Category: Books

Books of 2014, #5: Die Trying, by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #2)

The “Jack Reacher” novels are causing me to realize that I haven’t actually read a lot of conventional thrillers in…well, maybe ever. I mean, I read Tom Clancy’s first few novels—basically, the ones that were published before I finished college—and that’s about it.

That said, I’ve seen plenty of movies in this mold, so the conventions of the genre are pretty familiar. And truly, these don’t seem to be bad renditions of the type…except for the sex elements.

It’s not that I’m a prude—more that if I was going to sit down and find passages to mock in these books, I would just start skimming for anything having to do with Jack Reacher’s thoughts about the attractiveness of women, or even more unintentionally hilarious, his renditions of sex. They’re just excruciationly awkward.

Other than that, yeah, it was a perfectly fine read, nothing really to distinguish it.

Books of 2014, #4: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan

Whoa.

I’m a little surprised that the entirety of the kerfuffle that this book seems to have kicked up (at least as far as I’m aware) was an moronic challenge from a Fox News idiot.

Now, any realistic review should note that this book is doing a lot of extrapolation—as Aslan himself notes, the historical record on Jesus of Nazareth is spectacularly minimal. However, the few facts we have, when placed in the historical context—of which we have much more of a record—suggest that the constituency and central tenets of the bevy of sects that hold Jesus as their central focus are far removed from anything he intended.

In fact, the impression I was left with was that the most fundamental author of Christianity is most likely Paul of Tarsus. That seems a somewhat radical proposition in most actual Christia circles.

Books of 2014, #3: Killing Floor, by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #1)

If anyone wasn’t completely certain that I was reading (and am now ripping off) Chet’s posts about books last year, then this book selection will probably eliminate any doubts.

I was looking for some low-effort entertainment, and based on the fact that the movie had been completely watchable, and that Chet has apparently read all of them, I figured that the Jack Reacher novels were at least unlikely to offend me terribly, since Chet tends to be somewhat more sensitive to such things than I.

And indeed, while it seemed obvious that Killing Floor was a first novel, the things it did wrong or poorly were at least different things than most first novels. The prose, while choppy, had the virtue of at least not being purple. There were occasional word choices that, if I had not already known “Lee Child” was British would have clued me in—but no epic missteps.

The plot…ehhh, in many ways, the less said about the plot the better. It was serviceable. It caused things to happen, caused conflicts to arise, even if much of it felt kind of forced.

I do intend to read the second—i get the impression from Chet that they do get better—and I hope that, as I gleaned from Childs’ introduction to this novel, the rest of them aren’t in first person.

I will add, though, that if anyone needs a long series of books to keep them busy, you owe it to yourself to read Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin novels. I flat out don’t care whether you think they sound like your cup of tea, because whatever your opinion, it’s wrong: either you’re wrong that you won’t love them, or you’re wrong about why you’ll love them.

Books of 2014, #2: Nicholson: A Biography, by Marc Eliot

Over the last few months, I’ve ended up reading a few biographies of entertainment figures. The best, hands down, was ?love’s Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove which I will recommend to anyone anytime.

Nicholson: A Biography doesn’t rise to that level—not by a long shot. I wonder if it’s because Jack Nicholson is simply not someone who will ever really let you in—certainly the patterns of his interpersonal relationship suggest that to be the case.

Still, the book isn’t helped by the fact that the text itself has some problems; it seems poorly copyedited, given that there’s at least one place where they misspell “Parramount”, and the voice seems to me to veer towards apologia at times.

It’s not devoid of interest—my awareness of Jack Nicholson was pretty superficial, so it’s not like I didn’t learn things hadn’t known before—but mostly I learned that Jack Nicholson isn’t someone I think I’d care to hang around with.

Books of 2014, #1: One Summer: America, 1927, by Bill Bryson

The other day, I found myself describing Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon to some friends, and admitted that as much as I enjoyed his work, he was an author who never met a digression he didn’t like.

