Of Mice and Men & Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men (1937) and Cannery Row (1945). Author : John Steinbeck. 306 Pages (OM&M - 107 pgs; CR - 195 pgs). Genre : American Literature. Overall Rating : A.
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.    This "twofer" book was published by Penguin Books in 1986. It's a nice pairing. Both stories are set in the same place (Northern California), the same time-period (1930's), and have the same theme - a bunch of "less fortunates" and the ruts they're stuck in. But the stories also nicely contrast each other. OM&M is a darker, tragic study of the hopelessness of trying to escape that rut. CR is a lighter, comedic study of a group of people who don't regard their situation as a rut at all.
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.What's To Like...
    The storylines are good, all the characters are engaging (even the bad guys), and there's quite a bit of character development in these relatively short tales. Steinbeck's literary description of California in the 1930's is masterful. Both stories are the proper length. These would suck if they were 500 pages long.
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.What's Not To Like...
    Not much, since I give this an "A". There is some cussing that might offend the faint-of-heart. That's not a problem for me, but it grates my soul when Steinbeck uses the ...ahem... N-word. I know it was commonly used in the 1930's, and I am dead-set against censorship, but I can't help it. That word offends me. Can't we just replace it with "black" in stories like these?

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    Oh, and I got quite excited when I found that someone was selling this book for $190 on eBay, since I had picked it up for $2. Visions of untold wealth danced in my head. Alas, that $190 asking-price had the curious acronym PHP after it. It turns out that stands for "Philippines Pesos", and the PHP:USD exchange rate is about 41:1. Easy come, easy go.

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Is the phrase "American Literature" an oxymoron?
    Being a biblioholic means reading a lot of "C-to-B-minus" books. After a while, one's expectations get lowered. Anything that rises a smidgen above humdrum is cause for a minor celebration. Furthermore, I'm not a big fan of any American Lit BV (before Vonnegut). So this book was a pleasant and unexpected treat. I don't know that I'm prepared to tackle Steinbeck's longer stuff (Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath), but I may have to give some of his other less-than-250-pages books a try.

The Dogs of Riga - Henning Mankell

1992 (Swedish); 2001 (English). 324 pages. Genre : Murder-Mystery. Overall Rating : B-.

    A life-raft floats up onto the Swedish shore. Inside are the bodies of two men, shot through the heart after being tortured and then dapperly dressed. There's no ID on either man, and no markings of the origin of the life-raft. With almost nothing to go on, Swedish detective Kurt Wallander tries to solve the case, which sudsequently leads him to Latvia, which is enduring the last throes of the Soviet Union.

.What's To Like...
    The emphasis here is on Wallander's (and several of his coworkers') plodding perseverence. No brilliancies; just dogged detective work. The plot unfolds beautifully as they try to determine the nationalities of the victims and the origin of the life-raft. It (naturally) quickly becomes clear that the two murders are simply a small part of a more complex plot.

.The Swedish ambiance is a welcome relief from that "bubbly buxom blonde girls skiing around as ABBA music plays in the background" scenario. Swedish winters are gray, cold, and like our Phoenix summers, seemingly never-ending. When Wallander travels to Riga, everything only gets grayer, colder, gloomier, poorer, and darker. Kewlness.

.Best of all, Wallander is a polar-opposite to a literary "Mary Sue". See here for Wikipedia's offering on Mary Sues. More about this in a bit.

.What's Not To Like...
    The plot unfolds nicely, but its resolution seems hurried and forced. For 200+ pages the sleuthing creeps along, then suddenly there's a 007 shoot-em-up, where a bunch of good guys get offed, while our hero amazingly gets neither a scratch nor caught. Kinda reminds me of The Last Samurai, where a couple hundred Japanese warriors get chopped into hamburger meat by machine guns, while Tom Cruise somehow handsomely survives.

.    While the Latvian ambiance is great, Mankell doesn't seem to have done much detailed research. For instance, when Wallander has to flee beyond Riga's city limits, all Mankell says is that he goes into various unnamed towns that Wallander never learns the names of. Sloppy, sloppy.

.    Finally, the translation (which Mankell had nothing nothing to do with) just sucks. There are spelling and grammar errors, and some clunky sentence structures. One wonders if this is a much better read in the native tongue.

.Mary Sue, Where Are You...
    If you're tired of too-perfect heroes, Kurt Wallander is for you. He's middle-aged, somewhat overweight, and average-looking. He drinks too much alcohol, even by Scnadinavian standards. He smokes too much and is addicted to lousy coffee. He's divorced, and frankly his ex is doing better without him. His father lays guilt trips on him, and thinks Wallander made a dumb mistake by joining the police force. So far, there's nothing to prove that wrong. His (grown) daughter barely tolerates him. He hates his job, but finds that he doesn't have any alternatives. His romantic charms are non-existent. In the previous book, he threw himself at the beautiful female lead, only to have her threaten to bring a sexual harassment charge against him. Here, he falls for a murdered-Latvian-detective's widow, and while she appreciates his solving the case and saving her life, she prefers to remain "just friends".

.    Nevertheless, I've enjoyed both Kurt Wallander books that I've read. I think Mankell is more concerned about giving you a gritty, true-to-life picture of Sweden (and in this case, Latvia as well), letting you know of some of the serious social issues there, and having you become friends with Wallander, his family, and his fellow detectives. Now if he'd just pay more attention to the plot itself...

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter Miller

1959; 313 pages. Genre : Post-apocalyptic fiction. Awards : Hugo (1961). Overall Rating : B.

    .A Canticle For Liebowitz chronicles a monastery in the futuristic American Southwest, and is divided into three parts : Fiat Homo ("Let There Be Man"); Fiat Lux ("Let There Be Light"), and Fiat Voluntas Tua ("Thy Will Be Done"). The first part takes place in the 25th century, as mankind struggles to survive in the aftermath of a devastating 20th-century nuclear holocaust. There are mutants, wolves and brigands, and a potent anti-knowledge movement which executes all intellectuals and burns all books.

   .The second part takes place 600 years after the first (3174 AD); when technology is being re-learned, for better and for worse. The third part takes place 600 years after that, (3781 AD) when galaxy-travel has been perfected, and when a nuclear holocaust again is a distinct possibility.
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What's To Like...
    The emphasis is on historical reflection here, not on thrills-&-spills action. Miller explores the "history repeats itself" motif : Holocaust, Dark Ages, Renaissance, Holocaust, Dark Ages, Renaissance, and so on. He also looks at the inherent conflict between Scientific Knowledge and Church Dogma, and the respective roles of Church and State on issues such as Euthansia. And he focuses on the contributions (past and future) of monasticism to civilization - copying books and preserving knowledge when no one else is/was there to do it.

   .There are a number of interesting characters. Brother Francis, who stumbles upon pre-holocaust relics. The wanderer who manages to show up in all three books. And the Poet, who's a man after my own heart : quick of wit, and short of common sense.

