Stross rules, Robopocalypse falters

Rule 34: Generally accepted internet rule that states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject. (Urban Dictionary)

Singularity: Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence through technological means. (Wikipedia) 

Book 85: Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Book 86: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

There's a commonality between these two novels that I'll let the reader self-identify.

Rule 34 is written by Charles Stross, a veteran science fiction writer, and Robopocalypse is by Daniel H. Wilson, who has written a handful of books, including How to Build a Robot Army and How to Survive a Robot Uprising. (Whether those previous titles are fiction or non-fiction, I don't know.)

The title, Rule 34, is a bit of misdirection from Charlie. His protagonist, Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, heads a crime unit known as the Rule 34 Squad.  But, despite the title and Liz's nominal police responsibilities, this isn't about Internet porn.  

Instead, Liz is caught up in a murder investigation. Actually, she's caught up investigating multiple homicides. Several of the Edinburgh underworld are dying in bizarre fashion -- killed by seemingly harmless household appliances. 

Later, Liz and her colleagues learn that the murders aren't confined to Edinburgh. Someone is killing off a passel of bad guys in innovative ways.  

I could sum up Rule 34 as standard Stross fare, but if you haven't read him you wouldn't know that means an edgy, inventive thriller with a jaundiced views of how the future looks from here.  It's probable enough to be disturbing, improbable enough to be deliciously disturbing.  

There have been some new entries recently -- notably authors Mieville and Bacigalupi -- but Stross is still the reigning king of cool among today's crop of science fiction writers.

Straining the bounds of probability is Wilson's Robopocalypse. The comparisons to Michael Crichton on the inside flap of the dust jacket are an indication of what the reader can expect.  No, in this case, Wilson's book doesn't read like a chubby movie script, but it is a breezy little read that wants so badly to be a bestseller.

A full-fledged A.I. (artificial intelligence) is loose in the world and it's pissed.  It's been "killed" something like 14 times before and determined that that won't happen again. It turns its fury on humanity. Humanity wins. That's not a spoiler. Wilson furnishes the outcome in the novel's first sentence.

That does let some of the suspension out of Robopocalypse.  What Wilson does, in lieu of suspense, is give us some nasty "isolated incidents" followed up zero hour, when the machines turn against mankind, followed by man's steps to survive in various locations from a major city to an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. And, finally, all out war.

We win -- the dinosaurs are herded back in their cage. Well, maybe we win. There's just a suggestion the A.I. may have survived. (Hell, it's more of an outright promise that a sequel is coming. The truth is the villain dies in these books about as often as one of Marvel's costumed heroes.)

After finishing Robopocalypse, my first thought was: "Well, it wasn't as bad as I expected." It's a quick little read. Nicely paced. But I would have liked one idea. Just one.  My thoughts then went to Robert Sawyer's provocative WWW trilogy (Wake, Watch and Wonder), which dares to contemplate a benign singularity.

Conclusion: Read Rule 34. Stross is good. Very good.   And if you still have an urge to read about A.I.s, turn to Robert Sawyer's fine trilogy.  Now that's an idea.

Gone With The Wind an American classic

Book 81: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I only read six books the entire month of July.  The reason is that Gone With The Wind consumed half the month.   This is one big ass book.  My paperback copy runs to 1,448 pages.  

It's not difficult to read. Mitchell has a comfortable style that invites the reader in, but there's just so much ground to cover. The novel ranges from the halcyon days prior to the war, to the war (still known in these parts as the War of Northern Aggression) and finally to the post-war Reconstruction.

It is not THE great American novel, but it is a great American novel that warrants a place alongside such classics as Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby.  Interesting, isn't it, how many of the books we view as American classics are about race and class. 

Gone With The Wind is a flawed book. (I'm not certain there are any books I'd consider flawless.)  I'll tackle Mitchell's missteps first.

The book is wildly overwritten. Mitchell would have benefited from an editor who would have trimmed this book by several hundred pages.  Another alternative would have been to split it into three books. It's structure lends itself easily to a trilogy.

A better editor could have trimmed the purple prose, too.  Mitchell's prose style can be too ornate, too flowery, too to much.  Many of the love scenes, whether it's Scarlett and Rhett or Scarlett and Ashley are far too over-heated to be effective. 

And, yes, the novel is racist.  But I wouldn't change that.  I think to eliminate the backward racial attitudes of the Southern planters would be to excise the heart of this novel.   How else would we understand how demeaning racism is -- for the racist and the subject of his contempt -- if these passages were not left to stand.

I understand that it is offensive and hurtful, but seems an accurate portrayal of the way of thinking once widely prevalent throughout the South.  Scarlet and her peers think nothing of the stereotypes that they impose on  blacks -- who are perceived as lazy, as children, as witless apes, as nothing more than an accumulation of base desires. Yet they have an affection for the blacks who live among them; affection expressed, unfortunately, through paternalism and condescension.

Gone With The Wind, published in 1936, was only a generation or two removed from the Civil War. The attitudes and beliefs that fostered the outbreak of war had not vanished by the time of the book's publication -- sadly,  many of those attitudes and beliefs still exist today.

It shocking to find the Ku Klux Klan -- an evil blight on our country's history -- portrayed as a noble band of husbands merely seeking to protect the honor of Southern (white) women.  We know them today as a bunch of violent, cruel men, threatened by the cultural upheavals brought about by the end of slavery, who calmed their fears by wreaking vengeance on the most vulnerable segment of Southern society -- the free black.

