Wordful Wednesday: 2009 Reading Highs and Lows, a.k.a. Books That Transported Me or Made Me Pine For Illiteracy
My “thumb-through” process is sufficient to prevent me from reading truly bad books. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel it’s incumbent upon me to take one for the team, as it were, and press on through a real stinker.
At other times, a book doesn’t need a thumb-through, because I’m excited about the subject material or have a good deal of comfort with the author. Or the book comes so highly recommended that I know I’ll read it just as soon as I can get my hands on it.
There are also, rarely, books that trigger a twinge of I’m Not Sure-itis during the thumb-through, that turn out to be the Best Thing I Read All Year.
So this is my collection of Goods and Bads for the year. My full list of everything I read will come later this week, after I’ve finished my last title.
First, the Goods:
Favorite Non-Fiction:
Escape From the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew, by Alex Kershaw. Great subject matter? Check. Good writing? Check. Inspiring and gripping.
AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, by Tom McNichol. I’m a big-time sucker for History of Science books, and this one was just fascinating. Edison v. Westinghouse was quite the epic battle. “Savage” isn’t far from the truth.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller. I don’t generally like Christian Inspiration titles. But this one actually inspired me, and I can’t recommend it more highly.
Favorite Fiction:
Blindness, by Jose Saramago - Just remarkable, really. I doubt if I will ever read a more unique book. I loved the characters, loved the story, loved the style. Definitely some difficult material in it, in a Lord of the Flies kind of way, but it’s the best Fiction I read this year. And for its uniqueness, I’ll call it my Favorite Book of the Year also.
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. It’s rare that a fiction book lives up to the hype. This one did, by a comfortable margin.
Colossus, by D.F. Jones. Took me back to the era of Cold War paranoia, with shadows of Terminator mixed in. And the ending was perfect.
The Inimitable Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse. My first Wodehouse, but not my last, I imagine. Charming and hilarious. I read it before I started doing book reviews, but that’s not a reflection of how much fun it was to read.
Favorite Read-Aloud (The Pancake-Eating Boy’s pick):
The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynn Reid Banks. Click on through for the Boy’s full review.
Favorite Audiobook:
(This is the place where I would recommend Audio Renaissance’s production of Speaker for the Dead again if I hadn’t already done it a bunch of times. But in case you missed the other times, know that it’s close to a perfect audiobook.)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Excellent narration by Anton Lesser, with terrific character differentiation (without being overdone). Oh, and a great story, too.
And now for the Bads:
From the “How the Other Side Thinks, Depending On Your Definition of ‘Thought’” Category:
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Pathetic, whiny and completely underwhelming. Makes me much less likely to read any other “New Atheist” titles.
From the “Grab-Bag of Truly Insightful and Just Plain Puzzling” Category:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, by Lynn Hiles. I’ve softened somewhat on my opinion of this one, and there definitely was some thought-provoking stuff, but it was mixed in with some very bad editing and even worse hermeneutics.
From the “Lack of Creativity on This Scale Takes Effort” Category:
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bible!, by Jonathan Goldstein. Inspiring, in that if this kind of tripe can get published, there's hope for the rest of us. I just really hope he didn’t get an advance for it. Easily garners my Worst Read of the Year award.
Toss-up Tuesday: I, Robot – Screenplay
Have I utterly cast aside Too Funny Tuesdays? Maybe. Right now I’m all about book reviews, so that’s what I’m doing.
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie erroneously known as I, Robot, with Will Smith. I’ve seen it and somewhat enjoyed it, but it’s not I, Robot. Really, it’s not. The “book” the film was “based on” was actually a collection of Isaac Asimov’s robot-themed short stories. And they’re terrific.
(By the way, the audio version with Scott Brick is one of my favorite audio books.)
Just don’t expect to find Will Smith’s character in any of the stories. That’s right, Del Spooner, robotophobe cop, is not an Asimov creation. He probably draws some of his character from Elijah Bailey, a cop from Asimov’s Robot Novels, and some of the plot seems to come from The Caves of Steel.
This isn’t really a rant on movies being different from books. It happens, and sometimes you end up with a good movie and a great book, even though they only share a title. The Count of Monte Cristo is a good example. Enjoy both. Just don’t expect them to be anything like similar.
The problem here is that there was an excellent screenplay that could have, no, should have been made into a faithful adaptation of the original I, Robot stories. In which Susan Calvin wasn’t just eye candy (in fact, she’s characterized as quite 
plain), but was the main character.
Harlan Ellison wrote it (in the 70s), and Asimov loved it. And movie producers dropped the ball.
I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay isn’t perfect, of course. Every fan of the original stories probably has a favorite, and one of mine didn’t make it into this screenplay. And the character featured in it is given somewhat short shrift. And he’s an important character. And some of the climax of the screenplay was confusing.
Still, the screenplay works and is totally filmable with today’s technology. It just didn’t happen. And it’s a real shame.
This was the first screenplay I’ve read, and I probably won’t read many others. It took some getting used to the different formatting, but after the adjustment, it was fairly easy to read.
