Book #23: Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

The twenty-third book I read since May 2008 is:

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

***** Note: Spoiler Alert!! *****

I think Card learned a lot in the 14 years between the original publication of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. I read Ender's Game earlier this year, and I thought it was interesting but flawed, with little explanation of why Ender was the chosen one and a sudden ending that caught the reader completely by surprise.

This novel encompasses the same time period as the earlier one, but is told from the perspective of a different character, a friend of Ender's (and comrade in arms) named Bean. And this time there are no real questions as to where Bean came from, we are given nearly a complete history and see him grow from a street kid to a key player in the war to save Earth. And given Bean's agile mind and ability to get information he shouldn't have, the reader also knows some of the behind-the-scenes discussions and the ending that was too sudden in the first book is less jarring this time.

In other words, having Bean as your narrator helps because he figures out enough to keep you in the loop but there is even more tension because you understand the stakes this time.

I also found the writing flowed better and the story came through the action and less from long monologues or talky conversations. Some of it came from the latter, but those sections worked because you could see Bean out-thinking the other person and sifting through the words for new nuggets of information.

I had my doubts about reading this so soon after the first book, but I'm glad I did. It nearly cracked my Top 5 list (at right), though I didn't like it quite as much as Oscar Wao.

Worth the read, perhaps even best read before you read Ender's Game.

- Scott

Book #22 The Host by Stephanie Meyer

The twenty-second book I read since May 2008 is:

The Host by Stephanie Meyer

****Note: spoiler alert****

I love a good story that explores what it means to be a person. The movie Blade Runner is one of the classic tales that ponders whether or not being born makes you human, or if it is something more. And this book held that possibility, with a reverse-telling of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

However, The Host didn't end up doing a very good job of fleshing out the issues it held in its hands. It's a very intriguing concept; but most characters are either well-worn stereotypes (Kyle, Jeb, even Melanie), meaningless props (all of the rest of the Souls), or window-dressing/furniture (most of the rest of the crew living in the caves).

Only Jared, Doc, Wanda/Wanderer have the kind of complexity to explore the issues at hand, and unfortunately that wasn't enough to make it an interesting discussion. The rest of it seems more like a lurid look at love triangles where there were only two bodies but three "people."

Also unfortunately, the book is over 600 pages, and you can predict how it will end about 200 pages in. By that time, I was invested enough to want to finish. Problem is that I didn't find Meyer's writing style gripping enough to hold my attention.

Meyer is an okay writer, but she has a bit of a tin ear for dialogue and has several characters who do the same thing over and over (Jamie, and even the main character spring to mind). So on the whole, the idea was great, the story was well constructed, but the characters and writing weren't enough to sustain 600 pages.

Okay, but not worth the effort unless you've read and enjoy the style of the writer.

- Scott

Book #21: Leading Geeks

The twenty-first book I read since May 2008 is:

Leading Geeks by Paul Glen

I actually saw Glen speak a few years ago, and was promised a copy of his book at the time. I never got that copy, and turns out I didn't miss much. The book is decent, but I didn't learn anything in it that he didn't cover in his presentation.

My advice; get it at the library and read about the first one-third. The rest is rehash of the initial thesis, which is that geeks are different from the rest of us and need totally new thinking by their managers. Not a ground-breaking thought, but Glen starts out doing a good job explaining why the old models don't work and then peters out as he reproves the same thing over and over.

- Scott

Book #22: The Giver

The twenty-second book I read since May 2008 is:

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Labeled juvenile fiction, The Giver is a lot deeper than most books aimed at that age group. It takes place in a world without meaningful differences, where people's obedience is their greatest strength, and where all feelings are discussed and dismissed before they get out of hand. It's a world of control that evolved out of a fear of chaos.

In some ways it's like the world in The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood), given that the society is closed and insular but you don't really know how far it reaches and what is just beyond it. And that uncertainty helps hold it all together.

But back to The Giver; the main character is a teen named Jonas and he is chosen for the ultimate job -- to serve as the repository of all emotions of the greater society. It's important because some decisions can't be made through sheer logic, so when the elders are faced with tough choices they will call on Jonas to make the right decision.

But the new job comes with difficulties: the newly provided freedom to lie to those close to him, knowledge of his family's (and the larger society's), and understanding of the horrors of starvation and war. He is up to the task, but it is exhausting to both him and "The Giver" (the man giving him the emotions).

