Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist

Wow. I haven’t posted any fiction reviews in the past year. Then again, I haven’t been reading much new fiction in the past year – mostly I’ve been re-reading comfort books or watching TV instead of fiction reading. Anyway, I was going through my bookshelves, and figured I should do at least a capsule review of a couple books before I gave them to HousingWorks.

The Learners, by Chip Kidd

I adored The Cheese Monkeys, so of course I bought this sequel. We follow Happy, the graphic design student of the first book, into the working world and his experience with the world of advertising in the 1960s. I enjoyed the first part of the book, as he tries to get his bearings in a wacky advertising firm straight out of a sitcom. The second part of the book gets more heavy as Happy ends up participating in the Milgram experiment, and Kidd explores what it would feel like to realize one had shocked another person to death because a man in a lab coat said so. The book gets darker at this point – still worth reading.

As an aside, Kidd released a Youtube video to promote The Learners where he does “5 Experiments in Form and Content”, delivering one character’s lines in the style of another e.g. Psalms 23 as read by the Wicked Witch of the West. Also, I found his recently released music video, Asymmetrical Girl, to be very entertaining in his use of visuals to underline the lyrics.

Fledgling and Saltation, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

I’m a huge fan of the Liaden universe, and so when I found out via Kevin Kelly that Sharon Lee and Steve Miller were publishing the next novels in the series in first draft form, I jumped at the opportunity to read them. Saltation isn’t quite done yet, but even in this proto-form, they have been quite entertaining.

Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman

Recommended by Wes, as I think he knows Grossman. Entertaining superhero novel, with two intertwining first-person narratives, one from Doctor Impossible, the clicheed supervillain, and the other from Fatale, an aspiring superhero. CoreFire, the most powerful member of the Champions, has gone missing, and Doctor Impossible suspiciously breaks out of prison (again) soon after. The Champions bring Fatale on board to help find CoreFire, and she gets sucked into the battle between the superheroes and the supervillain.

I thought the Fatale narrative worked better, as it conveyed the overwhelming nature of joining a superhero team, where she was now interacting with people she had only seen on TV. Perhaps it felt more real because we all have those moments where we feel starstruck meeting somebody that we’ve admired. The Doctor Impossible narrative was more disappointing, as it never really explored his motivations for wanting to rule the world. Sure, he was an overlooked downtrodden nerd, but who wasn’t? I would have liked more insight into what made him into a supervillain (although oddly, I liked that they didn’t try to give the Joker any backstory in the Dark Knight this summer – bah, consistency).

Tolerably entertaining, probably best suited for a library read or for borrowing from me.

Mask Market, by Andrew Vachss

I’m a big fan of the Burke series by Vachss, but it’s starting to run out of steam at this point. Burke’s been around for twenty years now, and I think Vachss has run out of things to say. I still love the characters and the way these broken people have formed a family of choice under incredibly difficult circumstances, but the plots no longer have the iconic memorability of the earlier Burke novels. I actually debated throwing this in the donation pile, but decided to give it another chance at some point.

Deadman’s Bluff, by James Swain

I’ve enjoyed earlier entries in the Tony Valentine series, so I picked this up when I saw it in the used book store. Tony Valentine is a retired cop who busts gamblers trying to cheat casinos. As usual, he gets in trouble. Entertaining as always, with the best part being Swain describing how various scams work. Entertainingly, I also bought Sucker Bet at the same time, even though I apparently already have a copy (it’s in storage with the rest of my books). I should pick up the rest of the series at some point.

Market Forces, by Richard K. Morgan

I got this from Jofish, although I still haven’t figured out if he meant to be sending a message or not. It’s a silly little near-future novel, where capitalism has run rampant, and corporations settle their battles with demolition derby-like duels, although the duels are settled purely on driving skill without auto-mounted weapons. So two people up for promotion for the same position? They settle it on the road. The winners get the top positions, and then exploit the hell out of developing countries to guarantee resources for their companies, helping revolutionaries in exchange for a guaranteed supply chain. The book centers on the struggle of one such executive to get out of the corporate life before it kills him. Ho hum.

Paperback Original, by Will Rhode

Picked this up at HousingWorks at some point because it looked entertaining. Essentially a gangster heist plot, but with the protagonist as an ex-pat in India, which adds a colorful air to the proceedings. Not too memorable, although I think it would have been more entertaining if I had travelled in India and recognized the various locations mentioned.