Bill Bryson occupies a niche that allows him to produce books that are often the accumulation of their digressions. I don’t say that negatively—I enjoy the style and the content, and he does it well, diligently making the connections that thread the digressions into a narrative.

Still, One Summer doesn’t hold together as well as his other books. I think this is because the most substantial hook he has upon which to hang his narrative is that pivotal moments in the various parallel stories he is telling take place in this one summer—but much of the book is everything that leads up to the events happening that summer and a lesser but still significant part is concerned with what happened afterward, and the actual events happening that summer are generally (but not always) unrelated except for being “significant”.

As a consequence, it doesn’t grant the various narrative threads the same sense of coherence that you find in In a Sunburned Country, or A Walk in the Woods, or even At Home.

Which is not to say that I didn’t find it an interesting read; the individual threads it covers are significant ones, taking place at an inflection point in the rate of change in our society—it just doesn’t make for a coherent fabric of a narrative.

A book so good…

I saw Questlove on The Daily Show. I knew who he was in a general way—in fact, are my favorite sticks when I’m playing—but I hadn’t, to the best of my knowledge, ever heard a single thing by The Roots. Ever.

Thinking back on it, my memory of the interview was that it was a little awkward. Re-watching it just now, though, suggests that my memory is shot to shit—I mean, I didn’t even remember that it was John Oliver, and while it was a low-key interview, it wasn’t really awkwardness per se, or at least not on Questlove’s part.

Regardless, it convinced me to buy the book.

I was a third of the way through it, when I realized that I had to by a copy of it for my friend Paul for a couple of reasons.

The first is because Paul is two months younger than me, and Questlove is a month younger than that—so when Questlove is talking about his childhood, it resonated with me surprisingly strongly. I mean, no, I was not black, nor was I growing up in Philly, but we share a passion for music, and many of the musical touchstones of his childhood are ones that I remember, even if they weren’t quite as much a part of my cultural identity. I mean, I didn’t really come to an appreciation of Parliament until I was in my 30s (incidentally, I’m going to see them at the end of the month), but there are Earth, Wind and Fire albums that I have known down to the note as far back as I can remember. I remember Soul Train in the 70’s, though I mostly remember just being…baffled, it was that far outside of my experience.

Anyway, that was the first reason—we’re all contemporaries, and I figured Paul would feel a kinship with many of those same things.

The second, of course, is because Paul owned a hip-hop club in Atlanta in the 90’s. And so I sorta wondered if he had ever met Questlove. In fact, he and his wife knew the whole band. Not fast friends or anything, but they knew them.

Anyway, I think this is probably my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. It’s interesting to read his perspective on the roots of hip-hop, about which I know relatively little—I’ve always been a rock and roll baby. It’s hilarious to read his meetings with Kiss and Prince and Tracy Morgan. it’s profound to read how The Roots are grappling with trying to be a band after 40.

If you care about music even a little bit, why haven’t you already read this book?

John Scalzi does not have to die

When I finished reading the ultimate chapter of The Human Division this morning, I was…upset. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed the ride so far—it made Tuesdays quite a fun thing to look forward to, in fact. But dammnit, that was a resolution that was no resolution at all.

I figured John would know enough to realize that to not announce that there was going to be at least one more novel in the Old Man’s War series would be to put himself in mortal danger.

So I am very pleased to see that he’s announced that there will be a Season Two.

Tying a bow around the Ringworld…

In the last three months or so, I’ve read every book of Larry Niven’s (some in collaboration with Edward M. Lerner) that deals directly with the part of his “Known Space” universe that concerns itself with the Ringworld. So, in order, Fleet of Worlds, Juggler of Worlds, Destroyer of Worlds, Betrayer of Worlds, Protector, Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne, Ringworld’s Children and finally, the newly released Fate of Worlds.

I remember discussing the original Ringworld with Chet a couple of years ago, as he picked it up for the first time. Parts of it have those antiquated gender role assumptions that so often succeed in annoying me, though not quite as ferociously patronizing as, say, Heinlein regularly evinced. But mostly, boy it goes by fast. It (along with Rendezvous with Rama) is among the first Big Dumb Object stories, and there is a blessed lack of a sense of need to attribute meaning to it—it just is.

