spongy white bread on the great buffet

An insanely funny review of Atlas Shrugged. I couldn't stop laughing.

I can't imagine it being that funny, if you haven't read the book, which the reviewer describes as "nerd revenge porn". Several of the reader comments (well the 1st few, I"m not going to read all 396 of them) are really amusing, as well. "Regardless, I may have to read it now, just so I can picture John Galt as a sentient cup of yogurt the whole time."

commenter #39 stated:
I think most Objectivists sit in their middle class suburban houses and think “Yeah, if society was like that, then I’d be a CEO making the big bucks too!” And there are also those who see these people, and use this selfishness and lack of self esteem and use it to manipulate them. Probably why it appeals to segment of the tea party folks.
-- nailed it in one. This explains my personal opinion of tannin-containing-idiots quite succinctly.

I read it in high school and it was the first significant piece of literature that really impressed me socio-politically. Sure, I'd read a bunch of Heinlein, Asimov, and I might even have read Dune, and quite a bit of Cherryh's more social-focused works. All of which came across as clearly SciFi. Atlas Shrugged was presented as more clearly 'it could be real', since it didn't have interstellar space traveling aliens wielding laser guns. I clearly disagree with the reviewer about how plausible the objectivist-world is. Just look around, man, and listen to the politicians today.

[pre-review] This Body of Death

I can't take it anymore.

This Body of Death, latest endeavour from Elizabeth George, is up to par with her fantastic writing. Normally, her books start with an opening chapter which leaves you wondering which one of the people are going to bite it before Chapter 2. This opens in a totally foreign style, quickly identifiable as a formal report. Being about a group of 3 twelve-year old boys and a toddler, who is implied to be the victim of some horrific events. Chapter 2 comes. We still don't have a body or any police. We have, however, gotten a chapter which seems much more as expected. But no body. Back to the little boys. No body. At this point, I'm ready to ask "so where's Death, dammit?" Finally a body appears. But it is clearly an adult victim with an equally adult perpetrator.

As the plot progresses, it keeps popping back to the criminal report of the three boys and toddler.

I am at the point where I simply cannot read that part any more. The implication seems to be that the older boys killed the younger one with premeditated horror. If I knew the little tyke lived, I'd be okay with it. The writing is so bland and emotionally detached that I simply can't take it. Sure, the style is appropriate for some sort of review-report. But the sheer lack of emotional contact is driving me nuts.

Yet my response "why isn't anyone dead yet?" was in expectation of an adult victim. What's wrong with me, if the expectation of an adult dying is okay (in a literary sense), but a very young child completely horrifies me?

The new character on the force at Scotland Yard is an alcoholic woman, who like any alcoholic expends a lot of energy to avoid being revealed as such. An interesting approach to character is that she is far more worried about the vodka than in whether or not she's getting respect from her male subordinates, although if asked would claim the sexism was the biggest problem.

An Adult screwing up her life, and screwing up other Adults' lives, is much more emotionally palatable to me than trying to read something piecemeal that I just know is going to be truly horrific (as the report-author keeps stating). I think it's just the victim's age which is bothering me; I wonder, however, what my response would be if it was an adult. George's book With No One As Witness had a psychotic killer luring teenaged boys to their death; for some reason that wasn't so bad. In that situation, though, the kidnapping and murder were only mentioned distantly with details coming out only with the police investigation. This just drags out and out in excruciating detail, leaving me in fear for the child's life. Obviously this is extremely well written to provide such a strong response. Nevertheless ...

Sorry, Ms. George, I just can't take it. I am certain the two plot lines will merge; if the toddler survives, I might go back and read the whole thing when I re-read the book eventually (which I'm sure I'll do).

I write like ...

cut & paste your writing to find out "who do you write like?" ... although I'm pretty sure it has a really simplistic tool. After all, look at the comparison of the topics and the writers below. It's not my writing style, it's the content. Because while I like Vonnegut, I do not write like him.


This is from my term paper on comparing dry and wet deposition following the Chernobyl disaster.

