Shutting Down

Since joining the social bookreading site Goodreads, this blog has become a somewhat duplicative effort. Since my audience at Goodreads is larger, I'm going to be mothballing this site for a while, and possibly forever. If you've come here looking for my ever so insightful reviews, surf on over to Goodreads and become my friend! Thanks!

Barnes Burning

Ben Barnes, author of Barn Burning, Barn Building and former Texas Lt. Governor, is a great representative of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party. Throughout this book, written before Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 elections, is full of advice to sell out core constituencies and serve business interests at all costs. He insists tht modernation is always the best course, even when it plainly is not: he seems to regret the steps toward civil rights taken in the 1960s (because they alienated much of the South), has never questioned his advocacy of the war in Vietnam, views liberals in his party as a bigger opponent than republicans, and makes half-wit justifications for the obviously unethical business dealings he had while holding office in the state of Texas.

The "solutions" he offers to the modern Democratic Party to regain power are no help at all--basically it boils down to the need for greater bipartisanship--as if the problems our country now faces are the result of Democrats not compromsing enough on bad republican policy. He seems to hold few if any real positions; anything is negotiable. The only reason I do not give it one star is because it has some value to understanding the historical forces that broke up the Texas Democratic Party and led to Republican ascendance. There are also a couple of interesting bits regarding Nixon's use of the SEC to trump up allegations against democrats, and about Barnes' role in getting George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.

Among the blurbs on the back cover of the book is one claiming that Tom Daschle once called Barnes the 51st democratic senator; if Barnes really is representative of democratic politicans, then it is obvious why democrats have had so much trouble holding on to power

My 4th Bible

Not long ago I completed my fourth reading of the Bible. The translation I read this time was a version of the Contemporary English Vervsion (CEV) which I had been given in 1997 at the ELCA Lutheran National Youth Gathering in New Orleans. The picture accompanying this post is not the same cover as my Bible, but I think it is the same text.

All four that I've read are fairly common protestant translations that have had either the official or tacit endorsement of the ELCA church I grew up in. However, one can still notice differences when comparing reading experiences. According to the translators of this version, it was designed primarily to be read aloud, and thus uses simple language and relatively short sentences. There's not much in the way of footnotes, except the very basic notes on alterative translations. There is nothing in the text to indicate a footnote and the reader has to guess about when the read them.

For someone hoping to get a real learning experience out a Bible--including historical, cultural, and political context--I can't say I would much recommend this version. It's very bare bones--exactly the type of thing you might imagine is being given away at a Lutheran national youth gathering. In this case, you get what you pay for.

Twilight Eyes

Twilight Eyes is a better than average Dean Koontz novel, but still not a very good book. I was sort intrigued at the outset--the writing is a little more solid than most Koontz books and initially he did a fair job of allowing us to see of the interior doubts of the main character. At first the narrator, referred to as Slim, does not seem reliable, which is very unusual for Koontz, as he usually deals only in characters that are purely good or purely evil (one of the reasons why his books are often so boring). Slim believes he can see "goblins" which take the form of people and walk among us. He has killed several people he believes are goblins, including braining his uncle with an ax. Of course, the reader is left with some doubt about Slim's ability to actually see goblins, as opposed to simply being crazy.

Well, Koontz doesn't let that go on for long. He establishes that goblins are real and Slim can see them, taking away the dramatic tension he started to build. The first half of the novel takes place mostly against the backdrop of a travelling carnival (the second carnival book I've read this year, after Water for Elephants). The first section is the strongest section; part two is slightly longer than part one, but feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought. Here we find out the stupid and uninteresting backstory of how the goblins came into being and we follow Slim and his girlfriend in their war against the goblins. Both Slim and his girlfriend have some kind psychic abilities, another crutch Koontz regularly uses to help his characters solve problems when he writes himself into a corner.

After early high hopes, this book is another disappointment from Koontz. Plagued by bad characterization, worse dialogue, and flaky plot. Not recommended for anyone.