    .Oh yeah - and there's "booklegging". The art of locating, smuggling, copying, and preserving books, for the sake of Knowledge, even at the cost of one's life. Hey, every bibliophile should aspire to this noble criminal activity, should worse come to worst.

What's Not To Like...
    The characters may be interesting, but except for the Wanderer, they all die off within 100 pages/600 years. So don't get too attached to anybody.

    .There's an abundance of Roman Catholic-sounding Latin throughout the book. I hate Latin. If you saw my grades in it from Junior High, you'd understand why.

Those who don't learn from History are condemned to repeat it.
    A Canticle For Liebowitz received mixed reviews when it came out. Some loved it (hence the Hugo); some hated it, including the Catholic Digest. Miller joined the Catholic Church in 1947 (prior to that he called himself an atheist), and there is an aura of Catholicism througout ACFL.
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    The Catholic Church didn't like ACFL, because there are a lot of theologic foibles here. For example, "Saint Liebowitz" was in fact a Jewish engineer. And some of his "relics" revered in the monastery, are things like a shopping list ("pound pastrami; six bagels") and a cover page for an intra-office memo. Then there's the canonization of Saint Liebowitz, due to ailing penitents who swear they prayed to him, and were healed.

.   This novel took a huge toll on Miller. Prior to this, he was a prolific short-story writer. Indeed, ACFL is actually three of his short stories, re-worked and synchronized into a coherent novel. Alas, after this, he suffered from depression and writer's block; and he never had anything else published during his lifetime. He devoted himself to writing a sequel (technically a "midquel") to ACFL. In 1996 (that's 37 years later), when the midquel was just about done, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. A Miller-appointed author-successor, Terry Bisson, put the finishing touches on the midquel.
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    In closing, this is a great book for when you want to reflect upon history, mankind, and "the big cosmological picture". However it's not a good choice if you're in the mood for the clichéd Starship Troopers action-hero-against-the-monsters sci-fi tale. Read it to muse, not to be amused.

Holidays On Ice - David Sedaris

1997, 134 pages. Genre : (Semi) Non-Fiction, Humor. Overall Rating : C+..

    Six Christmas-themed stories (3 new, 3 previously-published) by David Sedaris. Among them : an over-the-top Christmas letter, a review of the neighborhood kiddie Christmas pageants, and a Christmas-is-Giving rivalry between two famiies that gets out of hand.

.What's To Like...
    Sedaris' wit is dry and hilarious. I kept laughing out loud, which isn't always desirable when one's spouse is trying to sleep. It's a quick, easy read. If, on December 30th, you realize you're still one book short of your reading goal, Holidays On Ice is your answer.

   .The best of the six stories is Santaland Diaries, recounting Sedaris' job at 33 years old of being a seasonal "Santa's Elf" at Macy's. The Christmas Pageant Review story, and "Dinah, the Christmas Whore" are good as well.

.What's Not To Like...
    The Christmas Letter story is a bit too in-your-face, even for me. Somehow, a tale with a dead baby (Spoiler alert : "I said WATCH the baby, not WASH the baby!) in a Christmas book is just inappropriate. The "Christmas is Giving" story goes on way too long. Overall, this is an uneven set of stories, and not a good choice as your first Sedaris book. Finally, this book sold for $8.99 new?! For 134 pages?! What a rip.
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"Congratulations, Mr. Sedaris. You are an elf!"
    There apparently is some controvery about Sedaris' books. The NYT lists them in their Non-Fiction list, yet it is alleged that some of his essays are ...erm... hyperbolized. I've read three of his books so far, and all I can say is : I certainly hope Sedaris availed himself to hyperbole. If not, he was raised in the most dysfunctional family imaginable, and half the people he's met in life are shoe-ins (shoo-ins?) for the loony bin.

   .In closing, here are two quick teasers from the Santaland Diaries. If you find them funny, you'll enjoy David Sedaris. If not, Art Linkletter books are still around.

."A spotted child visited Santa, climbed up on his lap, and expressed a wish to recover from chicken pox. Santa leapt up." (pg. 25)
."Today a child told Santa Ken that he wanted his dead father back and a complete set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Everyone wants those Turtles." (pg. 30)

The Bourne Betrayal - Eric Van Lustbader

2007, 717 pages. Genre : Action. Overall Rating : C.
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.  When Arab extremists kidnap his only friend in CI (Covert Intelligence), it's up to Jason Bourne to find and rescue him. But the kidnappers have already invaded Bourne's mind, and they are able to anticipate his every move.

What's To Like...

    The book is constant action, so at 717 pages, you're certainly getting your money's worth. There's a plethora of plot twists to keep you reading. As with any Bourne novel - there are well-described locations (Ethiopia, Odessa, Istanbul) to fall in love with. There are four major plotlines going on at the same time, yet you have no trouble keeping track of them.

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What's Not To Like...
    There's a lot of action, but not much progress. The core of the trilogy written by Robert Ludlum - the inner struggle between the assassin Jason Bourne and the "normal" David Webb - is missing here in book #5. Only Jason Bourne exists.

.The technical portions of the story will strain your limits of believability. EvL's attempt to write ebonics is just irritating. Then there are all those spy-novel clichés.
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.Three clichés I've had my fill of... (and they're all here!)
1. Western Girl falls in love with Arab terrorist. This is always the kiss of death. If the evil BF doesn't kill her first-hand, he betrays her and the last thing she sees is his uncaring face. Just once I'd like to see a different ending. Maybe she betrays him. Maybe she perishes, fighting by his side. I don't care. Any new angle will do.

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2. The hero mistakenly thinks he killed an innocent bystander. Of course, he didn't. Evil people did and made it look like he did. For goodness sake, Bourne's an assassin. There is bound to be some collateral killing. If he wants to cry in his beer afterwards, so be it. But enough of the "only evil bullets kill innocent people" concept.

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3. The Ultimate Evil deliberately lures the hero to his central headquarters so he can finish him off. This sounds like something out of a bad Austin Powers movie. Folks, if I'm the UE, there's no way I'll ever let the hero get within 100 miles of my HQ, let alone show him the way. If we're going to duke it out, we'll do it out in the boonies somewhere, so that if/when the hero kills me, my evil plan will still go forward.

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Overall Rating : C
    In retrospect, this story should not have had the Bourne name associated with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with clichés and unbelievable technology. Clive Cussler enthusiasts have enjoyed them for decades. But the Ludlum-penned Bourne trilogy doesn't rely on Batmanesque gizmos, and is really about one man's reconciling his polar-opposite inner beings. The Bourne Betrayal has strayed a long way from Ludlum's premise. It is a decent read, as long as you are able to think "Dirk Pitt" instead of "Jason Bourne".

The Crossroads of Time - Andre Norton

170 pages; 1956. Genre : Sci Fi (Young Adult). Overall Rating : A- to C+.