I write like
Arthur C. Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This is from a blog post on my surreal experiences in a Staasi prison in Berlin, Germany

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

From a chapter of a fantasy book I wrote for some friends:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Who in hell is David Foster Wallace?
With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel (after The Broom in the System) will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis. But few others will have the stamina for it. -publisher's weekly

So ... on 2nd thought about the content-only ... I had never heard of this Wallace fellow - but the text I pasted in was a pretty explicit erotic short story. The publisher's review doesn't make it sound like sex.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

and, of course, out of scientific curiosity, I tried something from a famous author, Upton Sinclair, who apparently writes like Arthur C. Clark.
.

[review] The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

This is the film version of Stieg Larsson's book, Män som hatar kvinnor [men who hate women] is less direct, but more appealing is the English title for the movie & book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Taken in that order:

Movie has a pared-down version of the plot, excellently chosen to maintain a seamless story line without the parallel line. Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, is convicted of libel and en route to jail for a few months when approached to investigate a 40-year old murder. Eventually persuaded, he heads off to rural Sweden. Concurrently Lisbet Salander, a bizarre younger woman is having horrific issues with a guardian, no explaination is provided as to why she has one. Eventually the two work together on the mystery of a missing young woman who has been murdered. Salander, a computer whiz, and Blomkvist, the star investigator, apply their respective talents. The clan's patriarch just wants to know who killed his beloved niece before he dies, even if no other justice can be served. Eventually we realize that the mystery must be closer to home than anticipated as someone starts trying to run Blomkvist/Salander out of town and off the story.

I've never been to Sweden and don't speak Swedish - this limits my opinion of the set design/location choices/script. If Minnesota was attractive to Swedish immigrants, I can see why. Mr.Gopher is the person to ask about these aspects.

The script - in the sense of the translated language and the given plot - were good, coherent and internally consistent. The character development starts in the middle of a story in several senses: Blomkvist is convicted, but we don't know the actual reason; Salander has a guardian, but we don't know why. We just pick up in the middle of their respective stories before they merge.

I'm surprise this got an R - rather than NC-17 rating - for "disturbing violent content including rape, grisly images, sexual material, nudity and language" - basically sex & violence. Our limits for sexual explicitness are down right Victorian compared to Europe & we're a nation with an appalling appetite for violent movies, but usually not the two together. The sexual violence in one scene actually shocked me; the sex/nudity certainly didn't.

A good movie, and mostly enjoyable. A good story with an ending I didn't expect.

Gopher Rating:
3 - definitely see it on video


The source material book has, in addition to the movie plot, a concurrent, parallel story line. In this, Blomkvist's libel conviction plays a much larger role, as this legal problem haunts him personally and professionally. The man requesting the murder investigation entices him by offering information to disprove the libel claim and thereby restore his journalistic reputation. Salander's strange behavior is presented gradually in historic contexts, making her more sympathetic. The sex and violence make more sense within the deeper story here. Lifting the legal undercurrent wholesale from the story makes the characters thinner than Larsson's depth gives. But in a movie one doesn't expect the same depth.

There are one or two instances of utterly bizarre words where I think the translator picked the wrong word from a dictionary for an 1) old-fashioned term and 2) colloquial English. Larsson's writing style is extremely detailed. Where possible, he fleshes out the physical scenes with specifics. E.g., He doesn't simply mention someone's having breakfast, he provides the list of food. E.g. Not only does someone furnish her flat from IKEA, he specifies which furniture lines. A set designer's work is limited trying to figure out how the author imagined it.

The Author gave this (and 3 other books) as a graduation present. It is often intriguing what people think you'll like. What they think your literary tastes are. In this case, perhaps more so than usual, since a writer is the gift-giver. This falls into the category "I'm glad I got this" type of present.

Gopher Rating
2.5 - somewhere between 'definitely read this' and 'you'll probably read it more than once'.
This rating is more on the fence than usual. I know I'll read it again; if you like mystery stories you probably will as well.

p.s.
I just requested the 3r novel from Larsson; within 1 hour I became #1449 of 1451 with 153 books available. 29 weeks before I would get it, assuming everyone keeps it for the full 3 weeks.
By the time I get the copy, it will probably be out in paperback.
Oh, my ... I can request the large print version and be #264 of 264 with 25 copies available and ... and.. 32 weeks before I could get it.

What I want to review

John Carter of Mars
Yeah, sure ... so I'm a woman? I'm almost automatically a minority with respect to old-fashioned SciFi. Dig the cover of the first volume of the Mars stories, Princess of Mars. The cast for the movie is pretty impressive, too. You are surprised that I like this? I'm not.

