My friend Matt has Web pages listing the books he has read the last few years. I wanted to keep better track of what I read, so at the beginning of 2007, I started keeping a list here. For one thing, changing jobs at the end of 2007 meant I had lots more reading time than I used to, because I now have what amounts to a public transit commute.
Well, I had a crappy book-reading year in 2008. I blame it on blogging a lot more than in previous years, reading other blogs too much, and the election. I also got badly bogged down, to the point of blockage, by The Rest is Noise. I read part of it in April, part of it in July, and remain stuck half-way through. Read the index to see why, she said cryptically; I still haven't figured out what to say about it on my blog.
My goal for 2009 is just to read a lot more, of whatever type of book.
Books I'm in the middle of and am likely to finish:
Books I finished:
An art-historical thriller of sorts, one about which it's hard to say much without major spoilage, so I'll just say that it's lots of fun and will send you diving for the art history books.
This book is wild with anachronisms; the characters act much too much like modern people; I do not for a minute believe that a Spanish Jew of the 12th century spoke Yiddish (he would speak Ladino); for that same minute, I do not believe that the famed medical school at Salerno followed 19th and 20th c. practice to determine how bodies decayed after death; and I do not believe for a second that they trained women as doctors. (It has been brought to my attention that perhaps Salerno did train women as doctors. That would be interesting to read about.)
Enjoyable, not in the least believable.
The second of Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe books. Compact, swift, and well done.
I'm home with a cold, that's why the three books finished in three days. Today's was one of Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford novels. As usual, she is both great and maddening, for these reasons: 1. The felis-ex-machina without which.... 2. The young cop who is a pure caricature of a feminist - it's far from the first time Rendell has pulled this crap 3. The incredibly convoluted plot in which a lot of trouble could have been avoided if, say, some of the characters had bothered to speak honestly to each other 4. In a book with two English characters of African ancestry and one English character of Indian ancestry, she still manages to have a "magic Negro" (ask me if you're not familiar with the term) 5. The sheerly idiotic and immature behavior of yet another character from one of the subplots. Is that enough reasons?
The first Parker book I've read, a superb and tightly-plotted and -writen heist novel.
A girl named Polly runs away to join the army and find her brother. She finds a lot more, and finds OUT a lot more. Typical Pterry.
Rats was a surprise best seller a few years back. Considering the subject matter, it is surprisingly charming. Still, given that the author spends quite a lot of time in an alley observing the subject rodent, perhaps this is not for the squeamish.
One of Ellroy's L.A. Quartet books; if you've read L.A. Confidential, you'll know some of the characters. A good read of sorts, but the stench of corruption and horror is so great that I think I need to go shower now.
Nero, Archie, a perfume-related contest. Pure comfort reading, and I'm absolutely certain I'd read it before.
Flat, flat, flat. Flat writing, poor plotting, has to invent a work by Aaron Copland, then claims there would be only one percussionist. I don't think so. Must be the only writer to set a book at Oxford and pay no attention to the town and university's age and beauty.
The gap isn't as long as it seems; I read most of two books that I need to finish since The Moonstone. I picked up the Tanenbaum book because the excellent Michael A. Gruber ghosted this and several other of Tanenbaum's books. However, this one is not nearly as good as the books Gruber has been writing under his own name. The writing isn't as good and the characters and plotting....I can't begin to tell you how many times I wanted to kick one of the main characters
A famous 19th century crime/detective novel, now more entertaining as a period piece and for the charming characters than for the plotting. You could say I don't buy a word of the explanation of who and how done it. Still, I'm glad to have read it, some thirty years after I first heard of The Moonstone.
The second in Gruber's stylish Jimmy Paz series. Terrific writing and plotting. If I'd been able to buy a copy of the third book today, I would have done so.
Horrible people doing horrible things to each other, often behaving stupidly in the process, the exceptions mostly being in Lynley's immediate circle. Please stop torturing Havers immediately, and if this series doesn't improve in the next book or two, I am done with it.
If you're following along, you'll have noticed the weeks-long gap since my last-completed book. During that time, I started a Pratchett book, then lost it at work. I spent more time working on Remix, which is hugely annoying. I am also more than 100 pages into a Java textbook and have been spending one evening a week in class and more time doing homework.
I started In the Night Garden months ago, and then got distracted, perhaps by my first run at Remix. In any event, I finally picked it up and dashed through the last 150 pages. All I can say is "Wow." It is an amazing, intricate, wonderfully-written fantasy. I can't wait to read the next book.
A superbly written thriller/police procedural/fantasy novel - really - that raises all sorts of questions related to the recent cultural appropriation and racism debates on LiveJournal. Judging by the photos, the author, with whom I have a slight online acquaintance, is European-American, but the central subjects include African American identity, Africa, santeria, anthropology, anthropology's role, and what, exactly, it is possible to learn by trying to become part of a culture not one's own. I am troubled by the way some of the character development goes, no, wait, by quite a lot of the character development. I also liked the book a whole lot and plan to read the next two Jimmy Paz novels.
