The Food Of The Gods - H.G. Wells

1904; 254 pages. Full Title : "The Food of the Gods And How it Came to Earth". 1967 price (new) : $0.75.; used-book price today : $2.00. Genres : Classic Fiction; Early Sci-Fi; Edwardian Literature. Overall Rating "B".

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The sci-fi premise : There is a compounf in young animals and plants that causes them to have growth spurts. This discontinues once the organism has reached a certain age or size. But what if that compound could be identified, made, and fed for a longer time to the organism?

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Two turn-of-the-century scientists research and synthesize the compound ("The Food of the Gods") and decide to test it on hatchlings at an experimental farm. It works, but things immediately go awry because the farm custodians - think Ma & Pa Kettle - are incredibly sloppy with the FOTG. Soon wasps, earwigs, and rats get into it and grow to unheard-of size, and when it falls into the soil, gigantic plants result. Then the scientists start feeding it to infants.

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What's To Like...

H.G. Wells is often called the "father of science fiction", so this is primordial stuff. The structure of the plot is different from both modern and 50's sci-fi, the latter of which was my first taste of this genre. There is a subtle, British humor throughout the book (including chortle-inducing names), but the real difference is the switching from one theme to another.

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TFOTG starts with your standard "Jurassic Park" theme. Giant, rampaging critters wreak mayhem o'er the land. Crichton could build this into a trilogy, but it only takes Wells about 100 pages to resolve it.

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Then the story switches to a sociological theme. Wells looks at how the new phenomenon changes the lives of the local humans. Giant rats and wasps that can kill affect our position at the top of the food-chain. So do 40-foot tall humans.

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The last third of the book switches to a political theme. Friction inevitably develops between the "giants" and the "pigmies", especially when the latter expect the former to confine themselves to restricted areas and only do menial jobs. Wells was an avowed socialist, and it is rather obvious that the giants here represent the lower classes.

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Surprisingly, this was a slow-read for me. The sentences are long and complex, with lots of flowery verbiage. Oh well, at least it isn't Milton.

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Kewl New Words...

There were a bunch. Teufteufing : making the onomatopeian sound of a motor (French). Eleemosynary : dependent on, or considered to be, an act of charity. Cavil : trivial objections. Gride : to produce a grinding sound. Almoner : one who distributes alms or takes care of the material and social needs of patients in a hospital. Irruption : a sudden, violent entrance or bursting in. Navvy : a laborer required to do menial work. Intercalary : inserted into the calendar to make it correspond to the solar year (think February 29th). Chalybeate : containing salt of, or tasting like, Iron. Importunate : expressing earnest entreaty. Selvedge : the ornamental border of a carpet, designed not to fray. Adumbration : vague advance portents; an indistinct foreshadowing.

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Excerpts...

They were of course quite undistinguished-looking men, as indeed all true scientists are. There is more personal distinction about the mildest-mannered actor alive than there is about the entire Royal Society. (pg. 20)

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Lady Wondershoot liked bullying Caddles. Caddles was her ideal lower-class person, dishonest, faithful, abject, industrious, and inconceivably incapable of responsibility. (pg. 134)

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"Look at them! And I know their father, a brute, a sort of brute beast with an intolerant loud voice, a creature who has run amuck in our all too merciful world for the last thirty years or more. An engineer! To him all we hold dear and sacred is nothing." (pg. 183)

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A different world...

The thing I like most about The Food of the Gods is the way Wells depicts life in the English countryside 100+ years ago. The first motorcars had just begun to appear on the streets. Most people still rode horseback or in wagons. There were lots of small, rural villages, all essentially isolated. There was no radio and no TV, the news came from neighbors or newspapers. Science was more a hobby than an industry.

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This is not one of Wells' better-known books, but it's still good. I'll give it a "B", content to know that there is some Edwardian reading out there that isn't chick-lit.

The Pickup Artist - Terry Bisson

2001; 240 pages. Genre : Fiction; Satire. Overall Rating : "B".

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Hank Shapiro is a Pickup Artist. There's too much art in the world - paintings, albums & CD's, books, films, etc. Some of it needs to be catalogued , archived, and destroyed so that new works can take its place. Hank is part of the "Deletions" division, going around and picking up those items specified for elimination from people who voluntarily turn them in. He might even give you a rebate if you're nice. For the involuntary seizures, there's an "Enforcement" division.

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All goes well until one day when he picks up a Hank Williams LP, and realizes this is who his parents named him after. Alas, HW is on the "Eliminated" list and no one, not even a Pickup Artist is allowed to listen to him anymore.

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What's To Like...

There's a Fahrenheit 451 storyline here, but the main charm is the vividly-detailed world Bisson paints, which is set in New York City as the story opens. He's created some great characters. There's Henry (female), who's 8½ years pregnant and wants to go to Vegas (which has seceded from the USA and is now an independent city-state) to find the father-to-be, who ran off years ago. There's Homer, Hank's lovable old dog, who dies, yet is kept in existence through the wonders of illicit drugs. And there's 77 Indian Bobs, genetically identical clones who were made so that modern man can appreciate the noble Native American savage. Unfortunately, funding ran out before they could clone their 77 female companions.

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And then there's the satire. On a deeper level, The Pickup Artist is Bisson's vision of where American culture is going. He shows us Misdemeanor Bars, where you can go to listen to deleted music and watch deleted DVD's. The authorities are aware of these, but generally let them subsist. He shows us Flee Markets, where anything - legal or otherwise - can be bought and sold. But they only have a 24-hour grace period in any given state, so every night they flee across state lines. There are several drugs in Bisson's world, the most interesting of which is "Dig" (a take-off of meth, perhaps?) whose users have an uncontrollable urge to dig - in old landfills for discarded trinkets - when they're high on it. And although money and credit exist, the preferred currency is Indian casino chips, despite the fact that the exchange rates always rip you off.

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The chapters are short, and separated by "Interludes" wherein Bisson gives the history of the art extermination movement. And he gives some great examples (such as "A Canticle For Liebowitz" by Walter Miller) of worthy artists whose works have already pretty much been forgotten.

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New/Kewl Words...

Midden : a dunghill; a refuse heap. Ephemera : collectible items not originally intended to last for more than a short time, such as postcards, labels, posters, tickets, etc.

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Excerpts...

"I mean the tree of art, unless pruned, will stop bearing fruit."

"We're not just art," I said. "We do music, literature and movies. No fruit."

"I know," she said. "It's a metaphor."

"We don't do metaphors either," I said. Then added : "It's a joke." (pg. 39)

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"I'm dead! I'll be dead from now on. Forever!"