Anarchism in practice

Lately I've been really fascinated by the idea that a lack of affordable oil is going to radically transform our economy, and by extension, the way our communities are organized, in the next decade or so. You can google "peak oil" to read a bunch of apocalyptic doomsday prophets, and I should say that I don't have any technical knowledge at all to guess at how many resources are actually left in the planet, but it doesn't take much imagination to think of how catastrophic the consequences of continually rises fuel prices can be. The war in Iraq may be only the opening salvo in a coming series of wars over resources; I think it is likely that oil rich countries are going to more and more start treating oil as leverage for obtaining their geopolitical goals, rather than simply an exportable material. And there will be very serious consequences in our individual lives--people are going to have to get small. By which I mean, communities are not going to be able to rely to stuff being shipped around nearly to the extent they now do. Much more food will have to be grown locally and travel will be severely restricted. The kind of enormous metropolitan cities that have become the norm over the last 150 years are going to be less tenable, faced with both the difficulty of providing enough resources for that number of people living in one place, and many of them also enduring the worst effects of the now inevitable global climate change, due to their proximity to coastlines--some of them will simply be underwater.

All of this is just a long way of saying that very shortly we are going to be facing some of the most serious challenges humanity has ever encountered. And there are going to have to be a lot of decisions about how we live in this new world--there may be some strong tendencies to step backward into autocratic rule, but there will also be opportunity to try to establish egalitarian and truly democratic societies. Which makes me think maybe now is the time to start brushing up on anarchist theory and practice. It may be possible that some anarchist principles could be useful in attempting to refashion our communities to meet the requirements that are going to be imposed in oil poor world, and work toward a society were individuals have meaningful autonomy to the extent possible and the means of production and major economic decisions are managed by some democratic process.

So I was pleased to read this book at this time. Anarchism has long been a sort of hobby-horse of mine, and I've enjoyed reading the texts of major anarchist thinkers. Beyond Chomsky's essay in American Power, I don't have much familiarity with anarchism as practiced in Spain duirng the short-lived revolution. This book gives some insight into how those societies tried to function, though there's not a lot of meat on the bones. And of course all the contributers, and the editor, are sympathizers and it's hard to say to what degree they permit themselves to be critical of the movement.

Maybe my whole radical impending societal change theory is pure bunk. It wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about something ("After the travesty of the 2000 elections, the American people will not stand for the continued existence of an undemocratic institution like the Electoral College"). Still, it's both frightening and exciting to think of the potential for creation of a better world than the one dominated by global capitalism. Though no revolutionaries are going to overthrow the government anytime soon (I hope, anyway), it is becoming increasingly clear that the the present state of affairs is unsustainable--certainly in the long term, but maybe also in the relatively short term.

Dave Barry

I read my first Dave Barry column back when I was probaby 13 or 14. I still remember that it contained some bit about how snakes were learning to move from toilet to toilet, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. As a middle and high schooler, I read quite a few of his books and generally enjoyed most of them a lot. Now that I'm somewhat older, I don't think Barry is quite the genius I used to, but I still find him surprising enough that I don't mind picking up one of his books once in a while. Dave Barry's Greatest Hits is from the late eighties, so the political jokes don't have too much resonance these days, but it's a fine time anyway. Actually, I've often wondered about Barry's politics--obviously as a non-political humorist, he's obligated to make jokes about figures in both political parties, but it's hard to determine if he's really got a dog in the fight. I sort of suspect he may be a closet Republican. Anyway, don't expect anything too deep (aside from a strangely moving column about the death of his father) and you won't be disappointed.

Acceptable Trash

As far as Koontz novels are concerned, The Servants of Twilight is not bad at all. It's about a bunch of religious fanatics that try to kill a kid they believe is the Antichrist. It has a decent amount of tension and is somewhat more ambiguous than most of his work. It doesn't escape Koontz's usual undercooked characterization and often stilted dialogue, but I wasn't totally sure how it was going to end after the first hundred pages, so that's a pretty big deal. Grading this against Koontz's past effort, it is better than most.

