ReadingBlog

20 July 2011

Nosey nurse

Nineteen months ago, Dan Conrad passed on a recommendation of a Masie Dobbs-like mystery by Charles Todd, A Duty to the Dead. I finally read it.

It's good.

I found a copy at the used book sale run by the hospital auxillary last spring. I plucked it off the pile a week or so ago.

It's not a Masie Dobbs mystery. It is set during World War I, not in the war's aftermath. Hero Beth Crawford is an active duty British nurse from a well-to-do family, not a fortunate, talented former nurse who, with the right mentors, has made her own way in the world. Beth Crawford is home on recuperation leave after her hospital ship was sunk by a mine (she doesn't spend much time on R&R).

She's carrying a message from a dying patient to his family. She doesn't know want it means, but she has an overactive imagination and a really nosey attitude. She also has enough money, enough friends and family, and enough time and energy to poke around in the "private" world of a dead soldier's family.

Okay, I might make it sound bad, but if you read the book, you'll find Charles Todd putting an opposite spin on the whole situation.

The mother-son duo who is Charles Todd

In spite of that I liked reading the book. The story is complex and well unwound. The characters are pretty thin and the British countryside is mentioned, but not featured. There are some improbabilities, but I'm not inclined to award any Heart of Gold prizes for them. Well, except maybe the final one where Beth Crawford goes to a previously unmentioned aunt or cousin or something and finds a sympathetic and helpful advisor. It made me wonder why Crawford hadn't she gone to Aunt Melinda sooner.

I'll second Dan's recommendation of A Duty to the Dead, and look forward to reading another "Bess Crawford Mystery." However, I'll look forward with greater anticipation for the next "Masie Dobbs Mystery."

Have you read A Duty to the Dead or another of the Bess Crawford mysteries? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

The authors' web site (There's a video of the authors talking about and reading from the book. You might want to skip it. The book is much more lively and alive than the authors' presentation of themselves.)
Irma Heldman's review at Open Letter Monthly
Good Reads' 600+ ratings and 200+ reviews
Uncredited review at Women in World History

17 July 2011

Why not dead?

Well, I was reading through a welcome stack of books that I began accumulating in April, and dear Nancy brings home a book from the library. That means I should read it before it is returned unless I want to make the effort to find it later. Not that I minded much. The book was another in the Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow. I've liked most of Stabenow's books that I've read.

This one is Though Not Dead.

Right off the bat, I have to give this book two Green Lantern Superhero awards and a Heart of Gold Improbability award.

That bat, that I mentioned above, is about the only thing that wasn't used to hit Stabenow's superhero Kate Shugak in this book. I lost count whether it was 3, 4, or 5 times that Shugak was knocked silly and unconscious during the course of this story. I would suspect that Stabenow has a medical consultant she could consult about the short and long term effects of those injuries, but I really doubt that Shugak could wake up, blink, and carry on as nonchalantly as she does in this story. (Of course, as I recall, Shugak has survived worse in other stories, but in my memories her recoveries have been more realistic.)

Then there's the plot within which all this damage is done. As the book opens, Shugak's self-appointed foster father has died. He was a respected community elder. His gruff, outspoken manner was appreciated by most people. He left a mysterious message for Kate Shugak with his will, and that sets the story in motion.

It's a wonderfully complex story. Only slightly improbable. It's the actions of Kate Shugak and her "enemies" that are improbable. The bits and pieces of the story unwind and then join together in fine ways. Stabenow is a very good story teller. That is what holds this all together in the face of superheroism and incredibly unlikely events.

Like the other Kate Shugak stories, it takes place within the mostly native community on the edge of wilderness in southeast Alaska. The area is about 200 miles southeast of Wasilla in "the park," Stabenow's name for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Since the park is so new, there is still a lot of private land and some native communities within the park. (After all, there's still some private land within Glacier National Park, and it's 101 years old.)

Downtown Chitina, Alaska, near the site of Niniltna
(reminds me of Cicely from Northern Exposure
Of course, outside shots for that TV show were filmed in Roslyn, WA)

Niniltna and the native villages are familar communities, full of familiar people to readers of earlier Stabenow books. But, there's a big mining company doing an environmental impact study for a proposed gold mine nearby that brings in a lot of outsiders as well as providing jobs to many locals. Plus, Stabenow allows the community to change, as with the death of Shugak's "father." That kind of vitality is one of the things that makes these stories attractive to me.