.   By having a premonition to help someone out, Blake Walker finds himself drawn into dimension-travel, and the tracking down of a rogue who's importing sophisticated weaponry into less-advanced dimensions for personal gain.

   .Andre Norton (1912-2005) was one of the top Sci-Fi authors in the 50's/60's. While she didn't introduce the concept of time- and space-travel, she popularized it by using it as a repeated theme in her books. TCoT is one of her earlier stories, which she then developed into a 4-5 book series.

What's To Like...
    This is a perfect story for a young teen boy. There's a fair amount of fighting and killing; and no yucky romance. Parents will appreciate that there's no sex or drugs. The bad guy is a UE (Ultimate Evil), but at least he's resourceful and cunning. And our hero doesn't start out as a perfect defender-of-all-that's-good. Indeed, he's as much of a liability as an asset in this present UE-hunt.
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    I like Norton's treatment of our timeline. All too often, Alternate History authors portray our particular time/space continuum as being the most advanced there is. We boldly go where no one has gone before, benevolently enlightening the rest of the Cosmos.

   .No so here. Our dimension comes off as being quaintly naive, psionically primitive, and dangerously prone to violence. Just the sort of place a UE would want to take over. That's a refreshing viewpoint.

What's Not To Like...
    Not a lot. Norton doesn't spend a lot of time fleshing out most of the alternate worlds here, but I suppose that's to be expected in a 170-page book. And I swear, although every Norton book ever issued has at least two completely different bookcovers, none of them (including the one shown above) have anything to do with the story itself.
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What If...
    Norton's general hypothesis here is that an alternate timeline spins off at every critical juncture in history. Thus you end up with thousands of parallel universes.

   .The one that Norton does take some time to explore here is a world where Hitler wins the Battle of Britain. The remnants of the British army and government flee to Canada, and the main phase of World War 2 consists of Germany and Japan besieging North America from both coasts. The effort eventually fails, but at the cost of tremendous destruction and anarchy in the United States. TCoT is set in the present (well, mid-1950's), and while Blake and his associates try to catch the UE, a few plucky, local New Yorkers are trying to re-establish civilization.
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Overall Rating : Adults : C+; Young Adult : A-
    In the end, the plot is just a bit too straightforward to keep an adult reader's interest. And it has to be asked just how the universe decides what constitutes an critical juncture, worthy of an alternate world spin-off. But for a kid into science fiction, this should be a fun story. And it is cool to read someone who blazed the path for present-day Alt-History writers.

What's So Funny? - Donald Westlake

2007, 401 pages. Genre : Crime Comedy. Overall Rating : B-.

   .This is the latest (#13) in Westlake's Dortmunder series. John Dortmunder is a lovable galoot of a burglar, who here is blackmailed by a retired detective into masterminding a heist of a jeweled chess set, originally earmarked for the Czar of Russia.
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What's To Like...
    WSF? is a fast and fun read. Dortmunder and his associates are slow-witted but persistent, true-blue to each other, and lovable New Yorkers through-and-through. They are all proficient at their purloining profession, and take great pains to plot each caper carefully. But their best-laid plans inevitably go awry.

What's Not To Like...
    According to Wiki, the books are formulaic. The heists are always ethically-justified (the chess set here was already stolen property); meticulous plans are laid; things always go wrong; the gang is nevertheless muddly successful; yet in the end the goods somehow elude their grasp, ending up in some noble and charitable person's unwitting possession. Oh, and no one ever gets killed.

.I'd probably go batty if I had to read all 13 of these, but since this is only my 2nd Dortmunder book, the "formula" is still interesting.
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Less interesting is the first third of this book. The ex-cop forces Dortmunder to take the job by means of an incriminating photo of him at an earlier burglary scene. Okay, that's a plot device, and I can accept that. But the chess set is in a heavily-guarded vault, and for the first 150 pages, all Dortmunder does is sit, think, meditate, and conclude that a break-in is impossible. It would've been a better pace to spend the first 125 pages detailing the circumstances of Dortmunder getting caught on camera, allow 25 pages for "It can't be done", then move into the "Oh, things have changed. Here's how we're going to do it" stage.
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Overall Rating : B-.
    We'll call What's So Funny? cotton-candy for the mind. There's nothing heavy or substantive here; it's all-too-soon done and gone; yet in the end you're happy for having partaken of it. It's a good choice for when all you want is some "Lit Lite".

Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

1952, 320 pages. Genre : Dystopian Lit. Overall Rating : B.

   .This was Kurt Vonnegut's first pubished novel, and is set in Ilium, New York, where it follows the misadventures of Dr. Paul Proteus in a 1984-esque world. The back-cover blurb on my book calls it as "a cross between Animal Farm and Alice In Wonderland," and that's a fair description.
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What's To Like...
   This is "applied dystopia". Whereas Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 all have essentially the same mood, books like Player Piano (satire added) and Animal Farm (um... animals added) at least give the Big Brother story a new ambiance. Also, Vonnegut sticks to a straight chronological timeline here, which is not true in quite a few of his novels. I know chrono-hopping can be confusing to you non-time-travelers out there.
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Best of all are the characters themselves. The good guys have their faults; the bad guys have their endearing traits. Proteus has few, if any, outstanding qualities. Gray is a nice change from the black-or-white characters in most stories.

.What's Not To Like...
    This is not Vonnegut's best effort. He self-rates it a "B", and I'm inclined to agree. It's a good first stab, but it lacks the polish of his later work. The most glaring weakness is the tired, well-trodden dystopian plot. I keep waiting for a book in this genre to come up with something different for a storyline. Anything different.
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When I look into my crystal ball, I see...
As with any book in this genre, it's fun to see which parts of the future the author got right, and which parts he didn't. For brevity's sake, we'll limit ourselves here to some of his hits.
.1.) The Back To Nature Movement. At one point, Proteus decides to "cleanse" himself, and purchases an old farm that doesn't even have electricity. Jaded flower children followed suit 20 years later. With an equal lack of success. Eva Gabor, where are you today?

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2.) Let's sing the company song! Thank God, I never had to do this. But it's big over in Japan, and I have a friend who used to work for Wal-Mart, and claims they started every day off by singing the Wal-Mart song. Whatever that is. Oh, and Wal-Mart used to pick a different person each morning to lead the singing. So the trick was to scrunch down behind other patsies to avoid being called upon.

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3.) The ultimate anathema. In Player Piano, the label-of-death was being called a saboteur. It didn't matter whether you actually were one or not. Today, of course, we call anyone who doesn't go along with us a terrorist.

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4.) Everyone's a doctor. Vonnegut just barely missed on this one. Everyone in the privileged category in Player Piano gets a PhD. Whether it has any use/meaning or not. Nowadays, we don't have garbage collectors; we have sanitation engineers. Secretaries aren't secretaries; they're administrative facilitators. Same sort of thing.