"It's just the deal," said Henry. "It's okay."

"It's not okay!" Though his dessicated body had ceased, or almost ceased, to smell, Bob's breath was fouler than ever. I had to keep backing up just to talk to him.

"He has to be completely dead," said Womack, who was standing in the doorway, shaking his head. "There are regulations, even here in Vegas."

"He really is pretty muich dead," said Henry. "This is just a residual effect of the LastRites which saturates the alveolar tissues." (pg. 197. LastRites is a drug)

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What if...

I enjoyed The Pickup Artist, and it got me to wondering - what if we really had such a regulation? Would it help Kelly Clarkson's career if, say, all of Janis Joplin's music was deleted? Would more people go see The Lovely Bones if Star Wars wasn't around? Would it be easier for aspiring poets and novelists to get published if we no longer had Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller? Maybe Bisson's premise here has merit. Who cares anymore about Frank Sinatra or Walter Miller?

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I give The Pickup Artist a "B" because I always enjoy spending time in his worlds. It's a good book, as long as you're in the mood for well thought-out satire and don't mind the plotline playing second fiddle. Bisson is not for everyone, but you should read one of his books anyway, before he passes away and his works are deleted to make way for newer fiction.

Black Order by James Rollins

2006; 506 pages. #3 in the "Sigma Force" series. Author's real name : Jim Czajkowski. Genre : Action, Adventure. Overall Rating : "B".
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At a monastery in Nepal, the lamas go beserk - killing and eating each other, and drawing weird signs on the walls with their blood. In Copenhagen, Denmark, someone wants an old Bible enough to burn down a bookstore and kill the proprietor. In South Africa, a mythical man-eating beast (a ukufa) seems to be prowling a game preserve, and munching on little old ladies. The prologue is set in the closing days of WW2 Poland, where we find Nazi scientists trying to destroy their secret research project before the Russian forces overrun them.
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How do all these storylines connect, and who or what is the Black Order? That's what Sigma Force wants to know.
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What's To Like...
There's non-stop action and the characters are interesting. The Cri-Fi puzzles are believable and there are some "gray" bad guys (is that an oxymoron?). The Sigma Force folks are kind of a combination scientists and spec-ops agents. How cool is that? And because the storyline follows a team of protagonists (instead of just a single hero), there is bad-a$$ action happening in several places simultaneously.
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At times, the good guys and their exploits can stray just a bit too close to being a Dirk Pitt knock-off. And after 450 pages of constant chases, fighting, mystery, and escapes; the ultimate resolution kind of staggers to a finish.
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Kewl/New Words...
Provenance : a history of the ownership of something. Etiology : in a medical sense, the study of causes. Paroxysmal : accompanied by a sudden outburst of emotion or actions. In this case, it was shivering.
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Excerpt...
"A bit of the old bait and switch. Took me all day to find a Bible the right size and shape. Course I had to tinker with it a bit afterward. But then all it took was lots of tears and shouting, a bit of fumbling..." She shrugged. "And Bob's your uncle, it was done." (pg. 153). What can I say - I love the phrase "and Bob's your uncle".
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And take a little off the top...
This was my first James Rollins book. The heroes, especially their against-all-odds escapes were at times a bit too over-the-top for me. But that's a personal opinion only. The style reminded me of a cross between Steve Berry (who I like) and Clive Cussler (who I find to be so-so). If you like both those authors, you'll probably find Black Order to be great.
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Ditto for the climax, where they're trying to find a cure for what ails one of the heroes. I found it a letdown; you might not. Overall, this was a page-turning book that kept my interest until the very end. We'll give it a "B" and endeavor to see how other books by Rollins compare to this.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues - Tom Robbins

1976; 416 pages. Genre : Modern Lit. A Counter-Culture Classic. Overall Rating : B.

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ECGTB is the story of one Sissy Hankshaw, who's the Tiger Woods of hitchhiking, thanks to two super-sized thumbs and a love for the open highway. In her travels, she crosses paths with the all-girl Rubber Rose Ranch, the last flock of migrating whooping cranes, the author posing as a psychiatrist, a lust-crazed Japanese guru that everyone thinks is Chinese, a full-blooded Mohawk whom she marries, a peyote queen, and a Countess who's a "he".

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What's To Like...

When he's advancing the plot, Robbins has the rawness of Bukowski, the humor of Vonnegut, the word-weaving wit of Plath, and the simile and metaphor magic of Pratchett. Wow. In addition, he sprinkles in some interesting ancedotes (some maybe even factual) such as Robert Schumann doing finger-stretching exercises, and F. Scott Fitzgerald dying while eating a Butterfingers candy bar. He also occasionally engages in "verbing" (which I still think should be called 'verbalizing').

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There is a lot of sex here, and all sorts of it - straight, gay, bi, group, and auto. The sex passages fit in well, but this is not a book for the kiddies. Robbins takes on religion and all sorts of hippie-days issues, such as "finding oneself". He doesn't have much use for us westerners getting into Eastern gurus, suggesting that we instead should reconnect with our pagan past.

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Alas, after a stellar first third of the book, Robbins starts halting the storyline to go Dan-Brown preachy on us, often for 20 pages or so at a pop. Most notable and lengthy are the Sissy-and-the shrink and Sissy-and-the-Ch*nk diatribes. Hasn't he heard of "show, don't tell"? Some of his philosophical mush is probably good, but there are also things like "I believe in everything, nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing, everything is sacred." That reminds me of Inspector Clousseau's (Pink Panther) line : "I suspect everybody. I suspect nobody." Yeah, they both have equal merit as far as life-guiding advice goes.

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Excerpts...

In the evenings, light from an ever-increasing number of television sets inflicted a misleading frostiness on the air. It has been said that true albinos produce light of similar luminescence when they move their bowels.

Middays, the city felt like the inside of a napalmed watermelon. (pg. 42, describing South Richmond)

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"You're either for us or a Guinness." (pg. 311)

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New/Cool Words...

Atavistic (the reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence); Pellucid (crystalline, transmitting light); Limbic (of the interconnected brain structures involved with emotions, motivation, etc.); Impastoed (applied via thick layers of pigment to a canvas or other surface); Gloaming (twilight); Extirpate (to pull up by the roots). There was also "mambaskin" which means, straightforwardly enough, "the skin of a mamba". For some reason when I read it, I broke it down into "mam - baskin" and drew a total blank.

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"Ha ha, ho ho, and hee hee"

This seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it book for most readers. I found it to be both. When he was moving the storyline forward, it was a great read. But the philosophical exegesis and the ending were both self-indulgent. I give it a "B"(or one giant Sissy Hankshaw 'thumbs up'), since the good parts are more prevalent than the bad parts.