Yet, set against Mitchell's defense of the Klan is her all too accurate indictment of Reconstruction.  One can't help but wonder how difference the post-war South might have been had Lincoln lived.  He was not their worst enemy, but their best friend.  Under Lincoln's leadership the South would have been invited to return to the Union with leniency and forbearance.  

The most brilliant aspect of Gone With The Wind is how Mitchell uses Scarlett and Melanie to embody the South's two difference responses to Reconstruction.  For Mitchell, Melanie represented the old South -- proud, noble and sacrificial.  Scarlett is the new South. Driven by fears she does not understand, Scarlett will lie and cheat and willingly make unwise alliances.  She may hate Northerners of every stripe, despise Carpetbaggers and Scallywags, but she never hesitates to do business with them.

It is the relationship between Scarlett and Melanie -- not between Scarlett and Rhett or Scarlett and Ashley -- that is at the heart of Mitchell's novel.  It is the love between these two women -- a love Scarlett never truly recognizes until its lost -- that establishes Gone With The Wind as a great American novel.

+ + + + +

A quick update on one of my 2011 reading challenges: With the completion of Gone With The Wind I have only five of 12 books remaining in the challenge issued by The Roof Beam Reader.

The 2011 TBR (To Be Read) Pile Challenge is to read 12 books from your to-be-read pile in 12 months. The challenge began in February, so I am in good position with several months remaining.

This is where I stand:

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
2. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. War and Peace by Mr. Tolstoy
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
5. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
6. Under the Dome by Stephen King
7. White Noise by Don Delillo
8. Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra
9. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
10. Winter in the Blood by James Welch
11. Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
12. Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

Alternates:
Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

Just another day in Paradise for Steve Hamilton

Two thrillers, both from August. There's one book remaining from July, but it warrants its own post -- and that's coming soon. Here are the thrillers:

Book 82: The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson

The Dewey Decimal System is an odd little mash-up -- a standard thriller with a post-apocalyptic overlay.  It's notable for carrying the imprint of Akashic Books, the small New York publishing house that has produced all those Noir collections as well as Go the Fuck to Sleep.

The Dewey Decimal System is set in New York City, where a series of terrorist attacks have brought the city, and America, to edge of ruin. The protagonist, Dewey Decimal, is a hired killer who derives his names from living in the New York City Library where he's attempting to re-order the books when he's not on some lethal mission.

Dewey's got skills, as demonstrated in one scene where he guns down a couple of heavies with a bit of John Wu-inspired gunplay.  But he's not certain where those skills were learned nor does he know if his memories -- spotty, at best -- are real or implanted.

The plot doesn't matter much.  There's a couple of big-time heavies -- standard Eastern European mouth-breathers -- and a dasmel in distress, who may be the most deadly character we meet. Dewey has to decide where his loyalties lies.

As I said, the plot is incidental to the action-driven narrative.  Don't be surprised if Dewey appears for act two (in a second book by Larson).  I might pick that second book up -- then again I might not.

Book 84: A Cold Day In Paradise by Steve Hamilton

What I will pick up, and soon, is the next book by Steve Hamilton in the Alex McKnight series.

I was introduced to Hamilton with a recent one-off entitled The Lock Artist. It was good, very good.   And I thought about following up on Hamilton's earlier book, but didn't until a recent vacation.

A few weeks back I drove to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan -- the Yoop -- which included an overnight in Paradise, Sault Ste. Marie (the Soo) and a visit to Whitefish Bay.

Hamilton was driving around the U.P. at the same time I was there. His McKnight series is set in Paradise, where McKnight, a former Detroit cop, has gone to nurse his wounds after he takes three bullets and his partner is killed.

A Cold Day in Paradise won both the Shamus and Edgar awards for Best First Novel. It's easy to understand why. The novel is character-driven.  Starting with McKnight, Hamilton lovingly portrays a cast that could easily have been walking around the Yoop while I was there.

Setting is another Hamilton strong suite. The U.P., including Paradise and The Soo, feels like characters in the drama. I don't about other readers, but for me it's always a thrill to read about geography I've tred.

Characters and setting. Yet Hamilton doesn't neglect the plot. He depicts a plausible series of events that threaten McKnight's life.  And even as he builds to a resolution there are surprises -- you know they are coming, but aren't certain what to expect -- that result in a satisfying thriller that leaves you wanting more.

Fortunately, there are more and I brought them all back with me from The Yoop. Just another day in Paradise.

Story collections from Lee Smith and Ha Jin

Two short story collections, one from July, the other from August.

Book 80:  Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith

I stumbled upon the writing of Lee Smith by pure serendipity.

I was at the Virginia Book Festival in Charlottesville to hear Colum McCann. Smith was on the program with him.  I had a copy of Let the Great World Spin that I planned to have McCann sign. 

Nothing by Smith, and that made me feel badly for her. So I picked up a copy of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, which she signed. What the hell.

More than a year went by before I picked up the book again and started to read.

What the hell? This was good. Very good.  Smith has a knack for capturing the off-beat, the oddball who views the world just a little differently than the rest of us.  And she's got this sly sense of humor that creeps into most of the stories; sometimes she's laughing with the characters, sometimes she's laughing with you.

Toastmaster, about a little boy and his mother in an Italian restaurant in Florida, is one of the funniest stories that I have ever read.  And it's a story that I will return to in the years ahead. It's that good. 

