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About me: I'm an unrepentant generalist finding my way in a world of specialists. I started this blog to review books, but I now talk about topics ranging from management to cognition to social software.
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I borrowed this from my girlfriend Lilia, who had it recommended it to her by one of her planner friends. It’s a little bit hard to describe. Nominally, it contains Marco Polo’s descriptions of cities to the emperor Kublai Khan. But it’s more about the exploration of different aspects of what makes cities similar and different. Each city description is only a page or two long, but the descriptions provoke strong images from the humorous to the thoughtful. It reminds me a lot of Borges, but instead of Borges’s wild imaginings taking form in short stories, Calvino uses the medium of city descriptions.
I liked it a lot - I wish I had had more time to mull it over, because it seems like the kind of book that would benefit from going back and re-reading it and digesting the connections between the various city descriptions (Calvino uses categories like “Continuous Cities”, “Cities & Names”, and “Cities & Signs”), but I had to return it to Lilia before she leaves for Europe. If I see it used, I might pick myself up a copy for further perusal.
P.S. Apparently, some of Lilia’s friends were miffed that I did not give her proper credit in my previous post about good conversations, thinking that referring to her as merely “my friend” did her a disservice. So let it be known.
A couple more books from my mindless fluff library trip.
Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan. Cyberpunk-y novel about a far future where personalities are downloadable into different human bodies, essentially making people immortal. Not too thrilling. But I read it anyway, because it was from the library and therefore free.
Astro City Vol. 1: Life in the Big City, by Kurt Busiek. A graphic novel collection of a comic that I’ve heard good things about. Busiek is subverting the superhero comic by examining what the rest of the people living in a city with superheroes would feel and how they would react. It’s kind of an interesting take on things, but not too compelling.
My local library branch now has a graphic novel section. I was astonished, really. While I can understand why they put it in the “young adult” section, they may want to reconsider their filing, considering they had Watchmen filed there as well, and that is anything but a children’s tale. I thought about flipping it open to one of the sex scenes and showing it to a librarian, but decided that kids should be exposed to really good graphic novels, so I left it.
I checked out three Daredevil graphic novels. I don’t know much about the Daredevil series, but after seeing Sin City, I wanted to go back and check out the original Frank Miller Daredevil work, and they had both Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the “Visionaries:Frank Miller” graphic novels available, as well as the Guardian Devil run, by Kevin Smith.
Reading volume 1, I thought it was okay, but pretty pedestrian stuff, not anywhere near what I expected from Frank Miller, even a young Frank Miller in his first comic job. Volume 2 was an immediate quantum leap in quality of writing. On a hunch I went back and looked. It turned out that the issues in volume 1 only had Frank Miller as the artist (and apparently occasional co-plotter). Volume 2 is when he took over as both writer and artist. And the difference is stark. The stories have much more emotional depth, and are just plain more interesting. Volume 2 traces the Elektra story line, which is pretty awesome in and of itself.
The Kevin Smith run was okay. Nothing too great. He gets into his schtick about dealing with his lapsed Catholicism issues, but whatever.
I’m glad I was able to get these from the library - they wouldn’t have been worth paying for. Daredevil just doesn’t do it for me. He’s not an interesting character that I sympathize with. Even less so after seeing him played by Ben Affleck in the movie. He’s just a little too invincible for a blind man. Actually, that was the same issue I had with Zatoichi, which I saw last night at a friend’s house. Anyway. Not a huge fan of the Daredevil series. But Frank Miller, as a comics writer, is pretty awesome.
Similar to the Evanovich books, when I saw the latest Terry Pratchett at the library, I grabbed it and read it. As usual, it’s clever and funny, but not particularly memorable.
Ten Big Ones and Metro Girl, by Janet Evanovich
I like Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, so when I saw the latest one in the library, I picked it up. And Metro Girl is the start of a possible new series. I liked Ten Big Ones better than Metro Girl - the Stephanie Plum antics are consistently funnier, with several incidents in each book that have me laughing out loud. Metro Girl was okay, but not as clever. Not sure why.
While we were driving up to Cornell, Jofish recommended this book. I’d read another of Smith’s books, Spares, borrowed from the library, but it made absolutely no impact on me, and I didn’t remember a single detail. But, in the mornings, while waiting for others to wake up, I picked up Only Forward from Jofish’s bookshelf, and slammed through it.
I thought it was interesting. I liked the world that it takes place in, which is sort of the logical extreme of the Burbclaves in Snow Crash, where the Neighborhoods grow to be completely separate and cut off from each other. And I really like how the protagonist’s flexible viewpoint lets him move between the different Neighborhoods seamlessly, because it picks up on the contextual nature of reality that I’ve been thinking about. The second half gets more metaphysical, and I’m not sure I liked where Smith went with it. But it was a quick read, and had some interesting ideas, so it’s a qualified thumbs up.
Picked this up in my big library trip of a couple weeks ago. Again, recommended by a friend. Plus, I’ve been curious about Palahniuk since seeing Fight Club. I really like his stylized writing in a lot of ways, and it’s easy to see the resemblance to the style of Fight Club. I didn’t really connect to any of the characters, though, so I didn’t get into it as much as I do some other fiction. For me, fiction is all about identifying with characters, I think. The early years of Buffy, when the Scooby gang were all high school outsiders? Total identification. Gilmore Girls with Lorelai’s mother issues? Yup. Miles Vorkosigan’s brand of demented genius. Ender’s loneliness and supernatural observation skills. Pretty much all of the fiction I like has a central character that I identify with strongly. So when I don’t connect to the characters, I tend to feel eh about a book, no matter how beautiful or creative the writing. I’m just not enough of a literature geek yet, I guess.
I remembered China Mieville’s name from Aneel’s book page, so when I stopped by the library, I looked him up, and this was the one book by him that they had. It’s somewhat in the same vein as Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, describing a London with more dimensions than most of us ever get to see, or the urban fantasies of Charles de Lint. The cover description plays up the importance of drum and bass techno music to the story, but I think that’s just to draw in the hip kids. I thought it was okay. The writing is gorgeous in spots, but the narrative seemed to kind of wander without a clear idea of where it was heading at times. It was okay. I’m happy I got it from the library.
I stopped by the library a few days ago and picked up a bunch of books that I was vaguely interested in, but not enough to toss into one of my Amazon orders. Mostly quick reads, so you’ll see several book reviews over the next couple weeks as I slam through them.
This one was recommended by a friend due to my Buffy obsession as another take on the tale of the young woman called into service to fight the vampires. It was okay. I liked the world, and the juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact and the otherworldly. None of the characters really grabbed me, though. And some of the more interesting aspects of the world are never fully developed. I thought it was an okay read, but it’s not a book I’m going to run out and buy.
Then again, I’ve only bought one of the Buffy books, and thought it was terrible. The presentation on screen brings the Buffyverse to life in a way that the books fail to. Credit for that should probably be split between Joss and the actors. Plus the dialogue is much better in the real episodes. And I’m totally a sucker for witty dialogue.
In my last Amazon order, I picked up the latest Andrew Vachss, an author whom I adore, and own all of his books. Well, maybe not all, but certainly all the Burke novels, and most of his fiction. I’m missing a couple of his graphic novel creations, things like that. Anyway. I think Burke’s New York is one of the more fascinating settings out there. This isn’t one of Vachss’s more stellar efforts, but it’s still a solid read. I put it away in one evening. Yay.