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Even Cowgirls Get The Blues broke new ground when it came out in 1976, especially regarding lesbian and bisexual relationships. But it's written by a heterosexual male, and I wonder whether today Robbins' views would seem dated to GLBT readers.

Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett

2009, 400 pages. The latest book (#37) in the Discworld series. Genre : Fantasy, Comedy. Overall Rating : B.

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Per some fine print tied to a sizable financial donation to their University, Ankh-Morpork's wizards find themselves forced to learn the plebeian sport of foot-the-ball. Or football to you Old Worlders. Or soccer to us Yanks.

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Meanwhile, the University's night kitchen has a new scullery maid, Juliet. A naive girl, slow of wit, but with looks that make even celibate Wizards turn sweaty. And from those two plot starting points, all mayhem eventuates.

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What's To Like...

If you like new characters, there's lots of them. Glenda, Trev, Juliet, Pepe, Nutt, and more. If you don't like new characters, a lot of your old favorites - including Rincewind, the Luggage, and Sam Vimes - are here, at least making cameo appearances. And, "ook!", the librarian's back as well. There's even a new ...er... species introduced.

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Pratchett's themes this time are football. hooligans, fashion models, cooking, (as usual) racial prejudice, and the esoteric "crab bucket philosophy". For the ladies, there's even some romance.

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Unseen Academicals is not as uproariously funny as the early Discworld books. Yet it's still full of wit, and Pratchett deftly weaves all those themes and a bunch of plotlines into a cohesive tale. One of my favorite characters, the benevolent tyrant Vetinari, plays a larger-than-usual role here. Some critics say he's "differently portrayed", but I see it as "character development". My only personal quibble is that 95% of the story takes place within the walls of Ankh-Morpork. It's a great city, but I always enjoy visiting other parts of Discworld.

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New Words...

There were a bunch of them : Concomitant (occurring the same time as another related event); Catenary (the natural curve of something flexible hung between two fixed points); Eventuate (to ultimately result (in)); Abseil (to descend by rope); Chatelaine (a chain worn around the waist, which holds all the castle's keys); Louche (of questionable taste and/or morality); Turbot (a European flatfish); Reticule (a lady's drawstring purse); and last but not least, Bledlow, which is some sort of chap that even Google and the Internet can't define. Perhaps Pratchett made this last one up.

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Excerpts...

"Oh he was quite healthy," said the Archchancellor. "Just dead. Quite healthy for a dead man."

"He was a pile of dust, Archchancellor!"

"That's not the same as being ill, exactly," said Ridcully, who believed in never giving in. "Broadly speaking, it's stable." (pg. 30)

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Sator Square was where the city went when it was upset, baffled, or fearful. People who had no real idea why they were doing so congregated to listen to other people who also did not know anything, on the basis that ignorance shared is ignorance doubled. (pg. 250)

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Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not". They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana." (pg. 76)

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Is this Pratchett's Swan Song?

In 2007, Pratchett posted online that he had been diagnosed as having a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Naturally, every reader of Unseen Academicals has an opinion as to how much this affected the book. My 2-cents is, "not very much". It is an excellently penned book.

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However, there is a touching scene at the end, where Nutt asks his mentor, Lady Margolotta, "do I have worth?" She assures him he does. To which he replies, "Thank you. But I am learning that worth is something that must be continuously accumulated."

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He then asks her, "Have I become?", and she tells him he has "become" as well. Both questions have to do with whether the world is now a (slightly) better place because of one's having existed in it. And although the person in question here is Nutt, I wonder if perhaps this isn't Terry Pratchett self-reflecting about his time in this world, and whether Unseen Academicals is perhaps the swan song of the Discworld series and his writing career.

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If so, all I can say is, "Terry, you have worth. Terry, you have become. The world is a better place for you having passed through it."

Roseanna - Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

1965 (Swedish); 1967 (English). 212 pages. Genre : Crime Fiction. Book #1 in the Martin Beck detective series. Overall Rating : B.

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The nude body of a young woman is pulled out of Sweden's Lake Vattern. There are no identifying marks or any other clue as to her identity. Detective Martin Beck checks on all the Missing Person reports throughout Sweden, but none of them match the victim's description; even after a couple months have gone by. There's not a lot for him to go on.

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What's To Like...

It's cool to see how the detectives go about trying to solve a case so devoid of clues. The plot moves along nicely, and if anything, the book was over too soon. This is a "police procedural" story, so the emphasis is on perseverence and dogged detective work. There are a couple lucky breaks, but they make the story work, so that's okay.

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It's also neat to read a story based on 1960's technology. There are no e-mails or cell-phones. Long-distance phone conversations have poor reception and tenuous connections, and snail-mail is the only way to send written communication. And when the snail-mail is coming from overseas, the delays are significant.

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There are a couple "holes" in the story. Most notably, nobody seems too concerned about where the girl's clothing and personal effects might have ended up. And the ploy used to catch the killer smacks of Police Entrapment, although maybe this was allowed in Sweden way back then.

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Martin Beck is to a certain degree, the stereotypical p0lice detective. He smokes too much, his marriage is on the rocks, and he doesn't sleep well. Oh well, at least he 's not an alcoholic. Yet.

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Cool new words in the book...

Only one - décolleté. Meaning (in fashion) : leaving the neck and shoulders uncovered.

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Excerpt.

"Don't think so much about that case. It isn't the first time we have failed. It won't be the last either. You know that just as well as I do. We won't be any the better or the worse for it."

"It isn't just the case I'm thinking about."

"Don't brood. It isn't good for the morale."

"The morale?"

"Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness." (pg. 42)

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Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

Roseanna is the first of the 10-book Martin Beck series. Sjowall and Wahloo were a husband-&-wife team, who wrote alternating chapters of each book. Bizarre.

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Sjowall and Wahloo blazed the trail for Swedish noir police procedurals. Their influence on Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson is profound. FWIW, the most famous book in the Martin Beck series is probably The Laughing Policeman, which was made into a Hollywood movie, starring Walter Matthau. I enjoyed Roseanna, and will probably end up reading a couple more of the series.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

1962, 221 pages. Genre : Fiction, Humor. Awards : None, although Playboy magazine ran a condensed version of it. Overall Rating : B.

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Bertie Wooster faces a fate worse than death - marriage. The engagement of Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett is on the rocks, and Madeline has made it clear that Bertie is the back-up beau. So he's forced to return to Totleigh Towers, (where most of the folks think he's an unsavory thief), either as a raisonneur or a groom-to-be.

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What's To Like...