Protector turns out to be the background for all that follows, and perhaps my favorite of all the books—it’s more like two novelettes packaged together, and they’re both interesting and fast-paced. A reminder, really, of what the new generation of SF writers meant in the 60’s and 70’s.

And it promptly becomes the basis of a multitude of enormous retcons to the Ringworld.

That’s not to say that I didn’t like the books—there are many worse ways to spend your time—but from The Ringworld Engineers the action becomes increasingly baroque, and at a certain point, I just didn’t care to work hard enough to follow it. By the last half of The Ringworld Throne, I don’t have the patience to try and fight my way through all the thrusts and counter-thrusts. It doesn’t feel worth my time to try and figure out which protector is allied with whom, etc. I’ve read that book at least four times, and I still feel in the dark. Ringworld’s Children just magnifies the problem in all directions.

The new “* of Worlds” books are at least clearer, but again, I just don’t have any real investment in the characters, even the ones that have shown up in earlier books that I actually liked. And when they start trying to reconcile the already-complicated timelines of the two series’ so that they can sync up for the last book…well, obviously, they got my money. But my heart just wasn’t in it. I felt like I could skim without missing anything of real importance. It all felt kind of empty.

It doesn’t have to be that way. At all. But I think these big end-of-life tie-it-all-together books that some SF writers seem to move toward are always going to feel somewhat hollow. They are, necessarily, more about tying things off than starting things anew. In fact, I think most sequels are like that, except perhaps where the author is willing to leave no bridge un-burned in the service of a new story that needs to be told.

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”

Or: I think I have finally figured out why Robert Heinlein makes me so nuts

At the age of 17—the year he died—my most favorite author in the whole world was probably Robert Heinlein. I don’t think anyone else came anywhere close. I had read just about everything he had ever published, and (with the exception of Farnham’s Freehold), I loved it all.

Some of these books had enormous implications for my attitude toward the world—Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers being the most obvious. They marked me indelibly. They helped make me who I am today.

Which is why, for about the last fifteen years or so, I’ve not understood why I couldn’t pick up one of his novels and read it without getting…annoyed, often downright pissed-off, even as I could recognize how this or that passage or scene had had some specific impact on me.

It’s not that I was disappointed to find that they were badly written—to this day, I rarely have problems with Heinlein’s prose, or even his plots; he was good at the craft of writing. Hell, I recently re-read The Sword of Shanarra, a book I had a great deal of affection for at 14, and found that, yeah, it was actually worse than I had expected (not just wan pastiche of Tolkien, but, truly, badly written to boot), and that didn’t piss me off. So it wasn’t that.

I think I finally found the answer the other day.

I was thinking about something—I don’t even remember what about, probably something political—when I said to myself, “Well, of course, that’s just a social construct.” And I started considering where I had been taught to look at things that way, to try and see the way so many things we are told are “the way things are” are really just things that we as a society have chosen to privilege, and should be open to being questioned and, ultimately, changed.

And as I thought about it, I realized that that was something that I almost certainly got from Robert Heinlein. It is, in fact, a huge theme throughout his work—almost all of his characters question social conventions, defy them, reshape them, mock them and generally point out how instrumental they are in keeping people down, and often unhappy.

What I realized annoys me is that, having established that social conventions and mores are things to be regarded with suspicion and contempt, Heinlein then proceeds to tell you how if you did it his way, everyone would be better off.

That’s chutzpah.

I think the problem was that as I became an adult, as I started to move into the real world, I ran up against the realization that his vision of what would make everyone better off comes off as somewhere between quaintly backward—right up until his last novel, he has a sort of Madonna/whore complex that comes off as alternately protective and patronizing toward women—and Ayn Rand levels of ignorant of actual humanity. Even when I agree with him, the way he presents these notions makes me cringe, because they’re presented in such a paternalistic way, in circumstances that are so absent from real life.

