalance” than meets the eye. Perhaps Harry can only see the tip of an iceberg. Perhaps Harry must find out the truth about his death, his fate, and the lives of his friends.

I won’t give you any spoilers, so you can have the pleasure of discovering the story for yourself, but I will say however, that the book has a satisfying ending, and yes, there will be plenty of “Dresden File” books in the future… featuring Harry himself.

Recommend? Yup. But just like anything in a series, you must read the others first. None of the “Dresden Files” books are stand-alone affairs. The series is a continuing unfolding of events and you need to be up to speed. It makes no sense to come in without any prior knowledge.

http://www.jim-butcher.com/
http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden

Just finished reading...

...ALL THE LIVES HE LED, sci-fi legend Frederik Pohl's newest book.


Fred Pohl is a science fiction writer but this is not really science fiction… more social fiction. Although there is a bit of science in it. But no space travel, no alien cultures. We peek in on the world in the year 2079, and most of the action takes place in Pompeii, Italy. You see, the original eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii was exactly 2,000 years prior and the ruins of the ancient city have been turned into a theme park and tourist attraction for a celebration of the volcano. Our narrator Brad Sheridan, who works at the park, tells us all we need to know about how the park works, including the “virts” as he calls them: virtual reality holographic projections that make the ruins seem like a brand new Roman-era city!

And much like several works by the brilliant Margaret Atwood, we see that the future is a place a lot like our world right now… except only more, and worse, and bigger, and crazier, and more difficult, and more dangerous. After the eruption of Yellowstone in the United States, which wiped out ¾ of the country, sent millions of people to refugee camps all along the eastern seaboard, and destroyed or disrupted every aspect of life, other areas of the world rose to power, particularly China. In ALL THE LIVES HE LED, terrorism is now the norm, with fringe groups too many to count bombing, sinking, burning, exploding and maiming millions of people for causes that are even more strange and esoteric than our terrorists in 2011.

The title ALL THE LIVES HE LED is really a bit misleading. I didn’t feel that Sheridan led many lives; Pohl shows us that the single one he did have was plenty. From a prosperous family in Kansas City, to a refugee camp in New York, to being an indentured slave in first Egypt and then Pompeii, we see that Sheridan does indeed get around. But honestly, there is really only one plot line... and one life.

And that is one of the drawbacks of this novel. The first half of it seems like a very long, protracted set up for one plot line. I kept thinking, “Yes, I get it, yes the theme park is almost all virtual reality, yes, terrorism is everywhere.” Very little happens in that first half. We just get descriptions of the same things over and over. Another drawback is the first person narrative of this story… I usually don’t mind first person narratives, but it seems that as a literary device, in this instance it is doing a little more harm than good. I think if we were not tied to Sheridan, the book might have been able to roam a bit more, discover a bit more, and ultimately be a little more interesting than it is.

However, when the action does finally start, it is interesting enough. And it does weave together some of the things from the extra-long set up (a few plot threads get dropped or totally forgotten—the author is in his 90s after all). Although married (five times!) and presumably heterosexual, Pohl has always been a very gay-friendly writer and this book contains some interesting gender and sexuality issues as well. But as the story wound down, I felt like we ended up with the opposite problem from the first half of the book: the ending is swift and facile, and not really explored well. We are told a lot of things instead of seeing them unfold. It feels rushed and hurried, less of an ending and more of an afterthought.

I have read Pohl's STARBURST and his HEECHEE SERIES, and those novels are more imaginative and from what I recall, paced much better. This feels like a freshman or sophomore attempt at a novel by a much less experienced writer than I know Pohl to be.

Recommend? Don’t get me wrong, this is not a terrible book—it is mildly enjoyable and it can be a quick read (despite the seeming slowness of the first half). But if you have something else waiting for you on your night stand, read that instead.

http://www.frederikpohl.com/

Just finished reading...

...THE HIDDEN REALITY: PARALLEL UNIVERSES AND THE DEEP LAWS OF THE COSMOS by Brian Greene.


I consider myself to be a bit of an armchair physicist. I have greatly enjoyed following the unfolding concepts in both relativity and quantum physics from several different authors over the decades. I read Greene’s first book, THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE and quite liked it. It was full of easy to understand explanations and metaphors to illustrate the very large, complex, hard-to-grasp concepts of quantum mechanics. And of course the first book I read on this subject was the marvelous THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS by Gary Zukav, which introduced the idea that some of the advances in physics are proving some spiritual concepts from Buddhism and other esoteric beliefs. This idea is taken for granted now, with the Dalai Lama involved in brain mapping and brain studies, but when Zukav published his book in 1979, it was a radical idea. Because of the brilliant discoveries in physics since 1979, THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS is dated, but the information was formative and still true as science builds on past discoveries.