It looks like I haven’t done a fiction review for most of the past year, so this will be a chance to collect everything I’ve read but wouldn’t admit to reading when I was supposed to be studying

Intuition, by Allegra Goodman

This sounded interesting after reading the Economist review, so I picked it up at a used book store last fall. I can’t remember most of the details now, but what I really liked was the depiction of the human side of science. We have this myth of science that heroic scientists march into the laboratory and come out with unquestionable objective results, and it’s just not how things work. By placing this work in the maelstrom of funding and politics and personality conflicts, Goodman shows how murky and fuzzy scientific results can be.

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

No idea when I picked this one up. It’s possible I borrowed it, but I have no idea who from if so. I was curious if the book would be as good as the movie. The answer was, not so much. John Cusack elevates everything he’s in.

Love Monkey, by Kyle Smith

I really liked the TV show based on this book, and a friend recommended it to me since I’m living in New York now, so I picked it up used this spring. Tolerably amusing tale of the exploits of a single guy in New York. I couldn’t decide if I should be taking notes or not.

Con Ed, by Matthew Klein
Geek Mafia, by Rick Dakan

Picked these up after seeing them recommended by Seth Godin. Both are fast-paced caper stories, which I adore. And both are set in the Bay Area, so it was fun keeping track of all the places I’ve been. Quick but enjoyable reads – as Seth says, great beach reading.

Repairman Jack series, by F. Paul Wilson

I heard about this series from David Hines, who I think is the same David Hines who used to post great reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer. Anyway, it sounded interesting, I was on vacation in March, wandered into a bookstore, and picked up one. So far I’ve read The Tomb, Legacies, and Conspiracies. They’re tolerably entertaining, but pulpy mindless entertainment. I like the character of Repairman Jack – he seems like a toned-down version of Burke from Andrew Vachss – but the plots aren’t that involving and the other characters are paper-thin. The books have very little re-readability value so I probably won’t buy any more of them. But they were entertaining enough that I’ll probably read the rest if I can find them in the library.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

I picked this up at the used bookstore purely because of the title, as a wallflower myself. Only after picking it up did I notice the author. Chbosky was the writer and director of one of my favorite independent films ever, The Four Corners of Nowhere, which nobody has ever seen unless they happened to watch the Sundance Channel during the few months in 1996 when they were broadcasting this movie (I still have it on videotape and recently copied it to DVD).

Anyway, this is a coming-of-age story of a withdrawn high school freshman. It’s written as a series of letters, and so the writing style is intentionally poor to match a freshman’s writing, which gets a bit annoying at times (think Flowers for Algernon). But the story is decent, and it’s touching to watch the kid try to figure out who he is.

I stopped by the library on Monday evening since I happened to be walking by, and walked out with four books. One of the books I picked up solely because of its title: The Futurist, by James P. Othmer. It’s smart and sassy with trenchant commentary on the modern world. Here’s the protagonist’s description of himself:

He sits alone in back seats and attempts candid conversations with drivers paid to accommodate. He gleans local lore from chatty bellhops, from Conde Nast Traveler. From the top steps of grand hotels he elicits profound sociological insights. From a part in the curtains of eighteenth-floor executive suites he absorbs geopolitical experience. He gets it with his healthy start breakfast from English-speaking room service waiters. From free newspapers dropped outside his door. From SpectraVision. Then he chronicles it, rolls it around in his head, and distills it down to anecdote, to conversation starter, to pithy one-liner, and finally he turns it into a highly proprietary, singularly respected worldly expertise that is utter and complete bullshit.

I really enjoyed the book, having finished it in a couple days. Othmer is apparently a former ad executive and you can tell he’s enjoying dishing out all the cynicism that he had to keep bottled up in front of his clients for years. Each chapter has a paragraph summary of former achievements of the protagonist, e.g. “He once spoke before the graduates of a Bible college in Virginia about the future of God and one week later delivered the keynote address to the Adult Video Distributors Conference in Vegas about the future of porn, and received standing ovations at both.”

The plot is a bit weak, but the ride was enjoyable, and I’d recommend it. I may even pick up a copy for myself if I ever see it at a used book store. Maybe I can use it as a guide in my on-and-off quest for pundithood.

P.S. I’ve been really enjoying this reading for fun concept. I recently read Twelve Sharp, by Janet Evanovich, the latest Stephanie Plum mystery which I borrowed from the library at 7pm on Monday and had finished reading by 10pm. Fun and frothy just like always.