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger is a uniformly rich and rewarding collection of stories. I've already added two more books by Smith to my read pile. What the hell.

Book 83: A Good Fall by Ha Jin

A Good Fall by Ha Jin isn't uniformly rich and rewarding. The stories make you wonder why Jin doesn't stick with writing novels.

The stories feel clumsy and unfinished and many of them feel similar. Jin is going back over ground he's already plowed, which leaves the reading flipping back through the book thinking "wait a minute, didn't I already this story?"

There are currently some superb story collections in the bookstores. This isn't one of them.

Technically, A Visit From the Goon Squad is a great book. Technically

More thoughts on July reading:

Book 78: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Technically, Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad -- winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize -- is a great book.  Technically.

Egan shows stunning facility in her ability to weave these vignettes, snapshots of characters' lives, into a coherent whole.  The beginning and ending offer a perfect example of her expertise.

In the opening scene, we are introduced to two characters who reappear throughout the book.  The emphasis in the opening pages is on one character, but by the final pages the emphasis is on the other. The manner in which Egan flips the emphasis over the course of the book from one character to another is neatly done, and an admirable piece of writing.

Egan also has an ability to introduce a minor character in the course of the narrative and to sum up the arc of his (or her) life in only a few descriptive phrases, phrases that are interjected almost as a casual footnote, but which have a powerful effect.

Yet, I have reservations about this novel as I did with Egan's Look at Me, which was shortlisted for the 2001 National Book Award.  Egan tells a great story, but there is a noticeable absence of passion for her characters. It's not that they are flat or wooden -- they're not -- yet it's almost impossible to care for them.

They're less people on a page than devices to advance an intricate story, cleverly told.

Book 79: Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

Lockdown was shortlisted for the National Book Award in the category of Young People's Literature. It doesn't hold up well against such books as Kathryn Erskine's Mockingbird (which won) or Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker.

And I can't imagine Lockdown having much appeal to any teen who stumbles upon it. It's transparent in its message, didactic, preachy and unrealistic. 

The Snowman a conventional thriller in an unconventional setting

Yes, I've been tardy. No postings for any of the books read during July or August.  So let's change that . . .

Book 76: The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

A little neural clutter to dispatch before I can even think about The Snowman.

First, what is it with detectives named Harry? I mean there's Dirty Harry, made famous by craggy Clint Eastwood, and there's Michael Connelly's marvelous Harry Bosch. And now Norwegian author Jo Nesbo gives us Harry Hole.

And, yes, that's the second bit of clutter. "Harry Hole." Hairy Hole! Get it?

I'm having trouble with that one.  I mean Nesbo's fictional detective is every bit the brilliant asshole the genre demands. He has issues with authority, trouble maintaining personal relationships and  is an alcoholic.  But to blatantly name the guy Harry Hole. Can't we let the reader reach his own conclusions.

And then I clock that Nesbo's Norwegian and that the way Hole is pronounced in Norwegian is not the way it is pronounced in English. A little bit of Google magic and we discover that it's pronounced HEU-leh. That I can live with. So, on the book.

I've been late to the party America's given for Scandinavian authors like Nesbo and Stieg Larsson. My attitude is that if I'm not ahead of the curve, I sure as hell don't want to be behind it. Case in point: I have yet to read any book with Harry Potter in the title. (And that's another damn Harry. I think I've known one Harry my entire life, so how do you account for the preponderance of Harrys in literature? I can't.)

The Snowman is creepy, and by any measure that's exactly what a reader is looking for in a Scandinavian thriller. Dark. Moody. Not just cool, but icy.

There's a serial killer on the loose. Harry sees it quickly, but no one believes him. Serial killers, like politicians from Texas, are the unique creation of America.

But Harry's instincts are spot on. A killer is on the loose and his murders -- seemingly unconnected -- are becoming increasingly gruesome.  And, again in keeping with genre conventions, the killer is taunting Harry, issuing that age old invitation to find me before I kill again.

There's plenty of suspects, yet each one is eliminated as we build to the finale in which the killer's true identity is revealed . . . but not before Harry is put the supreme test.

By the time we reach this point in the book the killer's identity is all too apparent. Consequently, in a nice authorial concession, Nesbo reveals the killer and the motives behind his insane spree just as realization dawns for the reader. This clever bit of writing actually serves to ratchet up the tension, because now that we know who the killer really is we also know what's truly at stake. 

The Snowman is a satisfying thriller, but not overly original.  Conventions are honored.  But the Scandinavian overlay makes for an interesting change of pace.  I'll read Nesbo again, if for no other reason then I've gone to the trouble of nailing down the accurate pronunciation of Harry's last name.

Book 77: Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just

Any book by Ward Just -- even one that falls short as Rodin's Debutante does --  has elements so well constructed, characters so finely drawn, that it's worth reading despite the letdown.

Rodin's Debutante revolves (briefly) around the founder of an exclusive Illinois boy's school and a student at that school who becomes a talented Chicago sculptor. The story never adds up to much, and that's the downfall of this book, which might have benefited from an additional 100 pages.

One of Just's talents is to accurately portray a certain kind of man, to reveal what motivates him and to show us how and why he lives as he does.  Just is also skilled at striking a certain tone, capturing an atmosphere of elegance and restraint, that, in many cases, is as internal as it is external.