Try those power-pusher women who guiltily read bodice rippers with throbbing members seeking her moist femininity with ... but I digress. Those are truly misogynistic, in a way that old male-driven SciFi can never hope to achieve. ... ... Old white guys in the '30s writing about women being subservient to men? So what's news? Middle-aged white women in the 21st Century demanding million dollar contracts for stories about young white women being frustrated in their social inequalities while putting out for some hunk they don't really want to like? Who's undermining socio-eco-political equality more? Some dead dude or a NY Times best seller author? (e.g. #4,8,9,16 on the mass market paperback list, 2/25/10.)

Hypocracy? No. Sure, I read them once in a while. But I don't read anything with guilt.

SciFi, possibly even more so in its own golden age in the 1930s, provides more fodder for the imagination. Those 'bodice rippers' truly pale in comparison to Pulp Science Fiction as a genre.

Quite often you at least need to use your imagination to see the world in a way beyond 'ordinary' fiction. Well, afterall, there was no Wikipedia in 1930 (unless it was the one entitled "Encyclopedia Britannica") ... yet there are plenty of photographs of just about anywhere in the UK or the Wild West the most popular locations for bodice rippers recently. John Carter of Mars starts off in the American Civil War. We even have photographs of that. But Mars? You need imagination, even with the author's words, to really enter into the story. Ray guns, interstellar travel, green skinned aliens ... Star Trek was not, by 80 years, unique.

I suppose Boris Valejo might be an okay artist, but boy, does he paint to his audience, which would be any white Euro-American male who discovered SciFi around the age of 12 and who likes big tits. I can only hope that - unlike Lord of the Rings - the director doesn't use the most popular art style of the source material as the basis for the art direction of the film.

What do I want to see on the big screen? John Carter of Mars? Or The Elusive Bride (#8, above)? Mars, hands-down. If there's a great-looking leading man in the "romance" story, his primary function is still going to be "good looking man"; at least in John Carter of Mars he gets to be "good looking man who can kick ass" and will still likely have sex in the movie, with fewer violins & no soft-focus.

Within recent literary consumption here in GopherLand was
David Weber, Shadow of Saganami (modern techno-heroine sci-fi)
Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane (gothic/demon fantasy & yes, the author of Conan the Barbarian)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (I can go finish the book now, film review coming eventually) &
Henning Mankell, Die Hunde von Riga got set aside when Mr.Gopher practically ripped it out of my hands and sucked it down whole ... I think instead of buying him books in English, I might want to switch languages - doubly so since we own a copy in German, but the original is Swedish which he no doubt would also enjoy)
Stieg Larsson, another Swedish offering, The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest, a follow-up story to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. The latter of which is a cliff-hanger & I'm going to have to wait in line at the library for a copy.

Robert Howard's Solomon Kane is also on the slate for release as a movie soon eventually. With James Purfoy as Kane (a.k.a. Marc Antony in Rome, and some Martian in John Carter, too). I've never read Conan the Barbarian, or the Conan books; I have, however, read Howard's Bran Mak Morn, something I found while perusing old Irish sagas. 'Solomon Kane' was written in the grand style of the heroic-fantasy. My Irish forefathers 300 years ago would have recognized the general heroic epic aspect of it; my dad/mom might recognize the dime store pulp fiction magazine serialization of the epic style; me? I just enjoyed it.

Had I been a 10 year old boy when I read either Solomon Kane or John Carter of Mars, I would likely have been found the next morning playing sword & pistol kill-the-demons in the back yard. I am a 44 year old woman, and I would still rather read them than the mysogenistic lame-o excuses for un-erotic literature currently marketed as "romance". (a completely different rant)

Who would I rather close my eyes and imagine being? A beautiful never-over-25 woman who is oppressed and dismissed by society but can't manage to either keep her legs together or pull her head out of her ass and become her own woman .... ... or the sword-wielding powerful hero(ine) destroying evil and receiving adulation from all?

Seriously ... Cerebus the Aardvark: yes; Arwen the Elf, no.

