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I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (FEBRUARY 2015 EDITION)
Here we go with the amateur book reports again.
READ
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Having recently re-read the first Dirk Gently novel, naturally I had to re-read the second one. I noticed some interesting differences between the two – whereas Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was darker, complex and often surreal, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is more (relatively) straightforward – or at least as straightforward as you can get with a tale that involves Norse gods in airports, dangerous legal contracts and an inexplicable lack of pizza delivery in London. It’s also the funnier of the two books, and the title character gets a lot more screen time. It’s hard to say which one is better, since the approaches are different, although TLDTTOTS comes with a resolution and ending so compressed that you have to spend some time with it to make sense of it. But it’s still an enjoyable and deceptively thoughtful book.
Comeback by Richard Stark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As the title suggests, this novel marks the late 90s return of master heister Parker, last seen in the mid-70s in Butcher’s Moon. Perhaps wisely, Stark doesn’t even acknowledge the time gap between Parker novels or the simple fact that Parker is technically 23 years older, in which case he would probably be pushing 60. Like Batman and James Bond, Parker doesn’t really age: he just is. On the other hand, there are some noticeable differences from the earlier books, such as a relatively lighter tone and a more talkative Parker than usual. Also, it features a strong female character (Brenda, the wife of co-heister Ed Mackey) who plays a key part in the story. The plot – Parker’s team knock over a stadium hosting a televangelist revival – is pretty good, and contains the usual twists and turns, although a couple of them require some suspension of disbelief, and the ending is somewhat rushed. It’s entertaining in its own right, but in some ways it suffers compared to the earlier streamlined Parker novels.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The classic novel in which Vonnegut relives his experience as a POW and the firebombing of Dresden in WW2 via the fictional character of Billy Pilgrim. This being a Vonnegut novel, there’s also time travel and aliens. I read this over 20 years ago – and it made me an instant Vonnegut fan – but I was inspired to re-read it after a recent visit to the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Museum in Indianapolis. It’s every bit as good as I remember it. The book not only showcases Vonnegut’s skill at non-linear storytelling that doesn’t lose the reader, but also demonstrates his ability to make you laugh at the horrors of war and the sadness of life on Earth without trivializing either. Vonnegut’s sense of absurdity probably isn’t for everyone, but it’s perfect for people like me. Simply put: for my money, it's one of the best anti-war novels ever written.
My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Zelazny is another one of those authors I haven’t really read much of (Damnation Alley in the 80s, Deus Irae with PK Dick last year, and that’s it) but lots of people say I should. I happened across this one at a charity sale, so I gave it a shot. It’s an anthology of three novellas with the same main character, a nameless freelance agent for a global detective agency. The background seems prophetic in retrospect: everyone’s personal details and activity are recorded in a Central Data Bank, but the protagonist – who worked on the project – opted to have his data destroyed before the system went live, and uses his inside skills to create new official identities for himself with each job. The jobs themselves range from preventing sabotage on a project to create artificial islands, to clearing dolphins of murder charges and stopping an AI-enhanced space-exploration telefactor out to kill its creators. I find Zelazny’s prose a little dense at times, especially when he’s waxing philosophic, but the overall concepts are worth the price of admission.
GAVE UP
A Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I read Mailer just once before (Barbary Shore) and wasn’t very impressed, but a lot of people said that was a bad starting point for Mailer, and then I came across this book – his coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landings – and thought I’d give him another try. After 50 pages, I’ve had enough. Mailer’s prose is so flowery and self-absorbed that it detracts away from the actual subject matter. It doesn’t help that he insists on referring to himself in the third person (the better to explore at length the blurred lines between journalists and novelists), which just makes him seem pretentious. I realize Mailer is heralded as one of the pioneers of New Journalism, but to me there’s a difference between being a subjective part of the story and hijacking it altogether – especially when it's a story of this significance. It’s the equivalent of trying to watch an Apollo 11 documentary while Mailer is standing in front of the screen telling you what he thinks about it and going off on rambling tangents. Sorry, but it’s not for me.