In effect, as I internalized what I think was his greatest lesson—and don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for that lesson, it has stood me in good stead all my life—I was being set up to not actually be able to enjoy his writing.

I can’t decide if it’s a shame, or it’s a natural progression, the realization that eventually people do run out of things to teach you, or that you have to sort through the lessons yourself to understand what really matters.

The Disappearing Spoon

There are, broadly, two categories of science books; those that focus on one thing, with only enough digression to perhaps explain background or competing theories (I’m thinking of The Elegant Universe, for instance), and those that have a theme that try to tie together many disparate bits of scientific knowledge or history.

Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon is definitely in the latter camp. Though it certainly takes the periodic table as its jumping-off point, it’s really a broad overview of the formalization of chemistry and physics as their own, separate disciplines in the 19th and 20th centuries, seen through the lens of our relationship to the not-as-fundamental-as-we-think (or, for that matter, most of the scientists being discussed thought) components of our universe.

Some of the endnotes are pretty interesting—the scientist who nearly didn’t get his Nobel Prize because he nearly died from a Staph. Aurea infection that degraded into necrotizing fascitis, for instance. And, truthfully, it’s easily read in small bites, which fits with the time I have available to devote to reading right now.

If you’re into this sort of collection-of-anecdotes sort of book, go for it; it’s an excellent example of that sort of book.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

If the title carries meaning for you, you are, arguably, the intended audience.

I found the main story to be a fun little meta-fictive romp, and not a lot else. In tone it very much reminded me of his earlier novel, _Agent to the Stars_–deeply aware of, if only to have fun with, genre conventions. As utterly unconcerned with the “science” part of “science fiction” as its purported source material.

There are certainly far worse ways to spend a few hours, though there are many better ones as well.

I was intrigued, though, by the three “codas”. Obviously, John felt it necessary to write “a little apologia”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/31/a-note-about-the-format-of-redshirts/ for it. And I was doubly intrigued when a review I read of the book a couple of days before I got to it myself suggested that the codas were a waste of time.

In fact, I think the codas–specifically, the second coda–are the best part.

Now my gut reaction to writing in the second person is something in the general neighborhood of derision. Tell me you’re doing it, and I will suggest you are making a mistake. Tell me you’ve already done it, and I will make a note to avoid your book. Admittedly, if you get me to read your book anyway, and I might actually like it (thank you, Mr. Palahniuk), but my default assumption is that it is going to be annoying and precious.

But I can’t imagine the second coda to _Redshirts_ working as well from any other point of view. To ask the reader–especially one who has some idea what might be coming–to empathise with the weirdness of the situation the character finds himself in pretty much demands something as jarring and weird and annoying as second person narration. So I think it not only worked, but was the only way it *could* work. So I actually found myself more satisfied after the codas than before.

I’ll note, just because I’ve started paying a little more attention to this in my fictional choices, that I believe the book fails the _Bechdel Test_. I think there are only two female characters in the whole thing, and they never talk that I remember. Just so you know.

Children of the Sky and Snuff

Two of my favorite SF novels are _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and _A Deepness in the Sky_, by Vernor Vinge. So when I heard several months ago that there was a sequel to the first being released this month, I felt both excitement and deep trepidation.

My experience of the book, _Children of the Sky_, falls somewhere in the middle.

In a way, I guess you could say the scope of all three books has been narrowing–[_A Fire Upon the Deep_] being a no-holds-barred Space Opera, _A Deepness in the Sky_ being a first-contact novel, while _Children of the Sky_ is a political thriller that happens to have aliens. It does a good job at what it is, but I found myself missing the sense of wonder that the first two books provoke in me even after numerous readings.

I enjoyed it enough that it’s not going to go into the pile to be donated to the library–and these days I’m getting pretty darn ruthless about putting stuff in that pile–but I suspect that if I went out and bought a new copy of _A Fire Upon the Deep_ (which I kinda need–the old one’s getting pretty worn), in 10 years, it will probably show more evidence of use.

Before that, though, I read _Snuff_, Terry Pratchett’s latest.

