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defrog
Readin’ books, writin’ book reports. And for the first time in over a year, I’ll be invoking the “Gave Up” category. JUST FINISHED
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Having generally enjoyed my first outing with Willis (To Say Nothing Of The Dog), I decided to give her another go with this book about two researchers working for a major corporation. One studies the origins of fads, the other studies chaos theory. They get together. Comedy and science ensue. Some people might dismiss this as a rom-com with gratuitous science, but I think it’s more the other way around – one of the main themes is how the scientific process works, and how chaos theory might play a role. Moreover, it’s a smart and extremely funny satire of fads and corporate bureaucracy (based loosely on Robert Browing’s Pippa Passes, even). So if nothing else, fans of TV shows like Office Space and Big Bang Theory may find a lot to like here (and this book predates Office Space by five years, incidentally).
JUST STARTED
The Man Who Sold The Moon by Robert A. Heinlein
Short story collection featuring some of Heinlein’s first “Future History” stories, with the title novella as the centerpiece. I actually wasn’t aware Heinlein did much in terms of continuous timelines in his stories (though I know some characters make appearances in different novels from time to time), so this could be interesting.
RECENT TITLES
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Short-story collection featuring Bradbury’s work from Weird Tales, so it’s not sci-fi so much as horror, from the supernatural to the psychological, though the tone ranges from deadly serious to relatively lighthearted (albeit in the same sense that Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson were lighthearted). It’s a great collection, and even the weaker stories are still high-quality. If yr not reading Bradbury, you should be.
All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
Detailed and meticulously researched account of the business practices and events that led to the 2008 Wall Street crash thanks to the subprime mortgage craze. It’s not the kind of thing I’d normally read, but McLean is the co-author of The Smartest Guys In The Room, which brilliantly dissected the Enron scandal, so I decided to try it. I will say it's a very hard read if you don’t know much about financial services or property markets (which I don’t – my eyes glazed over multiple times reading this). But if you can wade through that, McLean and Nocera do a good job of covering all the bases, and I did come away with a better understanding of how the crash ultimately came about (and why TV news organizations struggled like hell to make sense of it all even without everyone trying to spin it in their favor).
The Outfit by Richard Stark
The third Parker novel, which I meant to read ahead of the fourth one (The Mourner), but I got the order mixed up. Not that there’s a whole lot of continuity to keep up with, even though this book sets up the premise for The Mourner. Anyway, Parker finally decides it’s time to settle his score with the mob (i.e. The Outfit) once and for all after they send a hit man to kill him. His plan: have colleagues steal as much money as they can from the Outfit while Parker goes after the head man, Bronson. As usual, it’s well written, briskly paced, and not a little inventive in terms of the various heists. Good stuff.
Everything Is Broken by John Shirley
Another thought exercise from Shirley who takes on Ayn Rand fetishists and Tea Party paranoia over Big Govt™. The premise: the mayor of Freedom, CA has shrunk the city government to the point of dismissing fire & rescue services and cutting off all federal funding. Then a massive tidal wave decimates the California coast, and residents must fend for themselves against local gangs as the mayor goes to deadly extremes to keep FEMA out of his town. It’s a great idea that’s let down by weak characterization and perhaps a little too much restraint on Shirley’s part in breaking down the logical and practical flaws of Randian self-sufficiency. Not that he shies away from it, but he probably could have done more to build up the ideology that leads to disaster in the story. It’s actually a decent book, but one that Shirley’s own back catalog proves could have been better.
GAVE UP
Our Kind Of Traitor by John le Carre
I mentioned the last time I read le Carre that I found his particular writing style somewhat hard to take. That goes doubly so for this one. The back-cover blurb sounds promising – young British couple meet mysterious wealthy Russian on holiday and are subsequently interrogated by intelligence agents. But 60 pages in, it’s mainly a messy jumble of flashbacks and internal monologues that involve the couple sniping at each other – and neither of them are particularly likeable anyway. Consequently, I’ve decided I don’t care enough to plod on for another 300+ pages to find out what happens. I think that’s also it for Le Carre – if I try him again, it’ll be via the library where it doesn’t cost me any money to risk another go.
Disavowed,
This is dF