.Bottom line - this is a good book to read if you're already hooked on Vonnegut ( I am), but Slaughterhouse-5, The Sirens of Titan, or Breakfast of Champions are all better introductions to him.

The Thin Place - Kathryn Davis

2006, 275 pages. Genre : Fiction, American Literature. Overall Rating : A-..Kathyrn Davis' 6th novel examines a cross-section of humanity in a bevy of people (and a number of animals) in a town steeped in Americana.

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What's To Like...
    This book is hard to characterize. It's about three girls/friends coming of age; but it's not Chick-Lit. It's about one of those girls being able to bring people and animals back to life; but that's really just incidental to the story.

.It gives the hyperactive, mischievous thoughts of dogs; it has a resolute beaver that never loses hope even when caught in a trap; and there's a feline who tests the saying, "Curiosity kills the cat". But this isn't Dr. Doolittle. It has a 92-year-old lady still full of life, but this isn't On Golden Pond.
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What's Not To Like...
There's not much of a plot. It's more of a snapshot of a small New Englandesque town (although the exact location of it is never really given). With about 50 pages to go, things start to build towards a climax, but even that is ...um... anticlimactic. If you're seeking for swashbuckling action, look elsewhere.

.There are a lot people who, for some reason, expected The Thin Place to have a spiritualistic overtone - good-vs.evil; demons & angels; etc. True, there's a bit of that here, but this is more mystical than metaphysical.

.Finally, this is not an easy read. The story demands your full attention, as it swirls from one being to another in almost random fashion. Clive Cussler fans should avoid this one at all costs.
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Overall Rating : A-.  There's no middle ground. You'll either love The Thin Place, or give it up after 50 pages. It reminds me of Waiting For Godot, but instead of witty dialogue to substitute for a plot, Ms. Davis treats you to some beautiful writing. This is an excellent book for a quiet evening with New Age music playing in the background. But don't try to read it while watching TV.

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Overall Rating : B.

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Oh, the absurdity of war! John Yossarian is a bombadier, stationed in the Mediterranean during the last half of World War 2. He spends his time bombing the northern half of Italy, falling in love with various whores in Rome, agonizing that his next mission will end in his death, and trying to figure out how to convince the military to ship him back to the states.

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There is a way out, of course. If you're found to be insane, that's an instant ticket home. Alas, by attempting to show that you're insane, you demonstrate your sanity. That's Catch-22, and that means it is impossible for Yossarian to ever get himself discharged.

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What's To Like...

Yossarian is a classic anti-hero : full of faults, scared of dying, and anti-establishment. The group he's stuck with (the "Fighting 256th") has country bumpkins, back-stabbers, buxom nurses, milquetoast chaplains, incompetent Generals (anyone remember the Peter Principle?), ambitious Colonels, capitalistic Majors, and a host of other engaging characters to become acquainted with.

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If you like paradoxes, there are a couple billion of them in this book. Then there are the Catch-22's themselves, which are similar to, yet different, from paradoxes. BTW, a "Catch-22" is entirely fictional. FWIW, Heller tried quite a few numbers as the title prior to the book being released - Catch-11; Catch-14; etc.

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I suspect if you've ever been in the service, you'll find this book hilariously close to how things really were. I'm not a vet (both the Army and me are stronger because of this), so there's a limited amount of relevancy here for me.

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What's Not To Like...

It's a slow read. As with the other Heller book I've read ("God Knows"), its way too repetitious. You could slice 150 pages out of C-22, and it would be much better. You'll find yourself skipping "text" paragraphs to get to the dialogue parts.

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There's no plot for the first 75% of the book. There's humor and wit, but no progression in the tale at all. To be fair, Heller wakes up around page 330, and things finally begin to unfold. The book gets markedly darker after that, which IMNSHO is a plus.

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Finally, the ending just plain sucks. I know this is a farce, but it was a believable farce until... well, no spoilers here.

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It's The History, Stupid...

If you judge Catch-22 solely on its literary merits. it doesn't stand the test of time very well. Joseph Heller was destined never to repeat his initial smash hit. I'd go as far to say that the success of C-22 was due more to good timing than good writing. Of course, I say that about Seinfeld too.

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But Catch-22 is a breakthrough opus. Along with authors like Kurt Vonnegut, there was finally something distinctive about American literature. Yeah, the Brits figured this out before we did, but hey, they've had more practice at this sort of thing.

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You can see the influence of Catch-22 in M*A*S*H, and maybe-just-maybe, even in Dilbert. So we'll remember its time-period, and give it a shaky B. With Heller, Vonnegut, and Hunter S. Thompson all now departed, maybe it's time for a new generation of talented American authors to emerge.

Ruled Britannia - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : B.

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It's 1597. England seethes under a long Spanish occupation, following the success of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Queen Elizabeth is in the Tower of London. The state religion is once again Roman Catholic. The Inquisition is rooting out all Protestant die-hards and other heretics.

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Will Shakespeare couldn't care less. All he wants to do is write and stage plays, and get paid for them. But karmic forces are in motion. The English insurgents hire him to write a nationalistic play ("Boudicca"), while the Spanish oppressors hire him to write a eulogistic drama to memorialize their dying monarch (Philip V). The tension mounts as Will reluctantly finds himself forced to play both ends against the middle, but becoming unexpectedly wealthy as he does.

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What's To Like...

Shakespearophiles will love this book. Turtledove cribs freely from various plays of the the Bard himself, as well as some bits of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine. The result is a fine piece of drama that will appeal to even those of us who weren't thrilled about having to read one of Shakespeare's plays every cotton-pickin' year in High School.

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The author serves up a delightful cast of characters. There's the witty and punning Wil Kemp who will keep you groaning & chuckling. His counterfoil is the bombastic fellow-actor Richard Burbage. There's the Mitonesque detective Constable Strawberry, who can take a simple statement and embellish until not even the Queen herself can make out what he just said. And the lovable-but-lazy manservant Diego, employed by the womanizing Spanish soldier and wannabee-writer, Lope de Vega. And finally, at center-stage throughout, we have the but-I-never-wanted-to-be-a-hero Will Shakespeare.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's a drama? Therefore, don't expect much action. The book starts promisingly, with a pleasant public burning-at-the-stake, but that's pretty much it for blood-spilling until around page 500. (Yawn)

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Turtledove takes great pains to immerse you in 1590's England. But that includes that dreadful renaissance English that made reading The Merchant of Venice such a royal PITA. You will find yourself getting tired of being repeatedly subjected to words like fain, liefer, gramercy, certes, 'swounds, bethinks, belikes, and a whole slew of other verbs prefixed by that annoying "be-". Forsooth, it besucks.

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Finally, if you're English and Protestant, you will probably find this to be an uplifting tale. But if you're Spanish and Catholic, you may take umbrage at the stereotyping of all the occupiers as being either stupid or evil.

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To Be Free, or Not To Be Free...