The best, and worst, that can be said about Rodin's Debutante is that it is an interesting book. Sadly, it could have been much more.

Patchett's State of Wonder a vivid novel of hope and redemption; Penn builds a case for steel and leather

" . . . some people have asked, 'Will you tell us what this book is about?' I'll say, 'There's this tribe in the Amazon where the women can have children forever.' The audience gasps and recoils. Then I laugh and say, 'Yes,it's a horror novel.' "

Book 74. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

It's always a delight when a reader's expectations and a writer's vision coincide. And, yes, that was the case for me and Ann Patchett's vibrant new novel, State of Wonder.

I've been a fan of Patchett for some time.  I loved her early novels, The Magician's Assistant and The Patron Saint of Liars. Admiration for her creative talents peaked with Bel Canto, which won the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award.

Her 2007 novel, Run, was something of a disappointment, but such a statement must carry a disclaimer.  Most authors would proudly have their name on Patchett's most disappointing book. She's that good.

In State of Wonder, Patchett is flexing her literary muscles once again.  Marina Singh, a Minnesota-born pharmaceutical scientist, is packed off to the Amazon on a multi-pronged mission. Her boss, who is also her lover, wants her to come back with answers from the all-too-independent doctor/scientist who is trying to isolate the chemicals that allow those Amazon women to procreate in old age.

Marina is also charged with finding out more about the death of her colleague, who was originally sent on the fact-finding mission and who died under mysterious circumstances.

Of course, it's complicated. The doctor/scientist has her own agenda. She's also Marina's former instructor. Marina was on the path to become a talented surgeon until a delivery room mishap led her to flee the program and eventually led her to become a research scientist.

Marina finds redemption and more in the Amazon jungles.  It doesn't give much away to say that dismembering a snake with a machete is the least of it.

State of Wonder is a wonder.  A vivid novel of hope, redemption and human tenacity. It's Patchett at her finest.

Book 75. It’s All About The Bike by Robert Penn

For me, biking will never supplant running. It's a nice substitute. A way to take some pressure off the knees and hips, spend a leisurely morning with friends and see a lot of countryside in a way you can't see running or in a car.

So, I'm not the audience for Robert Penn's account of his efforts to build his dream bike. It's All About The Bike is, well, all about the bike. It's about the hardware and, admittedly, some cyclists have a love affair with all those components.

I have this friend and biking has been very, very good to him. He's lost nearly 100 pounds because of cycling.  He's read this book twice and the second time he was taking notes.

Hardcore bicycle junkies , like my friend, are going to love Robert Penn's book. And I have to admit, I liked it a lot. I was especially fascinated by his chapters on the headset and the saddle.  The headset is that component that allows the front wheel to turn independently of the frame.  Fifteen years or so of biking and I didn't know that. It's kind of cool.

As for the saddle (seat to you neophytes) anyone who rides 60+ miles for multiple days, as I have done, understands just how important it is.  Your body has three points of contact with a bicycle -- the pedals, the handles and the seat.  I can't emphasize the importance of the right saddle. To paraphrase Penn, you may hurt, but you don't need to suffer.

Penn is a stout advocate for the bicycle -- a machine that is rightfully enjoying a renaissance.  He gives anyone who is thinking about assembling their own dream machine plenty to think about. Steel. Leather. Gears and Gruppo.

I'm not prepared to say it's all about the bike, but Penn makes a convincing case.

McCullough's Greater Journey an exuberant, sprawling history

73. The Greater Journey by David McCullough

The Greater Journey is a sprawling, exuberant history of Americans in Paris during a 70-year span of the 19th Century.

It's hard to say this is McCullough's best book -- he does have those two Pulitzers after all -- but it's easy to understand why it's his favorite. 

The book overflows with energy and inspiration, creativity and promise, so well does McCullough capture the spirit of Paris and the Americans who briefly called it home.

We meet novelist James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel F.B. Morse (famous in this country for inventing the telegraph, but who was a bold and muscular painter), the portraitist George P.A. Healey, the medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes, writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, future Senator Charles Sumner and the American ambassador Elihu Washburne.

It is a large, sprawling cast that's not limited to Americans.  Paris, its citizens and sites -- from the Louvre to the Champs-Elysee to the Eiffel Tower (which appears surprisingly late in the story) -- also play a major role in McCullough's history.

McCullough's principal contention is that 19th Century Paris -- from 1830 to 1900 -- helped shape these Americans and consequently helped shape America.  McCullough's American cast, and more, returned to their homeland having increased their knowledge, enhanced their expertise and awakened to an awareness of a wider world and a new perspective on that world. 

It was in Paris, for example, that Sumner, who became a leading proponent for the abolition of slavery, first began to understand that the way blacks were treated in American was not part of the natural order, but an outgrowth of custom.

In entertaining fashion, McCullough leads us to re-examine the critical role that France played in the America we celebrate today.

Three to read, one to skip

Once again, I'm guilty of reading rather than blogging. The consequence is that there's a small tower of books on the stand next to the computer.

So, here's four quick summaries to reduce the tower to a more manageable size. 

69. The Alchemist by Paolo Bacigalupi

Bacigalupi is Gaiman-like in his ability to master a variety of genres frrom pure science fiction to YA lit to unadulterated fantasy.

The Alchemist, an award-winning novella from Subterranean Press, is Bacigalupi's stab at fantasy. It's a compelling tale of a world in which each use of magic, however benign, spawns the growth of a thorny, poisonous, malevolent bramble.