I am sad to say that this is the first Discworld novel in the last 15 years that I haven’t wanted to re-read almost immediately. Like _Children of the Sky_, I don’t intend to get rid of it, but I feel like it’s relying overmuch on my love of the characters to make up for a plot that seems a little lacking in originality–it feels a little like the bastard child of _The Fifth Elephant_, _Thud!_ and _Unseen Academicals_, and I think the result is a little tepid.

In my heart of hearts, though, I know some of my dissatisfaction stems from the fact that I realize that this book or the next book or the one after that is likely to be his last, and I want one last Granny Weatherwax novel. For me, she and Sam Vimes are the emotional core of his cast of characters–both people who are so desperately suspicious of themselves that being good often seems to make them angry–but she hasn’t been center-stage since _Carpe Jugulum_ in ’98, and I have that childish desire to see her again.

The Hunger Games

Yeah, so I started it on my fathers Nook while we were visiting with them in Panama City, FL, early last month. When we got home, I put it on my list of things to get at the library, and then prepared to wait.

However, the Sunday morning yoga class I teach has also taken on something of a book-club character—really, I guess you could say it’s taken on a circle-of-friends character, as we often end up talking about one thing or another, books and food are just persistent topics.

Anyway, someone offered to loan me the first book, but I was in the middle of a stack of things that were coming in from the library, so it sat for a few weeks, and then I got the new Terry Pratchett novel for my birthday, so that got precedence.

Last night I made the mistake of picking it up just before bed, and didn’t get to sleep for a couple of hours. And then picked it up over coffee and oatmeal, and was late getting to my desk. And then finished it over lunch.

I guess in some ways it reminds me of _Ender’s Game_, which isn’t an entirely positive association for me. It’s compulsively readable, that’s for sure. And I’ll probably borrow the other two from my source…but they’re certainly not books I see myself ever wanting to actually own.

Stations of the Tide

I have a hard time even describing this book. I guess it reminds me most of something Gene Wolfe might write. You come to distrust the narrative, feeling it’s leading you astray even as it tells you the truth.

I don’t know that I would recommend it, and I don’t know that I would re-read it, but it was worthwhile to have read the once.

The God Engines

I guess you could say this was my “rebound book” after the heavy commitment of King’s _Dark Tower_ books. As it is a novella, I suppose it really just constitutes a fling, which seems about right.

John Scalzi goes all omniscient-third-person–which is a departure from the “Old Man’s War” series, which is basically everything of his that I’ve read– on this tale of betrayal. It’s a fun, fairly light read. You can infer all sorts of Deep Thought About Religion if you so choose, but I think that might be going a little far.

And that’s the end of my current spate of library books, though I have two more waiting for me to go pick up. Perhaps this afternoon.

Finishing The Dark Tower

Well, I guess it’s technically not finishing it, since there’s now an 8th book on the way, scheduled for next year. And I may well read that when it comes out–checked out of the library, of course–but the seven books I read were obviously the main story.

I appreciate the first four books a fair amount. In part, I suppose, because they were the four that still felt…_lean_. The first two because I don’t think he’d yet gotten into the habit of writing long books. The third book starts to get a little piggy, but as I was still getting immersed in what’s going on, I didn’t find it as noticeable. By the time I hit _Wizard and Glass_, the text is perhaps a little more Stephen King-y (which is not necessarily a negative, in my view, but it’s a marked contrast to the first two books)–though I think even _Wizard and Glass_ may have been reined in by the fact that he was, in many ways, working in a genre that was not his own.

_Wolves of the Calla_ was a bit of a slog. The only part I truly found compelling was the story of Father Callahan. The rest of the books…I liked them fine. I know some people were annoyed with the (non-)ending of the story, and others were annoyed with King injecting himself into the narrative (literally, rather than figuratively), but neither thing bothered me particularly.

In fact, as I write this, I’m realizing that I’m really very rarely annoyed with books or music or movies or what not any more. They are what they are, and I may like them or not, but it seems silly for me to wish such a thing to be other than it is–annoyance, I think, being a manifestation of that wish .