Plotwise, the story ambles to a predictable conclusion. Spoiler Alert : The oppressors are ousted, the Queen is freed, and like Robert Asprin's Skeeve, Turtledove's Shakespeare somehow bumbles his way into becoming a hero.

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Yet there is a subtle undertone to the story. In the end, as Shakespeare wanders through London observing the joyous celebrations of long-awaited liberty, he also notes that the English citizenry are treating the unfortunate remaining Spanish (and anyone perceived - justly or unjustly - as being a collaborator) with just as much brutality as the Spanish had doled out for nine years. Even the likable Diego, who has never done any harm to the English, and who only wants to sleep his way through life, ends up dead-as-a-doornail, a casualty in the name of Freedom.

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But I digress. As a drama, Ruled Britannia rates an "A". As an action novel (hey, Mr. Turtledove! You at least cooda included the Armada's successful campaign against England in the story), it only rates a "C". That averages out to a "B", so that's what we'll give it.

Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Overall Rating : B.

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Something is slashing and gnashing people at the New York Museum of Natural History, and eating their brains. Is it human, animal, vegetable, monstrous, demonic, or alien? Whatever it is, Margo Green better find out quick cuz the museum wants to open a new exhibition in 4 days, and the Museum Management isn't about to let a few grisly slayings get in their way.

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What's To Like...

This is a page-turner. It starts off fast; there are no slow spots; and you can finish it in a couple of days. There are a few twists to keep you on your toes.

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The heroes aren't Mary Sues. (not sure what a Mary Sue is? See here). Indeed, the mayor of New York gets cast in a favorable light. When's the last time a politician got that treatment in a novel?

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And the book actually comes to a conclusion! You don't have to read 10 sequels for everything to wrap up. Take that, Robert Jordan.

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What's Not To Like...

Despite the twists, the story is somewhat predictable. The bad guys get chomped; the good guys live. The ending, although climactic, is also a let-down. Brain-Chomper gets his just desserts, but you don't get many details about his ultimate demise, and the Feds apparently snatch up the body before the authors can give you much of a description of the corpse.

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Finally, you have to believe that life, and new exhibits, go on as always, despite employees and visitors getting mutilated and disembrained.

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Oh Cri-Fi! Thy name is Crichton!

The teaser on the cover says it all : "Alien meets Jurassic Park". But as Cri-Fi, Relic just doesn't quite measure up to JP. Oh, there are some computer-generated read-outs, but one doesn't get the feeling that the authors made a lot of technical effort to make this scientifically believable. (*)

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Still, it is a decent book, so we'll give it a B, and see if we can find its sequel, Reliquary, at the used-bookstore.

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(*) : There's one glaring loose end to this story. A plane carrying most of the Amazonian expedition crashes early in the timeline, giving rise to the theory that a "Curse" is involved. But it becomes evident later on that Brain-Chomper wasn't on that plane. So why did it crash? Inquiring nit-pickers want to know.

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth

Overall Rating : C.

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Philip Roth's best-known work caused a sensation when it came out in 1969, for its shock value, sexually-taboo subjects, and Jewish humor. The book is essentially a 300-page monologue by the book's protagonist, Alexander Portnoy, to his shrink, one Dr. Spielvogel. Alex recounts his life, in more-or-less chronological order, focusing extensively on his four favorite sex partners - "The Monkey", "The Pilgrim", "The Lieutenant" (attempted only), and his hand. We won't mention the liver, the cored apple, the bottle, and his sister's bra.

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What's To Like...

If you like the Mel Brooks style of humor, you'll enjoy PC. One-line zingers abound, such as, "The perfect couple : she puts the id back in Yid; I put the oy back in goy."

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The book was banned in Australia when it came out, which naturally stimulated sales Down Under. It is self-deprecating, and obviously semi-autobiographical; so you'll have fun trying to figure out how much of this was drawn from Roth's life. You'll meet his domineering mother, his Willy Loman-esque father, and his plain-and-patient sister. You laugh as Alex tries to cope with his Jewish heritage and survive in a goy world.

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What's Not To Like...

It's a monologue. A very lonnnnnggggg monologue. Try imagining having to listen to a Mel Brooksian rant for, say, 12 hours straight. It may be funny at first, but it grates on one's nerves before very long.

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There's no plot. There's little progression, other than Alex grows older. And if you're looking for Alex to impart to you some grains of experiential enlightenment, forgetaboutit!

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So. Now vee may perhaps to begin, Yes?

I think the book's chief value lies in its ground-breaking impact when it came out. Up till then, American literature was pretty tame. And boring. No cuss words, nothing to offend the WASP and the Jewish communities, and above all, nothing about S-E-X. Portnoy's Complaint burst through all that phony Puritanical bullsh*t, and made people laugh while doing so. And the rabbis and Jewish leaders couldn't call it anti-Semitic, cuz Philip Roth is Jewish.

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Nevertheless, the book didn't age well. The shock-threshold has long been exceeded, and without that, the limitations of a chapterless, 300-page monologue are exposed. As you tire of the same themes and the same humor, you'll find it difficult to keep reading the book. I did complete it, and I'm happy about that, but it'll be a long time before I read another Philip Roth book.

Absolute Fear - Lisa Jackson

Overall Rating : C.

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A serial killer roams Louisiana, killing men, women, and a few old nuns in ritualistic fashion. Eve Renner gets stalked and shot, and has to deal with the possibility that her jealous beau could be the shooter/stalker.

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What's To Like...

The story starts out fast, and continues for 500 pages that way. There's lots of mysterious clues to reason out, and someone gets offed every hundred pages or so to keep you from getting too relaxed. I guarantee you won't figure out who's the Ultimate Evil until the end.

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What's Not To Like...

The heroine obviously has a death-wish. There's a psychopathic killer stalking her, and she just can't think of enough reasons to go off to places by herself.

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Everyone is amazingly dense here. The killer tattoos 3-digit numbers onto his victims, and no one can figure out what they mean. Hey, it took me two pages to deduce that one.

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Finally, there's a slew of unresolved loose-ends left lying about at the end, and one doesn't get the feeling they're there in order to carry over into the sequel. For instance, once our intrepid heroes figure out what the 3-digit numbers stand for, you're still left with a giant "so what?". Are these clever MacGuffins, or just sloppy writing?

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And if you don't know what a MacGuffin is, click here.

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Wait! It's not Murder-Thriller! It's...

Think about where you found this book. Were there Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele books on either side? Maybe that should be telling you something.

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Yes, folks. There may be blood, gore, moral outrage, death, and nunocide in this book, but at its core - it's Chick Fic. True love oozes from page to page, and threatens to overshadow the murder-mystery. I guess that's okay if you happen to be a chick, but male readers are hereby forewarned.

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To sum up, Absolute Fear is overall an average novel. The unforeseen twists and action-packed chapters are offset by the IQ-challenged characters and the loose ends and McGuffins. We'll give it a C, keeping in mind that if you like Romantic Thrillers, you might rate this a lot higher.