The alien and familiar world of Kerouac

This is the third book by Kerouac I have read, and without fail, they all have an unusual raw emotional gravity about them. This book is short burst of linguistic invention--supposedly written in only three days, and it reads as such. It weighs in at a little over 100 pages, but is full of love, disgust, drunkenness, excitment, and the peculiar next-day regret hangover. It does not match either On the Road or The Town and the City in terms of overall narrative power, but is a strangely compelling book after you adjust to Kerouac's fevered prose style. The Subterraneans is sometimes difficult to read--Kerouac can go for pages without paragraph or punctuation--but does become more manageable as the book nears conclusion.

There is some weakness in the portrayal of the supporting characters, and the novel is much more interested in painting vivid word-pictures that give the reader a sort of strobe-light impression of events than it is in any kind of serious character study. But if you are a Keraouc fan, you know what you are getting into here. And while I did find myself on the fence about whether I actually enjoyed the book as I worked through it, the ending was strong enough to pull over into the plus column. As a final note, it is humorous to take a look at the Kerouac reviews on Amazon and notice how the reviewers tend to take on Kerouac's writing style to a degree as they review his books--an amusing feature which I am afraid that I have succumbed to as well.

Lesser Known Dostoevsky

Who knew how many minor works Fyodor Dostoevsky has produced? I recently finished The Village of Stepanchikovo, also sometimes translated as The Friend of the Family. This is a short attempt at a comic novel that meets with middling success. The plot revolves around a rural household in thrall to a domineering pseudo-intellectual named Foma Fomich. Foma, though basically just a hanger-on, manipulates the entire family, including the uncle that is supposed to be in charge, into revering and bowing down to him. The plot turns on the arrival of a newphew to the estate who challenges Foma's supremacy.

Stepanchikovo is not a difficult read and I thought it was enjoyable, though not something that would be considered a classic. Dostoevsky is still finding his footing here, and though the novel is occasionally funny, it did not keep me in stitches by any means. Only for the dedicated Dostoevsky completist.

I review another bad novel

In this case, Darkfall by Dean Koontz. I had no idea what this book was about when I started it, and declined to read the synopsis so I could have the "joy" of nosing the plot out for myself. Well, I'll spoil it for you: it's about a voodoo practitioner that opens the gates of hell a bit and lets out some weird stuff that terrorizes the family of a policeman that is trying to catch said voodoo practitioner for his connection to some murders. Now, this sounds like exactly that kind of thing that I might get some guilty pleasure out of, but as is so often the case, Koontz is such a bad writer and inept at characterization and dialogue that I couldn't squeeze any enjoyment whatsoever out of the experience. The characterization of the bad guy in is awesomely stupid. That Koontz remains a bestselling author through decades of poor quality work is astounding.

Early Dostoevsky

Netochka Nezvanova translated means something along the lines of "nameless nobody". So you have some idea how cheerful this novel is--though what else would you really expect from Dostoevsky? Calling it a novel is not really correct either--it was supposed to be the beginning of a novel, but Dostoevsky never returned to it after being rudely interupted by his imprisonment in Siberia for political activism.

I won't really get into it, since it is just a fraction of a work. I'm glad it's been preserved, but I don't think anyone rates it among Dostoevsky's great achievements. Not a bad read, though somewhat melodramatic. Not really worth digging into, though, unless you are a Dostoevsky scholar, or have some kind of pathological need to to read all of an author's works.

World War Z

I have fretted long and hard about what my choice for book club would be, when that time finally came. I wanted both to pick a piece of literature that would be surprising and that most others in the club would not have considered reading, but I also wanted it to be good. After all, I have spent the last few months reading the likes of The Kite Runner and Water for Elephants. If I can put up with that kind of sissy-pants literature (I am of course, joking. Partially.) then I wanted to make others endure something they would not normally consider. So I cast around for a while, and eventually landed on this little book. The deal was sealed when, in a strange coincidence, the day I started to read this book, the author turned out to be reading in town. So I went to hear him, and decided this book was fate. He signed my copy and added "survive book club".