So, it is with no guilty pleasure that I look forward to both Solomon Kane and John Carter of Mars on the silver screen. Or if someone manages to make anything from E. E. Smith (e.g., Galactic Patrol), or (almost) anything else from Boroughs. but lord, lord, lord, not another dorky Tarzan!. Afterall, I really liked The Mummy, too.

.

Law v. Russian literature

Politifact, my amusement for the evening states:

... a Nov. 19, 2009, news release, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that the 2,074-page bill was "longer than Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace ."

We decided to see if he was right.

As for the bill, we cut and pasted it into a Microsoft Word document and found that the bill contained 384,067 words. Just to make sure that Word wasn't choking on such a large file, we did a sampling of word counts on individual pages, then multiplied the typical one-page count by the total number of pages in our Word document. The single pages we checked tended to have a bit fewer than 300 words per page in Word. So, with our document running to 1,372 pages -- shrinkage that illuminates how spread-out the text of the Senate bill is -- we came up with a ballpark estimate of 411,000 words.

So while Hatch is right if you simply count pages, when you use a more accurate comparison -- the number of words -- War and Peace is actually longer. In other words, he is right by one measurement, but not by the best measurement. So it turns out that Democrats aren't as wordy as a Russian novelist. Who knew?

German Poetry in color

... and no, not Goethe ...

Farben
Vor allem Schwarz und Weiß und Grau
vergesse ich manchmal
die bunten Farben in meinem Leben:
Du bist für mich
weder Schwarz nor Weiß
sondern Rot und Blau und Gelb und Grün
meine Lust und Freude

rev: it occurred to me that most of my friends don't speak German, so a translation is in order:

With all of the Black and White and Grey,

at times I forget

the brilliant Colors in my Life:

You are for me

neither Black nor White

but rather Red and Blue and Yellow and Green,

my Passion and Joy

My friend The Author enjoys poetry; I braved the elements of authorship & posted something I wrote on her blog. to wit:

The only thing vaguely like poetry that I’ve written in my adult, post-college life was in German.
We do not, and will certainly not, even consider what spewed forth from my pen during those heady days in Arnold Hall dating one of the ... uh, no, the greatest asinine Idiot I've ever given my affections to. Boy, and that's some epitaph. What a waste of paper that relationship was.

This is why one should clean out the car regularly, besides achieving the status of mobile microbiological experiment station. One might leave bits of paper with incriminating doodles indiscriminately about a semi-public space.

My mother-in-law saw a small bit of such paper in my car. My heart sunk, as she read it. Her comment was along the lines of “it looks like something written to a lover”.

I responded, with forced courage, “I wrote it for Mr.Gopher” (who at the time of maternal discovery was my husband, although he was my lover at the time I wrote it).

I’m not sure if the surprise was due to the fact that I wrote it, or that I wrote it for her son. Although, I suppose, the surprise might simply have been that I wrote anything in German.

And, strangely enough, I didn't feel embarrassed, when I contemplated sharing it on The Author's blog. This is strange since I’m horribly, mortally embarrassed every time I think about asking for someone’s opinion on the prose fiction that I wrote. Perhaps this is simply too short to be able to be embarrassed.

The Golden Kilometer

The title is actually The Golden Mile, but Russia uses metric. Martin Cruz Smith has a new Arkady Renko novel coming out in March. As with any serial author, I cross my fingers & hope that the pressure to create excellence survives the pressure to simply write another novel. The thorough enjoyment of these works is not increased with frequency. I'm #72 on the library's waiting list. Which means I'll be able to read it about 1-2 months after it comes out.

I wish I had some divine ability to have IM from the publishing gods about my favorite authors. Amazon used to do that, but doesn't anymore (or if they do, I'd appreciate a note about where the function went). I don't mind waiting a while to read something. (A statement predicated upon an assumption I'll have the time to devote to a longer, more enjoyable read which shouldn't be interrupted by data analysis or public health courses ...) However, if I do know - I can jump the line at the library.

For example, the Hennepin County Library only has 4 copies of The Incredibles (I'm #20); given that it's not even vaguely new, I'm surprised at the demand. I'm even more surprised that the library system serving the most populated county in the state has 4 copies of a popular kid's movie. All 4 of us having to stave off the 1,140,984 of the rest of them for it.
-- from 10/30

The Great American Novel

Cinda contemplated what constitutes great American literature. Not being a professional writer, or a devout classicist, my literary consumption has been mostly popular stuff. Anne Perry, Robert Ludlum, Lois McMaster Bujold, Patrick O'Brian. I have read a couple of her recommendations, especially To Kill a Mockingbird.