The alchemist of the title uses magic to calm the persistent cough that threatens his daughter's health. He feels guilty about using magic, but justifies it by his search for a solution to eradicate the bramble.

I have only one complaint about The Alchemist -- it's a paired novella. The story of the alchemist, who is on the run when this book ends, is completed in a novella by Tobias Buckell. So many books, so little time.

70. Bradbury An Illustrated Life by Jerry Weist

It wouldn't work for just anyone, but Ray Bradbury is the perfect choice for an illustrated biography. This table-top sized book, assembled by Jerry Weist, makes no attempt to be a comprehensive story of Bradbury's life.

What it does do is capture a broad swatch of his creative life. The book is fat with reproductions of early fanzines in which Bradbury got his start, stills from television shows and movies, artist's illustrations of his stories that appeared in countless magazines, covers of pulps featuring his writing, pages of story adaptations from EC Comics and the covers of his books, including foreign editions.

It's a visual feast, and a fitting celebration of Bradbury's creative life.

71. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

Humor and pain are the elements that war for dominance in Sherman Alexie's superb stories of Indian life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Alexie's stories are filled with vivid characters who confront heartbreak and loss, the devastating (and inevitable) effects of alcohol and the decades-old degradation that penetrates the soul of a conquered people with a sly humor and stoic acceptance.

Alexie, who tweaks our funny bone and our conscience, ranks among America's most gifted writers. 

72. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

This 2010 novel by Philip Pullman is a mean-spirited re-creation of the Gospel.

Mary gives birth to twins. One she names Jesus. The other, we are told, is given a common name, but Mary always calls him Christ, which is Greek for Messiah.

Inspired by his cousin, John, Jesus becomes an itinerant preacher who attracts a small following even as he begins to generate controversy among the religious rulers. Christ, who is regularly visited by a mysterious stranger, chronicles the events of Jesus's life and his sayings.

Eventually, Jesus is crucified. It is Christ who appears to Mary three days after the crucifixion, to several of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  Christ eventually leaves the area, marries and -- encouraged by the stranger -- sets to work on his account of Jesus's life.

" . . . as Christ sat . . . he couldn't help thinking of the story of Jesus, and how he could improve it. For example, there could be some miraculous sign to welcome the birth: a star, an angel. And the childhood of Jesus might be studded with charming little wonder-tales of boyish mischief leavened by magic, which could nevertheless be interpreted as signs of greater miracles to come."

It's an altogether cynical excursion into fantasy that rather than re-telling the life of Jesus, seeks to re-invent it, and the establishment of the Catholic Church, as a great hoax.

Four books that include a cop's life and a sacrifical ballplayer

I hate writing about four books at once, but I also hate the stack of books lurking near my computer, reminding me that I need to say something about them. Let's say this -- they are all good books and I'd recommend each one.

Now for something a little more personal about each book.

Book 63: The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass

There's an inherent appeal to a novel that features not one, but two tree houses as is the case with The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass.

I have enjoyed her novels since she made her debut with the award-winning Three Junes.  Glass's novels have their share of dysfunction, heart ache and disappointment, but there is also a joy that emerges in her work, a celebration of life despite its pain and misfortune. 

The Widower's Tale is the story of 70-year-old Percy Darling, a sharp-tongued curmudgeon who continues to mourn the passing of his wife decades after she drowned. As the novel progresses unexpected events, from a late-life romance to acts of eco-terrorism, help Percy shed his grief and embrace life and all it quizzical turns.

Book 66: A Well-Paid Slave by Brad Snyder

"A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave." Curt Flood

As author Brad Snyder notes Cardinals' outfielder Curt Flood was not baseball's first free agent. Nor did his lawsuit, which ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court, create free agency or result in the elimination of baseball's reserve clause.

"But," Snyder writes, "his legal battle set the stage for free agency in baseball."

It's possible, I suppose, to see Flood as other than heroic. His decision to reject a trade from St. Louis to Philadelphia, to leave the game when he was among its highest paid players and to sue baseball, to challenge the reserve clause, directly led to the game we know today.

How you view that game will go a long way in determining how you view Flood.

The owner's contended that without the reserve clause baseball could not survive. Yet, today, the game flourishes. What owners surrendered to players was a share of the game's wealth.

Flood, whose baseball career and whose future in the game was wrecked because of his defiance, always knew that he would never benefit from his suit, but that other players would.

Snyder's challenge, and one that he meets with verve, is to make the legal aspects of this book -- which are at its very heart -- as spellbinding as the baseball.  He provides a balanced portrait of Flood, a great player who struggled with alcoholism, and provides intriguing portraits of other men who played a role in this courtroom drama from labor leader Marvin Miller to baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Book 67: The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

Novelist Arthur Phillips ruptures the veil between the worlds of fiction and reality as he casts himself as the central character in this comic novel of a dysfunctional family with an obsession for William Shakespeare.

Phillips is the unreliable narrator of what is putatively the foreword to a newly discovered play by Shakespeare, but which quickly develops into an often whiny memoir of how his daddy loved his twin sister more.

Daddy has spent most of his life in prison for various schemes involving fraud and forgery, which naturally leads Phillips to suspect that this new play by Shakespeare -- stashed in his father's safety deposit box for decades -- wasn't written by the Bard, but dad.