Anyway, as is always the case with King, it’s the characters that make the difference. If you don’t develop some affection for them, you’re not going to make it through the text, but if you can find a way to love them even a little bit, they’ll carry you through to the end. It wasn’t like Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, where, as I finished the last book, I pined to be able to read another and another and another. But I didn’t feel like my two weeks worth of reading had been ill-spent.

Commencing The Dark Tower

One of the writers on “tor.com”:http://tor.com elected to take on Stephen King’s _The Dark Tower_ series. The significant difference is that where most of the posters on Tor are doing “re-reads”–guiding others through the books–this is a read-along, so you get to watch as someone else encounters the book for the first time.

Of course, I could do that just fine by myself–I’d never read it, though I remember Patrick talking about it when the first volume was finally widely-released in a trade paperback format in ’88–so I figured what the hell, I’d follow along. Unlike my recent plunge into Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin books, though, I decided I would take advantage of my local library. I don’t necessarily see these as being evergreen re-reads.

I finished _The Gunslinger_ in short order. It is interesting to realize how spare the writing is compared to most of King’s work. Some people have suggested that this is because it was such an early story, or because it was originally serialized–basically, because King couldn’t get away with over-writing.

Now, personally, I do not get as annoyed as some with King’s prose, or the length of his books, or even the stuff that could have been cut–I don’t find the text offensive to read, so it doesn’t outright bother me, and it’s not like his stories are generally laden down with anything as awkward and didactic as John Galt’s radio broadcast.

(Ask me about the Kevin Anderson/Brian Hebert “Dune” books, and you will get an entirely different answer, Their individual Wikipedia articles are better prose and better stories. But a lot of people think that about Frank Herbert’s sequels, too.)

Anyway, I think, actually, that it is a conscious choice on King’s part, though only the remainder of the series will prove me right or wrong. I think it’s intended to be a reflection of the character, who is himself a somewhat spare individual. The atmosphere isn’t that of a horror novel, really. It brings me to mind, for more reasons than one, of Samuel Delaney’s _Dhalgren_. Which I suppose I should get back to one day, though I already read the ending.

Anyway, I fear that the whole series really isn’t going to last long, unless the later books are more true to King’s prose form and take longer than these first two are.

Zero History

Done. Enjoyable. There’s a sense of humor in these three books that I don’t remember from any of his prior novels, though it’s been an admittedly long time since I’ve re-read any of them.

That said, the distinguishing feature of the trilogy begun with _Pattern Recognition_–and _Zero History_ make sure you know that it’s truly a trilogy, with the three books tied quite firmly together–seems to be that when I’m done with them, I don’t feel like I’ve really been presented with anything new. More like I’ve been given a tour of exotic locales, with an interesting plot to tie them together, and characters who interest me. But it’s a stark contrast between this and, any of the Sprawl books, or even the eschaton presented in the Bridge novels. That’s not bad, but it confounds my expectations somewhat.

Spook Country

From _Pattern Recognition_ I moved on immediately to _Spook Country_.

I enjoyed this more the second time through, though if I hear the phrase “locative art” again, I may scream. It’s another one of those ideas that doesn’t seem to have gotten any traction in the last four years, and in the end just served as an annoying distraction from the rest of the book, which I quite enjoyed. It made me look forward to _Zero History_, which I started yesterday.

Pattern Recognition

Now that _Zero History_ is out, I decided to go back and re-read the prior two Bigend Books.

I first read _Pattern Recognition_, on a trip to Miami in 2003 just after it came out. At the time, I thought it might be my favorite of William Gibson’s books. Now…well, I still enjoyed it, but it felt a little light on substance. Perhaps it’s that it was trying to posit something changing just a little too close to the present, and as a consquence, it seems more glaring when it misses the mark. The whole idea of the Sekrit Footage, when considered in light of YouTube just doesn’t quite have the resonance it did 8 years ago.

