Just Finished

2008-08-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith, the latest Arkady Renko novel.

I wrote about the previous novel, Wolves Eat Dogs, here. One of the hallmarks of the series is the horrible situations Renko puts up with, from being banished to work on an Arctic fishing trawler to having to work in the Chernobyl hot zone, and Stalin's Ghost doesn't disappoint. Renko has his closest encounters with getting killed while investigating sightings of Stalin in the subway.

Once again, Smith does an excellent job of taking advantage of Russia's turbulent recent history. In this case, it is the war with Chechnya, and it's aftermath. It makes me curious to see if we will see a Renko novel in a few years set in relation to the current Georgian situation.

2008-08-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

This morning I finished Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

Water for Elephants is an excellent book - a historical novel set during the Great Depression, in and around a traveling circus, with some chapters set in the present day as an old man remembers his time with the circus.

This one was a recommendation from a friend, who said she had trouble putting it down, and I felt the same way. Good characters, an interesting plot and the alternating between the past and present worked well.

Definitely recommended.

2008-08-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, we went and saw The Dark Knight, the latest Batman movie.

It's a pretty good movie, better than I expected. As many people have noted, it is very dark, with lots of fairly realistic and disturbing violence to go with the usual over-the-top comic book scenes. Heath Ledger's performance is a little over-rated, but he does a good job of selling a character through the makeup.

It has lots of very typical superhero movie moments - the battle between romance and the secret identity, the villain dedicated to revealing the hero's identity, the forced choice between rescuing one set of hostages and another, etc, etc, but they are all done with either little twists to make them fresh or with a panache that imbues them with a fresh feeling.

Deja Vu All Over Again

2008-08-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched the Olympic opening ceremonies from Berlin - oops, I mean Beijing.

Very impressive displays of thousands of people moving in sync and cutting edge technology.

From the reviews, it's amazing to see how much people are still impressed with nationalist displays of pageantry, even when they come from one of the only 21st century nations that could be literally described as fascist. One gets the impression that if the Nazi's hadn't been homicidal anti-Semites, the Nuremberg rallies would still be considered nifty displays of national pride.

2008-08-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

I just finished Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston. Subtitled "How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill)", it is a follow up to Perfectly Legal, his book on taxes that I discussed here.

Free Lunch has a lot of the same virtues of Perfectly Legal, and a lot of the same vices - Johnston does a good job of presenting a polemic that should raise anyone's ire about the current state of affairs, but falls down on explaining or understanding why this state of affairs exists or how to fix it.

The book goes into great detail on how free market rhetoric is used to push changes in regulatory systems that are really not deregulation, but just changes in regulation that favour one side over the other, and how government is used, often in secret, to funnel money to small groups of people. The most common terms for this are corporate welfare or corporate socialism.

But there are a number of problems with how the book is written. First, there are problems with organization - in the chapter on how sports franchises profits come mainly from subsidies, he gets derailed in talking about George Steinbrenner and ship building business. Second, there are problems with tone and journalistic standards - he mixes fact and one sided opinion very freely throughout the book without properly differentiating between them. Third, there are problems with math and argumentation - he counts discounted expected sales tax over many years as part of a subsidy, and then compares it to the single year earning of a business.

But all of those are minor flaws compared to the main one - he doesn't understand the political, and philosophical, context that underlies the facts he talks about. He discusses the growth in America post WW2, and contrasts that with more recent times, but doesn't understand that the expansion of government influence post New Deal, which accelerated after WW2 and got it's tendrils into every part of American life, is fundamentally to blame for the later results that he decries. Once this un-accountable system was in place, it is inconceivable that it wouldn't be turned from benefiting one group to benefiting another. And it is easy to understand why the group with the most resources, in every way, would come out on top. Once you have started the equivalent of gang war, why is it surprising that the strongest group comes out on the top of the heap?

But looking past those flaws, this is a valuable book that should be read as widely as possible so that people understand the extent of the corruption in the system, in order to make them understand that what is needed is not incremental fixes to the system, but a new understanding of the base of the system and why the gov't influence that exists is wrong. At times, Johnston sidles around this idea but in the end he seems to blame the problems on the emphasis on free markets, even though at other times he makes it clear that what are being set up are really fake free markets.