However, once Jonas begins experiencing the joys and sorrows of emotion, he just can't bring himself to deny them to the rest of his community. And even though he is called "The Receiver" through most of the book, at the end he sacrifices himself to become the real "Giver" -- gifting emotions to all those in his orbit in exchange for his own life.

The Christ symbolism is thick here, but the tale is one that shows the scary underbelly of conformity and ultimately shuns it for the unpredictable world of natural beauty and feeling. A quick read and a layered story that held my nephew's attention (no small feat). I'd recommend it; and given how quick a read it was, I'll probably re-read it again soon.

- Scott

Book #20: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Twentieth book I read since May 2008:

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken

I enjoyed the book, though it didn't tell me a lot I didn't already know or suspect. Yes, the right-wing spin machine lies, bolstered by the middle-right mainstream media outlets and the conservatives who own and operate them. And yes, the lies can weaken freedoms and squelch debate here at home and support catastrophic foreign policy mistakes.

It was funny at times and informative all the time. I didn't care much for Franken's imagined comic book (Operation Chickenhawk -- starring the stars of the right wing who somehow got out of military duty); he was more pointed and funnier when he stuck to debunking the lies.

But what was missing was a solution to the problem of liars. The louder you denounce them, the more their lies are repeated by a media hungry to report on the fight. And the more you ignore them, the bolder they seem to become. All the while rationality dies a slow death at the hands of talk radio and screaming heads on television.

The solution might be to let both sides scream themselves silly and continually elect centrist politicians. And maybe someday, when the screamers realize the error of their ways, they'll join us in civil society again.

- Scott

Book #19: Welcome to the Monkey House

Nineteenth book I read since May 2008:

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

A friend lent this one to me, stating that she thought Vonnegut's short fiction was more accessible than his novels. She also thought it would be easier to read short stories on the train.

She was right on both counts.

My only worry going in was that the shorter fiction might lose some of the poignancy and Vonnegut-ness woven into the longer fiction. Well, I'm happy to say that his short stories are just as interesting and semi-zany as any of his novels I've read.

He has a wonderful way of twisting the future just slightly and figuring out how human cultural and biological wants/needs/flaws would express themselves in such a world. Would the world's only telekinetic decide to rule the world or alter it for the common good? What are the family dynamics when nearly ever-lasting life is guaranteed? How would our society react if people no longer needed their bodies? And the overarching question of whether or not a longer life is worthwhile.

But wait -- there's more! He also explores romantic relations between political enemies, race relations, how dogs might actually be ruling the world, and what we might need to sacrifice to motivate apathetic youth.

As you would expect with Vonnegut, it's all done with characteristic flair and small twists. His prose is spare, though at some points frankly confounding. But a very easy read, with interesting windows into everything from the human soul to the post-Camelot Martha's Vineyard.

Highly recommended.

- Scott

Book #18: Ender's Game

Eighteenth book I read since May 2008:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I would hesitate to call this a joyous romp through space. After all, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. But it is played out by children, so there is a certain playfulness about it. Though the children are often more deadly serious than the adults and play for keeps in all ways, which can be as dangerous as anything adult can be.

Ender is the nickname of the teeny kid who is apparently the savior of the human race. Chosen because he's empathetic enough to understand an enemy and brutal enough to destroy it, six year-old Ender turns accepted military strategies on their head and is thinking ten steps ahead of students twice his age. He rifles through military school faster than other tikes open their birthday presents and snaps out of a mid-life crisis in time to meet his destiny on the battlefield.

The books touches on some important topics: how young is too young for indoctrination; are leaders born, made, or both; should there be any rules of war; is it a war crime if you win; do wars/enemies unite us more than they divide us. But this book doesn't really explore them, just touches on them.

From what I understand, the rest of the Ender Saga contains deeper exploration of those questions, so I might read through some of the other books to find out. And I'm open to suggestions as to which book I should read next. There are about a dozen books and they don't follow a single through-line, so you don't have to read them chronologically.

But on its own, Ender's Game was a solid effort, with interesting characters and a lot of intrigue about motive, both seen and unseen. And it set the stage for a lot of future machinations, lots of interesting possibilities, and deeper philosophical debate. Oh, and it was also an enjoyable read, though the dialogue was a bit forced at times.

- Scott

Book #17: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Seventeenth book I read since May 2008:

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell. It's the first non-fiction entry on the blog, and it is a fascinating book. A true must read for anyone who buys the idea that our society is anything close to a meritocracy.