I also got a couple paperbacks from the $1 rack at a used bookstore a couple weeks ago, which I then read in a few days. One was The First Immortal, by James Halperin, which I picked up because I liked The Truth Machine. This one details a near future projection of how somebody in the next few generations achieves immortality – the protagonist of the book takes advantage of cryonics to freeze himself and is resurrected with nanotech biotech genetic engineering gobbledybook. The other was Knight Moves, by Walter Jon Williams. I know of Williams through the Wild Cards series, but his solo work has been pretty nondescript. Still, it’s hard to go wrong for a dollar.

I should really think about finishing books for a while. I think I’ve got something like eight books which I have started in the past few months but haven’t finished.

P.P.S. My computer’s back up. I think I even recovered most of the files from my old hard drive that I wanted. I may be missing a few, but I probably won’t notice for a year or two.

Lots of book reviews to catch up on, so I’m going to do capsule reviews until I’m caught up.

Balance of Trade, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

I really like the Liaden universe books, but hadn’t gotten around to reading the new books in the universe. When I saw this one in the library, I picked it up and read it last weekend. It was decent. I didn’t think the characters sparkled as much as in the other Liaden books, and some of the plot twists were far-fetched. But it was solidly entertaining, which is about all I can ask from a library book.

A Dirty Job, by Christopher Moore

Christopher Moore is an author that I’d like to read more of. I read his book Coyote Blue, and was tolerably amused by it, and would like to read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal just for the sheer blasphemy. This one describes what happens when a normal schmo (described as a Beta Male, the subservient to the prototypical Alpha Male) gets imbued with the powers of Death. It’s a little bit odd. But quite funny.

The Jazz, by Melissa Scott

Melissa Scott is another author whose work I like, even though it’s not part of my regular rotation of comfort reading. I’ve read a lot of her stuff, and particularly like Burning Bright for its projection of gaming in the future, and Trouble and her Friends which is cyperpunk-y with a dash of women’s studies. So when I saw a Scott book at the library, I picked it up. This one is a near future projection where “the jazz” is a major component of the net. “The jazz” is basically a combination of gossip-mongering, tabloid journalism, and rumors with just enough truth to make people believe it. It’s another book describing a future where image is more important than reality. Anyway, a teenage kid puts out a new piece of jazz, but is discovered to have stolen a program to help him make it. Pursuit ensues. The kid picks up unlikely allies along the way, while the record studio chases them with a ruthlessness that reminds one of the RIAA. The book itself is kind of by the numbers, but I liked the idea of the jazz; it reminds me of Bug Jack Barron in a way.

Amazon link

After reading the Economist’s recommendation, I’d been keeping my eye open for works by Mark Burnell, thinking that his books about “a proficient, imaginative, world-class assassin” would be interesting. I finally saw The Rhythm Section in a used book store a few weeks ago and picked it up.

It was kind of disappointing. I didn’t think much of the writing, and the action was lackluster. I didn’t sympathize with the main character, and since the book is a psychological study of her, that didn’t leave much to work with. Alas. I may still pick up another one if I see it, in the hopes that the first novel was mostly setup and that with the stage set, he can go more interesting places with the character. But I’m not too hopeful.

Amazon link

I’ve been a big fan of George R.R. Martin since I was introduced to the Wild Cards books in high school. I’ve been buying the Song of Ice and Fire books in hardcover because I want to read them right away, which is stupid, because the elapsed time in between book releases is way too long (in an interesting aside, while trying to figure out when the next one would be released, I went to Martin’s website and found out that because I bought the hardcover of the first book as soon as it came out, I have a collector’s item). I bluffed my way through the third book when it came out, but this time it had been long enough that I decided it was time to re-read the series in its entirety (partially because I was taking some time off). 2800 pages later, I’m bummed because he’s nowhere near done.

Re-reading the first one was eye-opening, though – it was fantastically well done, reminding me of what I love about good fantasy. I picked it up one Saturday afternoon and was most of the way through it by the end of the weekend, because I couldn’t put it down. The others became more and more of a slog. I’m mildly curious to see how he ends things, but if it takes another 1800 pages, I may not make it (and looking at the website, he says about A Dance with Dragons, “My hope is to bring the book in at around 1200 to 1300 pages.” And it’s not even the last one!).