Put out the fire,
This is dF
READ
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas AdamsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Having recently re-read the first Dirk Gently novel, naturally I had to re-read the second one. I noticed some interesting differences between the two – whereas Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was darker, complex and often surreal, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is more (relatively) straightforward – or at least as straightforward as you can get with a tale that involves Norse gods in airports, dangerous legal contracts and an inexplicable lack of pizza delivery in London. It’s also the funnier of the two books, and the title character gets a lot more screen time. It’s hard to say which one is better, since the approaches are different, although TLDTTOTS comes with a resolution and ending so compressed that you have to spend some time with it to make sense of it. But it’s still an enjoyable and deceptively thoughtful book.
Comeback by Richard StarkMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
As the title suggests, this novel marks the late 90s return of master heister Parker, last seen in the mid-70s in Butcher’s Moon. Perhaps wisely, Stark doesn’t even acknowledge the time gap between Parker novels or the simple fact that Parker is technically 23 years older, in which case he would probably be pushing 60. Like Batman and James Bond, Parker doesn’t really age: he just is. On the other hand, there are some noticeable differences from the earlier books, such as a relatively lighter tone and a more talkative Parker than usual. Also, it features a strong female character (Brenda, the wife of co-heister Ed Mackey) who plays a key part in the story. The plot – Parker’s team knock over a stadium hosting a televangelist revival – is pretty good, and contains the usual twists and turns, although a couple of them require some suspension of disbelief, and the ending is somewhat rushed. It’s entertaining in its own right, but in some ways it suffers compared to the earlier streamlined Parker novels.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The classic novel in which Vonnegut relives his experience as a POW and the firebombing of Dresden in WW2 via the fictional character of Billy Pilgrim. This being a Vonnegut novel, there’s also time travel and aliens. I read this over 20 years ago – and it made me an instant Vonnegut fan – but I was inspired to re-read it after a recent visit to the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Museum in Indianapolis. It’s every bit as good as I remember it. The book not only showcases Vonnegut’s skill at non-linear storytelling that doesn’t lose the reader, but also demonstrates his ability to make you laugh at the horrors of war and the sadness of life on Earth without trivializing either. Vonnegut’s sense of absurdity probably isn’t for everyone, but it’s perfect for people like me. Simply put: for my money, it's one of the best anti-war novels ever written.
My Name is Legion by Roger ZelaznyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Zelazny is another one of those authors I haven’t really read much of (Damnation Alley in the 80s, Deus Irae with PK Dick last year, and that’s it) but lots of people say I should. I happened across this one at a charity sale, so I gave it a shot. It’s an anthology of three novellas with the same main character, a nameless freelance agent for a global detective agency. The background seems prophetic in retrospect: everyone’s personal details and activity are recorded in a Central Data Bank, but the protagonist – who worked on the project – opted to have his data destroyed before the system went live, and uses his inside skills to create new official identities for himself with each job. The jobs themselves range from preventing sabotage on a project to create artificial islands, to clearing dolphins of murder charges and stopping an AI-enhanced space-exploration telefactor out to kill its creators. I find Zelazny’s prose a little dense at times, especially when he’s waxing philosophic, but the overall concepts are worth the price of admission.
GAVE UP
A Fire on the Moon by Norman MailerMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
I read Mailer just once before (Barbary Shore) and wasn’t very impressed, but a lot of people said that was a bad starting point for Mailer, and then I came across this book – his coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landings – and thought I’d give him another try. After 50 pages, I’ve had enough. Mailer’s prose is so flowery and self-absorbed that it detracts away from the actual subject matter. It doesn’t help that he insists on referring to himself in the third person (the better to explore at length the blurred lines between journalists and novelists), which just makes him seem pretentious. I realize Mailer is heralded as one of the pioneers of New Journalism, but to me there’s a difference between being a subjective part of the story and hijacking it altogether – especially when it's a story of this significance. It’s the equivalent of trying to watch an Apollo 11 documentary while Mailer is standing in front of the screen telling you what he thinks about it and going off on rambling tangents. Sorry, but it’s not for me.
Put out the fire,
This is dF