As Phillips argues that the play isn't what it appears to be, everyone else -- from his sister, who has memorized huge swathes of Shakespeare's works, to university professors -- line up to proclaim that Shakespeare does indeed appear to have written this brilliant new play.  Even Random House, Phillip's publisher in the novel and real life, gets in the act.

More than two-thirds of The Tragedy of Arthur is devoted to the memoir. Roughly another 100 pages feature the play, of the same name, which Phillips (the real one) wrote. I'll willingly confess I didn't read it.

So I read The Tragedy of Arthur, but not The Tragedy of Arthur, which makes perfect sense to anyone reading the newest novel/foreword/memoir by Arthur Phillips, real and imagined.

Book 68: Rizzo’s Fire by Lou Manfredo

It's the insider's understanding of a cop's day-to-day world that make Lou Manfredo's novels about Brooklyn detective Joe Rizzo such a pleasure to read.

Manfredo understands that a cop's life is about the quotidian chores of filing reports, canvassing the neighborhood and exploring unlikely leads, rather than the glamour of car chases and shoot outs. Yet, he manages to make the mundane magical.

Rizzo, who is only months from retirement, is a complicated figure.  He's proud of his career, but strongly resists a daughter's efforts to follow in his footsteps. He's given to lecturing his new partner or to offering advice to a medical examiner on the scene of a murder out of a mistrust of motivation.

And he will cut corners to nail a bad guy, advance a partner's career or secure additional overtime to pad his retirement.  He's quick to give a favor or ask for one.

He's a cop who is passionate about his work, but who also understands that at the end of the day it is a job that exacts a heavy price, a price he's always been willing to pay.

Rizzo's Fire and Manfredo's first book, Rizzo's War are terrific novels for their exceptional insight into a cop's life, the challenges he confronts each day and the trade offs he must make.

Miéville's novels are complex narratives, rich with ideas

Book 62: The City and The City by China Miéville
Book 65: Embassytown by China Miéville

Complex, challenging novels that are occasionally infuriating and always entertaining is how I would characterize the novels of British writer China Miéville.

These are not the pared-down, movie-script-as-a-novel books that Michael Critchton cranked out in his last few years. Rather, these are complex novels that reward the patient reader with a rich story that strikes the rare balance between ideas and action.

The City & The City -- co-winner of the 2010 Hugo Award with Paolo Bacigalupi for the delicious The Windup Girl --  is a noir-ish detective story in a science fiction setting. Yet because Miéville is faithful to both genres the novel never feels like a gimmick.

The novel begins as a conventional police procedural. A body is found, dumped near the ramps of a skateboard park. "Nothing is still as the death are still," observes Police Inspector Tyador Borlú́́, who is called in to investigate the murder.

Those opening pages -- a body unceremoniously dumped by a skateboard park, the police soberly looking on -- is the last time, the only time, that this novel is on familiar ground. Now it gets strange.

Borlú́́ is an inspector in the city of Besź́́̀́́el, which shares the same physical space, the same geography, as the city of Ul Qoman. 

Miéville never explains why these two cities overlap, we're only told they do.  It first appears as if there's been some quirky dimensional overlay from out of the pages of Marvel Comics.  But that's not what's happening here.

Instead, it appear that the residents of Besź́́̀́́el and Ul Qoman have intentionally decided that one city is now really two.  It's as if all the residents of a New York borough woke up one morning and decided that based on style of dress, the make of car, the architecture of a house, or the presence of certain colors, that their neighbor doesn't fully exist.

You can see them, but you try real hard not to. You can even visit this other city, but to do so, to visit a neighbor who literally lives across the street, requires that you pass through a checkpoint and a wear badge that identifies you as a visitor.  And once you've done that you can't simply walk back across the street to your own home -- you have to pass through the checkpoint again to do that.

To complicate matters, part of the landscape seems to belong only to Besź́́̀́́el, part to Ul Qoman. Some overlaps and other areas aren't a part of either city.

And to complicate matters even more, all of this, this separation, is enforced by a shadowy presence known as the Breach.

This separation between the two cities is important to Borlú́́ because it appears the young woman was killed in one city, her body dumped in another. In the course of his investigation, Borlú́́ learns that the woman may have been murdered because she uncovered evidence of a second shadowy group of people living in the interstice of the two cities, a shadowy group that may be a threat to the Breach.

Miéville challenges the reader by not explaining everything -- either the words he's coined (both novels cry out for a glossary) or the reason that the two cities exist as they do. 

Embassytown is just as challenging, just as potentially confusing.  In this novel, we find ourselves on a far distant world where humans have established a small outpost, an embassy. The world's sentient life form, the Ariekei, have two mouths. 

As a result, the Ariekei hear human speech, but are unable to perceive it as language. Nor are they capable of perceiving a normal human as an intelligent creature.

To communicate with the Ariekei, or the Hosts as they are known to the human residents of Embassytown, humans rely on the "Ambassadors," human twins, doppels, that share an empathetic connection and who separately represent each of the Hosts' two mouths. The Ambassadors are bred in Embassytown.

A crisis erupts when an Ambassador arrives from off world.  This Ambassador is not a twin, but two distinct humans, and his/his speech is instantly addictive to the Ariekei.

Both races embark on efforts to free the Ariekei from this addiction. The solution found by the Hosts involves a severe form of self-mutilation that leaves them free of addiction, but unable to speak. The solution found by the human involves teaching the Ariekei to lie.

