Date
Title
Comments
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
I stumbled across a reference to this book somewhere browsing around on the web. I think it was Amazon. Anyway it had such positive response that I put a copy in my shopping cart and purchased it on my next Amazon checkout. It sat on my shelf for at least a year. (I have an addiction problem buying books). I finally picked it up and started reading after bogging down in Zinn's History of the United States. I was impressed.
Simmon's has created a rich believable fictional universe set 700 years in the future. When I say believable, I mean that he has creatively developed a setting where strange, unexpected and original ideas abound. This is not your pop-sci-fi but good solid sci-fi. As with most good sci-fi there is an element of mystery. The mystery here centers on the archeological ruins on a fringe planet known as Hyperion. A cast of characters from very different backgrounds are all brought together and propelled towards a propitious event.
Simmons spins a great yarn all the way up until the climatic even in the story. And then.... the book ends and you have to go buy the sequel.
Fall
of Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
You can't read Hyperion without reading this follow on. Hyperion ends just at the climax of the story hanging. You have to follow on and read the sequel, which is more the second half of the story rather than a sequel. Simmon's wraps the story up in compelling fashion, with very Matrix like forshadowings. He neatly plays up the interconnectedness of man and machine and places the moral dillema before both man and the evolving machine. Simmons does however not neatly wrap up all loose ends or answer every question. Clearly future sequels abound and uknowns remain to be explained.
Drowning
World:
A Novel of the Commonwealth
by Alan Dean Foster
I started reading Foster's books in Jr. High. The Flinx and Pipp series. Which I found when I returned to reading fiction again (after my course through college when I put away childish things, actually I was worried about distraction and not having sufficeint will power to read fiction and non-fiction at the same time), that I still enjoyed them. This is unlike other books that I read as a teen that I am sure I would not enjoy now, such as the Martian Tales Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Anyway back to the book at hand. I found it rather boring. Foster has flushed out the Commonwealth universe, a rich and complicated setting for many of his books. It felt that with this story he was resting on his laurels, merely plodding along with the conflict ridden story of good vs. bad, an wild alien planet and the search for a sentient life form. All in all jus tnot that exciting.
Amazonia
by James Rollin
James Rollin redeemed himself with this novel. The last book I read of his Deep Fathom in 2002 was a complete waste of time, I don't even recall plot lines of it, while the two other books he wrote I can still recall. Lets face it, this is summer airplane thriller fiction. Rollin's is going to sell a lot of books but not win any awards for great literature. However within the understood realm of paper back fictions there are accessibilities, and while plausibility is checked at the door in large measures, things have to hang together and there has to be some compelling interest. Rollin's lost this in Deep Fathom, but he is back in Amazonia. I won't even bother you with the plot line, but if you enjoy the genre its worth a read, although it does seem to be in the category of book that has the "fake" front cover with holes in it and another cover behind it. Very "horror"-esque, not clear who in publishing thought this was a good idea.
Hardcase
by Dan Simmons
Damn! This book hits you from the first page like a freight train. It is what is referred to as "hard-boiled" detective story. At 276 pages in a small format its not a long read, I finished it in a day. And that wasn't me playing hooky. It entailed me waiting for BART for 10 minutes at the station and then not having a seat so I read for 40 minutes and at Montgomery station I was on page 75. Reading on the train home after work I was halfway through and then another hour tonight and wham, bam and I'm finished.
The book doesn't pretend to be anything less than genre detective fiction, but it is good "believable" genre fiction. The style is pretty hard, not for the faint of heart (sex, drugs and violence) standard ingredients of hard-boiled detective novels, but if you understand that up front its an interesting read.
Balshazzar's
Serpent
by Jack L. Chalker
I'll admit up front I have never written a book, I am a consumer not a producer of books. I acknowledge the fact that good ideas and great stories are hard to come by. I'll also acknowledge that in art there are themes and patterns that are unique to an artist and make up distinctive and recognizable styles. However I expect this more in terms of styling than story line. Having read a ton of Chalker (since I was 12) there are times when his themes though could be construed as bordering on the lack of original ideas. I wouldn't exactly characterize this book in that vein, but I did notice at least one simliarity, namely the setup of planetary system which three inhabitable worlds was similar to his The Four Lords of the Diamond series (which I highly reccomend). However I can't fault him for that entirely, just noting a thematic similarity.