Gladwell clearly and sometimes painfully illuminates the role of luck, societal bias, class, culture, and well... luck, in the lives of hyper-successful people. In our world, the year you were born, the month of your birthday, the genes you got, the random opportunities that present themselves, and the family/culture/region in which you were brought up -- those factors have much more to do with your success or failure than your own hard work, determination, and your ability to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

The author is not a nay-sayer to the American Dream; he contends that hard work is essential to any success story. And in fact, he argues that to improve the lives of people and the overall functions of society we should we provided better, more equally distributed opportunities to all. Then talent and hard work would be rewarded more often and those successful people would make our world a better place by having their talents and hard work rewarded and recognized.

Gladwell does prove that the "self-made man" is a cultural illusion -- a fairy tale we tell ourselves -- that has virtually no examples in real life. Success in our world depends on being born into the right situations, having time to discover and nurture your talents, and getting the opportunities to apply those talents.

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who questions our society or culture and anyone who goes through life without questioning them. It's an intriguing study of how cultures self-select who will become successful, why some cultures have more success in some areas and tend to fail in others, and is far from the downer that this blog entry might make it sound like.

It's a celebration of success, and a hopeful dream that we can make small changes that can result in big success for even more people. And by the way, it's a quick read. I finished all 300 pages in less than a week on the train :)

- Scott

Book #16: Certain Things Last by Sherwood Anderson

Sixteenth book I read since May 2008:

Certain Things Last: The Selected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson (edited by Charles E. Modlin)

I enjoyed every single minute of this book. Anderson's spare style and simple phraseology make him easy to read and get into, and he pulls a lot of life knowledge from simple things.

His landscape is mostly rural Ohio, and yet his stories plumb the depths of human experience. Frustration, sexual desire and promiscuity, family obligations and limitations, status, artistry, the innocence and lack of innocence of youth, race relations, class distinctions, and even gender bending.

He also portrays his world with simple grace, bringing back visions of old town and slick cities as they moved from the industrial revolution and the great depression. But not the down sides of this transformation but the simple realities those events created for the people who had to survive them. And the yearnings and discarded dreams of those people.

The stories are short but chock full of great writing and vast knowledge. My favorites were Death in the Woods, Virginia Justice, and Fred. Anderson is a thoroughly modern and accessible writer, and I'd recommend these or any of his works to anyone.

- Scott

Book #15:Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

Fifteenth book I read since May 2008:

Tales of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft (edited by Joyce Carol Oates)

In the end I think Lovecraft spends more time building a scary world than actually scaring you. Maybe it's because of the time he wrote and how much the fright-and-gore industry has grown, but an underdescribed descent into madness that ends in cannibalism or weird stuff that happens after a meteor lands in a New England field just didn't do it for someone raise on Jason the Slasher and Stephen King. King still thinks Lovecraft is brilliant, and he probably knows more about it than me. But if you are like me and haven't studied horror fiction extensively, you're more likely to react to this out-dated fiction the way I did.

- Scott

Book #14: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Fourteenth book I read since May 2008:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Now that was one quick read. A lot of fun to get to this after repeated viewings of the movie (the Gene Wilder classic, not that more recent one). some of the differences struck me: more mean-spirited Oompa Loompa songs; no absent father; finality on what happened to the other kids; no Slugworth temptation, etc. And when I read the final scene, the music from the movie was spinning around in my head. Just couldn't help it.

I think I liked the movie better. Some of the songs were similar and a lot of the ideas were in the book. But Roald Dahl's original didn't have "Cheer Up, Charlie" or "Pure Imagination" -- both of which I love. And the visual sense brought to the movie was equal if not better than the descriptions in the children's book. Sort of the same reason I like the movie version of A Clockwork Orange better than the book. Yikes -- bet that's the first time *those* two movies have been mentioned in the same paragraph ;)

- Scott

H.P. Lovecraft

I remember the first time I read Emerson. It was in an American Lit. class and I'd read about ten words of his first essay of his when I realized he was the best writer I was going to read that semester.

Well, I just had a similar experience with H. P. Lovecraft. I'd never read anything by him before picking up a book of short fiction (edited by Joyce Carol Oates) at the library. "The Call of Cthulhu" begins thusly:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

In a paragraph he crystalized the dichotomy of our desire to discover new truths and our unwillingness to discard ideas destroyed by those truths. Lovecraft intuits that scientific exploration will always be anchored in and by the myths and fears and past science that built our culture and our society. Amazing to think that in 1926 he presaged the current state of affairs, where 9/11 somehow makes people want *more* religion and the intelligent design crowd desperately tries to beat science into a shape that keeps their gods in the center of the universe.