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a hell of a fun book. Though not without moments of humor, it takes itself completely seriously. It is laid out as other "oral histories" are, with short, "man on the street" style interviews, as well as interviews with those that experienced certain unique aspects of the war. Humans have, at least for now, vanquished the zombie threat, though there are still zombies out there and no one knows if the plague might start again. Through the eyes of the participants we see the earliest outbreaks, the chaos of the Great Panic, fighting the hordes to a stalemate, the tide slowly turn, and finally the re-emergence of humanity. WWZ is full of intimate detail, some touching or inspiring; some brutal, remorseful, or bittersweet. There is a fair share of blood and guts--this is a horror novel, after all--but many of the snapshots are unexpectedly poignant.

Really though, the zombies in the story are only a stand in, a way to pique the interest of readers. It could be any kind of worldwide emergency, particularly disease, such as Avian Flu. The bulk of the story is showing lack of government planning and bureaucratic missteps. And it's impossible not to read and think of the inadquate disaster response to Katrina in the U.S., and other large scale catastrophes around the world. Also on this wavelength, there are some fairly clear allusions to modern political figures and to the war in Iraq. However, the novel is truly global in scope, and we spend time in a variety of countries besides the U.S. I was especially intrigued at the way the zombie war boosted the prestige of eastern nations, and helped to tip the balance of geopolitical power toward China and India, much like a major worldwide disaster might really do.

Criticisms I expect to have to deal with at book club: there are 40 or 50 different "voices" or characters in this book, most of them only getting a few pages to speak. As such, some voices will obviously be stronger than others. Also, we do not build up large amounts of attachment to a single character over the course of the book. I think Brooks did a great deal of research on what type of weapons the military might use to combat a zombie plague, and he spends quite a few pages detailing various sorts of tactics and specific weapons that could be used. To some degree, I lost interest in this topic. I felt that since he did the research, he felt like he had to use some of it, but honestly, I wasn't too in to learning about exactly how weapons systems work. Less would have been more. As someone who works in politics, as does most of my book club, some of the interviews with political figures were a little heavy handed.

One particular section I wanted to praise was the writing about zombies in the water. This was a very effective image for me and will have me thinking twice next time I'm swimming in a body of water after dark. And, of course, as with any story about zombies, during certain moments you have to ask yourself who the real monsters are. The zombies, grotesque as they are, have no choice in their actions. It is the humans that stab each other in the back and become their own worst enemies, willing to do anything to fellow survivors in order to gain their own advantage. Even in the last pages, as some survivors talk about the way the crisis brought people together, I had to wonder if they were already starting to gloss over the worst moments with familiar cliches. Do these sorts of crisis bring people together, or is that only the story we tell ourselves when it's all over, when we've done what we must to survive?

WWZ is a fast and interesting read. Obviously I think highly enough of it that I chose it to make my coworkers read. If you happen to be an interp coach reading this, you might seriously think about getting a copy; I think some very cool pieces could be cut from it, and I guarantee you'll be the only school in your area doing them.

more book club fodder

Another book club choice here--interesting setting, taking place in a 1930s travelling circus. However, not really something I would recommend. Predictable romance and an ending that nicely cleans up any loose ends. The best parts of the book take place when the narrator is shown as an old man in the nursing home, not when he is remembering his youth in the circus. I guess that tells you something about how much drama I felt in the circus sections. A fine, but not ultimately engaging, read. Deserves about two and a half or three out of five stars.

I am in agreement with Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Media makes essentially the same point I did about the rules of winning the Democratic nomination in this post from yesterday: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/185225.php. He's more eloquent and convincing than me, though.

My new fear

is that McCain will pick Lieberman as his running mate and the Dems will go with Obama. The "bipartisan" repubican ticket will take a lot of the wind out of Obama's beyond partisanship rhetoric. Maybe McCain wants a true blue conservative to solidify his base; maybe he wants someone with some geographic importance; maybe Lieberman wouldn't accept a VP offer. I don't know, but it does scare me.