Oh, and Kate Shugak's love interest? He's off in California because of the death of his father. And presumably he's coming back to the wilderness richer than Croesus. What will become of two rich adventurous do-gooders in "the park?"

The hard-headedness of superhero Shugak and too many improbabilities keep me from proclaiming this really great. But I liked reading most of it.

Have you read Though Not Dead or other Stabenow books? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

Dana Stabenow's web page for Though Not Dead
Mary McManman's review at MLive
Nina Sankovitch's review at Read All Day
Over 300 ratings at Good Reads

11 July 2011

Burned by Barr's Improbabilities

Many years ago, long before I dreamt up the Heart of Gold awards, I stopped reading Sue Grafton's novels about the adventures of Kinsey Millhone. I think it was around G is for Gumshoe (1989) or H is for Homicide (1991). Grafton's private eye was improbably doing dumb things and improbably surviving attacks by bad guys. It was too much fantasy for me.

Before the little California girls flew home, I picked up another of the birthday books from our family book pusher. (Thanks, Mary.) This was a Nevada Barr book, Burn.

This book earns a couple Heart of Gold awards. Usually, improbablities leave me cold. I like stories and I like realism. I am not keen on superheroes in an otherwise realistic environment. Maybe I should give Burn some kind of superhero award too. A Green Lantern award for improbable superhero?

Well, the improbabilities in Burn could power The Heart of Gold across the universe and back several times (I know that's an oxymoron in Douglas Adams' universe). One of the biggest improbabilities is that Barr's hero, U. S. National Park ranger Anna Pigeon, is a superhero in an otherwise normal universe. At least in modern Superman's "world" there are super villains to contend with. (I don't recall super villains in the 1950's Superman of my youth, but that's another issue.) And then there are the scenes where straight-laced, uptight Ranger Pigeon goes undercover as a hooker in New Orleans' French Quarter. And she doesn't get tagged as a female impersonater. Nor does she get approached by any Johns.

And Barr resorts to a plot device often used by mystery writers: sending her main character off on an investigation she has no duty to follow and one that's far outside her purview. I see that most often in TV scripts, but it's here, right out in public. In fact, Ranger Pigeon is supposedly in New Orleans recovering emotionally and physically from her last adventure. Instead she decides to jump into situations she knows little about and without any consultation with people she loves and respects (like her husband and her sister).

I've really enjoyed most of Barr's mystery-thrillers. As escapist lit, she does a good job of story telling.

There are two stories in Burn which merge about half way through the book. I enjoyed the separate stories more than the single joined story. Once Anna Pigeon got involved with murder suspect on the lam from half-way across the country, things went downhill. I read the second half of the book wondering how Barr was going to pull all her irons out the fires. Her methods were improbable.

My unsolicited advice to Nevada Barr is to send her ranger back into the arms of her sheriff-preacher husband and find out how the two of them can more realistically work together. And don't neglect to have Ranger Pigeon's psychiatrist sister come for a visit. In my mind each of those people offers needed balance for the Anna Pigeon character (and stories about her).

Have you read Burn? Or another of Barr's novels? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

Nevada Barr's web page for Burn
Laura Taylor's review at Buried Under Books
Julie Hyzy's review at Reactions to Reading
Dorman Schlinder's review at The Denver Post

Reintroduction

A couple years ago, I awarded some books I read "Heart of Gold Prizes."

The name for the prize came from Douglas Adams' space ship in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. [It had a black control panel (like my now obsolete audio amplifier). Black controls mean that no one can really tell what the controls control. But given the way the space ship worked, no one needed to use the control panel anyway.]

Heart of Gold

The reason I choose that space ship for the prizes was becasause of the power source used by the Heart of Gold. Kevin Kelly in his io9 blog, described the propulsion system this way, "The Heart of Gold ran on an infinite improbability drive that took it through 'every point in the universe at once' when it was switched on. Not too shabby. All it took was an electronic brain and a good Brownian motion generator, like a cup of tea, and you're off. Probably the cheapest form of travel ever invented."