There are engaging characters, witty dialogue, and lots of pratfalls and tangled plotlines. There's a hideous Alpine Hat with a pink feather and a black amber statuette. The whole book is written in "English" (as opposed to "American"), which is always a delight to read. And of course, there is Jeeves.

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It is a sequel to The Return of Jeeves (reviewed here), and some of the references will make little sense if you haven't read that book. Also, there aren't really any new places to visit or new people to meet.

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Excerpts.

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying "Tra-la-la" as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning. (opening sentence)

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"She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance of the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we all know, is not the case. She's a drooper." (pg. 21, describing Madeline Bassett)

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Another frisson passed through my frame. I had the unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that centipedes in large numbers are sauntering up and down your spinal column. I feared the worst. (pg. 59)

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Kewl Words...

P.G. Wodehouse books are a treasure trove of great words. In SULJ, we meet : niffy (stinky); to biff off (to depart); pukka (superior); the banns (a wedding announcement, and there is no singular 'bann'); abstemious (moderate in food and drink consumption); diablerie (devilish); desultory (haphazard); beazel (a chick); foregather (to collect in one place); sedulous (zealous); blancmange (a sweet custard-like dessert); costermonger (one who sells fruits and vegetable from a cart); peccadillo (an indiscretion); distrait (distracted due to stress); and betimes (early).

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...but if the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them. (pg. 10)

I've yet to read a dull or medicore "Jeeves" book. These are fast-paced, light-reads. We'll give it a "B" only because it doesn't really tread any new ground. Highly recommended.

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

1961; 268 pages. Genre : Contemporary Lit. Overall Rating : B.
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On the surface, Harold W. Campbell is a World War 2 "Lord Haw-Haw", an American who broadcasts propaganda for Nazi Germany to the Allied soldiers fighting in Europe. Only a select few know he is actually a hero, a double-agent transmitting vital war secrets via coded phrases in his radio diatribes.
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What's To Like...
It's Vonnegut; it rocks. There's a fascinating storyline, superior writing, and a bunch of interesting characters, most of whom turn out to be not what they seem.

.Vonnegut gives us the moral on the first page of the introduction : "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." A couple pages later, his dedication to Campbell reads, "a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times."

.There's a brief reference to a great, obscure historical figure - Tiglath-Pileser (pg. 4), and a cameo appearance by one of my favorite words - susurrus (pg. 177). Oh, and I swear each of the 45 chapters ends with a storyline "twist". Try pulling that off every 3 or 4 pages.

.Underneath all the absurdity, Vonnegut examines a fundamental question - what constitutes the "real" you? Is it your innermost being, or is it the summation of the effect your actions have on Humanity?

.If the theme of Slaughterhouse Five is the insanity of war; then Mother Night is its sequel, with a theme of the senselessness of post-war. MN is not quite up there with S-5 and The Sirens of Titan, but it's still a superior book, and highly recommended.

.Excerpts...
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. (pg. 160)

."Any news of my parents?" I said.
"I'm sorry to tell you-" he said, "they died four months ago."
"Both?" I said.
"Your father first - your mother 24 hours later. Heart both times," he said.
I cried a little about that, shook my head. "Nobody told them what I was really doing?" I said.
"Our radio station in the heart of Berlin was worth more than the peace of mind of two old people," he said.
"I wonder," I said.
"You're entitled to wonder, " he said. "I'm not." (pg.187)

Dirty Martini - J.A. Konrath

2007; 324 pages. Book #4 (out of 6 now) in Konrath's Jacqueline 'Jack' Daniels series. Genre : Psycho-killer thriller. Overall Rating : B.

  .Chicago cuisine is to die for. Literally, because someone calling himself 'The Chemist' is poisoning food in all sorts of restaurants and supermarkets. The Chicago Police Department tries to keep things calm by not announcing all the deaths. They appoint our hero, Detective Jacqueline Daniels, to head the crime team, and give her two choices. Solve it and be a hero; don't solve it and be demoted to traffic cop.

What's To Like...
    The story is formulaic, but it works. A smug, psychotic killer committing gruesome murders as part of a larger plan; eventually taking on Jack herself. In the meantime, anyone knowing Jack is also a target, including her BF Latham, who seems to end up in the ICU in every book.

  .The action is non-stop. The humor will make you chuckle - especially the repartee between Jackie and her former partner, Harry McGlade. You gotta love any bad guy who goes by the moniker "The Chemist".

  .OTOH, Dirty Martini is the polar opposite of a police procedural story. Clues are routinely ignored, so don't try to solve the case alongside Jack. The Chemist brazenly invades two precinct houses to destroy old records, and the cops somehow don't find that worth looking into. When he releases thousands of cockroaches into a police station, no one stops to ask themselves why. The case-cracking clue comes out of nowhere, and with no explanation as to why the normally meticulously cautious Chemist suddenly gets sloppy.

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    Read this book for what it is - a page-turner. Turn off the analytical half of your brain and enjoy a story with a strong female lead (with more lives than a cat) and lots of thrills, spills, and chuckles. Ignore the implausibilities and rejoice in the fact that in the end, Jackie won't be directing traffic. Konrath isn't trying to give you a feel for what it's like to be a police detective; he just wants to entertain you for a few hours. He gets a "B" from me for his efforts.

A couple of trivia tidbits...
    Despite several dozen people dying in a variety of ways, not one drop of blood is spilled in Dirty Martini. This is a pleasant change-of-pace from the previous book in this series.
.After Book #3, Rusty Nail, Konrath went on a 3-month promotion tour, visiting 600+ bookstores in 27 states and driving more than 13,500 miles. He met over 1100 booksellers, and takes time at the end of Dirty Martini to thank them all by name. Kewlness.
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    Finally, if you read the hyping blurbs in the front of this book (OCD readers do), you will note that two of them are David Ellis and Jim Munchel. By strange coincidence, one of the characters in Dirty Martini is named Davy Ellis, and one of the characters in the sneak-preview of Book #5 (Fuzzy Navel) at the end of Dirty Martini is named Jim Munchel. So be sure to write Konrath and let him know how much you enjoy his books. You just might end up seeing your name in the 7th book in this series.

Wicked - Gregory Maguire

1995; 519 pages. Full Title : Wicked - The Life & Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Genre : Revisionist fiction. Overall Rating : B.

  .In The Wizard of Oz, the nasty old Wicked Witch of the West is done in by Dorothy and water. Maguire postulates that L. Frank Baum's story is a slanted account; Wicked tells the story from Elphaba, the WWofW's point of view.