No two people being the same, of course I paused to consider what I would recommend, if offering American literature to a foreigner. Something which paints a picture of life in America. How we, as Americans see our self-identity as Americans. Murder mysteries are all well and good, but does one paint a picture of America that is uniquely American? Love stories are popular, but does one demonstrate our idea of romance? Do we even have a monopoly on one flavor of love?

L.A. Confidential is an amazing picture of Los Angeles in 1952. All the glories of Hollywood, police and political corruption, the image that American was trying to give itself after the end of the war. The language used is uniquely American and uniquely 1950s. People don't speak like that any more. Removing the rose colored glasses of the Leave It to Beaver Era.

The Autobiography of Malcom X is a rather interesting picture of a very interesting man. The American dream of going from a nobody in poverty to being important; embracing freedom of religion and then embracing religion in freedom; and, of course, getting killed for bucking the system. A picture of the civil rights movement more likely to make whites uncomfortable than King's.

Atlas Shrugged yields the quintessential self-perception of American Capitalism. This is, of course, not how we practice that economic theory - but it is how Americans idealize it.** The Marlboro Man of Business - this is why Republicans idealize capitalism with utterly no governmental regulation - they think they're Hank Rearden or they're monumentally ignorant and think they're Jimmy Taggart. I read this while in high school & loved it without realizing it was an economic philosophy treatise. [Even at 15 I realized the personal relationship choices of the heroine really left something to be desired.]

Laura Ingall-Wilder's stories surrounding Little House on the Prairie paint a little idylic image of American Imperialist Expansionism in the 19th Century. Being almost-contemporary and written from personal experience, it might be rose-colored, but at least provides a very personal image of how White Euro-Americans look at the westward expansion into the prairies. Leave-It-To-Beaver of the 19th Century. This should be required hand-in-hand with:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is non-fiction, so it doesn't qualify as a novel; however, there aren't too many novels written from the point of view of the Indians. This is simply offered as a tool to better appreicate how Wilder's novels reflect the American view at the time which, for the most part, continues today.



.
** since writing this, the government has totally fucked us, and, boy, I mean fucked us ... and we've screamed for more more more more ...in our socialist economic love-fest. Or that could be our communist love-fest, depending on how in love you are with government buy-outs. What fucktards are running our government? Oh, that's right, the same assholes who are benefiting from all this dumb-ass money distribution (upwards re-distribution, that is) ... but don't let me sound too bitter.
.

Casting

Who should play this character?

There is a “book club” supplement in the novel I read recently (The Black Hand, Will Thomas). A few questions intended to spark discussions. One of the questions: “If this was made into a film, who would you cast as the characters?" Interesting, and one I sporadically contemplate when reading a book for the 2nd time.

One of my favorite authors in the past couple years has been Martin Cruz Smith. (Why do people insist in using all 3 names? What would be wrong with simply Martin Smith? I don’t recall ever seeing another author by that name. Sharon Kay Penmann? Lois McMaster Bujold? ... anyway ...)

Smith wrote Gorky Park, and several sequels. Arkady Renko is central, yet never deeply described physically beyond tall, thin, serious, pale and black haired. Who would I cast? I saw a chacter in The Bourne Supremacy and - pop - I thought, that’s who I would cast. Given the actor, Karl Urban, is a Kiwi I would likely not have contemplated it, other than that he was playing a Russian cop in Bourne. Tall, slender, black hair, pale skin and about the right age for the initial books.

William Hurt played the character in the '80s movie, which I just don't see. But, how much of the character's description influences our perception of the character as a person? The Black Hand has a central character, Thomas Llewelyn, who is repeatedly described as being short. The description actually reminds me heavily of my friend Calum, who matches it fairly well.

Sometimes one changes the character’s sex between source material & movie. Either specifically or generally. The Bourne Identity had a female assistant (Julia Stiles): if the character was in the book (I don't recall), it would assuredly have been a man. Ditto Bourne Supremacy (I never read) with Joan Allen. Ludlum in 1970 simply wouldn’t have made a Deputy Director of the CIA a woman. Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream as a man or woman? Would that choice effect the interpretation?

