I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (FEBRUARY 2016 EDITION)

As usual, February is a bit of a slow month, due to Chinese New Year and my annual Barcelona trip buggering up my reading routine. Still, it’s not like I have a quota or anything.

And so …

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked Max Barry’s Lexicon, so I picked up this earlier novel, which takes an old speculative-fiction trope – in future, corporations will rule the world – and dials it up to 11. Barry’s “what-if” scenario is a globalized free-market libertarian wet dream where pretty much everything is privatized (including the police), countries are owned by corporations, no one pays tax, the NRA is a private paramilitary outfit for hire and the government is essentially an underfunded NGO whose job is to deal strictly with things like murder. Also, employees show their loyalty by changing their surname to the company they work for. It starts off with sensitive pushover Hack Nike being contracted by psychotic marketing VP John Nike to boost the value of Nike’s latest shoe product by killing some customers, and it just gets progressively insane from there. It’s unsubtle, completely and willfully bonkers satire, and yet it mostly works within the parameters Barry sets for the story, although it’s not clear to me just how the Government is able to maintain any authority at all in such a world. It gets a bit messy by the end, and the title character is rather over the top as the obsessed agent bent on justice. But it’s a funny, rapid-paced page-turner that gets by on pure chutzpah, and works well if you don’t take it too seriously (or if you really believe that corporations are actively trying to establish a world like this, I suppose). If nothing else, it’s amazing that Barry was able to get away with using the real names of existing corporations – it probably wouldn’t work nearly as well otherwise.


Rod Serling's Night Gallery by Rod Serling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone knows Rod Serling for The Twilight Zone, of course. But he also did a show in the early 70s called Night Gallery, which was more focused on horror and the supernatural than science-fiction. This book features six short-story versions of Night Gallery scripts – one of which, “Does The Name Grimsby Mean Anything To You?”, was never filmed. I’ve been a fan of Serling’s for years, as much for his prose as his TV work, and this collection clearly demonstrates both his passion and understanding of the dark side of the human condition, and his keen storytelling ability. The latter is key, because the six stories here follow some very familiar tropes, and sometimes the “twist” is predictable – but Serling’s strength was always in how he tells it, putting real feelings into his characters, even the ones that in lesser hands would come across as more cardboard clichés. I confess I prefer Serling’s SF work to his horror stories, but there’s some good stuff here. This book confirms that Serling is probably one of the most underrated American short-story writers of the 20th Century.


Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America by John P. Avlon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is John Avlon’s chronicle of the rise of fearmongering extremist political rhetoric on both sides of the political aisle in recent times (that is, up to 2010, when the book was published) – which means that anyone who’s not a centrist is going to find something here to offend them. It also means that what you make of it is probably going to depend where yr own political views lie. The book is generally intended as a wake-up call to centrists to stand up to extremist politicians and pundits on both sides before they become the mainstream. It’s more anecdotal than comprehensive or analytical, but it does cover a lot of bases – cable TV news, talk radio, hyperpartisan online echo-chambers, birthers, 9/11 truthers, right-wing militias, Tea Party rallies, Godwin’s Law, etc. Some readers might feel the comparisons of certain groups to others are a little unfair. And Avlon may be guilty at times of somewhat overstating his case, or at least overstating the danger. Then again, when you look at the state of media and politics today, it’s pretty clear the situation is worse now than it was when this book came out six years ago. Wingnuts may be somewhat superficial, but it’s a good primer for a larger and deeper conversation.


Honor Among Thieves: Star Wars by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my second shot at the Star Wars Expanded Universe books. The first one, Heir to the Empire, was okay but not great. This one – a Han Solo adventure which takes place between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back – was a somewhat better experience in the sense that it’s more readable, has snappier dialogue and doesn’t go overboard on the fan service. On the other hand, the plot – in which Han Solo has to go to the center of the Empire to extract a Rebel spy who has a lead on a powerful weapon the Empire is also chasing – is basically a chain of mishap after mishap as things consistently fail to go according to plan. Which is part of the fun, especially with Solo, who is fairly well layered here (and points to Corey for slipping in the point that Han is the kind of guy who will shoot first), but it does get a bit ludicrous by the third act. I enjoyed it more than Heir To The Empire, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the Star Wars Expanded Universe books aren’t that essential for me. I may read more later, but I probably won’t go out of my way.

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Going solo,

This is dF

HARPER LEE: AN APPRECIATION

I was smothered in business travel in Barcelona all last week, so this is old news I know, but I did want say something about Harper Lee’s passing.

NPR has as good a write-up about her and To Kill A Mockingbird as yr probably going to see elsewhere, apart maybe from this Bloom County tribute.

For myself, To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the great American novels, and also one of the very few “classics” that I had to read in high school that I actually enjoyed.

The novel is inspirational on at least two levels for me: (1) the content, of course, and its views on racism (which wasn’t all that distant a memory for the South when I read it in the early 80s – the KKK was still having annual marches in Franklin, TN at the time), and (2) the fact that it was Lee’s only published novel. Lee was proof positive that you only need to write one novel to be a novelist. In a way, it’s as well she didn't publish another one for most of the rest of her life – TKAM is a hard act to follow.

Go Set A Watchman probably proves that, not least because it was actually written before TKAM. I haven’t read it, but I’m aware of the controversy over it, both in terms of Atticus Finch’s character development and questions over whether Lee was in full control over the decision to publish it in the first place. Either way, I’m not aware of anyone saying it’s better than (or even on the same level as) TKAM – but then how could it be? TKAM has gestated for 50+ years as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. How do you top that?

Anyway, I don’t plan to read Go Set A Watchman anytime soon. I don’t feel the need to do so. TKAM’s legacy aside, prequels are almost always disappointing experiences, and frankly TKAM is such a great book in its own right it doesn’t need any fleshing out.

Which is why I do plan to re-read TKAM soon. It’ll be great to see if it’s as good and/or powerful as I remember. As I recall, it was a quite an intense experience.

Meanwhile, you may also know that Umberto Eco also passed away – which I mention mainly because I’ve never actually read any of his books. But he does get namedropped by some people I know, so if any of you have any recommendations of Eco books worth checking out (besides The Name Of The Rose – that’s a pretty obvious starting place), feel free to send them along.

Recommended reading,

This is dF