There is something to the dreamy, paranoid quality that the book has that I still find attractive, though this time through I also found some of the text very jarring. A lot of phrases that seemed to me too cutesy or too clever.

Anyway, it’s not like I intend to get rid of it, but I don’t know that I’ll re-read it in fewer than another 8 years.

Strange Disclaimer

An interesting point about the thoughtlessness of some of our legal forms–the silliness of standard boilerplate suggesting that Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle wasn’t connected to actual events and persons…right after many pages detailing exactly how it was.

“Noted by Yglesias”:http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/01/strange-disclaimer/

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers

Yeah, I know I’m probably late to the party on this one. I haven’t finished the book yet, and if I knew just a little less, I might find it very convincing. As it is, I am left with significant doubts.

Simply put, there are basic factual errors and what I think are meant to be simplifications or glosses on complex topics that are so gross as to misrepresent things, in subjects about which I know a fair amount, which lead me to be suspicious of everything else in the book–because why would he just play fast-and-loose-and-ignorant with the stuff I happen to be familiar with.

In the realm of basic factual errors, when discussing Eric Schmidt (P. 67), he says, “He ran Novell, one of Silicon Valley’s most important software firms”.

That must come as a great surprise to Novell, that had its roots in Provo, Utah, and, looking on novell.com, appears to this day to not have offices in Silicon Valley (though, interestingly, corporate HQ is now in Waltham, MA).

This tells me that 1) he didn’t do basic fact checking himself, and 2) he never showed that piece of text to anyone who knew even the most basic things about Novell.

In the realm of simplifications or glosses that are so gross as to distort reality, well, let’s talk about Bill Joy.

First, I acknowledge that Bill Joy has huge expertise in software development, contributed many important things to UNIX, and was working deep in its internals during a time when it was rapidly gaining features.

But “by the time he happened to be presented with the opportunity to rewrite UNIX, he was up to the task” (P. 46)? I have to question this. Bill Joy was part of a group of grad students at Berkeley who modified and extended the base Unix distribution from AT&T. He was a DARPA employee tasked with running the group that added TCP/IP to the Berkeley kernel. He was a founder of Sun Microsystems. But he didn’t, as the text implies, single-handedly rewrite UNIX.

Or,

bq. It was so good, in fact, that it became–and remains–the operation system on which literally millions of computers around the world run. “If you put your Mac in that funny mode where you can see the code,” Joy says, “I see things that I remember typing in twenty-five years ago.” And do you know who wrote much of the software that allows you to access the Internet? Bill Joy.

To quote from Wikipedia, on “Mac OS X”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X, “Mac OS X is based upon the Mach kernel. Certain parts from FreeBSD’s and NetBSD’s implementation of Unix were incorporated in Nextstep, the core of Mac OS X.”

Now it’s true that FreeBSD and NetBSD are both descendents of the BSD releases that Bill Joy helped create, package and distribute. But that path is tangled and tortured, and much of the original code has been rewritten over time by others, so, to imply that millions of computers around the world are running this operating system Bill Joy ostensibly wrote is ridiculous.

And the software that allows you to access the Internet being Bill Joy’s creation? Um, no. This is not to say that the implementation of TCP/IP in BSD UNIX was not important, or that the BSD Sockets interface is not worthy of mention. But the fact is, over time, all of that actual code has been replaced, just as Bill Joy scooped out chunks of what came before him and replaced them.

Again, none of these things are outright falsehoods, but they are such enormous missrepresentations of the true state of things, that I am left wondering how much stuff he distorted in his discussions of hockey, about which I know nothing.

Kindle 2, redux

“Just a little shy of two months ago”:http://tendentious.org/2009/02/if-it-werent-for-the-drm.html, I noted that I really, really liked the looks of the Kindle 2, etc., but that I simply could not in good faith allow someone else to hold my content hostage via DRM.

No doubt people scoffed at the possibility. Two months later, “it happened to someone”:http://consumerist.com/5213774/amazon-can-ban-you-from-your-kindle-account-whenever-it-likes.

And I’m sure as hell never buying one.