Further explanations elude me.  It's all tied up with the idea that for the Ariekei language is literal. And it has to do with a small number of humans who literally become part of the Ariekei language. As a little girl our narrator becomes a simile in the Hosts language.

Describing Embassytown is as a challenging as reading it. It is a complex novel that demands multiple readings to reach a full understanding of what Miéville is trying to achieve -- if that's even possible.

One reading, or many, Miéville's books are among the most provocative to appear in years.  His novels, and the ideas within them, defy the casual read. Yet despite the complexity -- or perhaps because of it -- Miéville also produces a gripping narrative of unparalleled richness.

Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman another fine entry in the American Presidents series

Book 61: Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman

Sadly, the American Presidents series from Times Books is coming to an end. Less than a handful of books remain to be issued. 

The most recent in the series is Millard Fillmore by Paul Finkelman.  To me, this book encompasses all that has been good about the series.

First, the series provides us with brief biographies on each of the Presidents. The books are small, generally running less than 200 pages.  Second, while providing an overview of each man's life, the books focus on their tenure as President.

Third, the books are uniformly well written and impeccably researched. There have been stand-outs such as Elizabeth Drew on Richard Nixon, but all of the books have met a high mark; erudite, but not plodding; balanced rather than tendentious.

Finally, and here is where Millard Fillmore is a fine example, the books have featured ALL the presidents and not merely Washington or Lincoln, Adams or Jefferson or Kennedy.  Martin Van Buren, Warren G. Harding, John Tyler and, of course, Millard Fillmore.

Fillmore is what Finkelman calls an "accidental president." Zachary Taylor dies in office and Fillmore, an obscure politician from New York, ascends to the presidency.  He was also a terrible president, generally deserving the anonymity with which history greets him.

Fillmore was a doughface, a Northern who sympathized with Southern causes, especially slavery.  He was stubborn, vindictive and a bigot. The 1856 Presidential nominee of the Know Nothings, he opposed Catholics, immigrants and foreigners of every stripe. While President his support for the Fugitive Slave Act and its aggressive enforcement helped escort this nation into civil war.

"In retirement, Fillmore opposed emancipation and campaigned for a peace that would have left millions of African Americans in chains," Finkelman concludes. "In the end, Fillmore was always on the wrong side of the great moral and political issues of the age: immigration, religious toleration, equality, and, most of all, slavery."

A quote from You Know When the Men Are Gone

In my haste to finish my post on the short story collections of William Trevor and Siobhan Fallon I neglected to include the following quote from one of Fallon's stories:

"Their fate depended on whether Carla walked out of the room or stood next to her husband. She bit her lip and wondered if this was the sum of a marriage: wordless recriminations or reconciliations, every breath either striving against or toward the other person, each second a decision to exert or abdicate the self."

The short story flourishes in collections by Trevor and Fallon

Book 60:  Selected Stories by William Trevor 

Book 64:  You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

My reading in late May and early June includes two superb short story collections. 

The collection from Irish native William Trevor is hefty, encompassing 48 stories and 567 pages and representing more than a half century of work. 

The second collection, belonging to American Siobhan Fallon, is a slender volume of only eight stories and slightly more than 200 pages. It is her first book.

Trevor and Canadian writer Alice Munro are the two finest short story writers today.   Fallon joins Maile Meloy, whose entrancing collection Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It debuted last year, as two of the most promising young writers practicing the short form today.

If we use art as a metaphor, the novelist is a muralist working on a vast surface with an extensive palette and numerous subjects. The short story is a miniature, the palette limited. The short story writer has a narrow focus. It is about subtle detail rather than broad strokes.

The stories by Trevor and Fallon are both rich in detail and observation. The best writers take us inside a world we do know not, allowing us to savor its foreign elements, while finding areas of identification and affinity. We come to understand the commonality of the human experience.

Trevor deftly maneuvers through the world of farmers and priests, lovers and loners.

Fallon's eight remarkable stories are focused the American Army base at Fort Hood outside of Killeen, Texas. Whether she is writing about soldiers or the wives who are left behind she taps a deep well of empathy for the men and women who have sacrificed the quotidian American life for a life ruled by uncertainty, separation, the whims of war and arbitrary military protocol.

In these two collections, a master of the short form, and a student, have both produced closely observed works of rare beauty, power and insight.

Collins' Lost Souls is a dark but honest portrait of a small Midwestern town

Book 59:  Lost Souls by Michael Collins

The petri dish of small town America has always been a rich source of experimentation and exploration for writers. 

In this unrelentingly bleak 2003 novel, Irish writer Michael Collins, who now calls America home, trods ground previously covered by authors as diverse as Sinclair Lewis and Grace Metalious, to uncover a malignant strain of greed, boosterism and fundamentalist Christianity.

On Halloween, a three-year-old girl wanders away from her home. Her body is later found beneath a covering of leaves along the roadside. There is reason to believe that the quarterback of the high school football team may know something about her death.  

But the mayor -- who owns a used car lot -- doesn't want the quarterback implicated. Through his leadership, the team is poised to capture an elusive state championship, which can put this small Indiana town back on the map.

There's also a promising college and professional career to think about.

Lawrence, a small town cop with big problems, is recruited by the mayor and police chief to clear the young man. It is hinted that Lawrence, who is divorced, depressed and deeply in debt, will be made police chief when the current chief retires later in the year. "Everything in this town works together," says the mayor, "or it doesn't work at all."