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

Overall Rating : C-.

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73-year old Norman Maclean's debut novella was an instant hit. A semi-autobiographical (I love that term. It means, "I'm gonna write about my life, but I get to lie at times.") story about the family relationships, primarily between Norman, his dad and his younger brother. The setting is ...erm... fly-fishing. Pure and simple.

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Being only 104 pages long, ARRTI is bundled with two other Maclean stories - one about a summer he spent in a logging camp; the other about a year he worked for the US Forest Service.

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What's To Like...

Maclean has a nice, poetic style. If you like your storylines heavy on the drama and light on the action, you'll love ARRTI. I don't think anyone before Maclean ever thought to use fly-fishing as a metaphor for life.

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Personally, I liked the two "add on" stories better. They have a bit more plot, a bit more action, and best of all, give a glimpse into what being a logger and a ranger was like 90 years ago. Daily life was a lot different then, and it's enlightening to get insight into it. In that respect, it reminded me a lot of Isaac's Storm, which was reviewed here.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's light on action?

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In truth, ARRTI is devoid of action.Plot-wise (PWP), little brother is self-destructive, and the 30-something author can't figure out how to help him. He asks his Dad, he of zero parenting skills, who also has nothing to offer. A lazy bum of a brother-in-law shows up, who at least puts the "fun" back into "dysfunctional" by boinking the town whore and drinking everybody's beer. The Maclean women's sole activity is nagging the Maclean men.

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All-in-all, pretty uninspiring stuff. Alternatively, those who loved ARRTI call the book "dark". Oh, the book was made into a movie, starring Robert Redford, and my carpool partner (who has excellent movie tastes) says it's a yawner too.

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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it...

Judging from other reviews, I am in the minority when it comes to ARRTI. They gush about the poetry, the philosophy, the metaphysics, and the key to life, the universe, and everything else. Here's one example :

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(ARRTI is) "detailed descriptions of fly-fishing and nature to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions". Whoa! Way deep, huh?

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El toro poo-poo. Maclean wrote about fly-fishing cuz it's one of the few things he knew something about. Anything can be hyped into being a metaphor for life. For instance, here's a quote from yesterday at MSNBC.com, coinciding with the advent of the baseball season :

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"Bart Giamatti, the former commisioner of baseball, wrote eloquently about that journey that begins with the batter standing at home, trying first to leave it and then to get back - to be safe once again at home. For him, it was a grand metaphor of life, this circuituous journey that could be fraught with danger and obstacles, that could demand daring and bravery to complete."

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Wow! More way deep stuff, eh? IMHO, they're both ridiculous, unless you happen to be a baseball or fly-fishing fanatic.

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But I digress. For me ARRTI was a ploddingly slow read, lacking any plot and action, and saved only by the two add-on tales. I must admit it's well-written; now if Maclean could only have thought of some sort of storyline to drape his flowery philosophy around. If you want to see this sort of genre done much better, try The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis, which we'll review in the near future.

The Ides of March - Thornton Wilder

Overall Rating : C+.

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Thornton Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won Pulitzer Prizes for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and Our Town (1938).

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TIoM is one of his later works, and frankly was not a big seller. It deals with the 6 months or so leading up to Julius Caesar's assassination ("Et tu, Brute", and all that). At 191 pages, it was an opportunity to read something "high brow" for a change, without too much of an investment in time.

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This is not a historical novel - Wilder makes that clear from the beginning. He 'borrows' a number of things that actually occurred 5-15 years earlier, and time-shifts them to 45-44 B.C. for the sake of his book.

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What's To Like...

The style is wonderfully unique. There's a high-falutin' word for it : epistolary. Basically, the story here is written as a series of letters from/to the various characters - Caesar, his wife, a lady named Clodia, Cicero, Cleopatra, etc. You can read more about this style here. It works. I'd enjoy trying to write a story in this mode.

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Being a series of letters, there's always a convenient place to stop if you're a late night reader like I am. Overall, Wilder divides TIoM into 4 "books". They are not chronological; instead, they deal with different themes. Book 1 introduces the characters; Book 2 deals with Love; Book 3 focuses on Religion; and Book 4 details the events that lead up to Caesar being perforated 23 times.

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The book provides some delightful glimpses into the daily thoughts and activities of people living at the height of the Roman Empire. Okay, actually it's all just Wilder's opinions as to what these would have been, just like Shakespeare did in his play. But it's still quite interesting.

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The central theme of the book is the "human-ness" of us all. Slave or emperor; ancient Roman or modern reader; we all put our pants on one leg at a time. Inspiring? No. But can you relate? Absolutely.

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What's Not To Like...

PWP? For the acronymically-challenged, click here. If you're looking for an action-packed storyline, you're better off with Gene Wilder than with Thornton. Ditto for hoping for any humor and/or surprising plot twists. This book can drag at times, especially if you have to plod through a verbose diatribe by Cicero or some flowery prose by Catullus.

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What Makes Thronton Wilder Worthy of a Pulitzer Prize...

I've read The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and will comment on it at some other time. And I've had to sit through Our Town at least once a long time ago, as it used to be the default choice for every High School Drama Club director who found himself with a limited budget and a dearth of talent.

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There are recurring themes in Wilder's works. First and foremost is the focus on our humanity. We may aspire to have the world revolve around us, but the truth is, God makes the rain fall on every man.

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Speaking of the Deity/Deities; Wilder doesn't seem to have a high regard for theism of any sort. At its best, the concept of God(s) serves to give us inner comfort and inspiration; at its worst, Religion exists to be manipulated for self-serving purposes.

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So what is important to Thornton Wilder? Love. Pure and simple; and in all of its aspects. We live; we die; and in a couple generations, no one remembers us. But to love, and be loved, makes it all worthwhile.

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Ah, but I digress. The Ides of March is a decent book, if you're in the mood for something philosophical, rather than a thrill-a-minute tale. We'll give it a C+ and snort condescendingly to indicate we've read something high-brow. We'll recommend it to others, but I don't think this will motivate me to pick up anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Elizabeth Browning.

Next - Michael Crichton

Overall Rating : C+.

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The latest offering from the author of Jurassic Park, Next is typical Crichton - exploring the potential, the perils, and the pitfalls of genetic engineering. From transgenic creatures to cures for diseases; from gene-snatching kidnappers to corporate in-fighting; there's a whole gamut of themes in the book.

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What's To Like...

The transgenic critters will most likely be your favorite threads in the book. There's an Sumatran orangutan that enjoys cussing in French and Dutch; a talking parrot that can do math in his head and carry on intelligent conversations with humans; and Dave the half-chimp/half-human who has trouble "fitting in" as a schoolboy.

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Despite its length, this is a quick read. Apparently Crichton has developed "James Patterson Symdrome" as there are 528 pages, divided into 95 chapters. So when you're ready to stop reading at night, you'll always be a page or two from the end of a chapter.