Roland at the Tower

I do not aim with my hand. He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand. He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my weapon. He who kills with his weapon has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.

At long last, I've completed Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The 7 books run about 4500 pages all told, and are a serious undertaking. I would advise you to know what you're committing to prior to deciding to take on this much volume. Is it worth it? It's hard to say, frankly. The series has it's ups and downs, and doesn't end as strongly as one would wish. However, if you're a King fan, he views this as the story that connects all of his stories into a larger thread, and is probably required reading for a full understanding of his work.

It's hard for me to be too critical of the series. After you have spent this much time committed to any endevour, I think it's natural to want to find worth in what you've engaged in. Looking back and surveying my feelings about the books as I read them, I generally felt entertained, but that the stories were not the amazing literary gems that some online would contend. I can pretty much extrapolate this opinion from each individual book to the series as a whole. I will defend it as an enjoyable and complex epic, but I will not make the case that it is more than the sum of it's parts. It's not.

Two points specific to the final book in the series, entitled simply The Dark Tower. I agree with other critics that the villains that have been up throughout the over 1000 pages of this novel are dispatched of with almost ridiculous ease. The Man in Black, Mordred, and the Crimson King all given long mytholgies (the Man in Black extending all the way back to The Stand, before the Dark Tower series even began) but are written out of the story in the course of a few paragraphs. An inadequate demise, I felt. There are also those who complain about the actual ending and what Roland finds in the Tower. I won't give it away, but I will say that I found the conclusion to be satisfactory. Like many others, I was antipating, but also dreading, what Roland might find in the last room at the top of the Tower; King's ending feels right to me. If you don't like it, you should have taken his advice, where he says plainly that readers may not like what is coming and pleads with us not to continue, and quite reading before the last 20 pages of the book.

The series has plenty to recommend it: tension, fun characters, good action sequences, and a meticulously imagined alternative world that is fascinating. But it is also full of unlikely coincidence, unexplainable intuition, and deus ex machina. Take it for what it is. Ka is a wheel; time is a face on the water.

I am glad that I am done with this, and will have a little more freedom to read other authors now, though I do intend to go on reading King's other stand alone works. I still think the haters out there are terribly unfair to King, an author that is undeniably fun to read and sometimes achieves greatness. He certainly is unafraid to take risks, as this series proves.

Stray political thoughts

First--I freely admit that I am glued to the Democratic race between Senators Obama and Clinton. My view is probably colored substantially by my partisanship for Obama, but I don't think I'm unable to see reason. At this point, the conventional wisdom seems to be that Obama will reach the convention with a slight lead in elected delegates, but Clinton may win several large states (obviously she has already won Ohio, and narrowly squeaked out Texas) just prior to the convetion. In this scenario, the votes of party superdelegates, who are mostly elected officials and a elected party officials, would ultimately decide the winner. There are various schools of thought as to how the superdelegates should vote, but in the end, they will vote in the way that they feel is in their best self-interest, and there's not much that anybody can do to stop that. However, the argument being put forth by the Clinton camp, most recently by PA Gov. Ed Rendell this morning on Meet the Press, is that Clinton should get the nomination based on her winning several, large swing states that will be critical for Democrats to take in November. Because she has done this, even if Obama has a lead in elected delegates, superdelegates should vote for Clinton, the argument goes. First off, it is offensive to me, as someone from a small and mostly conservative state, to suggest that my vote in the Democratic primary system does not deserve to be considered. But more to the point is that if you got in your time machine and went back to December 2007, before the Iowa caucus, and asked both camps what they needed to do to get the nomination, they would unamimously and without controversy, agree that the one thing required to win the nomination would be to have more delegates than the other candidate. Now that the Clinton campaign has determined it is unlikely for her to be in a position of having more elected delegates, they have produced this new line. Since the Democrats, by virtue of their name, are theoretically the party that believes in democracy, I find it hard to believe that we could possibly select a candidate that has fewer elected delegates, or even more importantly, I would like to see the candidate with more popular votes, period. Of course, this is politics, so actual scruples play little role, if any.