I bring this up because of some of my recent reading. I'm ready to award some more HoG Prizes. Improbabilities drive me up a wall. Especially blatant ones. These are not awards of honor. A couple prize winners follow.

Doing my Doig

Ivan Doig is one of those names I see tossed around in the world of Literature. Well-known authors review his books.

On the Ivan Doig Literature Map, there are no names really close to his. That, to me, indicates that Doig's work is ideosyncratic. But some people whose books I've liked are not far away: Dan O'Brien, Norman Maclean, Leif Enger, Alexander Mccall Smith, and Kathleen Norris. On the fringes of the map are names like Willa Cather, Rita Mae Brown, C. J. Box, and Louise Edrich, whose books I have mostly liked. But there are also names like Danielle Steel. Danielle Steele?

Yes. I liked the first couple of Doig's books I read. I should have stopped after the first couple. I'd have better memories.

I'm more convinced than ever that these books are script outlines for television soap operas (if there are any still around). The little scenes he describes as his way of telling stories could easily be 4-minute televison scenes. And the way in which the scenes follow characters instead of timelines fits with what I've seen of soap operas as I've surfed channels. And the extended timelines (e.g. slow progression of story telling) also fits with my image of those daytime sagas.

Well, I've now done my Doig. I picked up Bucking the Sun at the Hospital Auxiliary book sale. It'll be the last of his books that I'll pick up.

This one centers on the extended Duff family, immigrants to Montana from Scotland. They get displaced or recruited to help build the Fort Peck Dam in Montana.

Dredging to build the Fort Peck dam.

Most of the Duff family were hired hands on the project and lived in one of the boom towns around the dam. Doig romanticized those towns and the people who survived there. Not everyone shared those views.

Dr. C.C. Lull, a doctor in the boom town of Wheeler, described the place and its people this way:

The natural result of this desire for recreation and entertainment when not on shift of work was that these places became a fertile field for the professional gambler and those of questionable reputation, both male and female, who live off the 'sap' and his hard-earned money. Bootlegging became rampant and a 'red-light' district was established.

There were gamblers, bootleggers, women of questionable income, and the men who associate with them. Professional dancers, grafters, robbers and morphine addicts and not a few wanted by the law sought refuge in this area. As time passed, the better and more substantial citizens became acquainted with each other, casting the influences against these undesirables, and made it too hot for them to remain any longer to plunder on the strange public without detection.

Lull doesn't mention that the workers were also begin recruited by the IWW other union organizers. Proletarian politics at its best and worst.

Bucking the Sun is light on plot and big on characters. It's evidently big on symbolism, too, but most of that missed me. The reading group guide that was at the back of the edition I read was full of questions about the difference between fiction and nonfiction, the purpose of "back stories," and the causes of the betrayals in the story. Okay, not my kind of questions. Well, except for the one about fiction/nonfiction. I did go looking to find out if one of the big events late in the book actually happened. (It did.)

I'm as tired of the stories Doig has told as I am with the dry, high praries of eastern Montana. I know, those praries might be one of the reasons I enjoy the mountains just to the west, but I cannot think of what the romances of 20th century east slope Montana will help me enjoy more.

Agree? Disagree? Write and tell this little bit of the world why.

Ivan Doig on Bucking the Sun
Customer reveiws at Amazon.com
Gene Lyons' review at Entertainment Weekly
Readers' reviews at GoodReads

Readers, put this on your calendar

The Library of Congress

July 18, 8:00pm EDT from CNN

"This program looks behind-the-scenes at the Library of Congress, allowing viewers to learn the history of the institution as they tour the Library’s iconic Jefferson Building and see some of the treasures found in its collections of rare books, photos, and maps. It will also feature a look at some of the presidential papers housed there, ranging from George Washington through Calvin Coolidge. Viewers will learn how the library uses technology to preserve its holdings and expand public access to them. It will also show how technology is helping to uncover new information about some of the items in its collections."