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The book has a reasonably good ending, with some of the storylines being skillfully (albeit, somewhat incredibly) brought together.

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What's Not To Like...

There are too many storyines, the majority of which you are going to have only a minimal interest in following. So there are some slow spots in the book. Indeed, one gets the feeling that Crichton had trouble deciding which of about two dozen plotlines to put into the book, so he included them all.

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Worse, as compared to Jurassic Park (and that comparison is inevitable), there's too much 'preaching' and technical warning, and not enough story-telling. Let's face it, while Crichton enlightens us as to the problems with cloning in JP, what we're really interested in is whether the velociraptors are going eat the good guys for lunch.

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Of course, in JP, you had only 3 or 4 plots to follow; here you have more than a dozen. If you do the math (528 pages; 25% 'preaching'; and let's say 12 plots, just to be on the conservative side), each storyline here is going to get about 35 pages to come to full resolution. That's a whole bunch a shallow tales.

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Life Is Like A Crash On The Freeway...

There was a forgettable movie a couple decades ago. IIRC, it had Robert "Wild Wild West" Conrad as a California motorcycle cop; it had Betty White (I think) as a middle-aged wife dying of cancer, and Buddy Ebsen as her husband trying to keep her from taking her own life. There were about a dozen other storylines-&-actors, none of which I remember.

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You spent the whole movie jumping around on these disparate stories, wondering how the heck they were going to tie in with each other. Surprise, surprise; they all were involved in a mega-car-crash on an L.A. freeway. Conrad goes flying through the air; Ebsen dies, leaving Betty White to try and carry on without him. And everybody else... well... like I said, it was a forgettable movie.

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That's the way Next comes across to me. Too many plots, and not enough story-telling. It would've been better to only deal with the transgenic animals, and leave the legalistic and corporate woes to a 20-page sermon at the end of the book.

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Despite its flaws, this is still Crichton, and he is still one of the better writers around. Heck, we named a genre after him. The transgenic animals are enough to make Next sufficiently engaging to read. So we'll give it a C+ and a lukewarm recommendation; and hope that the mouthy parrot, the foul-mouthed orangutan, and the monkey-boy show up in a sequel.

On the Oceans of Eternity - S.M. Stirling

Overall Rating : B.

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On The Oceans of Eternity is the third and final part of an Alternate History trilogy known informally as the Republic of Nantucket ("RoN") series. In RoN, the modern-day island of Nantucket is time-warped back to about 1250 B.C. and its inhabitants have to learn to survive. The first two books in this series have been reviewed here-(1) and here-(2) .

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OTOOE is primarily concerned with the marshaling of the forces of Nantucket and its allies (Babylon, Troy, England) as they try to out-flank and out-diplomacy the bad guys, who essentially control the entire Mediterranean Sea. There are a couple of side-plots (a 'Lewis & Clark' expedition to the Pacific by the good guys, and the courting and allying of Egypt by the bad guys); but those storylines are by-and-large peripheral.

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What's To Like...

As usual, there's lots of action; both diplomatic and warfare. Once again, the bad guys aren't Ultimate Evil personified - they're innovative, calculating, Machiavelian, and ambitious. That's still a nice change from the simplistic "white hats / black hats" dualism present in most sci-fi stories.

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OTOOE is a page-turner, and even comes to a dramatic conclusion; albeit enough 'loose strings' remain to where Stirling could've written a Volume 4 had he so desired.

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What's Not To Like...

The usual minor irritations mentioned previously (voiding, weapons sounds, and "Ayup") remain. In addition, the final resolution of the build-up between the two equally-powerful forces left many readers dissatisfied. There are charges of plagiarism (from the Michael Caine movie "Zulu"), which I frankly find to be much ado about nothing.

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Some feel that the character-development was shallow, but I find that rather petty. You have a choice - a fast-paced, action-packed trilology with moderate-to-minimal CD, or a 10-volume opus (a la Robert Jordan) with tons of CD. Personally, I like Stirling's choice.

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Finally, there's no action happening on the Island of Nantucket. So the pages dealing with the politics and lives on the mother island are boring.

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Do Publishers Dictate the Number of Pages in a Novel?

There's no doubt about it - the resolution of the conflict that's been growing for three books and 1800 pages is quite anti-climactic. A lot of readers feel Stirling lost interest and finished it up quickly and sloppily.

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Instead, I get a sense of haste. The plot(s) in OTOOE are proceeding along nicely, up until around page 500, when everything suddenly goes into overdrive. I'm not an author, so I wonder : do publishing companies ever (try to) dictate the length of novels? After all, every printed page is an expense for them.

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I imagine different authors would react in varying ways to such an edict. If James Patterson had to write a 400-page book, I think he'd let forth a loud moan, and divvy his book into 200 Chapters so as to have a lot of blank spaces on each chapter's first-page.

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OTOH, any attempt to limit Robert Jordan to less than 800 pages per book, would probably cause him to kill off a few characters, or else add a couple more volumes to Wheel of Time.

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So with OTOOE, I wonder if the deal was that it was to be 600 pages long, and Stirling looked up at Page 500 and freaked out. Maybe he called the publisher (ROC) and told them he couldn't possibly finish the story in the next hundred pages, so they told him, "Fine. You get 5% more pages. But not one page more." That would make 630 pages, which coincidentally is how long this is.

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But I digress. The RoN trilogy gets an overall A rating and a "highly recommended" endorsement from me. Lots of action, lots of different places to read about, and the whole thing gets wrapped up in only three books. Considering the way Eric Flint's 163x series has become bogged down, and the way Harry Turtledove has to take 12 novels to tell the "If The South Had Won The Civil War" alt-story; it's nice to only have to make only a 3-book reading investment to fully explore this alternate timeline.

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FWIW, many of the initial readers (back in 2000) felt that Stirling had left enough loose ends to write one more book in the series. But, as he hasn't done that in the last 8 years, I think in retrospect that was wishful thinking (which in a way, is a nice compliment re this storyline). Stirling did write a subsequent series ("Dies The Fire"), dealing with the changes wreaked upon the present-day world when Nantucket got zapped back to the Bronze Age. I haven't read any of those books yet, but they certainly look enticing. However, the next Stirling book on my TBR shelf is Conquistador. Stay tuned.

God Knows - Joseph Heller

Overall Rating : C.

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Joseph Heller's first work, Catch-22, brought him instant fame, but he never quite caught the magic thereafter. God Knows is his fourth novel, and is an autobiographical, Mel Brooksian look at the life of King David. Nearing his deathbed, David looks back on his life, giving his version of his encounters with Goliath, King Saul, Bathsheba, Absalom, Solomon, etc. Some have speculated that Heller is also reminiscing about his own life here, and that seems plausible to me.

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What's To Like...