I'm only a few stories in, but already I think Lovecraft might be the best author I read this year.

- Scott

Book #13: Frankenstein

Thirteenth book I read since May 2008:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Not what I expected, having been raised on the movie version. Much more social commentary than horror (though it might have been horror for its time), the book excels at drawing out the problems that science can create in the name of doing good or simply increasing knowledge. More so than any scientist in history, Victor Frankenstein comes to regret his scientific exploration, facing a fate where the monster of his creation spares no effort in making his life miserable. Imagine that the people who created the atomic bomb had everyone and everything they loved destroyed by it, and you begin to understand Frankenstein's remorse.

The monster is not the scariest thing in the book -- it's Victor and his lack of humanity toward his own creation. He gives it life and then denies it all of the basics of life: food, shelter, purpose, companionship, and love. Frankenstein himself is less compassionate toward his creation than his creation is toward others -- the monster unleashing most all its venom on Victor and those closest to him.

Overall a great character study of a scientist more devoted to knowledge and what he can do with it than to considering the outcome of his quest. The best quote I found that illustrated his non-humanity is as follows:

Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth... and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men.

Ladies and gentlemen -- the "heroic" scientist, Victor Frankenstein!

- Scott

Book #12: Watchmen

Since I started taking the train to work, I have been reading for pleasure for the first time in over a decade. So continuing the semi-tradition, here is the list of books I have read in 2009.

Twelfth book I read since May 2008:

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

It was so overhyped I thought there was no way it could measure up. Some of the longer set pieces read as if the same author wrote them (which he did), and as with many graphic novels, some of the dialogue was stiff and too explanatory.

On the plus side, the concept was very good, excellent illustrations, the overlapping imagery played very well, and the imagination put into it is breathtaking. I would say it's my second favorite graphic novel of all time -- right after Maus.

Book #11: The Corrections

Eleventh book I read since May 2008:

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Basic story: mom wants the family together at home for one last Christmas. What could be easier, right? Well, a little bit tougher with a family as dysfunctional and denial-bound as this one. Some heart-breaking scenes provide reasons that dysfunction and/or denial exist, and though sometimes overwrought with imagery, it has some clever use of language and evocative turns of phrase. And the final two chapters will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like "the other" or worried about their own -- or a loved one's -- mortality. In other words, something for everyone growing up here on Earth.

At 550+ pages and sometimes jumping around in time, it ain't for the faint of heart. I liked it, but doesn't quite make my fave-five of 2008.

- Scott

Book #10: George's Mother

Tenth book I read since May 2008:

George's Mother by Stephen Crane

Didn't really read like it was any big deal. Sort of scattershot and unfocused, but still worth a read (it's very short).

- Scott

Book #9: Maggie: A Girl on the Streets

Ninth book I read since May 2008:

Maggie: A Girl on the Streets by Stephen Crane

I always thought that Crane was the most modern of the turn-of-the-century writers. I'd read this one before, so some of its impact was lost. But the characterization of slum life and the ways of self-medicating in the face of it are pungent and alive, and the double-standards applied to women are too true and heart-breaking.

- Scott

Book #8: Democracy

Eight book I read since May 2008:

Democracy by Joan Didion

I read Play It As It Lays by Didion years ago, and liked its honesty and simple prose. Democracy was a broader reach and used a less accessible overall structure. I will say it was nice to get back to Didion, but I'll be looking for better things from her in future readings.

- Scott

Book #7: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Seventh book I read since May of 2008:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Geeks rejoice! This book has dozens of references and speaks to your angst growing up. In fact, it was so geeky that I missed half of the references myself. It's the story of a cursed family from the Dominican Republic, told through the eyes of many involved parties. It's fun to follow the action, and contains more than its share of (perhaps made up) history about the DR.

- Scott

Book #6: The Sun Also Rises

Sixth book I read since May 2008:

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The principals are wealthy world travelers, which makes it less accessible than other Hemingway books. And the "big secret" of the book is well known and the topic of multiple drug company ads now -- so it isn't quite as titillating as it probably was in 1926. Worth the read, but if you haven't read the next book in this list, I'd start with A Farewell to Arms instead.


- Scott