"The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with nearly 150 million items. It was started in 1800. Its first books were bought from England with a $5,000 appropriation from Congress. Housed in the U.S. Capitol, the library was destroyed in 1814 when British soldiers burned the building. Hearing of the fire, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell Congress his book collection. After much debate, Congress agreed to buy the collection for just under $24,000. In 1851, another fire destroyed 2/3 of the library’s holdings. In 1870, Congress passed copyright legislation that required two copies of every book published be sent to the Library of Congress. Subsequently, the holdings of the library grew extensively. Congress debated whether to give the library its own building. That didn’t happen until much later. The library moved out of the Capitol building and into the Jefferson building in 1897. Today, the Library of Congress spans over a total of 8 buildings."

30 June 2011

More about Montana before mid-century

I was enchanted by a four-year-old recently. It probably helps that she's a granddaughter, but she's pretty wonderful without that status.

I was planning on spending a couple evenings with her, but for most of that time, she'd be asleep. So I grabbed a small paperback by Ivan Doig (another of those books I picked up at the used book sale). I figured it would be easy to hold on to while I read to stay awake.

The book was Heart Earth. It was written about a decade after Doig wrote the autobiographical This House of Sky. In This House... Doig told the story of growing up with his widowed father and his maternal grandmother. The time wasn't easy for any of them. Doig's mother died on his 6th birthday. His grandmother joined the household because there was no other way for his father to continue earning a living and maintaining a family. Father and mother-in-law never seemed to like each other, but they joined forces to create a family.

I haven't read This House of Sky, but I did read Heart Earth. Heart Earth is a recreation (or reimagining) by Doig of his mother. After his uncle died, he was handed a packet of letters from his mother to her brother. Doig's uncle served on a warship in the Pacific during World War II, and his mother had time and inclination to write to her brother and share a lot of her thoughts and feelings with him.

From these letters, Doig attempts to describe his mother and her married life. There are many holes in the description, as we'd expect. In spite of the apparent intimacy of the letters, he writes about events more than about the person who was his mother. Maybe that's to be expected, too. Doig was too young to have many memories or first hand impressions. This writing exercise seems primarily to be a personal project in which Doig tries to find out more about the mother he never knew.

I never really got engaged with the story or the people. And it wasn't because I read most of this during a couple nights of babysitting. Doig's prose is rich and smooth. It's also pretty passionless and non-judgemental. His other books have plot that this real life biography doesn't. The book ends with his mother's death. As the number of unread pages dwindled, I knew where the death was going to happen. No dramatic build up or climax here. Just sorrow, but even that was mostly implied.

Maybe you've read Heat Earth and found things there I didn't. If so, write and tell this little bit of the world about your experience with the book.

Ivan Doig's notes on Hearth Earth
Beth Fish's review of Heart Earth

27 June 2011

More interesting books

The Future Has A Past - J. California Cooper
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Texas by James Michener
Rereading the book I wrote, Remnants, so I can write the sequel this summer!
Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin (because when I was 7, I was a UFO investigator)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

An intriguing book list

My college alumni Facebook page asked grads what they're reading this summer. Here are the results from the first two hours. It's lists like this that often lead me to books I'd never encounter otherwise.

I'll resist the temptation to comment and just post the list (without links too):

My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Portrait by Ian Pears
Uncertain Path: A Search For The Future Of National Parks by William C. Tweed
Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl [Okay, I'll comment. The author was once in a class I taught.]
Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
Fire and Ice books by Neal Stephenson
In The Woods by Tara French, great mystery and great writing
The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Vishal Mangalwadi
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (listed twice)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: dispatches from the front lines of the new girlie-girl culture by Peggy Orenstein
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Emma
Unbroken
Fall of Giants
In the garden of beasts
The Origins of Political Order, Vol. 1 by Francis Fukuyama
Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Waiting for Aphrodite (essays about amphibians) by the wonderful Sue Hubbell
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Embassytown by China Mieville
Philosophical Fragments and Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

18 June 2011

Great story again

For at least the third time, our family book pusher provided us with a novel by C. J. Box. I think she likes carefully reading these before they become welcome gifts in our household.

