I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (FEBRUARY 2013 EDITION)

[defrog]

Damn, I read a lot of books this month. So that’s a lot of book reports for you, then.

JUST FINISHED

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

I like Sarah Vowell as both a writer and commentator, and having enjoyed The Wordy Shipmates, I thought I’d try her latest book about the history of Hawaii’s annexation to the US in 1898 (not least because I was supposed to go to Hawaii in January – though that fell through due to illness). Stylistically it’s similar to The Wordy Shipmates in that it’s essentially a book-long essay (with no chapters), and is written from the perspective of Vowell as museum nerd/tourist. Some people have complained that her breezy, snarky style isn't suited to the topic (given that some people in Hawaii are still sore about annexation and what Christian missionaries did to their culture). Maybe, but my only real criticism is that it does seem a little rushed at the end. In any case, it’s well researched, and I got a lot out of it as an entertaining, entry-level history of the 50th state. So for that alone I’d recommend it.

JUST STARTED

Tales Of Pirx The Pilot by Stanislaw Lem

I’ve read Lem before, with mixed results, but the positive tends to outweigh the negative, so I’m reading this, a collection of stories that follow the career of Pirx, a space cadet top-loaded with self-doubt who somehow manages to get through one misadventure after another, often involving faulty technology and bureaucracy. Sounds right up my street.

RECENT TITLES

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov

The second of the Robot novels, in which detective Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw are reunited on the planet Solaria, where humans live as hermits and are served by robots – and where an impossible murder has taken place. Asimov uses the detective genre as a vehicle to explore the idea of a planet where humans have almost no physical contact whatsoever (interacting almost exclusively by hologram), as well as the culture clash (and political tensions) between Earth residents and Spacers who have long since settled other planets. Quite good. 

The Pirates! In an Adventure With Moby Dick by Gideon Defoe

I loved the Pythonesque silliness of the first book, and this second adventure delivers more of the same. It starts with the pirates needing to raise 6,000 doubloons for a new boat and, as the title suggests, the ticket to that is helping Captain Ahab capture Moby Dick. It’s not a literary mash-up a’la Pride And Prejudice And Zombies by any stretch – the fact that they sail to Las Vegas to start a pirate-themed stage show tells you how seriously Defoe takes literary license. Great senseless fun.

VALIS by Philip K Dick

Possibly the most intellectual PKD book I’ve read to date, as well as one of the more surreal. The basic premise involves Horselover Fat (who may or may not also be PKD himself) who gets zapped by God and starts seeing alternate universes overlaid with this one. He’s also a schizophrenic drug addict, so the question then becomes: is he imagining all this? It’s a great idea – the only problem is that the first half of the book gets bogged down in intellectualized theological wankery about Gnostic Christianity and the nature of God. It may be necessary to slog through all that to understand the second half of the book, but it’s not the kind of thing I have much patience for these days. 

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

High-concept hard SF and the debut novel from Hannu Rajaniemi. The basic pitch: It’s Lupin The Gentleman Thief mashed up with Schrodinger’s Cat in a post-human future set on Mars. And when you cut through the high-tech jargon and quantum science, it’s basically a heist story, with a gentleman thief hired by a mysterious benefactor to steal something – right after he steals his old identity and memories back. It’s surprisingly readable and rewarding once you get a hang of the completely alien environment Rajaniemi has created, but it is hard work to get to that point. Probably not for everyone, and as much as I appreciate the Lupin reference and love a good heist story, I have my doubts that I’ll pick up the second book in the series when it comes out. 

The Mourner by Richard Stark

The fourth Parker novel, in which Parker is hired to steal a rare statue from the house of the Ambassador of a Soviet bloc country – only to cross paths with a KGB agent who is planning a heist in the same house. I’ve enjoyed the Parker novels I’ve read so far, and this one is no different – Parker remains an interesting character, and the KGB agent storyline is a nice twist. 

The Fear Index by Robert Harris

I’ve never read Harris before, but after seeing the film version of The Ghost, and having a couple of people recommend him, I thought I’d try his latest, in which billionaire Alex Hoffman has created an artificial-intelligence hedge fund algorithm that thrives on investor panic and earns billions of dollars. Then someone attacks him at his home. The result is the kind of techno-thriller that Michael Crichton used to write – an effective page turner, but one with stock characterization and a predictable outcome – though to his credit Harris goes for the less obvious of two possibilities, if not the most credible (or original). Not bad, but it’s one of those thrillers that works more if you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Have a beer with fear,

This is dF