Recommended by someone on the Potlatch Good Reads panel. An odd cast of characters set off in a spaceshit to save the world. Well, not exactly, but sort of. The cast includes an autistic man who is a genius at synthesis, a military commander of notable nerve, the Gang of Four, and a vampire. A creepy and sometimes scary book, worth reading.
The latest Culture novel. It took a long, long time getting off the ground and ends, well, you know Banks.
A placeholder; I've been intermittently reading this since mid-February. So far, I'm somewhat disgruntled.
Between finishing The Rest is Noise and starting Carpe Jugulum, I also read about 50 pages of Joseph Horowitz's controversial Understanding Toscanini, which I will get back to in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the usual assortment of wisdom, wit, and belly laughs from Sir Terry. As usual, do not mess with Granny Weatherwax.
I started Noise last April at Wilbur Hot Springs, read another chunk in Santa Fe in July, then set it aside during the Great Reading Drought of 2008. Finally decided I had better finish it. So you could say I read 300-odd pages last year and 200-odd this year, making two decent-sized books. I liked what I read, am not happy at all about some important omissions and feel like a statement up front that this is an AMERICAN view of 20th c. music would have been a good idea. Maybe it's there and I have forgotten - I will check before I write my blog posting about the book. But if a Brit or German had written the book, there would be a lot less Copland and Bernstein, and Will Marion Cook wouldn't have gotten a mention. I have a lot to say in addition to that and won't try to put much of it here.
Giant, fast-moving, often scary novel with a large debt, both plot and structural, to Stoker's Dracula. I liked it quite a bit, though I think it stumbles a bit toward the end, perhaps because it's simply difficult to close out such a big book. The multipart denoument seemed both too drawn out and too short; at the end I wanted a bit more. However, a damn good read.
Well-written and reasonably entertaining, though a bit too convoluted in trying to set out a great deal about the mystery at hand, problems within Lynley's family, and telling us about Simon and Deborah's prehistory.
Okay, if you've read the first three Lynley novels, details about how Simon and Deborah FINALLY get together aren't exactly spoilers. But MY GOD how stupidly these people behave. He doesn't communicate with her for THREE YEARS even though they are quite clearly the best of friends when she leaves England for three years. He BROODS and BROODS about how he can't possibly be acceptable to her because of his injury and limp. What? He's presented as sensitive, brilliant, kind, well-read, and good-looking, and a limp and a brace are supposed to be disqualifying?
Other stupidity: EVEN I could figure out that the camera bag disappeared because of the film! And what is with the concealed evidence and the drive across London that takes an hour when Tommy and Simon know Sasha is dead or dying? Sheesh!
This is the second time I've read Growing Up Weightless, a coming-of-age/YA novel by the late John M. Ford. I like the book's characters, details, and plot, but I feel like it has one serious problem: it doesn't have what I would call a real plot climax, and so it feels structurally weak. This might be because there are multiple plot threads, any of which could have been further worked out, or because the denoument happens very, very fast, in a small number of pages both absolutely and relative to amount of plot to be unwound. It is typical of Ford that he alludes to a lot without spelling it out, which is, in this book, a serious problem with respect to one of the ongoing plot threads. I truoly wish the book had been longer, both for better working out of the plots and for more depth of detail in some areas: how the theater works, the mechanical systems of Luna, what happens with all of the kids, etc. Okay, the latter probably isn't necessary.
I'll also say that the musical economy of Luna is different from anything I am familiar with. There is no way the composer could finish his work and have it performed two weeks later in the current world musical economy. The implication of what happens in the book is that the composer lives in a world like Haydn's, where the music was performed by Esterhazys' private orchestra as soon as it was written, without a long rehearsal period. I am not convinced that a complex modern work, and that's what the symphony to be performed is, could be rehearsed and performed under those conditions.
This year's goal: more nonfiction and literary fiction than in 2007. (Note from early 2009: I didn't meet that goal.)
A survey of how several facets of the popular TV show work in the real world.
Grazing only. I read the excellent introductory chapter and parts of the string quartet and piano music chapters. I have the second edition (Thanks, Patrick!), which was published ten years ago. In the decade since, Carter, still composing at the age of 100, has written another 20 or 30 works. Hold off a while on that third edition, Mr. Schiff.
I read this because it was in the house and easy, even after having sworn off Donna Leon. I had been told the later books in the Guido Brunetti series were better the earlier - not true at all. Never again!