Sometimes casting one character can force other casting. A production of The Marriage of Figaro at MSU had Figaro played by a black man. Should that influence the rest of the cast’s color? This particularly intrigues me. Watching the Bourne movies (1st & 2nd) this week, I wonder why the entire cast is white. What difference would it have made to have at least the extras be black, brown, purple, whatever...? I’ve never been to Moscow, but Berlin is certainly not monochromatic these days. Even if one only considers the Turks.

29% plus

The top 100 beach blanket books, according to NPR. I've read 29 of them (in bold) - and several (in blue) are on my "next time I'm lounging on the beach/Bavarian Alps/Minnesotan Lakeshore/... ..."


1. The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
3. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
4. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding
5. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
6. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
7. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
9. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg
10. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

11. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
12. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
13. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan
14. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
15. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
16. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
17. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
18. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
19. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
20. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

21. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
22. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver
23. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
24. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
25. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
26. The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy
27. Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
28. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
29. The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler
30. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

31. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
32. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
33. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
34. Beach Music, by Pat Conroy
35. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
36. Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier
37. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
38. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
39. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
40. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon

41. Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
42. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
43. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
44. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
45. Empire Falls, by Richard Russo
46. Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes
47. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
48. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins
49. I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb
50. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

51. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
52. The Stand, by Stephen King
53. She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb
54. Dune, by Frank Herbert
55. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
56. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
57. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
58. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
59. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
60. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

61. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver
62. Jaws, by Peter Benchley
63. Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner
64. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
65. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
66. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
67. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
68. Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
69. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
70. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

71. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
72. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
73. Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns
74. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
74. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe [tie]
76. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
77. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
78. The Shell Seekers, by Rosamunde Pilcher
79. Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
80. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett

81. Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck
81. The Pilot's Wife, by Anita Shreve [tie]
83. All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
84. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
85. The Little Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
86. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
87. One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich
88. Shogun, by James Clavell
89. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
90. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

91. Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow
92. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
93. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
94. Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris
95. Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume
96. The Shining, by Stephen King
97. How Stella Got Her Groove Back, by Terry McMillan
98. Lamb, by Christopher Moore
99. Sick Puppy, by Carl Hiaasen
100. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson


Healthy Gopher's recommendations not already mentioned above, in no particular order: Mind, this is for "beach blanket" reading. Infections and Inequalities and The Great Influenza aren't here, no matter how good they are.

A. Gorky Park (and Polar Star), Martin Cruz Smith
B. Cerebus the Aardvark (definitely the first 2 volumes), Dave Sim
C. The Queen's Man, Sharon Kay Pennman
D. 1984, George Orwell
E. Animal Farm, George Orwell
F. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
G. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
H. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
. The Autobiography of Malcom X, Malcom X
. Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
. Face of a Stranger, Anne Perry
. Playing for the Ashes, Elizabeth George
. Some Danger Involved, Will Thomas
. Industrial Hygiene Control of Airborne Hazards ... just kidding
. The Manga Guide to Statistics, Shin Takahashi ... not kidding

[review] Some Danger Involved

Some Danger Involved:
The opening salvo in a series of Victorian murder mysteries a la Sherlock Holmes. 1884 and Thomas Llewelyn is hired by Cyrus Barker as an assistant private enquiry agent (not a 'detective', thank you). This is more like Bond meets Holmes, only the two aspects of Bond are split between these two: Barker, the over-achieving martial arts-streetwise mentor to the younger, too-distractable-by-women junior.

In my desperation to inject as much reading for pleasure before today (well, actually yesterday), when school resumed, I read all 5 of the novels, Some Danger Involved being the first. It is also, so far, the best. Each one has a fairly solid story, each set in a different aspect of life in London 130 years ago. While this was occasionally a bit too pedagogical for my tastes (I already knew what it means to sit shiva, having done so before), it would provide a shock to most modern (read: ill-informed) readers that
a) there was a significant Chinese population in London at the time,
b) there was a significant population of just about any other large ethnic group,
c) the technology at the end of the Victorian era isn't so archaic, or
d) the social concerns aren't all that different than ours, and
e) murder in 1884 is just like murder in 2009

Told in the first person by Mr. Llewelyn, it describes his transformation from a desperate man incapable of getting a really good job due to a brief stint in jail to an apprentice to a dangerous man in a dangerous profession. A 'frustrated storyteller', the author describes this character. We discover the novelties of London and the gradual revelation of a mysterious man by the limitations of the narrator, whose education we share. Subsequent volumes of the story describe the development of Llewelyn from the failed university student to a man more educated in very different aspects of life.