What's To Like...
    Maguire creates a wonderful fantasy world of Oz. There are munchkins, dwarves and elves; and rumors even of dragons. There are various competing religions - unionists (with their Unnamed God), pleasure faithists (with their Clock of the Time Dragon) and Lurlinists (waiting for the Fairy Queen Lurline to return) being the most interesting. There are some great political, spiritual, and philosophical ponderings in the book, the main one being how the world determines what is wicked and what isn't.
.
    Kewl stuff, but as a story, Wicked leaves something to be desired. Most notable are the annoying gaps in the tale. First we are introduced to Elphaba as a toddler. Then "poof", it's years later and she's heading off to college. "Poof" again, and it's years later, and Elphaba's now a revolutionary. "Poof" once more and she's leaving a nunnery after seven years to become a recluse in a castle in Vinkus. The final "poof" jumps us years ahead again to the fateful encounter with Dorothy.
.Also, the issues Maguire presents (such as Animal/animal rights) are provocative, but never answered. Ditto for the plot details. We never really know why Elphaba came out green; who killed Porfessor Dillamond (he's a Goat, not a goat); whether Fiyiero is really dead; and what happened to Sarima and her sisters.

.

    Moreover, while we're introduced to some well-developed and fascinating secondary characters (such as Elphaba's mom Melena, Boq, Glinda, and the flaming twosome of Crope and Tibbett), it's best not to get too attached to them, because most of them don't make the jump across the gaps.
.Finally the sex scenes and cuss words felt ill-fitting and unnecessary. I don't mind such things when they enhance the story (they certainly fit well in anything written by Bukowski), but here they detract. TMI.

.An excerpt...
"You're not wicked," said Boq.
"How do you know. It's been so long," said the Witch, but she smiled at him.
Boq returned the smile, warmly. "Glinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us." He sighed. "It's people who claim that they're good , or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of." (pg. 457)
.
We're off to see that no-good Wizard...
    Wicked had the potential to be either a superb fantasy story or a superb philosophical treatise. But by trying to be both, it failed to be great at either. It dragged at times, especially the first half. Yet it's still a good book, and there's no denying it's well-written. Perhaps some of the unanswered questions and plot details are addressed in the sequels. Ditto for the engaging, but short-lived characters. So we'll give it a "B", plus kudos to whoever managed to turn this into a highly-successful musical.

Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski

1982; 283 pages. Genre : Modern American Literature; Semi-autobiography. Overall Rating : B..

    With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, Charles Bukowski introduces you to his alter ego - Henry "Hank" Chinaski. Ham On Rye covers the first 21 years of Chinaski's life - starting in 1920, going through the Great Depression and ending with the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition to hard times, Henry hails from a tough neighborhood in L.A., and has an abusive father, and a spineless mother to contend with at home.

.What's To Like...
    Henry is the classic anti-hero; sporting a crappy attitude towards school and home, friends and foes, jobs and bosses, girls amd women, and just about everything else. There's only two things he likes in the world - drinking and literature. He devours authors like D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Upton Sinclair, Turgenev, and Gorky.

.The book is a quick read - there are no nuances here. But there is a lot of dark humor, keen insight, and a catchy writing style.. Here's an excerpt :

.

"The rich guys like to dart their cars in and out, swiftly, sliding up, burning rubber, their cars glistening in the sunlight as the girls gathered around. Classes were a joke, they were all going somewhere for college, classes were just a routine laugh, they got good grades, you seldom saw them with books, you just saw them burning more rubber, gunning from the curb with their cars full of squealing and laughing girls. I watched them with my 50 cents in my pocket. I didn't even know how to drive a car..Meanwhile the poor and the lost and the idiots continued to flock around me. I had a place I liked to eat under the football grandstand. I had my brown bag with my two bologna sandwiches. They came around, "Hey, Hank, can I eat with you?"

.There's a lot of cussing in Ham On Rye. Indeed, I was hard-pressed to find a stretch of sentences for the excerpt that didn't have cuss words in it. There's also a lot of drinking and fighting. If Henry can't find a stranger to fight, he'll start punching out one of his friends, then get drunk with him afterwards. There isn't a lot of sex, although there's a lot of talking and dreaming about it. By the end of the book, Henry still hasn't scored with a girl. Heck, he hasn't even reached first base.

Laureate of the low-life; poet of the punks...
Opinions are mixed about Bukowski. He's the polar opposite of John Milton. But he can weave a story. Open Ham On Rye to any page, and you'll find a captivating tale. I think he could hold the reader's interest talking about watching paint dry.

.I give Ham On Rye a "B". I liked the book, even though I couldn't relate to Bukowski's/Chinaski's life. At the end, it was obvious that Henry was going to turn out to be a homeless drunk or a published author. Or both. In real life, that's exactly what happened to Bukowski.
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This is a book to read when you're feeling rebellious, anti-establishment, and smart-mouthed. Put on a Sex Pistols CD and enjoy the story.

The Big Over Easy - Jasper Fforde

2005; 383 pages. Book 1 of the "Nursery Crime" Series. Genre : Comic Fiction, Ffordian Slip. Overall Rating : B.
.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and isn't going to be put back together again. But was it an accident, suicide, or murder most fowl?

.Detective Jack Spratt and his partner, Mary Mary (who is a bit contrary) investigate Hump's death, while at the same time fending off a hostile takeover by a vainglorious colleague and trying to keep the Nursery Crime Division from being a victim of budget cuts.

.What's To Like...
    There's the usual amount of Fforde's zaniness, puns, complexity, wit, clever character names, and plot twists. TBOE is a bit more plot-driven than the Thursday Next series (face it, we care more about what happens to the plot of Jane Eyre than we do about what happens to Thursday's husband). The ending of TBOE is great.
.As expected, a whole slew of nursery rhymes are touched upon. But there are still some literary references (most notably to Shakespeare's Richard III), and also a nod or two to Grrek mythology (the titan Prometheus and Jack's daughter Pandora become enamored with each other).

.

The Big Over Easy is actually a re-write of one of Fforde's earlier, unpublished stories. It's original title was Who Killed Humpty Dumpty? TBOE and The Well of Lost Plots are interconnected. A half-dozen characters appear in both books, and IIRC, the Nursery Crime world is invented by Thursday in TWoLP. Fforde even back-writes some references to Thursday Next into TBOE. I give this book a "B" only because I doubt it will supersede the Thursday Next series as your favorite work(s) by Fforde. If anyone else had written this, I'd probably be giving it an "A".

.A Quick Trivia Quiz (answers in the comments section)...
01.) How many words are there in Chapter 13 of The Big Over Easy?
02.) How many rejections did The Eyre Affair receive before someone finally picked it up?
03.) Does that web link for "extras" found in all Jasper Fforde books really work?