Regardless, its clear Chalker sets out to write a series, and this book largely sets up the books to come, but I found that over all I enjoyed the book. The major story lines centers on a evangelical Christian group proslytizing colonial outpost worlds that have been cut off from contact since the "Great Silence". I was worried that Chalker would use this as a means to grind an ax against religion in general, and was pleasantly surprised to find not only a fairly balanced account, but an exploration of faith in the face of doubt and the individualism of worship juxtaposed against congregational preaching.
I am looking forward to finishing the series, and am glad that the other two books have already been published and I won't have to wait for publication to finish the series.
The
Final Forest:
The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest
by William Dietrich
William Deitrich was a reporter for the Seattle Times who wrote a book exploring logging of ancient forests on the Olympic Peninsula and the the controversy that ensued over the spotted owl. The book ends in 1990s, there is a follow up article in 2003 winter edition of Forest Service Employees for Environment Ethics magazine, called Who Won the Spotted Owl War? Dietrich does not take a polemical approach to his tale. He is very even handed, and does a very fair job of telling both sides of the conflict, the loggers and the environmentalists. He does a great job of providing the world view of a logger, and carefully details their complex and dangerous profession. He does not take the easy road and dismiss either side but weaves back and forth between the complicated exchange that took place over logging in the northwest. He details the campaign for logging that centered in Forks, and shows the rise of environmentalism from within the US Forest Service. A fascinating tale, regardless of whether you have walked the forests of the Olympic Peninsula, but all the more compelling if you have.
Melchior's
Fire
by Jack L. Chalker
This is the sequel to Balshazzar's Serpent, book two of a three book series by Jack Chalker. The series center's on a hidden solar system known as the Three Kings where there are three livable worlds where untold riches abound. In Serpent Chalker spends the first half of the book setting the scene, this sequel I expected a lot more focus on the Three Kings universe directly. However again he sets the scene. I think this back story is more compelling than that in Serpent, but because it was a sequel I anticipated more focus on the heart of the series, and by the time the characters arrive at the Three Kings their time there feels compressed and really unjustified. Chalker does have a brief encounter from the evangelical group from Serpent, however this is a fleeting reference. And by the book's end, like the group in the first book, the parties from Melchior are stranded. However just prior to closing the book, Chalker does hold out tantalizing hints, just no answers. I was still waiting to find the unraveling of cause of great silence and the mystery of the Three Kings. So I forged ahead with book three.
Kaspar's
Box
by Jack L. Chalker
This is the third book in the series of the Three Kings. The series center's on a hidden solar system known as the Three Kings where there are three livable worlds where untold riches await. Since there are three worlds, each book tells the story of some group finding their way to one of worlds. Chalker has also setup a situation where contact with the primary civilization centers was completely cut off in an event known as the Great Silence. The mystery of what happened is coupled with that of what are the Three Kings and why do they exist. Chalker begins weaving a sinister tale that hints of witch craft and devil worship as a possible theme behind the mystery. This leads to a rescue / investigative visit to the Three Kings by an existing military group and all the rescue of stranded parties from the previous book Melchior's Fire. But all the way up until the last chapter he has still not resolved the unanswered questions, and you start to get that sneaky feeling that the ending will be unsatisfactory as there are not enough pages to do justice to the required tale. Which in my opinion turned out to be the case, a very short and weak explanation left more questions than answers and of course more books to come. I am not opposed to having more story to tell, but it really seemed that Chalker was with this series unevenly resting on his laurels, possibly writing for money or contract and not that compelling.