I first read a C. J. Box mystery/adventure when Nancy bought one in West Yellowstone. The first one I wrote about here was Winterkill in 2006. However, I mentioned then that I'd read two earlier books by Box. (I read Open Season and Savage Run in the days before I began posting these notes on the blog. I have written about Free Fire, Blue Heaven, and Below Zero. Along the way, I passed on reading Three Weeks to Say Goodbye because it sounded too grim.

Box is such a good story teller, that I've read most of his books even though, as I've said before, I don't like nastily violent books like these.

As with at least two other Box novels, I didn't want to put this book down once I got into it. Paradoxilly, I kept taking breaks in my reading because I didn't want to be done with the book.

There are two stories in Cold Wind, and they pretty much run parallel to one another until the end of the book. In an earlier book, Wyoming ranger Joe Pickett and his outside-the-law doppleganger Nate Romanowski were seriously estranged from one another. As we might expect one of this book's stories is about Joe and the other is about Nate. At the end of the book, the two stories merge and Joe and Nate reach a kind of truce. And the ending sets up the next story which is likely to threaten Nate, Joe, and Joe's family.

Between the covers of this book, a fabulously rich rancher is murdered, his widow (Joe Pickett's mother-in-law) is accused of the crime, someone clumsily tries to kill Nate, Joe's oldest daughter heads off to college, and Joe spends time monitoring the fall hunting season in north central Wyoming between taking comp days to investigate the murder. The plot is satisfyingly complicated, but it's the story telling that stands out.

As usual, there's a fair amount of improbability in the details of the story, but I can overlook it when it's told this well.

Have you read Cold Wind? other C. J. Box books? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

C. J. Box's web site
Wyofile on the local star of fiction
An interview with Box at the blog Jungle Red
Tracy Grant's review of Cold Wind at The Washington Post
Chris Rubich's review in The Billings Gazette

From the Kindle store

15 June 2011

Enough Scandinavian. How about a Canadian author?

Dale Stahl wrote from his post-school year leisure with another suggestion for reading. He's another valuable friend who is regularly reading interesting things. This is what he recommended today. (And no, Dale, no one else has mentioned these before. Thank you.)

Here is another series I wonder if you have read or anyone has written about: The Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny?

They are all set in an idyllic little Canadian village outside of Montreal that seems to have an inordinate number of murders. [Sounds like Murder, She Wrote] The characters are wonderful -- Penny creates a social life of flawed but connected people that I would love to drop in on for dinner. And speaking of dinner, every meal enjoyed by the characters makes one’s mouth water. Not to mention the wine and cocktails before during and after!

The murders in these books are all a little convoluted, no straightforward bludgeoning or stabbing, and I had thought them a bit farfetched until I opened my Star Tribune and read about the MN man who is accused of crushing his wife with a giant totem pole.

PS also I am for sure going to pick up and read the rest of the works by the Norwegian author K.O. Dahl I mentioned to you earlier. Really enjoyed the Fourth Man.

Do you have a suggestion for us? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

Louise Penny's web site

Louise Penny introduces her hero Armand Gamache.

Multiple recommendations

Dan Conrad dropped me an e-mail with an interesting list attached.

I thought you might find this of a tiny bit of interest.

What follows is my "request" list at Hennepin County Library.

The interest, I think, is not what I happen to have on order but as a check of the relative popularity of several books, which we might have a common interest in. Check, for instance, the long list for The Ice Princess. This will be my first Camilla Läckberg book. Have you read anything by her in your perusal of Scandinavian crime fiction? Also, note that Masie Dobbs beats out her "clone" Bess Crawford, 7+ to 1. That seems just.

Anyway, all in all a totally frivolous FYI. Any here you have on your "to read" radar?