So, being very familiar with the subject matter, I was excited to start THE HIDDEN REALITY, but Greene’s book proved to be a bit too academic for me. I can grasp abstract concepts, and I truly appreciated his stories, and fun, illustrative examples of abstract concepts in THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE, but this newest book seems to have eschewed stories and fun examples in favor of mathematical explanations. And I am no mathematician. Trust me when I say that…

I found it took me more time and chapters to build an image and put the pieces together than his other books. I suspect this has something to do with the advanced and complicated nature of what Greene is trying to explain. I got it… it was just a little dry.

Basically, he explores the idea of parallel or multiple universes and stresses that these ideas are not born out of some kind of science fiction daydream, but from the results of other mathematical physics equations. The math presents them, not someone’s imagination. And since there are many branches of string theory and other paths that physicists are looking at for explanations to some vexing questions (gravity, the Big Bang, the nature of reality, etc.), we are looking at nine different equations for the case for parallel or multiverses.
• Quilted Multiverse
• Inflationary Multiverse
• Brane Multiverse
• Cyclic Multiverse
• Landscape Multiverse
• Quantum Multiverse
• Holographic Multiverse
• Simulated Multiverse
• Ultimate Multiverse

He spends time setting up and explaining each variation of the multiverse, but for me, only the last two or three chapters became lively with discussions about black holes and holograms.

Recommend? Yes, but I would say you need to be familiar with quantum mechanics, string theory, and general relativity, to enjoy it all. Even then, it might be a little slow… unless you are a mathematician or physicist… then you will be in your element!

http://www.briangreene.org/

Just finished reading...

...CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART by the abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky.


After being on my “To Read” list for decades, I was surprised to find that this 1911 book is actually more like a pamphlet. What starts as a sort of clichéd rant about “philistines” (although Kandinsky does not use that word specifically) and the sad state of affairs concerning the commercialization of art and the art world, we get to Kandinsky’s view of spirituality, which, according to him (and greatly influenced by the teachings of the occult medium Madame Blavatsky), is shaped like a triangle. The "common" is at the bottom and the higher one goes in the triangle, the more refined and spiritual the art (and the intentions of the artists) becomes. His assessment of the art world and his analysis of culture seems quaintly antiquated. I couldn't help but wonder what he would think of the art world and culture at large now. The theory he put forth was that the art of the future will be purely abstract so as to portray inner states of spirituality, but how would he react to Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde or Koons’ vacuum cleaners under glass or gargantuan balloon animals in steel? He wrote so confidently about a coming art form that only seems to have been swallowed up and digested by the “future”—our present. The current conceptual art world seems to be light years ahead of what he foresaw. I feel like such art would confound him. It would not make any sense to him.

The rest of the book is dedicated to a breakdown of color, shape and composition. Again, not only was he reacting to what was around him at the time and the level at which art history had reached at that moment, but he also wrote from a clearly Euro-centric point of view. He issued edicts about the psychological nature of colors, proclaiming that black means death. But of course we now know that psychological reactions to color are contingent upon culture. For example, black may be a death and mourning color here in the West, but in China, the color of death and mourning is white (or yellow for Buddhists), a fact that was obviously unknown to Kandinsky. From our current position, his theories and suppositions in this book seem sadly provincial and outdated. It seems slightly comical because of the force with which he issued these theories and suppositions. A seer he was not.

Recommend? If you are interested in art history or the work of Kandinsky, have at it. But it is something that can easily be missed.

Just finished reading...

...the eleventh book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, DEAD RECKONING by Charlaine Harris.


Sookie gets drawn deeper into the shifting, dangerous and petty world of vampire politics. Her relationship with Eric is threatened by an arranged marriage he can’t get out of. Sookie learns more about her deceased grandmother’s double life, her fae family, fae culture, and—shockingly—how she came to be telepathic, all while dispatching the featured “bad guys” of this installment. But it all takes its toll on Sookie who is growing harder—out of necessity. This is another quick romp through the supernatural world by Charlaine Harris, and despite the wear and tear on Sookie, the tone retains its lightness and fun and even, at times, humor. I like the amateur detective-who-dunnit aspect of the whole series which is something I miss from Alan Ball’s otherwise excellent HBO adaptation, “True Blood.”

Recommend? Yes, but if you haven’t, read them all in order. Start with one and work your way through…

http://www.charlaineharris.com/