5/25/04 - 6/8/04
Across
the Olympic Mountains:
The Press Expedition, 1889-90
by Robert L. Wood
This is Robert Wood's re-telling of the first expedition to cross the Olympic Mountains which are on the peninsula across the Puget Sound from Seattle. Robert Wood was one of the original members of the Mountaineer's, friends with Manning and Spring. Wood spent considerable time hiking and exploring the Olympics, and was encouraged by Manning to write this book. He does this largely through summarization and or quotations from the newspaper report, and by providing insight based on his direct familiarity with the Olympic mountains. The book is now out of print, but I was able to obtain a copy through Amazon's used reseller program.
In 1889 Seattle became the 42nd state admitted to the United States. The population had exploded by 356% in 10 years. The Olympic mountains sit in plain view of downtown Seattle, separated by the Puget Sound. And yet they had remained unexplored, even the surrounding Indian tribes did not venture inland. Several events peaked interest in exploring the interior of the peninsula. In 1888 Washington's Governor Semple wrote eloquently regarding the region and romanticized the terra incognito nature of the Olympic Peninsula. Semple's successor actually called for an expedition and tales of Sir Henry Morton Stanley's "exploits on the dark continent" offered fodder for comparison. These events generated a lot of hype and buzz amongst the newspapers of the time. The Seattle Press decided to fund an expedition to traverse the Olympic Range, and since the concern was over who would have the glory of being first the expedition left in February (i.e. the dead of winter).
From there you follow the story of the 6 men, 2 mules and 1000 pounds of gear. Pulling a raft up the Elhwa river, hunting elk in Elhwa valley, climbing over the Baily Range, eating Bear fat, and finally making their way down the Quinalt to home. A journey that I want to follow myself someday, but its about a 5 day hike. Maybe next year. In the mean time this is a great tale of vim and vigor across the Olympic divide.
6/9/04 - 6/20/04
The
Devil in the White City:
Murder, Magic, and Madness
at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
Erik Larson's Devil in the White City is a great book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading! Its a little odd to categorize, I suppose it is best described as a historical novel. Based on careful research with extensive footnotes but written in the engaging style of a novel. Larson's book centers on events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Larson tells the story of the fair through the tales of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.
In 1889 the French hosted a Exposition Universel which wowed the world with the Eiffel Tower and set records for attendance. With the upcoming 400 year anniversary of Columbus's voyage to the New World sentiment in the U.S. grew for a similar fair hosted in America. Set in the late victorian era and the close of the 19th century, a contemplated world fair became imbued with a struggle over self identity and pride: America as a country demonstrating its greatness to the world, and for the city selected proof final of the greatest city in the country. Everyone knows that New York is the greatest city in the world, this was not lost on Chicago which struggled to assert itself. Chicago had a reputation for a dark dirty city built on pig and beef slaughtering, and had just in the most recent census come out the second largest city in the U.S. and was desperate to show the country it was a contender as a truly great city, like New York. In February 1890, Chicagoans were overjoyed to hear they had won the honor, approved by Congress and Daniel H. Burnham's firm were selected and had the awesome challenge of building a world fair in three short years that would show up Paris and "out Eiffel Eiffel."
What follows is a detailed account of both Burnham's struggle to construct a world fair, a task on a scale unimaginable to the average person, juxtaposed with the unfolding of the fair is the intertwined tale of the calculated and diabolical actions of a very un-average man, H.H. Holmes, Chicago's first serial killer. There is a rich amount of detail on both subjects, which other readers have either loved or described as tedious or boring, but I found them fascinating. The unfolding of the fair, the architectural and project management challenges, the personalities : Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison and the man who gave the fair its largest exhibition George Washington Gale Ferris.
One thing that struck me while reading about the Holmes vignette's was wondering about origin of the psychopathic serial killer. Its not clear to me whether modern urban society produced psychopathic tendencies (the disassociation/detachment from "normal" moral life but with the ability to mimic moral normality flawlessly) and serial killers, or if it is when we first started documenting them. Coincidently Jack the Ripper struck in London only ten years earlier. Regardless Larson maintains a high road in his story of the devil Holmes and intriguing creation of the White City in the midst of the dark city.