If you like Mel Brooks' (who was a friend of Heller's) humor, you'll like God Knows. There is a witty humor here that will have you chuckling a number of times. And while the overall tone can only be called "irreverent", it is obvious that Heller studied the life of David comprehensively before writing this.

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There is a clever blending in of modern events into David's autobiography, and it works. All in all, this is a fresh, tongue-in-cheek way to present the life of Israel's second king.

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What's Not To Like...

There is a lot of repetition. This could easily have been pared down to a 250-page novel, and not have missed anything. Instead, the book drags in a bunch of places, and you'll find yourself skipping over the long paragraphs of commentary to get to the better, wittier dialogues.

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Along the same lines, if you are not crazy about Mel Brooks' style of humor, you may want to skip this book. Ditto, if you aren't keen on a non-linear timeline, a la Kurt Vonnegut (who also was a friend of Heller's).

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Finally, if you're a Fundie, and think things like Monty Python's The Life of Brian are blasphemous, stay away from God Knows.

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Political Correctness in Literature.

It's probable that Jews would join the Fundies in expressing outrage at this book, except that Joseph Heller is Jewish. Which makes me wonder - are there certain subjects/literary treatments that only those of a certain religious, political, national, and/or racial persuasion can write?

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What would've happened if Jospeh Heller hadn't been Jewish? Would there be cries of anti-semitism for presenting the likes of David, Yahweh, Moses, and Solomon (whom David calls "Shlomo") in such an unflattering, down-to-earth light? It's kinda like the N-word; blacks can use it, but it's taboo to everyone else.There's something just a bit discomforting about these double standards. As long as they exist; religious, political, international, and racial tensions will continue to be present, no matter how hard we try to cover them up and pretend they aren't here.

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But I digress. God Knows is an okay book, but it's plain to see why this isn't considered Joseph Heller's finest effort. It has some worthwhile moments, but you have to be ready for some dead spots in the book as well. If you can handle the latter, you will enjoy the former.

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

Overall Rating : C.

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I Am Legend is a recent, heavily-promoted movie; so it was natural that the book be re-issued as well. The central character, Robert Neville, is the last human being left in L.A. He is beset by vampires and infected mutants at night (he has to hole up in his fortress-like house); but during the day, he is the hunter and they are his prey.

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The story chronicles his loneliness and personal loss, his crusade against the other creatures, his research into the cause of the plague, and his gradual accepting of his fate.

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What's To Like...

For a 1954 novel, this has an outside-the-box plot. None of this "I vant to bite your neck" tripe. Instead, there's a nice blend of science and sci-fi as Neville tries to figure out what anti-vampire methods work (garlic and wooden stakes do, and the Crucifix works some of the time) and don't work (mirrors don't); and more importantly why each does or doesn't.

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The book is a quick read. More on that later. Matheson's stories had a major influence on Stephen King. No less than three movies were made from this story - The Last Man On Earth; The Omega Man (with Charlton Heston), and the eponymous 2007 release.

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Finally, Matheson's treating of the characters themselves is complex. There are no "white hats" and "black hats" here. Humans, mutants, and vampires - each is someone else's bane. That's quite unusual for a McCarthyism-era atmosphere.

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What's Not To Like...

For an apocalyptic novel, there's not a lot of action. Neville has a couple close calls in getting back home before sundown, but that's about it. When he finally does meet another (Spoiler : (seemingly) human being, one expects some excitement to start as he "makes contact". However, such is not to be. The story fizzles out to a tepid, yet unpredictable, end.

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Worst - when you buy this book, you'll discover only half of it is I Am Legend. The rest of it is a collection of short sci-fi stories, presumably also by Matheson. Their quality ranges from mildly amusing to rather yawn-inducing. I don't fault Matheson for this deception, I fault Tor Books.

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"Shouting his name in a paroxysm of fury"...

I Am Legend may be influential, but it doesn't stand the test of time. The lack-of-action makes the reading of this story a chore. I've heard the movie is quite different from the book, and in this case, that's gotta be for the better. So we'll give it a C, mostly for its originality, and be happy that people like Stephen King and Anne Rice came along to improve upon a good-but-could-be-better style of writing.

Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson

Overall Rating : A-.

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This book came recommended to me by my cousin (Thanks, Janet!), and is subtitled, "A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History".

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The book tells the story of the 1900 Hurricane that ravaged the city of Galveston. This was before the Weather Service started assigning names to hurricanes, so it is only known as the "Great 1900 Hurricane" and several other monikers. To this day, it holds the record for the largest number of deaths in the USA by a storm. 6,000-12,000 people lost their lives.

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What's To Like...

Larson weaves several engaging storylines together here. There is the account of the storm itself, of course. But there is also the biography of Isaac Cline, the Weather Bureau's local man in Galveston in 1900 . In addition, Larson gives the technical science involved in the making of a hurricane. Finally, there is a narrative about bureaucratic incompetence and hubris.

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Isaac's Storm also offers a pleasant glimpse into life in American at the dawn of the 20th Century. Telephones? Not yet. Automobiles? Nope. Radio? Uh-uh. But you get to see the sights, and smell the smells (even if they are often horse manure) of America in 1900. Having recently had the opportunity to see some of my Grandfather's photos from as early as 1907, Larson's descriptions here were really a treat.

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What's Not To Like...

There are no pictures!! Larson recounts using a magnifying glass to look at a number of photos showing the storm's aftermath. Hey, Erik! Next time, put those pics in the book! Sheesh. Even the Wikipedia article on this hurricane, which can be found here, has some photographs.

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Larson paints an unflattering picture of Isaac Cline. Apparently, in Galveston today, a lot of people take exception to that.

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What Have We Learned in 100 Years?

Galveston got nailed in 1900 because it had a smug feeling that it could handle anything Mother Nature threw at her (they disdained building a seawall several years earlier); because the US Weather Bureau did a crappy job of predicting the storm's path (they thought it was heading up the Atlantic coast), because the bureaucrats in the Weather Service cared more about politicking than about putting out accurate forecasts (they jealously refused to listen to the Cuban forecasters' warnings); and because Science was used for political purposes (years earlier, Cline had written that it was meteorologically impossible for an Atlantic storm to ever hit Galveston).

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100+ years later, in light of Hurricane Katrina, what has changed? The levee system in New Orleans was in gross disrepair (it failed in 53 places); the Weather Service (again) predicted the storm would move up the east coast of the US; we had a stooge heading FEMA ("Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!"); and a large segment of the dittoheaded US population still cannot grasp what the warming of the oceans (and the Gulf of Mexico) is doing to the strength of hurricanes (because, golly gee, Dubnutz, that might make it sound like Al Gore knows what he's talking about!).

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But I digress. I enjoyed Isaac's Storm, even though I'm not a big reader of (non-alternate) History. I liked the intermingling of the various storylines (others might not). This is recommended reading for anyone living in Texas, or indeed, anyone living in a hurricane zone. We'll give it an A-, only because this book screams to have some photographs included.