Asimov and Ellison’s introductions to the work and particularly Ellison’s screed about the stupid movie producers were also worth reading.
Wordful Wednesday: Dead and Alive
Sometimes, when I’m not sure I want to read a book, I pick it up on audio from the Library. When I find that Scott Brick is the narrator, I normally know I will listen to it.
My younger older sister (she has a name that starts with “Meg”) recommended Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein around the time Book One hit paperback. For some reason, the title just didn’t thrill me.
I was wrong.
The trilogy, which includes Prodigal Son, City of Night, and now Dead and Alive is 
just plain fun. Well, okay, book one did revolve mainly around a sick and twisted serial killer and copycat. So that wasn’t all that much fun.
The premise for the series is simple: Dr. Frankenstein is real, and he’s still alive. As is his Monster (known as Deucalion in the books). And Frankenstein hasn’t stopped his work. Indeed, he’s building an army of extremely tough and compliant New Race to take over the world. Deucalion wants to stop him, and enlists the help of a pair of quirky New Orleans cops named Carson O’Conner and Michael Maddison (female and male, respectively, just to add a bit of tension – unnecessary in my opinion).
Sometimes a series is really more aptly described as one book in three parts (Timothy Zahn’s Conquerors series, for example). Not so in this case. The three titles stand, if not on their own, apart. The plots are connected in some way, but a major subplot is basically wrapped up in each book, while the larger arc continues.
The perspective of the series shifts from the cops, to Frankenstein (now known as Victor Helios), to several of the New Race, to Deucalion. But much of the plot is told from the cops’ perspective, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
See, I didn’t really like the cops. Yes, I know they really love each other and want to marry at some point. Yes, their banter is typical Koontzian Clever. But something didn’t quite connect me to them, even if they made me laugh out loud several times (and I'm not a big laugh-out-louder).
No, I much preferred the parts of the book in which the perspective was that of Deucalion or one of Helios’s minions.
One of the interesting questions raised by Koontz (and his co-authors, Kevin J. Anderson and Ed Gorman) is, “If you could live a thousand years but have no hope, what would that do to you?” Helios grows his New Race in tanks, educating/indoctrinating them by direct-to-brain data download, to have neither love nor belief in the transcendent.
Of course, some could imagine this is a good thing, but probably only in terms of a normal human lifespan. But over centuries? Millennia? Life without hope or love could get old quickly. Especially since Helios forbids his creations from taking their own lives (or for killing without his permission). And his control and will are unquestioned.
Or are they? Toward the end of Book One, we start to see cracks around the edges of the New Race. In Book Two, the cracks widen. In Book Three, the plot is basically all about the unraveling of Frankenstein's New Race. I liked the way it ended, and I won't give it away.
As I mentioned, I started taking in the series on audio mostly because Scott Brick was the narrator of Book One. He was not the narrator of Book Two, but John Bedford Lloyd did an able job (he played Jammer in The Abyss and I’ve listened to a couple of other titles read by him).
For Book Three, I requested both the book and the audio version. Both came in at the same time. So I’ll probably listen to it now that I’ve read it. My wife thinks I’m weird for considering this, but it’s a fairly short audio book.
Oddly, my paperback version was also a bit short. Or skinny. The pages were oddly narrow, as if a good quarter-to-three-eighths-inch of the book had been chopped off. Not enough to lose any text, but enough to make me feel like I was about to fall off the edge of each page.
Incidentally, I broke my No-Koontz-After-10pm rule for this one. With the exception of Book One, with the whole serial killer thing, this series wasn’t as scary as some Koontz gets. Eerie, perhaps, but not really disturbing. It might also be that I didn't expect any new creepies in a well-established series.
Eventually I should probably read the original Frankenstein. Not a bad idea, actually…I'll put it on my list for next year.
Fiction Friday: Speaker for the Dead
(Unfortunately it looks like I hit a Windows Live Writer hiccup here. I pushed the button on this one early on Friday but it never posted.)
I’ll just come right out and say it (well, write it): Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, is my favorite book.
A number of years ago, I read Ender’s Game for the first time and thought it was just plain awesome. But I had no idea there was a series of sequels out there for it. Then, one day, I was browsing the audio book selection at the Shute Park Library, and I saw a book with “sequel to Ender’s Game” on it.
This I had to investigate. I hadn’t read EG recently, but didn’t feel like I needed to review it. Pretty basic story, right? Boy learns tactics; defeats enemy.
For the first cassette (yes, my car has a tape player and I didn’t know from MP3s), I was a bit confused as to how, exactly, this book was a sequel to EG. Because Ender doesn’t enter the picture until the second chapter.
In fact, I had forgotten virtually all of the final chapters of Ender’s Game and didn’t remember any of the setup for Speaker. So my first “reading” of Speaker was a bit confusing. I didn’t remember what The Hive Queen and the Hegemon was.
But I still loved the book. In fact, here’s my entry in my book-tracking database (yes, I’m that geeky):
I think I liked it even better than Ender's Game!