Title	Author	Position (Place in Line)
Bad Intentions	Fossum, Karin	15 of 45 (on order)
A Bitter Truth: A Bess Crawford Mystery	Todd, Charles	15 of 32 (on order)
The Devotion of Suspect X	Higashino, Keigo	21 of 23
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life	Hughes, Bettany	15 of 32
The Ice Princess	Läckberg, Camilla	463 of 485
A Lesson in Secrets: a Maisie Dobbs novel	Winspear, Jacqueline	17 of 228
Naughty in Nice: a Royal Spyness Mystery	Bowen, Rhys	35 of 112 (on order)
A Red Herring without Mustard: a Flavia de Luce Mystery	Bradley, C. Alan	87 of 92
A Singular Woman: the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother	Scott, Janny	102 of 136
So Much Pretty: a Novel	Hoffman, Cara	27 of 67
Started Early, Took my Dog: a Novel	Atkinson, Kate	5 of 214

It's going to be awhile until Dan gets to read The Ice Princess. On my mental to-read list are the Maisie Dobbs mystery and Janny Scott's bio of Obama's mother. However, I'll have to investigate the others on this list as well. Except maybe the Soctates book. I might add Socrates to my fairly short list of things I'm unwilling to spend much time on anymore. Go ahead, call me a philistine.

Dan also wrote with a note that could only come from someone who identifies himself closely with his Swedish immigrant ancestors. But maybe you'll find some recommendations that will fit your reading mood even if you're not Swedish, Swedish-American, or Scandinavian. (I don't think there are any "important" books on this list.)

Two years ago, Dan sent me the same list. That time he'd found it in The Guardian. If you go to that blog entry, "Vem hade kunnat gissa?" you can see links to reviews of the books on the list besides Dan's. If he's read 6 of these books in the past two years, he's made great progress, especially if he's waited for library copies.

"I get a magazine called Swedish Press. In the current issue there is an interview with a current "hot thing" in Swedish crime fiction, Camilla Låckberg (Ice Princess, e.g.--not read it myself, but have it on my library request list, see above). Anyway, they asked her what she thought were the "Top Ten Swedish Crime Novels." Here is her list.

"I put an asterisk by ones I have read and also what I rated it on a scale of 1-5. [Note: I do have a "6" but that's for books I would like to read a second time]. Which have you read?"

Mind’s Eye, Håken Nesser (Read his Borkman’s Point and didn’t care for it)
* Blackwater, Kerstin Ekman (4.5)
* Missing, Karin Alvtegen (4)
* Sun Storm, Åsa Larsson (4)
* The Fifth Woman, Henning Mankell (3)
* Unseen, Mari Jungstedt (2)
Shame, Karin Alvtegen
Echoes from the Dead, Johan Theorin
* Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson (5)
Midvinterblod, Mons Kallentoft (Not translated yet)

If you look at the ReadingBlog entry, you'll find that my reaction to Nesser's Borkman's Point was much like Dan's. I read Mari Jungstedt's Unspoken and liked it. I've read all three of Stieg Larsson's books and I liked them all, although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the best. Netflix delivered the third Swedish movie based on the books, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and we watched it last weekend. It was really good -- maybe as good as the first film. I have no interest in seeing the American versions which are currently in production.

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13 June 2011

That's what I get

Every once in awhile, my ego whispers in my ear that I ought to read something more "important" than merely entertaining fiction. Sometimes, I listen to that voice.

Prelude: Forty-some years ago, I trotted off to one of my first college classes. It was a math class titled Math 10. It was the most basic math class offered. The topic was something called calculus.

I had no idea what calculus was. It sounded like calculation. I'd taken all the available math classes in my small town high school. I'd done well, even in the most advanced class: solid geometry and trigonometry. I knew I had to take a few math/science classes to earn my degree even if I wanted to major in political science. What better time to fulfill one of those distribution requirements than a couple months after finishing the math curriculum in high school?

I was lost in the calculus class from shortly after attendance was taken. I don't think I knew how lost I was for a couple weeks, but I was in over my head. Indeed nearly everything that was said in the class went over my head. Unfortunately, the prof lectured. I have no idea what he said. He didn't ask us to do problems in class. He had no way of knowing how lost I was until the mid-term.

I asked a friend for help. She'd graduated from high school at 16 and had taken calculus in high school. She tried to explain things, but it was probably too late. I started hanging out at the prof's office during office hours. That's when he found out how lost I was. He helped me figure out how to solve some basic problems, but he never did succeed in teaching me what calculus was or why anyone would want to know how to use it. I think I passed the class because I hung out asking for help.