The Eight - Katherine Neville

1988, 598 pages. Genre : Historical Action; Cri-Fi (Crichton Fiction). Overall Rating : B.

   .Two intertwined stories, one set in the 1970's; the other in the 1790's. The modern tale centers around Catherine "Cat" Velis, a computer geek who's about to be transferred to Algiers due to office politics. The older tale is set primarily in France, and follows Mereille de Remy, a novice nun whose cloistered life is about to be upended by the infamous Reign of Terror. Both women soon find themselves trying to collect all the pieces to an ancient, mystical, rumored-to-be-all-powerful chess set that is also coveted by the bad guys.

.What's To Like...
    The emphasis is on the storyline, which is complex, but not confusing. There is the central theme of chess, which has been a lifelong passion of mine. A lot of the book takes place in Algeria, which is a nice change of scenery. Some attention even is paid to the etymology of "Car". As in "Carthage" and "Hamilcar". Kewlness.
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There are plenty of twists in the storyline to keep you on your toes. Telling the good guys from the bad guys is quite the challenge. Both Mereille and Cat are strong female leading characters. (Well, the queens are the strongest pieces on the chessboard.) Indeed, there really aren't any weak women in the book. Amazingly, the men aren't pansies either.
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Last but not least - there's even some romance. Enough to appeal to women readers, but not enough to lose me.

.

Quibbles...
You are reminded a few too many times that there's a "bigger game" being played. And there's too much "telegraphing" with sentences like "Little did I know that thirty blocks away, a move was about to take place that would soon alter the course of my life." (page 130).

.Once in a while the plot gets clunky. For example, at one point Cat is being chased by a host of gun-shooting baddies, and is forced to jump off a pier into the Mediterranean. Alas (sez you), she has a knapsack of valuables to weigh her down, including a priceless ancient book. Lucky for her, that book just happens to be in a waterproof container (in a desert?), and she uses the weight of the knapsack to walk (underwater) along the bottom of the pier to safety, whilst the baddies wait for her to surface at the end of the pier to shoot her. Yeah. I don't think so.

.But these are minor. My biggest peeve with The Eight is the printing. A lot of the "e's" have their cross-bar missing, making them look like "c's". So your reading gets interrupted by things like trcc, pcacc, crcatc, ctc.

."It's a great huge game of chess that's being played all over the world....Oh what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them. I wouldn't mind being a pawn, if only I might join - though of course I should like to be a Queen best." (Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass)

.

This is a well-researched book. I can attest to that re the Chess parts. Some critics were turned off by the name-dropping. But I'd much rather read about Napoleon, William Blake, and Robespierre than some unknown commoner. That's what historical fiction is all about.

.Others didn't like the ending, but I disagree. I won't put any spoilers here; so let's just say the ending was similar to, yet better than, that of The Da Vinci Code.

.I recommend this to anyone who likes to read Dan Brown and Michael Crichton, neither of which has put out anything new lately. Yeah I know, Crichton's dead, but that doesn't stop Robert Ludlum. This was Ms. Neville's first published book, so the quibbles are quite forgiveable. She's written a half dozen or so since then, including (15 years later) the sequel to this story, called The Fire. I'm sure I'll be reading it sometime soon.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

2000; 437 pages. Awards : NY Times #1 Bestseller; nominated for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize (General Non-Fiction). Genre : Memoir; Fictional Non-Fiction (yeah I know, that's an oxymoron). Overall Rating : B..

    This is David Eggers' break-out book, giving his reflections on about an 8-year period of his life, starting around age 22. His parents die within a few weeks/months of each other, leaving their four children orphaned. Dave's older brother (Bill) has a full-time job, and his older sister (Beth) is just starting law school, so it falls to our author to be the family guardian of 8-year Christopher ("Toph"), despite having no parenting skills. It's a coming-of-age tale, as Eggers struggles to be both a mentor and a buddy to Toph, while also starting up an off-beat magazine ("Might", patterned after "Wired"), holding down various jobs to make ends meet, and somehow finding time to pursue the opposite sex.

.What's To Like...
    The literary style is unique. Eggers deftly weaves stream-of-consciousness and techniques like the "Fourth Wall" into the narrative. There are philosophical musings - the Might crew strives hard to adhere to a "we're doing this for Art's sake, not for financial reward", all the while knowing that without readers and advertisers, the magazine is toast.
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There's a gentle self-deprecating humor running throughout the book. Eggers recounts the foibles of his love life, dealing with his Mom's ashes ("cremains"), baby-sitter anxiety, and his I'm-gonna-die experience which turned out instead to be passing a kidney stone.

.The writing is polished (see below), which seems surprising, given that Eggers was still in his 20's when he wrote this. Last but not least, be sure to check out the "dull" sections of the book - the copyright page, the acknowledgements, etc. Eggers' wit is there as well.
.
OTOH, Eggers can get quite wordy at times (the contrived transcript of the MTV interview being a salient example). Lots of people found AHWOSG to be too self-indulgent (but isn't that what a memoir is all about?). By his own account, Eggers also takes substantial "literary license" with the facts here (but isn't that what an 'authorized' memoir is all about?).
.
Finally, I suggest skipping the 40-odd page prologue, in which Eggers self-analyzes himself and his book, and go directly to page 1. If at the end, you've been thrilled by the story, you can always go back and read the intro. .Excerpt (first two sentences, actually) :

"Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic. Exhaust from the dryer billows out of the house and up, breaking apart while tumbling into the white sky." Sigh. I wish I could write like that.
.
You'll like AHWOSG if...
    The style reminded me a lot of A Confederacy of Dunces, or perhaps a David Sedaris book, but with mellower humor. I'm not big on reading biographies and memoirs, but I liked AHWOSG. The Americana descriptiveness is nice, and I can see how this would appeal to the Pulitzer peeps. So I'll give it a "B", and wonder just how good of a writer Eggers will be when he's gotten a couple decades of experience under his belt.

The 5-Minute Iliad - Greg Nagan

2000; 221 pages. Full Title : The 5-Minute Iliad and other Instant Classics. Great Books for the Short Attention Span. Genre : Literary Spoof. Overall Rating : B.
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    Would you like to read the classics, but have neither the time nor the attention span? Do you want to impress others by doling out some literary ponderings ("Didn't Mrs. Dashwood have her hands full bringing up three such precocious girls in Jane Austen's 'Sense & Sensibility'?"), without actually having to trudge through the whole book? Do you think The Iliad would be much easier to read if Homer had put some humor in it? If so, then The 5-Minute Iliad is for you. 15 shining examples of Western Literature Classics, each distilled down to 10-15 pages, each easily read in 5-minutes or less.
.The List...