The enormous gap since I last finished a book has two reasons: the election, which killed my concentration for reading anything but political news, and the length and complexity of a couple of other books I was reading in the late summer/early fall. I seem able to read again now that the election is, thank goodness, OVER.
A mystery/fantasy novel set in an England where it's 1985 - and the Crimean War is still going on. Where there are internal combustion engines, but no jets, and air travel is by propeller-powered airship. Where dodos are common pets. Where crimes against literature are quite common.
How music got rocks in it; also, Death's sensible granddaughter saves the day - again.
The third of the New York Trilogy. This book appears more humane than the first two, or at least the protagonist seems less trapped in convention and more spontaneous than those of the first two. Still, there are many unanswered questions; the atmosphere of the book is disturbing and disquieting, as in the first two books. Not fun to read, not challenging; the books read more like intellectual experiments than anything else. Just how far can I stretch this genre before it breaks?
Book Two of the New York Trilogy, just as creepy as the first. A man (called Blue) is hired by White to watch Black, and destroys his life by doing so.
I read City of Glass in the 80s, but never got the rest of the New York Trilogy; gave away my copy of City of Glass, then picked up a copy of the trilogy that a friend was giving away. MY, what a creepy book. I suspect I both liked and understood it better this time than 20 years ago, and will be starting the second book in the trilogy later today.
A complicated and very entertaining literary thriller, with a great cast of characters.
Salman Rushdie came to Google for a talk a few weeks ago. I had never heard him speak before. He turned out to be smart, funny, and very charming. The talk was mobbed, and he got an enormous hand before and especially after. You can watch his talk on YouTube.The Enchantress of Venice is about a number of things: power, and fate, and magic, and love. It's a lovely book, and as he says in his talk, he didn't make up some of the seemingly wildest things he wrote.
A female wizard? Are you kidding?
A strange and mostly wonderful book, about a world in which the Jews who survived WWII are given a limited-term home in Sitka, Alaska. I liked it a great deal, especially the wry and tortured Mayer Landesman, cop. I suspect it's funnier than I found it; dry wit often goes over my head in print.
The first of MacDonald's Anthony Gethryn novels. I read several of these in the 1980s, and recently used MacDonald for the Well's Mystery Logout Quote game. My copy of The Rasp looked as if it had never been read, and I didn't remember a thing about it - strange, but possibly true. In any event, one of the worst mysteries I've ever read, with conclusions lept to and vast amounts of unmotivated and poorly-explained behavior. I'm now afraid to reread Warrant for X or The List of Adrian Messenger, which I remember as being pretty good.
Much better than the previous two Anita Blake novels, largely because it's heavy on the mystery, better on the human/monster relationship issues, and light on gratuitous violence
No problem with the improbability of talking dragons and Nelson's survival past Trafalgar, but the insanity of the decision-making in this book and the lost-kingdom aspect in the center put me over the edge. I also looked ahead to the ending - WTF? I don't buy it and am done, done, done with the series
Hmm, two Pratchetts in a row and separated by weeks. That's largely because of the amount of time I have recently put into researching and writing a forthcoming article, the longest I've written as a music writer. In any event, Death's sensible granddaughter saves the world.
Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, love, unicorns, and....those you don't mention.
One of the great New Yorker writer's collections of food essays. Hilarious, and you will drool straight through.
I read a review in the Times a few years ago when this translation of the Stendahl classic was published. On a visit to my mother, probably in 2001 after she broke her wrist, a bookstore across the river in Hackensack was going out of business. I picked up a few books, Charterhouse among them.
Now, I was not expecting to like Charterhouse. It's a long, early 19th century classic by a writer with a one-name pseudonym. I was expecting serious, heavy, unpleasant.
Boy, was I surprised. The tone throughout is light, ironic, very modern; the action is paced swiftly; the book is full of charm. world. At its heart, it's a novel of politics and court intrigue. It tells the story of the young nobleman Fabrizio del Dongo, as foolish a dolt as has ever been found on the pages of a novel: you will often want to smack him. Possibly more importantly, it's about his aunt, the marvelous Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover Count Mosca della Rovere, who try to get Fabrizio established in the world.
Subtitled "Tales of Music and the Brain," that's exactly what this superb book by Dr. Sacks is about. Music, neurology, brain damage, unusual conditions, all fascinating.
The third novel by an author best known for her writing about artificial intelligence and other aspects of computer science. Set in Santa Fe, partly at the Santa Fe Institute, about love, death, and other aspects of life. A really good book, interestingly plotted (the characters' lives unfold very slowly) and vividly written. I wish the typeface were more readable - the book designer made a very bad choice.
DEATH LEAVES HIS JOB FOR A WHILE.