What is all this reminiscing about? I picked up an important book recently that I'd read about. The topic sounded interesting and the review I saw was enthusiastic. It turns out, the reviewer was enthusiastic about the anecdotes that dot the book's chapters. But most of the book is about abstract math and quantum physics and genetics, none of which I understand any better than I understand calculus.

The book? The Information by James Gleick. Some of the anecdotes are indeed interesting, but finding them is a chore. They should have been in a different typeface than the other stuff. And since I never really understood what the book was about, I never figured out why Gleick told the stories when he did. I know what a fibonacci series is, but why would anyone care enough to even identify it?

There were whole chapters where all I could do was scan the first sentence of paragraphs looking for an interesting story, because the textbookish stuff was opaque to me. Numbers, to me, are meant for counting and measuring. What do you do with a sentence like, "Turing proved that some numbers are uncomputable." I shrug and say, "So what?"

The book was big, 525 pages with footnotes. The cover was white. It reminded me of Twain's so-called autobiography. It was less interesting, but it was easier to ignore the boring (incomprehensible) parts. I would have been very satisfied with a New Yorker article.

I should have focused on this line from the review, "Gleick ranges over the scientific landscape in a looping itinerary that takes the reader from Maxwell’s demon to Godel’s theorem, from black holes to selfish genes. Some of the concepts are challenging..." Challenging, hell. For me most of the concepts were meaningless.

Anyone have a more basic introduction to information theory? You don't have to answer that question. I'm not sure I want to know anymore.

Have you read The Information? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

Geoffrey Nunberg's review at The New York Times
Janet Maslin's review at The New York Times
Nicholas Carr's review at The Daily Beast

I get the impression that none of these people really understood much of what Gleick wrote either.

Freeman Dyson, I am sure understood what Gleick wrote about. His review in The New York Review of Books helped me make some sense out of The Information even though it didn't help me understand the math and science that Gleick chronicled. But, by the time I read it, I didn't much care anymore.

05 June 2011

Reading what I write

I guess I better read what I write as well as what comes to me from other hands.

A couple days ago, as I concluded my thoughts on a new book, I wrote, "I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series."

When I looked at the plot summary of the first Jane Whitefield novel I thought it looked familiar.

Then I searched this blog. I neglected Bird Loomis' advice and didn't read the first of Thomas Perry's Whitefield novels (Vanished), but I did read Dance for the Dead last fall.

I even wrote about it: First romance, now fantasy. I sort of liked it, but I wasn't terribly impressed. It must not have been very memorable. I'd forgotten about it. I guess writing about things I read isn't a way to remember forgettable things.

01 June 2011

Murders most foul

After reading about Montana at the beginning of the 20th century, I picked up a book about southern California at the beginning of the 21st century. That hundred years might have been the least of the differences between the two books.

First Bird Loomis and then Gary Sankary recommended Thomas Perry's books, and I've read a bunch of them. (Search for Perry in the search box at the top left.) No series of books centered on a few stock characters in Perry's bibliography; the books stand alone and the characters are unique (except for the "Jane Whitefield series" which I haven't come across yet).

Fidelity is one of the books I bought on my most recent Sunday afternoon expedition to a bookstore.

While Dancing at the Rascal Fair was an antique Western romance, Fidelity is a murder mystery thriller. Doig writes about people's lives over a 30 years span; Perry writes about events during a week (with some narrative flashbacks); the tensions in the story of last century Montana came from the ongoing nature of relationships while the tensions in the southern California story come from the murderous intent of a couple of the characters.

The only internal dialogues and reflections indulged in by Perry's characters are directly connected to the mysteries and the dangers. Doig's main narrator was often thinking about meaning and self as well as destiny. There is some progression in the emotions of the threatened widow of the first murder victim in Fidelity, but it seems to come without anguish. Would a woman still in shock at her husband's murder, who just found out about his long term affair, really approach her husband's mistress with an "I dont' care about that, I care about this..." attitude? Ah, well, even if it's unlikely, Perry tells a good story -- and remember, I'm a story guy.

The story begins with an ambush murder. It continues with sinister and horrific threats against the dead guy's widow, and the circle of horror expands from there. The characters and their back stories are lightly drawn, but it doesn't matter. It's an adventure story and well told.

I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series.