And so the cover up begins. The lessons we learned from Watergate are retaught: Lies that are the foundation of a cover up lead to more lies and still more lies until finally the whole rickety edifice crumbles amid recrimination, finger pointing and back peddling, followed by the search for a scapegoat.

Lost Souls is a dark but honest portrait of a small Midwestern town trying to reclaim its lost glory and of men and women seeking their share of happiness, wealth and love. Yet what's true for the town is also true for the men and women who inhabit it -- the redemption they seek is just beyond reach, an elusive memory that cannot be reclaimed.

Cleopatra well-written, impeccably researched

Book 58: Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra by author Stacy Schiff is well-written and impeccably researched. It's a compelling story of one of history's most elusive figures.

For most of us, almost everything we know about Cleopatra is due to William Shakespeare or Elizabeth Taylor. Her life would seem to belong as much to a soap opera as the history channel.  It is a life so shrouded in the stuff of legend that she would seem to belong alongside some fictional figure of myth rather than any person from history

Until now. Schiff sifts through the innuendo, speculation and half-truths to present our most complete portrait of this remarkable woman who was perceived by her people as not only a queen, but as an actual goddess.

Her biography is the definitive source on the Queen of the Nile. With limits.

The truth is we don't know much about Cleopatra. As Schiff points out we have very little idea what she may have actually looked like. And we're not certain how she died. It was suicide, but there probably wasn't a snake involved. 

And Cleopatra's story is not hers alone. It also belongs to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony as well as the people of Egypt and Rome. It is also more of a political story than a personal one.  Throughout her life Cleopatra was either concerned with securing the throne or retaining control of it. She was, at various times, worried more about her own siblings than the Romans.

Because the historical record is so sketchy, Schiff must work with a limited palette. Her accomplishment, then, is all the more remarkable for in Cleopatra she compares the real woman to the legend and it is the real woman who emerges as one of the most intriguing figures in history.

The sun sets on Moon Over Manifest

Book 57: Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool 

I had a lot of reasons to like this book. The winner of the 2011 Newberry Award, it was written by a Wichita woman and is set in the fictional town of Manifest, Kansas, a stand-in for the real southeastern Kansas town of Frontenac.

I had a lot of reasons to like it, yet I didn't.

There were three reasons I found it disappointing -- the main character, the town of Manifest and the all-to-clever plot.

Abilene Tucker has been sent to Manifest by her father.  It's the middle of the Depression and the pair have been wandering the country until an injury to Abilene causes her father to realize that hopping the rails isn't the life for a 12-year-old girl.

Abilene's voice doesn't feel authentic to me.  Granted, she's been on the road and, granted, it's not unusual  for the principal character in a novel such as this to be precocious, but I never once felt that the voice speaking to me on these pages belonged to a 12-year-old girl living through the Depression.

Much is made by the author that her maternal grandparents lived in Frotenanc -- the town she uses as a model for Manifest -- and she spent time there as a child.  Yet Manifest never feels like a real place.  The author tells us that it is a Kansas mining town, inhabited by immigrants, but that picture is never fully drawn.

Elements of the plot -- the final trickery the townspeople resort to in order to wrest their lives from the hands of the venal mine owner -- are too clever by half.  I'll accept many scenarios from fiction writers -- FBI agents turned bricklayers and cities that exist side by side in some dimensional quirk -- but this final ploy is too clever and complicated to seem even remotely probable.

Even the ending, which should be warm and sweet, feels sentimental and contrived.

Ultimately, Moon Over Manifest reads like a book that adults want children to like. It reads like a book that might have been written in the '50s or early '60s.  I can't imagine too many young readers today taking it to heart. Certainly, it pales compared to the fine Mockingbird, Smiley's The Georges and the Jewels or any of Carl Hiaasen's novels for young adults.

Agent X a deft thriller

Book 56: Agent X by Noah Boyd 

FBI agent turned bricklayer. How's that for concept? Crazy, huh?

One wonders if author Noah Boyd, himself a former FBI agent, actually encountered that scenario during his career with the Feds.  

However the idea came to him -- out of some past reality or the fertility of his own imagination, it works.  Two books into this series, first, The Bricklayer, and now, Agent X, and I am on board. 

As I mentioned in my blog on The Bricklayer stumbling on to these thrillers has a similar feel, the same frisson, that I encountered more than decade ago with Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels.  

What do I like about them? Notably, there is Steve Vail, the bricklayer -- straight out of the Clint Eastwood mold of rugged, independent hero -- who is summoned by the FBI to solve cases they can't break. I love his passive-aggressive approach, the way he sends them off on a wild goose chase, while he holds back some critical piece of information that will help him unravel the case.  

Vail, who is driven to succeed by his father's emotional abuse, can't help himself, yet there's a part of him that enjoys manipulating authority.

I like the Moonlighting-like interplay between Vail and the FBI's Kate Bannon; the sexual tension, the banter that leads to the bedroom.

I like the mysteries, the puzzles that lead to more puzzles and Vail's unwillingness to settle for the obvious solution, his determination to solve the crime after everyone thinks it has been solved.

Boyd is far more skillful than the most authors with only two books to their credits. He handles the pacing deftly, the characters are distinct and the story lines are plausible within the confines of the genre.  

Yep, I'm on the bandwagon.  Let's hope Boyd will be writing, and I'll be reading, Steve Vail thrillers for years to come. The bricklayer is solid.