Obviously it was a slow month for reading. This can be blamed mainly on my three week tour of the US. You’d think I’d have a lot of time to read on two long-haul flights lasting 12+ hours each. You’d be right, too. The thing is, I’m generally in no condition to read by the time the plane is up in the air, and if the inflight entertainment system is any good, I’ll probably use it to catch up on movie watching.
But I did get a few things read.
The Pearl by
John SteinbeckMy rating:
4 of 5 starsSteinbeck’s novella based on a Mexican folktale, in which poor pearl diver Kino discovers the greatest pearl in the world, which he hopes will buy a better life for his wife and son. Put simply, it doesn’t.
The Pearl is a simple story with a simple moral – the secret is how you tell it, and Steinbeck does so with the poetic grace I’ve come to expect from him, pulling off his usual trick of waxing lyrical without bogging down the narrative. Nicely done.
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think by
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth CukierMy rating:
3 of 5 starsIf you don’t know, “Big Data” is the term for all the digital data you generate by using Google, Facebook, Amazon, the internet in general, yr cell phone, etc. I write quite a bit about Big Data in the course of my day job, which is also how I ended up seeing the lead author, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, give a very enlightening talk about Big Data at a trade show. So this is kind of a detailed follow-up for me. The text can be a bit dense and repetitive at times, but overall it’s a good high-level summary of why Big Data matters, the pros and cons therein, and how to balance them. If you want to get a good understanding of all the data being collected on all of us and what it all means, I’d suggest reading this.
Charity by
Len DeightonMy rating:
4 of 5 starsThe ninth and final Bernard Samson novel, which basically wraps up the loose ends as Samson becomes increasingly obsessed with discovering what really happened to his sister-in-law Tessa, as well as increasingly paranoid as his personal life continues to fall apart. It’s the shortest and perhaps fastest-paced book of the series, but it doesn’t read like a rush job – it feels more like a case of the first eight books having gotten all the exposition out of the way so Deighton can concentrate on telling the rest of the story. It also says a lot that Deighton is able to maintain the suspense despite the fact that much (but not all) of the truth Samson seeks was revealed to the audience in the sixth book,
Spy Sinker. It’s a satisfying (if a tad too tidy) ending to the series.
The Left Hand of Darkness by
Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating:
5 of 5 starsMy first attempt to read Le Guin was
The Dispossessed a little while ago, which didn’t go well at all – I gave up after a few chapters. For whatever reason, it didn’t click. But a lot of people insisted I give her another try, so I went with this one – in which Genly Ai, an envoy of the interplanetary Ekumen collective, lands on Gethen (an ice world populated by androgynous humans who change gender once a month) to convince them to join the Ekumen – and wouldn’t you know, it knocked me out completely. The story – which is full of political intrigue – is really good, but it also famously serves as a device to explore the fascinating idea of a world where gender differences don’t play a role in shaping human society, and Le Guin really pulls it off. My only complaint is that the ice trek in the third act gets a little tedious after a bit, but that’s my problem, not Le Guin’s. I’m glad I gave her another chance – this is one of the most captivating books I’ve read in awhile. It also strikes me that the book illustrates Le Guin’s ambidexterity with both SF and fantasy – this book could easily have been either, with a few minor changes. Which is why I’ve finally decided to give her Earthsea books a shot.
View all my reviewsSecond time’s the charm,
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