The second of the Nurse Matilda books, with a plot that can be summarized in one sentence: The Brown children go to London, mayhem ensues, Nurse Matilda puts things right. Beyond that, really, it is rather annoying. Too much picking on both thin and far people and people with accents. I wish there were either a plot or some characterization beyond the very broad characterization of Aunt Adelaide, Evangeline, and Nurse Matilda.
The third of the Inspector Lynley novels. The plot is about two layers of complexity past plausibility, plus, I thought one character's self-torture implausible based on my knowledge of one of the other characters. I was vastly relieved when....but completing many of these thoughts would require a big spoiler warning. I should note that since I've been sick for two days, this was fine sick-bed reading anyway.
Longer than the previous two novels and less effective than either, with an overly long plot with insufficient motivation for the primary activity and a couple of all-too-obvious long-range setups, plus not quite enough elucidation of an intruiging character. Perhaps he'll appear in the fourth book, perhaps not. Moreover, those dragons can be so annoying! Just imagine a talking cat the size of a first-rate man o' war who can fly and speak intelligently in multiple languages.
Don't mess with Granny Weatherwax or Greebo.
I've wanted to read this book since it was first published in, get this, 1993. McCloud gave a captivating talk at Google a few months ago about his new book, Making Comics, and I decided I'd better start at the beginning.
Why ever did I wait so long? Understanding Comics is sheer genius, as he wittily deconstructs and reconstructs comics through the ages. Not only that, the book is in the form of a comic. Brilliant; I'll be ordering his subsequent two books ASAP.
For some reason, his talk isn't up on the Authors@Google web page. Hmmm.
You see the huge gap between finishing The Civil War and finishing His Majesty's Dragon? Blame Battle Cry of Freedom, a magnificent one-volume history of the American Civil War. It's about 900 pages long, and I have finally wrapped it.
Battle Cry won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and it's easy to see why. McPherson starts in the 1840s, and he's 250 pages in before the first shots are fired at Fort Sumter. He covers the causes of the Civil War, the social and political conditions of the period, the battles, the generals, the politicians, the enormous changes wrought by the war. He is deeply eloquent and deeply learned. A great accomplishment and worth every minute I spent reading it.
More of the Napoleonic wars plus dragons. There are two anachronisms: use of the words "mindset" and "sideburns." I wonder about the design of the dragon transport and may consult a naval architect of my acquaintance. Otherwise, lots of fun, and boy, those dragons are very high maintenance.
The usual mix of screwups, heavies, and entertaining improbabilities, all very, very funny.
The Napoleonic Wars plus dragons, from the English viewpoint. What more could you want?
I'm reviewing San Francisco Opera's production of Philip Glass's new opera, Appomattox, in a couple of weeks. I have not studied American history since high school, and though I had better review the history of the American Civil War before the opera opens.
The Civil War is a superb short history of the conflict. With about 300 pages of narrative and 100 pages of back matter, it's very much the 20,000 foot view. Still, it takes in the causes of the war, at least from the perspective of 1960, and its course. Catton vividly conveys the conditions of the war and the characters of the men who led it.
Still, we've learned a lot since 1960. I have a more recent, longer history of the era on board; I may even finish it by October 5.
The second is also annoying! There are a couple of implausible plot points that I won't discuss, as they are spoilers; she tips her hand badly on a couple of plot points; the pacing is not so good; there's a huge tangle set up and not undone by the end. I think she is setting up future plots, most likely; giving Guido a nemesis of some kind. I thought of John Rebus and his nemesis Cafferty -- if you want atmosphere and great writing, try the Rebus novels rather than these, unless they get a lot better. Also, perhaps she took that Chekovian dictum a little too seriously.
Given that it's Stephenson, you might expect fantasy or science fiction, but Cryptonomicon is a generation-spanning historical thriller. You don't need to know about the history of cryptography, or to have read an Alan Turning biography, but after you're done, you may want to.
I found Katherine enormously annoying for the first hundred pages or so; if you do too, stick with the book anyway. She changes a lot during the course of the story and the plot eventually gets underway in interesting ways. There is, I think, a big plot point left hanging at the conclusion, so perhaps we'll get more set in the same world.
If you're new to the series, read Swordspoint
first,
then this book, and finish with The Fall of the Kings. Yes,
you should try to find the two Alec & Richard short stories too.
This time it took, though, and I zipped right through, wishing at the end that there were more (and in more than one way). It's an alternate history, set in a 15th century where Byzantium is a power nearly across Europe, numerous gods are worshipped (among them Jesus Christ - but Christianity is a minor cult, not the dominant religion), magic works, and, oh yes, there are vampires. Highly recommended, for its elegance and the vivid characters especially.
Adding to the fun, one of the sous chefs at Google used to work at Babbo; he found me reading Heat one day and signed my copy on the page where he's mentioned. On the down side, whoever edited Heat needs remedial lessons in how to ensure that the verb and subject match in number.