Also, it was nice to see Tom Daschle defending Obama on Meet the Press this morning, and on CNN earlier this week. It breaks my heart to see this intelligent, reasonable person that used to hold so much power in the US Senate because it reminds me what South Dakota has given up in order to put a Bush troglodyte into office. Tom has a new book about health care in America out, and I look forward to reading it. From many of the people I've talked to, South Dakota has a real case of buyer's remorse over their decision back in '04. I miss you, Tom.

more dostoevsky short stories

I finished this collection a couple weeks back, and I can't say there is too much to recommend about it. Dostoevsky, of course, is a good storyteller, but I think it's better to approach his longer novels than getting bogged down in the many, many short stories he wrote. Many of these are well done, but not earth shattering. Some of these stories I had already read in the Great Short Works book, but did not realize this because the titles were translated differently.

The themes in these stories are familiar to readers of Dostoevsky, and I don't have much to add. They're enjoyable for those that know what they're getting into, but are not essential reading by any stretch, and I don't think the short story is the format that he is best in--he needs at least a little space to work.

Further Afghanistan material

The second book of my book club was another Afghanistan-centric work, The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. It's a quick and easy read, and although it is not all that illuminating in many ways, it does give a snapshot of one person's fascinating journey through that country, and at least an idea about what it is like in the rural hamlets that comprise much of the population.

Rory Stewart never explains why it is he decided to walk across Asia. For whatever reason, he walked across India, Nepal, Iran, and other Asian countries. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, he took the opportunity to walk across that land as well (he had previously been denied access to the country by the Taliban). Stewart walks through the middle of the country, from Herat to Kabul, braving sometimes unfriendly villagers, treacherous mountain passes in the dead of winter, and various other obstacles. It's quite the concept, and yields a fair amount of striking moments. The prose is matter of fact and dry, though sometimes you can sense Stewart's sense of humor just below the surface.

However, the book does suffer from a sort of sameness. The belt of villages that Stewart walks through, and relies on to feed and shelter him, are all fairly similar. There is a familiar motion to finding the appropriate local chieftan to appeal to in each village and avoiding the same sorts of pitfalls each time. And though the journey must have been incredibly difficult, I rarely got the sense from the walking descriptions of exactly how tiring it must be. I believe that Stewart was in many ways lucky to survive at all, particularly when accounting for the dysentary he seems to always have, his lack of mastery of the language, and his travel through areas that had heavy support for the Taliban still.

One moment that was among my favorite in the book: Stewart has just come into another poor dwelling hoping to find nourishment. It is a typical mud hut with no power or amenities; it does, however, have a poster on the wall. "[The] poster showed a yellow convertible sports car parked outside a Swiss chalet with flower-decked balconies. Printed below in capital letters in English was: ANYONE WHO HAS EVER STRUGGLED WITH POVERTY KNOWS HOW EXTREMELY EXCITING IT IS TO BE POOR. Our host had bought the poster in Herat and asked me to translate it. I told him I could not understand the inscription." Irony of that passage aside, I think that would make an excellent T-shirt.

The main lesson to be drawn in my opinion from Stewart's work is that Afghanistan is not in any way to be mistaken for a uniform nation. The people do not think of themselves in national terms, and the ethnic, religious, and feudal ties are much more important to them than any action being taken supposedly in their name by a distant government in Kabul. The things that matter are of course the things that affect our day to day lives. It is a depressing book in the sense that virtually no one the author meets cares at all about human rights or really any ideal whatsoever beyond what it is to be a Muslim (indeed there is a very interesting chapter about how Bush and Blair misconstrue Muslim belief). Stewart walked a long and difficult journey, but as thinking about this book makes clear, the journey toward a humane planet will be much longer.

A Long, Hard Slog

I don't know if there's such a thing as a casual Huxley fan, but if there is, this is not the book for that person. This second of six volumes of Huxley's essays contains many of the same trials and rewards of the first volume. It covers the years 1926 to 1929 and topics ranging from politics to philosophy to art to travel writing. My major criticism is that much of this work, written as short magazine pieces at the time, has not really stood the test of time, nor was it meant to. The section on art fares particularly badly.