The Iliad - Homer
The Divine Comedy, Part 1, The Inferno - Dante
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Crime & Punishment - Feodor Dostoyevsky
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Ulysses - James Joyce
1984 - George Orwell
The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Old Man & The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
On The Road - Jack Kerouac

.What's To Like...
    There is a lot of satiric wit, but Nagan also makes an effort to write each entry in the style of the original. On The Road is a single, 12-page, run-on sentence. The Old Man & The Sea nicely captures the fisherman's rambling monologue to the fish, as his boat is pulled out to sea. And of course, nothing compares to the limerick style used by Dante when he wrote The Inferno.

   .Nagan also prefaces each selection with a page or so about the author and the times in which the book was written. These are especially tongue-in-cheekish. And as a bonus there's a 5-minute section detailing everything worth knowing about Western Civilization from Gilgamesh to the present.
.A couple caveats. This is not a book for the kiddies. There are a few cuss words, and some "sexual situations". But you'd expect this since the list includes works by Salinger and Kerouac.

   .Also, it helps if you are at least familiar with the classic; even better if you've read it. The only ones I've read on the list are 1984 and Metamorphosis. I've seen the movie The Old Man & The Sea, and I think I read The Iliad in high school. Those are the ones I liked the most. I'm familiar with most of the others, except for The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sense & Sensibility. Those are the two I got the least out of, cuz I couldn't tell what was actually from the story, and what was spoof.

"I will never write such wordy trash again." (Count Leo Tolstoy, on War & Peace)
    I give The 5-Minute Iliad a "B", only because I don't know if any spoof merits an "A". For you young'uns, the humor here reminds me of Dave Barry's columns. For you geezers, it's very close to the "It All Started With..." series from the 60's by Richard Armour. Sadly, Greg Nagan appears to be a one-hit wonder. This is his only book that Amazon carries, and he doesn't even rate a Wikipedia entry. Highly recommended.

The Book of the Dead - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

2006; 597 pages. Third book in the "Diogenes" trilogy. Genre : Thriller. Overall Rating : B.

   .Three storylines are intertwined in this finale to the trilogy. Our hero, Aloysius Pendergast (think Sherlock Holmes), finds himself in Solitary in an "escape-proof" prison, accused on three murders, including a senior FBI agent. His evil brother, Diogenes, (think Professor Moriarty), amuses himself by sending the New York Museum of Natural History's stolen diamond collection back to them as ground-up dust, and messing with the head of Aloysius's ward, Constance Greene. And the NYMoNH decides to re-showcase an ancient Egyptian tomb, despite the fact that they mothballed it 70 years earlier because of "the curse".

.What's To Like...

    Preston & Child always write a good thriller. The tension in BOTD rises steadily for the first 400 pages, despite no violence taking place for more than 100 pages. Once again, the reader is left to figure out whether the Mummy's Curse is natural or supernatural; P&C resolve plots in this series via both techniques. Aloysius's prison-escape plan (well, you knew he'd do this) is captivatingly clever.

.Alas, there are some believability issues. After having made his escape (and showing up in public at the NYMoNH), the FBI and NYPD seem to just say, "Oh well", and lose interest in recapturing the triple-murder escapee. Not likely, guys. And Diogenes, who's been running circles around everybody for two books, ultimately gets his comeuppance from a rank amateur. I'll ignore the spur-of-the-moment concocting of tri-nitroglycerine, made from scratch, and using only chemicals conveniently found at the museum.

.Then there's the conclusion itself. The climax of the Mummy's Curse storyline is just a duplicate of what P&C used in the first book in this series, Relic. C'mon guys - enough of the "trapped crowd in the museum" schtick. Last but not least, Diogenes' ultimate demise is both unbelievable and stolen straight from Arthur Conan Doyle's method of disposing of Moriarty. And since there's no body, P&C can always write Diogenes back into the series whenever they run out of fresh ideas for villains.

.Just another manic Mummy...
    But I quibble. The book, and indeed the whole trilogy (Note : These three stories - Brimstone, Dance Of Death, and The Book of The Dead - are not stand-alones. You definitely want to read them in order.) are action-packed page-turners, with interesting characters, lots of twists, good suspense, and a worthy Ultimate Evil. We'll give BOTD a B, only because it runs out of steam with 200 pages to go. This was "A" reading up until then.

.And BTW, P&C's newest release in the Pendergast series, Cemetery Dance, has just been released in hardback. I will most certainly be reading it, albeit waiting until it comes out in paperback or shows up at the used bookstore.

Two for the Dough - Janet Evanovich

1996; 312 pages. A Stephanie Plum novel. A "Lula" recommendation, which is much more reliable than an "Oprah" recommendation. Genre : Crime; Beach Novel. Overall Rating : B..

    Fledgling bounty hunter Stephanie Plum has two jobs : looking for bail-jumper Kenny Mancuso and finding 24 stolen bargain-bin caskets. Joe Morelli and Ranger are around for hunk-appeal. Lula finds filing at Vinnie's better than walking the streets. And Grandma Mazur packs a pistol, appoints herself Stephanie's partner, and becomes the worst nightmare for all funeral parlors in New Jersey.
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What's To Like...
    If you enjoyed One For The Money, then you'll happily find 2FTD is more of the same. There's witty banter; a couple of plot twists to keep you on your toes; a realistic bounty hunting portrayal (lots of sitting and waiting), and a plucky heroine determined to make it in a tough neighborhood. The sexual tension between Plum and Morelli flows nicely through the whole book, without ever sinking into "Chick Fic" territory. There is the obligatory nude scene with an unexpected climax. Finally, there is Grandma Mazur, a spinster with a 'tude, and who frankly steals the show.

.OTOH...Most of the role players here are black or white. If they don't hit it off with Stephanie, you can pretty much write them down as being baddies. There are some believability issues (repeated appendage slicing at the funeral homes; the bad guys missing Granny's concealed weapon, etc.) and some unresolved loose ends (Steph's jeep gets stolen, stays stolen, and no one seems too concerned).

.

I'm going to the beach. What book should I take?If James Patterson's Alex Cross books are airport novels, then Stephanie Plum books are beach novels. Something to pass the time while working on one's tan. There's nothing deep, but it is satisfyingly entertaining. Ten years from now, you won't recall any of the details about Two For The Money, but you will remember that you enjoyed it.