(By the way, when I looked back at my tracker, I confirmed that I first read Ender’s Game in September 2004, then found Speaker for the Dead in May 2005)
Ender’s Game is a very fun book, but with a serious undercurrent. Because Ender suffers in it. Yes, he succeeds in everything he does, but the price he pays is brutal. But with most of the characters being kids, it almost reads as a Young Adult title.
Speaker for the Dead is much more mature by comparison, due largely to the fact that Ender’s Game was only ever turned into a novel so Orson Scott Card could properly set up Speaker.
The science fiction concept underlying the main story is one of the coolest I’ve ever read (though I’ll admit I haven’t read that much sci-fi), and the core mystery of the book kept me listening, wondering what would happen next. And the speaking that brings Ender to the main set piece of the story is just extremely awesome.
I’ve now read it in print at least twice (actually, I’m surprised I only have it entered twice, which indicates I’ve only read it that many times, and I was just sure I’d read it twice in paperback and once in hardcover…hmm) and I’ve listened to the audio version probably five times.
I just finished listening to the audio version again (I started it with my dad when we were driving up to Seattle), and it’s quite simply the best audio book I’ve ever heard. (I, Robot, the Scott Brick performance, is a close second.)
It’s a multi-voice production, but still a straight reading and not an audio-drama. Different voices read sections from different characters’ perspectives. With the exception of one actor, the performances are brilliant (and the one isn’t absolutely terrible).
Anyhow, if you ever want to give the Ender series a try, you might consider looking for the Audio Renaissance version (produced by Stefan Rudnicki, who also reads the Ender scenes). And I do recommend starting with Ender’s Game before moving on in the series.
Oh, and there are now more than ten books in what’s sometimes called the Enderverse (though Card himself doesn’t like the term). On the whole, I prefer the Shadow series (which follows Bean, one of Ender’s closest friends in EG), but Speaker is obviously my favorite single book.
MMM: Uranium, Escape, Ninja Warrior
Late again, I know. But it's still Monday Morning somewhere!
The latest audio book I've listened to is Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World, by Tom Zoellner. It's a really fascinating story, and the audio book is fairly well done. My one real quibble with it is the decision of the narrator to use "authentic" accents when reading quotes from interviews with the various figures in the story.
His accents are mostly okay, although his German tends to get mixed with a bit of Russian/Czech. The only powerfully bad one is his Aussie accent. Admittedly, it's a tricky accent to do, and I once knew a guy from Australia who had trouble keeping his own accent straight (of course, he moved to the U.S. when he was seven, so there's no question that he was faking it).
My thinking is, it's a nice idea to do the accents to break up some of the monotony of a narrator's voice, but if they're not really well executed, it detracts from the narrative. I don't call myself an expert on accents (though my friends say I'm quite adept), but I usually find that less is more.
By the way, it's an interesting book, especially if you're interested in the history of The Bomb, and what it means when a nation is "enriching" uranium, and that kind of thing.
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I've just read an early favorite for my Favorite Book of the Year, and it's my magic Number 30 for the year. There's just something nice about cresting that number. The book? Escape From the Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew, by Alex Kershaw.
I'd heard that a film is in the works, and being a bibliophile, I just had to read the book first. It was utterly riveting. I stopped reading everything else and took it with me wherever I went. Couldn't put it down. I can't say enough about it. And I can't say any more without spoiling it, so if you read on, it's on your head.
Basically, the book covered the fourth and fifth (final) patrols of the USS Tang, the most decorated submarine of WWII. On the fifth patrol, the sub sank a number of enemy ships, but their final torpedo malfunctioned. It circled back and exploded on impact with the after section of the sub. The 300-foot sub sank in 180 feet of water (meaning it was at an angle for some time). A group of men escaped from the bridge, and another group escaped from the ocean floor after filling the ballast tanks to sink the boat the rest of the way. They were the only sailors to escape from a submarine during the war. To put that in perspective, some 3500 sailors were lost in subs during the war.
Of course, they escaped into enemy waters and were soon picked up by the Japanese. They spent nearly a year as POWs, albeit without being officially listed as POWs (in other words, the Japanese didn't play fair in their handing of them).
Like I said, it's just a completely riveting story. Tragic in parts, of course, since very few men escaped the sub at all. But the story of survival is amazing.
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Ethan and I have become fans of Ninja Warrior on G4. We spent quite a bit of time yesterday watching it (the Mariner's game wasn't coming through on FIOS, and then it was). If you're a fan of Wipeout, you'd probably love Ninja, because it's just way cooler. The challenges are larger in scale, and the competitors tend to be a step up from what you'll see on Wipeout (although the average Joe thing does make Wipeout interesting).
The best part, of course, is listening to the hyperactive Japanese announcer giving the play-by-play (as opposed to the snarky-American-doofuses on Wipeout). I like to think I could give Stage 1 a good run, but I probably couldn't. And Stage 2 would probably be the death of me. Fun to watch, though.