Each of the novels starts out with a prologue by Llewelyn describing a critical step of the story, e.g. a fight to the death, only to step back to the beginning of the story with Chapter 1. It is a mark of a good storyteller (in this case, the author, not the narrator) that we can know what is going to happen by Chapter 20 and still be on the edge of our seats wondering if he's going to live by the next page of Chapter 10. This is reminiscent of Inigo's narration in Captain Alatriste (a fantastic book).

The Hellfire Conspiracy is by far the lamest offering, with far too many historical references tossed in by really inappropriate characters (some street urchin knowing who Madame Trousseau is, maybe; knowing the full-length name of her museum - be real). It also has a few leaps of complete irrationality. It's not just a leap of deduction by a highly skilled deducer - it was just a leap leaving me wondering if the author left out a few chapters.

To Kingdom Come follows our Intrepid Heroes on the path of Irish nationalists (c. 1884, read: terrorists). As with the other novels, there are historical figures in the book often in a rather different light than is typically portrayed.

Hopefully Thomas will drag his heels a bit longer before the next offering to keep the quality up. As much as I enjoy reading serials like this (or Anne Perry or Elizabeth George), it's only enjoyable if the quality of the books is fairly level. Cranking them out every other year can be draining on the author's ability to express his/her creativity. I guess I'll need to break down (after the semester's done) and read one of the Sherlock Holmes novels. (The preview for the up-coming film staring Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes looks intriguing and potentially too farcical for my tastes.)

Inspiration of the Muses

The following is from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I just enjoyed it so much, I thought I'd share it. This is around p. 22, before any of the graphic slaughter occurs. This is set at an immigrant Lithuanian wedding in 1906. I assume my immigrant forefathers celebrated St. Patrick's Day; I'll use it for other immigrants. It occurs to me this is roughly the same time Grandpa Sullivan's family came over.

The little person who leads the trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired man - the hands of the Muses have been laid upon him. He plays like one possessed by a demon, of a whole hoard of demons. You can feel them in the air round about him, capering frenetically; with their invisible feet they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the orchestra rises on end, and his eyeballs start from their sockets, as he toils to keep up with them.

[Tamoszius] has taught himself to play the violin by practicing all night, after working all day on the killing-floor. ... He is only about five feet high, but even so, these trousers are about eight inches short of the ground. You wonder where he can have gotten them -- or rather you would wonder, if the excitement of being in his presence left you time to think of such things.

For he is in a inspired man. Every inch of him is inspired -- you might almost say inspired separately. He stamps with his feet, he tosses his head, he sways and swings to and fro; he has a wizened-up little face, irresistibly comical; and, when he executes a turn or a flourish, his brows knit and his lips work and his eyelids wink -- the very ends of his necktie bristle out. And every now and then he turns upon his companions, nodding, signaling, beckoning frantically -- with every inch of him appealing, imploring, in behalf of the muses and their call.

For they are hardly worth of Tamoszius, the other two members of the orchestra. The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with black-rimmed spectacles and the mute and patient look of an over-driven mule; he responds to the whip but feebly, and then always falls back into his old rut. The third man is very fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his 'cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one dollar per hour.

Before the feast has been five minutes underway, Tamoszius has risen in his excitement; a minute or two more and you see that he is beginning to edge over toward the tables. His nostrils are dilated and his breath comes fast -- his demons are driving him. ...

Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene. Some of the people are eating, some are laughing and talking -- but you will make a great mistake if you think there is one of them who does not hear him. His notes are never true, and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and scratches on the high; but these things they heed no more than they heed the dirt and noise and squalor about them -- it is out of this material that they have to build their lives, and with it that they have to utter their souls. And this is their utterance: merry and boisterous, or mournful and wailing, or passionate and rebellious, this music is their music, music of home. It stretches out its arms to them, they have only to give themselves up.