2008-08-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I finished Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick.

Vivaldi's Virgins is a historical novel, set at an orphanage, Ospedale della Pietà, during the decline of the Venetian Republic. The abandonded girl orphans were trained as musicians and Antonio Vivaldi was a teacher there for many years. The main character is Anna Maria dal Violin, based on a real person, who was left at the orphanage as a baby and is desperate to know who her family is.

It's an enjoyable novel, though you don't learn as much about Venice as you might expect. The orphans are forbidden from travelling outside the orphanage, and though they do break the rules at times, most of the action is internal.

Having visitited Venice, it was hard for me to picture it as a place where people actually lived, rather than as the tourist trap it is today.

2008-08-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished Resistance by Owen Sheers.

Resistance is an alternate history novel, postulating a fairly standard alternative - what if Germany had won WWII? - but with a novel twist: the book is not set after the war, but during it. The D-Day invasion has failed and Germany has replied with an invasion of Britain. The novel deals with a small group of women, isolated after their husbands disappear to help out an anti-German insurgency, and their interactions with a small group of German soldiers who come to their remote valley on a special mission.

More of a sophisticated character study than the thriller one might expect from the description, Resistance is a well written debut novel, well worth checking out if you have the right expectations.

2008-07-31T15:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.

It made an interesting companion piece to With God On Our Side, the book on the Religious Right I read a while ago.

It is a pretty interesting book, about a topic that is not much discussed. I knew about the Deism of many of the Founding Fathers, and that they had pushed for a separation of church and state, but I didn't know that many of the Protestant sects at the time had also pushed for the separation due to worries about established religions acting against them. I also didn't know about some key figures, like Robert Ingersoll, who gave popular lectures all over the US in the 19th century even though he was a militant secularist.

There are some weaker parts of the book - Jacoby spends a lot of time talking about the abolitionist, suffragette and civil rights movements even though all three of those movements were not solely, or even primarily, secular movements. All three did involve secularists in one way or another, but that doesn't justify the depth she goes into. Another weak point is an odd omission - there is no discussion, or even mention, of Ayn Rand, probably the most popular and influential atheist philospher/author of the 20th century.

And now, with titles...

2008-07-26T19:11:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I finished The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith, the first in the popular series.

I have a friend who recommended another series by McCall Smith, but I couldn't find the first book in that series so I picked this up instead. It's a good, light read. Not so much of a mystery as a "slice of life" book about Botswana from someone who lived there. Most of it feels almost like short stories that had been tied together.

The one weak part of the writing is a weird inconsistency with point-of-view. Most of the book is from the point of view of the main character but at times it includes thoughts or feelings from some of the other main characters. I assume the author couldn't find a way to make his characters feelings clear in those situations without resorting to basically telling them to us.

2008-07-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished Baltimore (Or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire) by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, an illustrated novel by the creator of Hellboy.

Kind of an urban fantasy, Baltimore starts off with the title character on a WWI battlefield, where he encounters vampires feeding on the dead and inspires one of them to start feeding on living humans, unleashing a plague of vampirism that changes history.

The book is a deliberately "gothic" story, told mainly as a series of stories shared amongst three men who have met in a tavern. The black and white illustrations don't add much to the book, but the rest of it works pretty well. It's a basic story, told well. The format of stories being told adds a lot of overhead, so it's a short story in terms of content.

2008-07-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, the fifth of his Arkady Renko novels.

Modern mystery novels are really differentiated by two things - characters and settings - and finding a good combination seems to be the key to a good series. Smith stumbled on a brilliant combination in this series - the Russian setting provides a better background than most for the bitter, dis-spirited character that is common in modern mysteries. In this series, Renko has gone from suffering under the Soviet bureaucracy, being fired and toiling in a fishing trawler to post-Soviet Cuba.

Smith has also been lucky that real world changes have provided a nice backdrop for ongoing novels - from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of the Russian Mafia, and in this novel, Chernobyl.