However, this volume does contain some longer pieces where Huxley has more room to sketch out some thoughts more broadly on issues of philosophical and scientific importance, including a short section on eugenics, which he later comes back to in his most famous novel, Brave New World. Also, the travel section contains some interesting nuggets, particularly his views, as a liberal Englishman travelling through occupied India during the time of Ghandi's movement for independence. As you might expect, he is somewhat conflicted, re-emphasizing to me how issues that appear very clear in retrospect can often seem intractable as they are being lived, even to the brightest among us. Fun to compare Huxley's impressions to those of Orwell in "Shooting an Elephant," one of my all-time favorite essays.

Still, these works were never really meant to be read back to back and it is not fun or easy to get through this book. Rumsfeld's phrase from the title of this post is maybe a bit overblown, but I never miss an opportunity to quote Rummy. Huxley is undeniably good at wordplay and spending time with him has its pleasures, but this collection is too much effort for too little payoff.

Koontz Achieves Mediocrity

Phantoms is far and away better than most Koontz novels--which is to say that it achieves the level of mediocrity. It's a straight up creature story--you can see the 1998 film if you want to understand the plot. I saw it back when I was in high school and enjoyed it, even though I am a distinct minority in that respect. I think remembering the film helped me to enjoy the book more than previous Koontz work. It's still got awful dialogue and poor characterization, but the monster is relatively interesting. Also, it's grislier than previous Koontz books I've read. The plot holes are enormous as well, but there are a few creepy moments and I'll simply take what I can get from Koontz. Not a bad beach book.

Kite Runner Underwhelms

The Kite Runner is the first selection I have read for the book club I joined this year. I was pleased with the selection for a few reasons: 1) it's a book we have here at home, so I didn't have to buy it. 2) It seems like many of my friends have read and enjoyed it. 3) It is a best-selling novel that did not look like pure drivel. So I'm happy that book club will help me get out of reading ruts, but, as the following paragraphs will testify to, this novel did not do the trick for me.

Kite Runner is not a bad book, but one that fails to adequately grapple with the questions it raises. Hosseini is a talented writer--his prose feels natural and unfettered. I was initially excited to see the way the power relationships were going to play out--the servant and master both on an individual scale and in the realm of international politics. The stage certainly felt set for an exploration of class conflict. Our protagonist is one of the privileged few in Afganistan, but has a special relationship with the son of their family's servant. However, his inability to act in a moment of crisis--his inability to risk his place in the social order--lead to tragic results that haunt him into adulthood. By the same token, though the novel doesn't delve deeply into this, the Russians in the 1980s were a privileged nation, able to make Afganistan suffer on their behalf with few consequences.

However, the story suffers a serious breakdown in the second half, subsituting coincidences that are frankly unacceptable and abandoning characterization in favor of stereotype. We don't really get much insight into the cultural and social forces that drive out the Russians, but institute their own brand of militaristic and religious oppression. In this novel, the Taliban represent evil without any nuance--one particular antagonist even professes an admiration for Hitler. This is a transparent and desperate move on the part of Hosseini, who wants us to hate this charcter, but is apparently unwilling to give him the full scope of his humanity and instead resorts to this ridiculous shorthand. The end neatly wraps up the events without asking us to think very hard about what's happened in Afganistan and what is still happening. We are, conviently, also never asked to consider what, if any, role America has in the state of Afganistan today, and the ongoing American invasion is mentioned only in passing. We can go on sitting in Starbucks, reading the Post, and shaking our heads sadly at the state of Afgani affairs, safe from any impolite questions that the Kite Runner could have raised.

Kite Runner has some splendid moments, and is undoubtedly better than most of the fare that makes the bestseller lists. It's obviously better than many of the books I have written about on this site in the last few months, but considering its potential, the book is a real let-down. In the end, it is much less than the sum of it's parts.