6/16/04 - 6/22/04
Visions
of The Wild:
A Voyage by Kayak around
Vancouver Island
by Maria Coffey & Dag Goering
On Stac and I's 15 year anniversary trip our room had several books and I ended up being drawn to this one and was about half way through it by the time our trip was over. I purchased the book at the gift shop and finished it after completing the Devil in the White City. This was a great book, it was like reading a really good very long National Geographic article.
This is the diary of Maria and Dag from the summer of 1999 as the husband and wife kayaked 1000 km around the entire circumference of Vancouver Island. Through their entries you gain a appreciation for the male and female perspective on simlar events as they paddle through the tumultuous seas, wildlife and human encounters. The maps and amazing photo's make the story all that much more enjoyable.
Galileo's
Daughter:
A Historical Memoir of
Science, Faith, and Love
by Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel wrote Longitude, I started this book, left it at home when I went on a business trip and ended up picking up The Known World, haven't got back to this yet. Perhaps its time has passed again for now, I seem to be slipping into other books. I never got back to finishing this, some day in the future I will.
6/30/04 - 8/3/04
The
Known World
by Edward P. Jones
I ended leaving Galileo's Daughter at home on a business trip and picked this up at a airport bookstore. The endorsement of the Pulitzer prize is what initially attracted me. What made me love the book was the unique voice of the Jones in telling a challenging and compelling story involving what reads as a extremely insightful and realistic treatment of the moral complexities of slavery in Virginia in the two decades prior to the Civil War.
The most striking aspect of the Known World is the fact that the novel centers on Henry Townsend a former black slave, who becomes a land and slave owner himself. There are a myriad of characters that are introduced both in past as well as the current story line. At times it becomes difficult to track all the characters and relationships, it would have been helpful at times to have a genealogical pedigree chart that showed the relationships. As it was there was a bit of flipping back and forth to try to find references and put characters into context. Having said that there was never the feeling that any of these characters were introduced for sheer gratuity. One interesting literary device that Jones often used with characters was when noting a current fact in the story line, he would refer to a future event, but often in intriguing ways that might be later on in the novel be discussed in more detail or might not and they merely become the inference of a back or future story that is not told.
Another strange aspect was that at times Jones inserts historical facts almost as if he was documenting his novel. I found myself wondering since this was a novel if they were really true or not. Since there weren't really footnotes but right in the tract itself they were a bit incongruent.
What I fond striking at a deeper level was the concept of the known world and how it is the sphere of our world view. Henry's plantation master Moses acts a perfect representation of this known world. For example when he is outside the realm of working the fields on his immediate plantation he is out of his known realm and is lost. And then there is a lulled sense of security that Jones creates about the world he is creating, the description of slavery life in Virginia being almost a settled even keeled world where slavery was accepted, whites and blacks tolerated the situation, where clearly inequities and biases exist, but have settled into an angle of repose. This is violently shattered 3/4's of the way through when pure violence and acrimony erupts and Jones demonstrates that even the complicated picture he paints had chaotic and violent unknown upheavals.
This made me ponder my own known world. How strangely at any one exact point in time and space we really intersect so little of the actual physical world and most often don't have the physical perspective to see much more than our immediate surroundings. Getting tall, on top of structures, natural as in mountains, or man-made as in buildings or up in airplanes is one way to gain physical perspective. Even still your interaction point with what you see is still limited to a very small singularity where you are physically located and thus while you might see more your don't experience the knowness of the broader view any better. Analogously it is also strange to consider how much of our ourselves we don't have perspective on. For example as I type this, I stare at the screen of my lap top, my fingers flying across the keyboard, with my legs stretched out on the chair in front of me and my upper torso, but I don't really see myself, not as the way other see me. I can't see my face, my composure, and expressions. I am for example aware at times of concentration when I make certain expressions but even then unless I am in front of a mirror I don't truly see the way I myself look. Its similar to when getting your haircut upon completion of the cut they show you the back of your head with the double mirror trick and you say to your self "hmmm so that is what the back of my heads looks like" because its something that even with mirrors you so seldom see. Moving beyond our immediate self and the physical world, there is then the expanse of our individual world view, how broad does our experience extend and how rich in this sense is our own known world? And what have we spent most of our time getting to know? Myself it has been a lot of the outdoors, I feel a much more settled feeling in a space when I know the greater and more immediate outdoor surroundings. For example the recent road trips for me in Seattle and the greater pacific north west have really helped me have a better sense of the new known world I am inhabiting. But oh how very different from the world that Jones recreates, the comparison alone made the novel worth reading let alone the beauty with which it was told.