Wolves Eat Dogs is a good addition to the series, and I will probably read the sixth book in the series soon.

2008-07-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

This morning, I finished With God On Our Side by William Martin.

Subtitled "The Rise of the Religious Right in America", this book catalogs the shift in the 20th century from a religious population that worked hard to keep itself separate from politics to one that saw politics as an integral part in protecting, and extending, it's values in the public sphere.

The cover is a little misleading - it shows George W Bush as part of a progression of religious leaders, but the book was published in 1996, well before the 2nd Bush had moved into national prominence.

Overall, it's a well written look at the rise of this movement, written in a fairly non-biased way. If you are interested in how the religious right is influencing American politics, at both the grass roots and upper levels, this is a must read.

2008-07-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing WALL-E, the last Pixar film.

Pixar is yet to make a bad movie. Even when paired with an insipid, anti-consumer, environmental propaganda background, they can turn it into a fun, and amazing looking, event.

One odd thing about WALL-E is the use of real people in some scenes. When there is recorded footage played, it uses real people, even though when WALL-E encounters humans, they are animated in the standard way. I guess they just wanted to have Fred Willard in the movie.

WALL-E also comes with a new Pixar short entitled Presto, the best short they've done in a while.

2008-07-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I finished The Man With a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes, the first book in her Richard Jury series.

It is a decent mystery, set in a small English town. Light entertainment, but good light entertainment.

2008-07-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finished The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.

I developed a dislike for Dickens after speed reading Great Expectations on high school. I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities years later, but could never get into, which I thought confirmed that I didn't like Dickens, but I did enjoy this book. The pathos at the end is very overdone, but otherwise it is enjoyable.

2008-07-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

This morning I finished Revenge of the Cootie Girls by Sparkle Hayter, the third book in her Robin Hudson books.

The Robin Hudson books are light-weight mysteries centering around the exploits of Robin Hudson, a New York reporter/producer loosely based on Hayter herself. I picked up the first of Hayter's novels because she is from the same city as I am, and is the daughter of one of Edmonton's longest serving politicians.

Like the other books, Revenge of the Cootie Girls, is a mystery but is less plot centered than the other books. It is set on Halloween night and involves the main characters going from place to place in New York, following a trail of clues left by an old friend, reminiscing about her past and meeting up with a bunch of current friends. Very low key, humorous reading.

2008-06-30T10:37:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I finished Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow.

The book is an urban fantasy, involving a main character to who is descended from a mountain, a winged girl, a brother who won't stay dead and a subplot about WiFi access.

It's a very good book, with a few problems. First, the ending is weak. It's too short and depends on a twist that doesn't fit very well with the rest of the book. Second, the book uses a flashback structure, shifting between the present day and the main character remembering incidents from his childhood. This works OK but at a point it shifts from a two pronged structure to a three pronged structure, adding flashbacks to the recent past, after some of the events that occur in the "present" part of the book. This is confusing and at times it is hard to tell whether a given chapter takes place before or after an earlier chapter.

2008-06-29T10:55:00.001-07:00

Last night we saw Mark Knopfler at the Greek Theater in Berkeley.

I have a friend who is a big Knopfler fan, so we go see him whenever he has a new tour. I'm not a huge fan of Knopfler, but I have to admit he puts on an excellent live show.

His music was always a little on the sophisticated side, instead of being teenage rebellion or angsty, so it works very well with an aging audience and an artist. Highly recommended if he plays in your area and you have any familiarity with his music.

2008-06-27T14:18:00.001-07:00

Today I finished Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters, a steampunk fantasy novel.

The setup/background of the novel is never described or explained very clearly but seems to involve two gods having taken over part of London and slowly consuming or converting the inhabitants thereof. Where they came from, or what they are trying to build/create is never very clear.

And that is indicative of a general problem with this book - the author has some interesting ideas but doesn't do enough to properly set them up or describe them so that it is clear to the reader what is happening.

2008-06-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finished Brasyl by Ian McDonald.