P.S. For reasons unknown to me, this post will not publish showing the customary spaces between paragraphs--I will simply have to trust that my intrepid readers can ascertain where said breaks should go. Apologies.

Local Interest

Just a few sentences on Picturing the Past: South Dakota's Historic Places. This book has some really gorgeous black and white photography from around the state, including a couple of shots from my home area. Especially memorable to me are some shots of courthouses. You can certainly tell that the people that paid for these impressive buildings had some civic pride, and didn't mind spending a little public money to build a quality structure. I shudder to think what these sorts of buildings would look like if they were all being built now. The text that accompanies the photos is readable and generally informative. If you're a sucker for these sorts of books, like I am, this is not a bad one to add to the collection.

Good Music

Song of Susannah is the sixth of seven books in the Dark Tower series--which it feels as if I have been reading for years. This one is considerably shorter than the last few volumes, and less structured as well. It is set up in "stanzas" rather than chapters, and each ends with a campfire song sort of call and response routine. Though reviews on Amazon are decidedly mixed, I actually enjoyed this departure more than some of the previous adventures. A lot of the content is very dream-like, as the plot begins to see time, and some of the fabric of reality start to unravel. I was able to run with this, though I agree that there is a plot twist toward the end that felt self-indulgent to me on King's part. In the interst of avoiding spoilers, I will not go into further detail on that point.

I am interested in finding out the end of this story and will look forward to picking up the final segment fairly soon. Sometimes people say that the characters in books can come to feel like friends that you don't want to see leave. I don't exactly feel like that in this case--I doubt I'll pine for Roland when he's gone--but I am curious to see if King can pull off an ending that doesn't seem inadeqate given the tremendous scale of his undertaking.

The Color of Confusion

The Color of Credit is no doubt useful to some audience. However, understanding the statisical regressions and minutia of underwriting standards is well beyond my pay grade. I struggled with this book for months (reading it mainly, it seems, on airplanes--where I had no other options to distract me) and have finally finished it, but cannot say that I am much better off for it. Even as someone that deals with the banking industry on a daily basis, I am not nearly expert enough to comprehend this--though I am sure there are people that find this material quite useful. Using my limited knowledge, I tried just to grasp the outlines of what the authors were saying, without getting too deep into the weeds. I certainly find it easy to believe that there is significant racism in mortgage lending, and perhaps the solutions offered by Ross and Yinger can lead to improvement. I'd be willing to consider it, after getting briefed in layman's terms, that is.

Two Underwhelming Novels

Getting the new year off in a distinctly underwhelming note are these two novels. No need for extensive commentary on the Koontz book; it's the same as other early Koontz novels. Written under a psydonym, full of stupid characters, and an unusually irritating plot/ending. Rummies by Peter Benchley was a book that I had higher hopes for, after having enjoyed Q Clearance, his previous novel. Unfortunately, the characters are largely stereotypes and the book lacks both the humor that it is supposed to generate and any kind of dramatic punch. It's a serious step backward for him. In other reading related news, I have agreed to participate in a book club through my work, so that should add some much needed novelty into my reading choices over the next few months.

Year in Review

2007 was the first year I have successfully kept a reading log for the entire year, and I'm sure my public would be anxious to know the totals. Well, this isn't the Oscars, so I'll skip straight to the final catergory: 21,944 pages read. I feel like that's not bad, though, of course, I have no previous numbers to compare it to. It is at least close to the most I've read in a year, though I can't be sure. A further breakdown:

54 total books read, plus Ruth through Galatians in the Protestant Bible
14 books by Stephen King
9 Left Behind novels
12 Dean Koontz books
4 Peter Benchley novels
6 Aldous Huxley books
2 Fyodor Dostoevsky books (one short novel and one collection)
1 Jack Kerouac novel
and a smattering of other stuff

I am starting 2008 by continuing with these authors, with the exception of Left Behind, which I have thankfully left behind. I hope to at least double the amount of authors I am reading, as well as possibly finish up Benchley this year. And, of course, I hope to have a bigger total in 2008 than 2007.