“Via”:http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/PAx7DLPBeGA/ive_been_saying_on_the.php

Anathem

The cover to Neal Stephenson's Anathem

I’m sure I’ll get around to reading it eventually. But I got about 100 pages into it and just kind of lost the thread. I’ve read, I think, three books in the interim, so it’s not like I’ve not been reading.

I have read comments from some people that I respect saying that it’s a great book, but what inspired me to mention my problems with it was “recognizing a pertinent reference to it in the newest xkcd”:http://xkcd.com/483/.

An Evil Guest

The cover for Gene Wolfe's An Evil Guest

Gene Wolfe makes me feel…dense.

Not stupid, per se. I find that his prose is always clear, if sometimes antiquarian, and eminently readable. This is in contrast to, say, Pynchon, who often seems to revel in obscurity.

No, I just end up feeling like I am not smart enough to ferret out the subtext in his writing. I know it’s in there, but I’ll be damned if I can see it clearly.

I’m sure I’ll get around to re-reading _An Evil Guest_ at some point–his books always seem to warrant returning to–but right now, I’m still uncertain if I even liked it: the turn-of-the-last-century, stilted-feeling prose, the odd juxtaposition of futuristic elements into this old-feeling milieu, and finally, a sense of just not being entirely certain what the fuck is going on all left me a little ambivialent right now.

But it does have Cthulu in it, at least off-stage.

Axis

I ran across Robert Charles Wilson’s _Spin_ right about the time I ran across Charlie Stross’ _Accelerando_–in thinking about it, I suspect I heard about both of them at “Making Light”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/. I know that’s where I heard about “Spin”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007262.html.

Having read the first book, I picked up its sequel, _Axis_, though not before it was in paperback.

On the one hand, it’s not badly done, but on the other…I just can’t recommend it.

Glasshouse

Charlie Stross' Glasshouse

I “discovered” “Charlie Stross”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html about, oh, 2 years ago. The first book I picked up was [“_Accelerando_”:http://www.accelerando.org/book/]. I judged it to be well-written, but not entirely to my taste.

“_Iron Sunrise_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sunrise I liked somewhat better. Not one of my favorite books of all time or anything, but a solid story, actual characters, you know, all the stuff that a good book should have.

Then I found “_The Atrocity Achives_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Archives, which amused me greatly. Lovecraft meets computer geek, complete with Linux, Palm Pilots and bureaucracy. Ah, joy.

So last week, in a fit of actual book buying–I do this at a much slower pace than I used to–I picked up “_Glasshouse_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse. Like _Iron Sunrise_, it’s definitely more in the sci-fi thriller category, but it also does it well.

I will note that, this novel has an amusing interaction with Charlie’s “public embrace of the Bechdel Test”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/08/bechdel_test_roundup.html.

Are You Somebody?

Nuala O'Faolain's Are You Somebody

When she died earlier this year, “Fresh Air”:http://npr.org/freshair/ rebroadcast an interview they had done several years earlier with Nuala O’Faolain. I caught part of it on the way home from, if I remember correctly, a yoga class.

I think the thing that struck me most about the interview was about how she spoke about the problem of finding a meaning and a center to your life if you reject the things that traditionally define women’s lives–marriage and children. Effectively, she said, you have to go it alone, figuring out the meaning for yourself, because the answer is going to be different for everyone.

So, before we went to the beach, I picked up a copy. It made it to the top of the stack several days ago, and I just finished it last week.

It’s not really beach reading.

It is beautiful and evocative and bleak and blasted. I fear that she never did really figure out how to define herself. Her entire life, as she tells it, seems to be a fight between the recapitulation of her mother’s unhappy life and the knowledge that that path wouldn’t make her happy. But she never seems to find a path that does, or that would at least start down the road to happiness.

I guess the most interesting thing to me was that she eschews the status of victim–she knows she’s confused about what her own priorities are and what would make her happy, and although she sees the roots of it in her early family life and the cultural milieu in which she grew up, she doesn’t assume that it is beyond her control to change…even though, end the end, it seems it may have been.