Brasyl starts out feeling very vintage cyber punk - dystopian near future where high tech mixes with societies under-classes - but then branches out to include a historical section, secret societies and the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum physics, and then wraps it all up neatly in the end.

The only weak part of the book is that the usage of Brazilian slang and unfamiliar terms is almost overwhelming. It turns out there is a glossary in the back, but I didn't realize that until I had finished the book. This adds a nice colour to the text but strongly lowers the readability. I had to either stop numerous times to puzzle out what was being talked about or to skim some passages, absorb the general feel of it and not worry about understanding the specifics.

This book is one of the nominees for Best Novel in the 2008 Hugo Awards. So far I've read four of the five, and wrote about the others here, here and here. Of those four books, Brasyl is my favourite.

2008-06-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Pixar Touch by David A. Price, a book about the hardware/software/movie company.

It's quite a good book, well written, with a good amount of background and inside knowledge of the company. Before reading it, I had known that Pixar had failed as a hardware company, had some success as a software company and hit the big time with the first complete computer graphic animated movies but I didn't know that the animated movies were the goal the whole way; the hardware and software were just ways to make money off their computer graphics expertise until they could get someone to give them the chance to make animated features, and until the technology was ready.

The book also gives a lot of details about the ties between Pixar and Disney - a partnership that always made sense since a number of key players were ex-Disney employees and/or were inspired by the way Disney did animation.

Also, like other books like Insanely Great (about the creation of the Apple MacIntosh) or iWoz that feature him, this book makes it clear that working with or for Steve Jobs is basically a nightmare. He comes across as petulant, childish, a horrible manager and someone who is excellent at taking advantage of creative talent around him. From this book, he clearly didn't have a lot to do with Pixar's success other than funding them, even though he gets a lot of credit in the media.

2008-06-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Hidden Family by Charles Stross, the 2nd book in his Merchant Princes series.

I liked this one better than the first book in the series, The Family Trade. If you've read that one, but found it only marginally interesting, try this one. If, on the other hand, you're interested in this one, read the other one first. They are short books and they are really one continuing story.

The first book felt like a lot of setup with little payoff, which is probably why I liked this one better. There is still some setup, as Stross complicates the story, but the book is focused on resolving some of the mysteries raised in the first book and advancing the characters.

The first book mixes a modern day world and a medieval one, and this book introduces some steampunk elements as well. I've liked other books by Stross (see here and here), but I had mixed feelings about this series until now. Based on this latest book, I will keep reading.

2008-06-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished The Armies of Memory by John Barnes.

It turns out this is part of a series, but I don't think I've read any of the other books in the series but I might look for them now.

The setting for this book is very complicated, too complicated to summarize here, but it has some interesting new twists on standard science fiction settings. The book also has some well drawn characters and a plot that is deeper and more interesting than most.

For me, John Barnes is a difficult writer to judge. I really like some of his books, like this one, and really dislike some of his books, like Kaleidoscope Century.

2008-06-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

I spent the entire week at the California Bluegrass Association's Music Camp, where I am a volunteer/teaching assistant, and the following Father's Day Bluegrass Festival.

The highlight of the festival was the second set by the new Dan Tyminski Band. The first set was well played, but the song selection wasn't too my taste. The second set had a lot more hard driving bluegrass songs, and a few great instrumentals.

The second best thing was the first Crooked Still set. They complained during the set that they were tired since they were still recovering from being in Europe, but it seemed much more high energy than the other two sets I saw.

And the third best thing was the new stage, Vern's. It was a trial run this year, was fully launched this year and it was great. Overall, I liked the bluegrass coming from the bands on the Vern's stage more than the too polished sound of the bands on the main stage. There were sets by Angelica Grim's new band, the duo of Keith Little and Jim Nunally, Blue and Lonesome, and friends of mine in Kitchen Help.

2008-06-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I finished The Last Legion by Chris Bunch.

I don't have much to say about this novel - it's an example of pretty generic military science fiction without much to recommend it. I picked it up at the library because I wanted a paperback to read while camping, and I doubt I'll pick up anything else by this author.