8/3/04 - 8/8/04
The
Mocking Program
by Alan Dean Foster
I have been reading Foster since I was 12 and the Pip and Flinx adventures. The Mocking Program is a sci-fi detective novel set in the future earth, Foster does a great job of weaving a believable future with slang and society familiar with modern days but clearly evolved and different at the same time. The impact of the hispanic influence in the language is throughout the book, and I missed till the end the fact that he had included a glossary at the end. This was an inventive story, that combined the best elements of the sci fi genre with a great mystery yarn.
8/8/04 - 8/15/04
No
Second Chance
by Harlan Coben
Coben spins a good yarn, the perfect "can't put it down" summer thriller. He not only manages to
8/15/04 - 9/2/04
North
to the Night
by Alvah Simon
This is an amazing book of a man's primal quest to push to the extremes and the physical and spiritual challenges he faces along the way.
9/2/04 - 9/15/04
Vanished
Man
by Jeffery Deaver
This is it, the last Lincoln Rhyme novel I will ever read. I started reading them some time ago, long before CSI (a show I have never seen) becamse so popular and made forensics a common word. I am done though, I can't read another story about Lincoln using forensics to track a killer, only to have the killer find his way into Lincoln's room and yet Lincoln outsmarts him, invalid though he is. The plots, the evidence, the process its all the same and it is no longer interesting. This involves a magician and his magic tricks, but it was dull and had one too many twist upon twists.
9/15/04 - 10/09/04
Endymion
by Dan Simmons
This was a rather long and tale with messianic overtones. The story is cast in the
10/09/04 - 10/29/04
The
Rise of Endymion
by Dan Simmons
10/29/04 - 11/13/04
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
by Aron Ralston
Several things struck me as I read this book. First of all, despite this being his first book Ralston is a good writer and does a great job of telling his story. Secondly, at times I felt that Ralston was trying to qualify himself as a thrill seeker and someon who had brushed with death many times before. I do believe that these events in his life set the context for his story, but he just sometimes couched them with a little too much bravado. Thirdly, throughout the story I found myself juxtaposing myself with his position and wondering what I would have done. Lastly, as the book nears the climax I found I couldn't put it down, while I knew the outcome it was thrilling and visceral.
11/13/04 - 12/17/04
The Ice Master :
The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk
by Jose Saramago
11/13/04 - ?
A Blind Eye
by G.M. Ford
11/13/04 - ?
Black River
by G.M. Ford
12/25/04 - 12/25/04
Long Way Round
by Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman
I first heard of this via the on-line news feed. Later I heard of the show on Bravo, but I was only able to record a couple of episodes. Stac gave me this book for Christmas and I started reading it that morning and finished it late Christmas night around 2 am. It was an easy read, and an enjoyable one at the same time. The story of Ewan McGregor (of Star Wars prequel movies fame) and his friend Charlie Boorman (noted as an accomplished movie star in his right, but from what I can tell he has mostly been in his father's movies) bike ride around the world. Leaving from London, across Europe, through Eastern Europe, through Kazakhstan, Mongolia and through Russia, across the Road of Bones to Magadan, on a plane to Alaska, across the United States to NYC and then a plane again to London. Along the way they faced gangsters, floods, wrecks and visited OCC and boys of American Chopper. Great travelogue.
12/26/04 - 01/06/05
The Eagle has Landed
by Jack Higgins
As soon as I began reading this book I regretted it. Not because it was not well written, but it just felt like a bit of a tired subject for me: Nazi's and their plan to assasinate Churchill. Perhaps this book was exciting in the 50s, 60s or 70s, but it just felt "old" and not original. I finished it because I am a sucker for once having started a book to get through it (usually). I am not not reccomending it, just know what your getting.