.
An excerpt...
"Bars, funeral homes, bakeries, and beauty parlors form the hub of the wheel that spins the burg. Beauty parlors are especially important because the burg is an equal-opportunity neighborhood caught in a 1950's time warp. The translation of this is that girls in the burg become obsessed with hair at a very early age. The hell with coed peewee football. If you're a little girl in the burg, you spend your time combing out Barbie's hair. Big gunky black eyelashes, electric-blue eye shadow, pointy outthrust breasts, and a lot of platinum-blond phony-looking hair. This is what we all aspire to." (pg. 149)

Ariel - Sylvia Plath

1965; 85 pages. Genre : Poetry. Overall Rating : B..

    A collection of poems, often rushed out at the rate of two or three a day, by Sylvia Plath in the last months of her life, and while alone with her children (Ted Hughes had left her for another woman) and freezing during a bitter London winter.

What's To Like...
    What can I say? Plath is a maestro with words. Here she writes about a variety of subjects. There is the warm love she has for her children. There is also some darkness - especially when she's writing about her Dad and her straying husband. Death makes its appearance as well, but there are not as many lines devoted to it as I had feared. And last but not least - she throws in some cool chemical compouinds - Carbon Monoxide, Arsenic, and Acetic Acid. Yeah go ahead, name any other poem that has the phrase 'Acetic Acid' in it.

   .Although it's a short read, there is almost no rhyming here, and very little meter. That makes it tough on a traditionalist like me. Some of the poems are too vague for me. You almost need notes to understand them. Ariel, for instance, is not about the Shakespearean sprite; it's about a horse she rode at a nearby riding academy. Berck-Plage is about a veteran's hospital she visited in France. There's 4 or 5 poems about bee-keeping. It helps to know Plath had a bee colony in her backyard, and was a member of a beekeeper's club. I've yet to discover why a yew tree keeps showing up in this book.
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Don't buy this book!!
    This 1965 version of Ariel was edited by Ted Hughes, who took the liberty of deleting 12 of the poems and replacing them with a dozen of Plath's earlier works. He also decided Plath didn't know the proper order to put them in. Plath's daughter Frieda later put out a version with the correct poems and correct order. When I was at Borders over the weekend, I found there is now a "Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath" which, at 200+ pages, includes everything from Ariel and Colossus, and a bunch of other assorted poetry she penned. All for less than $20. So the version I read is obsolete.

   .In the end, I'd give Ariel an "A" for its biographical insight. But when I step away from that, a lot of these poems could use a bit of polish. I know everything Plath wrote is sacrosanct to her devotées, but objectively, penning 2-3 poems a day means they could've been improved with time and effort. Therefore I give this Ariel a "B", partly cuz it isn't perfect, and partly cuz it's Hughes' inferior version.

   .Ariel has sat on my TBR shelf for quite some time. I read it now because earlier this month, Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes took his own life by hanging after losing his battle with depression. It seemed fitting to pay my respects to him by reading a book of Plath's poetry.

A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson

1998; 274 pages. Genre : Anecdotal. Overall Rating : B..

    Bill Bryson's witty recounting of his attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, despite being 44, not in shape, and not knowing anything about hiking. He's joined by his boyhood friend, Stephen Katz, who is even more out-of-shape and unknowledgeable than Bryson.

What's To Like...
    As usual, Bryson self-deprecating humor had me chuckling out loud. There's the savings-draining trip to the sports store, trying to pack without breaking one's back, the foibles of a pair of urbanites camping in the wilderness, and a guffaw-inducing meeting with a moose. Fortunately, the bears, ticks, and poisonous snakes stayed away.
.
    You also get to share his joy as he beholds sunrises and mountain ridges essentially untouched by the human hand. And Bryson shares his research into the history of the trail, the US National Park Service, the fauna and flora, and the very mountains themselves.
.
    Unfortunately, the chuckles-per-page diminish in the second half of the book. Maybe Bryson had difficulty finding something funny about almost dying from hypothermia. So the first half of the book (Georgia thru Virginia) rates an "A"; while the last half (Pennsylvania thru Maine) rates a "C".

.

You dare to call yourself a hiker?!
    The Appalachian Trail is 2200 miles long. Almost all of it is up-and-down mountains on barely discernible paths. I once did a 10-mile hike in Boy Scouts, over mostly level eastern-Pennsylvanian terrain, in perfect weather, and at a leisurely pace. It took most of the day.
.
    Bryson ended up walking 890 of those 2200 miles. That he'd write a book about this feat seems to have ticked off a bunch of self-styled "serious hikers". Personally, I'm quite impressed. I didn't enjoy AWITW quite as much as I did The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid, but it's still an entertaining book, and a recommended read.

The Bancroft Strategy - Robert Ludlum (kinda)

2006; 708 pages. Genre : Spy Novel. Author : anybody's guess. Overall Rating : B..

    Robert Ludlum died in 2001, but five years later, using a ouija board and a magic marker, he communicated The Bancroft Strategy to his Estate. I know this, because his name is plastered on the cover of the book in huge, gold letters.

.    Todd Bellknap is no Jason Bourne, but when his mentor and best friend in the Consular Operations agency is kidnapped, he is forced to go rogue to go to the rescue. Meanwhile, Andrea Bancroft suddenly finds herself 6 million dollars richer, with just one catch. She has to sit on the board of her estranged family's Bancroft Foundation. When their two paths inevitably cross, they have to learn to trust each other in order to track down the sinister and elusive "Genesis".

What's To Like...
    It's the classic Ludlum storyline - one lone agent up against a sizable and mysterious conspiracy, on the run from his agency, and never knowing who's good and who's bad. There are lots of plot twists, lots of action, and lots of worldwide settings. The overall ending surprised me (although in retrospect, it shouldn't have), and at the very, very end, there's a neat little ethical twist that will make you smile.

.    OTOH, the book is 700+ freakin' pages long. Where was the editor in all this? And if you've read one-too-many Bournish "one agent beats all the other trained killers in the world" books, you might find this a slow go.

.I'm as paranormal as the next guy.
    Okay, I lied. Despite the bookcover, Robert Ludlum didn't write TBS. In small print, on the credits page, it says, "Since his death, the Estate of Robert Ludlum has worked with a carefully selected author and editor to prepare and edit this work for publication."
.
    Most of the criticism of this book has to do with the authorship. Some people felt suckered in by Ludlum's name splashed across the cover. Others felt this was a poor copycat of the Bourne plots. Those points have merits, I guess.

.   Personally, I enjoyed ths book, despite its length. Most people who read this genre know Ludlum passed away a while back, so one shouldn't feel duped. And if you can forget about the Bourne trilogy (all six books of it), and read The Bancroft Strategy for its own merits, it's pretty good. I even have some sympathy for the unknown author. He writes a good book, and no one will ever know.