I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (JANUARY 2012 EDITION)

[defrog]

As we all know, the New Year hasn’t really started until you’ve read some idiosyncratic amateur book reviews on LiveJournal. I’m here to help.

One item of note: starting with this edition, I’ll be including books that I started but couldn’t finish. Hey, it happens. And I figure I might as well make the most of the time I wasted trying to read a given book by telling you why I couldn’t be bothered to finish it.

JUST FINISHED

How To Watch TV News by Neil Postman and Steve Powers
Heavily updated edition of the book by media theorist Neil Postman and former TV news journalist Steve Powers that critiques television news as a watered-down entertainment spectacle where ratings trump actual journalism. Which is especially relevant in the age of cable TV news where Jon Stewart has more credibility than most anchors. However, I didn’t get much from this book – partly because I learned a lot of this in Mass Comms 101 in the late 80s, and partly because too often the argument seems rooted in the meme of television as malign manipulator in general, which I don’t necessarily agree with. That said, it does make a very good overall point that can’t be emphasized enough: TV news should always be watched with a critical eye, and should always be supplemented with newspapers, magazines books and other media capable of more in-depth reporting.

JUST STARTED

Planet Of The Apes by Pierre Boulle
Oh, you know. And no, even after all this time, I’ve never read the book. But I figured I probably should, if only because I’ve always known that the book is considerably different from the films (to include the ending). So we’ll see how it goes.

RECENT TITLES

All The Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block
The 16th book in the Matt Scudder series, and thought by many fans to be the last, although a new book appeared earlier this year. A man on death row who adamantly maintains his innocence gets a visit from Arne Bodinson, a man claiming to believe him – and for a good reason, as he’s the guy who framed him. Bodinson also has a score to settle with Scudder. With half of the story focusing on Bodinson’s serial-killing POV rather than just Scudder’s first-person narrative, this is one of the nastiest books in the series, and Block really ratchets up the cringeworthy suspense like the master he is. Put it this way: I finished the book in just over three days (which is fast for me). 

The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code by Robert Rankin
In which Rankin weaves a musical conspiracy theory around the urban legend of Robert Johnson’s 30th recording (the one with the Devil’s laughter on it as he claims Johnson’s soul), why so many rock stars die at age 27, and a mysterious music machine that can control people’s minds. And it’s up to 27-year-old certifiably insane metal guitarist Johnny Hooker to expose it, much to the dismay of his imaginary friend Mr Giggles. Pretty standard fare for Rankin fans, but I give it extra points for the Robert Johnson angle. 

Wireless by Charles Stross
An anthology of two novellas and eight short stories, and they’re as high-concept as you’d expect if yr familiar at all with Stross’ work. The stories represent his take on different genres (time travel, alt.history, the devil’s bargain, even British comedy with the best PG Wodehouse tribute story I’ve ever read), and he does pretty well with all of them, although the time-travel rules of “Palimpsest” (involving a secret group of time travelers rewriting history) are too baffling to follow. Best of the bunch is the episode from the Laundry (Stross’ spy series involving a secret agency that defends the world from Lovecraftian horrors with applied computational demonology) in which Bob Howard infiltrates an insane asylum for former Laundry agents. 

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman’s YA book about a boy named Nobody “Bod” Owens raised in a graveyard by ghosts (and possibly a vampire), who are hiding him from the man who killed his whole family and still intends to kill Bod. It’s a far-fetched premise, and the eventual explanation as to why Bod is targeted for death is a bit of a head-scratcher, but Gaiman makes it work with his usual storybook-telling style. So yeah, I liked it a lot. It also makes me wish Gaiman were writing books for teens back when I was in that age demographic.

Doc Savage: Quest Of The Spider by Lester Dent
Third Doc Savage adventure in which Doc and his team are contacted by lumber mogul Big Eric Danielson to stop an evil villain known as The Gray Spider – leader of the New Orleans voodoo gang Cult Of The Moccasin – from taking over every lumber company in America. Yes, I know, and even by Doc Savage standards it’s a pretty weak premise, but it’s still full of unintentionally silly homoerotic pulp action to make up for it. Still, not as good as the first two. 

THIS BOOK’S CRAP, LET’S SLASH THE SEATS

Phoenix Rising: A Ministry Of Peculiar Occurrences novel by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris
I probably should have known better. The book was obviously pitched as the start of a new steampunk series (you know this when the name of the series is larger than the actual title of the book), but despite not being a huge fan of steampunk or Victorian London, I was willing to take a chance on the idea of a secret British ministry that investigates weird phenomena. But the main characters of field agent Eliza Braun and archivist Wellington Books (see what they did there?) are too obviously written for subgenre fans (overdone tongue-in-cheek humor, cartoonish attitudes towards violence and explosions, etc). Which I could easily overlook if it wasn’t for the “They’re like chalk and cheese, isn't it amusing how they can’t get along but work well together” dynamic that just irritates me so much. I got through a little over 100 pages before I decided I no longer cared what happened to either of them.

Fun with dynamite,

This is dF