My recommendation – wait until he finishes the entire series, and then read it. Or not. He may pull a Robert Jordan and never finish the series. But even if you decide to skip the series, read the first book – good stuff.

Jovah’s Angel, and Angelica, by Sharon Shinn

Two more books in the world of Archangel. I like the world, and its exploration of questions of faith and science (and particularly the question of whether a world designed for faith is sustainable), but the plots started to run together, always being about an angel man and a human woman, assigned to each other by the god, then falling in love. Yes, yes, romance and all that, but some variation would be nice. They were moderately diverting, but I’m glad I got them at the library.

Wildside, by Steven Gould

After enjoying Gould’s book Reflex, I saw this at the library and decided to give it a chance. Blech. Terrible uncreative work. It starts with a reasonable scifi premise (a portal to an alternate Earth where humans never evolved), but does nothing interesting with it. No characterization, no clever plans to exploit the alternate Earth, no memorable dialogue. I don’t even know why I bothered finishing reading it except that it was mercifully quick and I figured it had to get better. It didn’t. Spare yourself.

Amazon link

I saw this in the library in the new sci-fi section, and it looked interesting, so I picked it up. It’s the sequel to a book called Jumper, which I’ve never read, but I may go try to look up now. The premise is that the protagonist has developed the ability to teleport. No real explanation of how, he can just do it. But only to places he’s been before, or can see. Of course, the government finds out about him and tries to figure out ways to use him. And off the plot goes.

But the interesting bit to me was the thought that Gould had placed into how being an instantaneous teleport would affect one’s life. One could whisk off for a relaxing two hour swim in the Caribbean after work and sleep in one’s own bed – hotels are no longer necessary. One can always go to the store because it’s business hours somewhere in the world. One can find a completely desolate cabin in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no access by road or air, and move in because one can pop out for supplies whenever one wants. I’m sure there’s more that Gould missed, but he covered several that I hadn’t thought of, and that was neat.

Characterization and plot weren’t all that interesting. And Gould never makes any sort of attempt to explain how the power works. But it was worth the quick library read that it was.

Archangel, by Sharon Shinn
I saw this in the library and I had remembered that Beemer had once recommended it to me, so I picked it up. I liked it. Interesting world, and characters that I sympathized with. Not particularly deep, and not a book that I’m likely to rush out and buy for myself, but decent and memorable. Unlike the next book…

Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card
I saw this in the library, picked it up, flipped through it, and still couldn’t remember whether I had read it, a problem which I’ve had with other books in this series. After reading a couple chapters, I realized I had. It’s really a sad commentary on this particular series of books from Card that they are completely forgettable. Normally, I have an almost encyclopedic memory of the books I’ve read, aided in the past few years by my writing reviews on my website, but these books just leave no impression. Strong anti-recommendation.

The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold
I adore the Vorkosigan series by Bujold, but haven’t been as enthralled by the Chalion series. But I saw it in the library, so I picked it up and read it. It was relatively engaging, but I’m still not that excited by the series. But that’s what the library is for.

Amazon link

I stopped by the library yesterday to pick up some light reading to offset my Amazon nonfiction pile. While poking around, I saw this book, and the title amused me, as did the descriptions, so I borrowed it.

Ribon is apparently an online diarist, who put together a fictionalized account of the process of becoming an online celebrity. Her protagonist, Anna K, starts writing an online journal to teach herself HTML (Ribon apparently used edited versions of several of her own posts), and puts up stories about herself, stretching the truth to make her life more compelling, most notably claiming to still have a fabulous relationship with her ex-boyfriend. As time goes on, her journal attracts a readership, she gets fan mail, starts meeting some of her more stalker-ish readers, and her online journal life and her real life start interacting in more and more complicated ways. It’s romantic-comedy-ish (and apparently the film rights have been optioned). Very light, and a quick read, but fun.

It does address some issues with online identity in passing. When we are in public, we try to represent ourselves in the most favorable way possible. When writing online, it’s always tempting to re-frame things to make one seem cleverer or wittier than one is in real life, to avoid talking about the embarrassing things. I’ve noticed it even in writing this blog, which has primarily friends and family reading it, and tends to stick to book reviews and rants about bizarre topics, rarely venturing into the personal. I have been fortunate to not yet have to face the tension between my online identity and my real world identity, because they’re pretty closely tied. But I can sympathize with the struggles of Ribon’s protagonist as she does.