Have you read Fidelity? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

Thomas Perry's web site
Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times
Kirkus Review on Fidelity

26 May 2011

Dancing in Big Sky Country

Every year the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary holds a used book sale as a fundraiser. We look forward to it as a way to offload books we don't want to host any longer. This year I went to the book sale to purchase some children's books for a granddaughter who will be visiting in June.

I came home with more than just kid lit. I already had several books from my Sunday expedition to the book store, then I got some birthday books from my favorite family book pusher, and now I have more on the short shelf of books to read.

I did start reading another of the books from the pre-April 15 purchase, but I haven't finished it yet. It's one of those books that's taking a long time to read. When I headed off on a road trip to visit another granddaughter, I grabbed one of the book sale books as well as the tape of the French philosophical novel (see previous entry here).

So, while in the quiet times between play dates with the kid, I began reading Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig. The earlier Doig books I've read have been interesting and entertaining to one degree or another.

Dancing... was published in 1987, and was Doig's third novel. It's set in the northwestern Montana country where he grew up. His love of the country is as obvious as Hillerman's love of the desert southwest. Right away, I have more in common with Doig. However, while Doig likes the east slope prairies, I'd rather be in the mountains themselves. I'm not trying to make a living there though. Doig's people are.

The book is a western romance, starring a pair of young Scotsmen who came to America in the late 1880s. They would have been about the same age as my great-grandparents who came to Minnesota from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. (Well, okay, some of my great grandparents weren't immigrants.) As a little kid, I knew two of those great grands, and as I read Dancing..., I kept trying to think of my ancient worthies. Didn't work. Doig's characters seemed entirely too human, normal, and modern.

The Hancock homestead, July 23, 1910, photo by Walter Lubken, a Bureau of Reclamation photographer (from Wikimedia Commons). Original source

My great grands were near and over 90 years old when I remember them. They were dependent upon my grandmother. They didn't get out. I'd have to work my imagination to the bone to see them as young, vital, and passionate. Even the old great grandfather who bragged about riding a horse to Yellowstone and back as a 21-year-old was probably only telling stories to his grand and great grandchildren.

The worthy ancients of Doig's imagination are human, normal, and modern. And they are young, vital, and passionate. And they're stars of a soap opera. The two heroes arrive in Montana with nothing but the name of an uncle. That part I get. One of my great grands arrived from Denmark with nothing but a name. (Unlike the Scotsmen, he didn't speak English.)

The Scotsmen homesteaded land in foothills of the Rockies. They became sheep farmers and members of a rural community of sheep farmers. They struggled to make a living; they fell in love, wisely and unwisely; they raised families; helped each other; and hurt each other. The ups and downs of life.

Doig adds some drama to the telling and his narrator adds some reflection and analysis. Sometimes that gets in the way of the story. (Remember, I'm a story guy.) Sometimes that reflection is thoughtful and descriptive. It makes me slow down in my reading. There are big sections of this book where I had to read slowly and carefully and pay attention to more than just the verbs.

I enjoyed the book. I'm glad I have a couple more books by Doig on my short shelf (I found three at the book sale). However, I think I'll read other things before I read another. I'll probably even go back to the book I didn't take on the road trip to visit my granddaughter.

Meanwhile, I think Dancing at the Rascal Fair is a good book. Have you read it? Did you like it?

Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

Ivan Doig's web site
Links to 175 reviews at Good Reads
Dan Webster's review at Spokesman Review

18 May 2011

The return of the philosophical rodent

About two and a half years ago, Dan Conrad wrote on Facebook, that The Elegance of the Hedgehog was the best book he'd read in 2008. He didn't write to tell us why, but I picked up his comment here and quoted a review from The Washington Post.

I don't recall that Dan ever explained his preference, but did mention the book by Muriel Barbery a time or two in conversations since.

So, I was heading off for a visit to a granddaughter. That meant 10-11 hours on the road. As usual when facing a road trip, I visited the Northfield library. When I saw the CD version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I checked it out. I listened to half of it on the way to Jim, Ange, and Jaime's. I listened to some of the rest on the way home.

I know why Dan liked this book. The author is a professor of philosophy. The book is full of philosophy. Ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and metaphysics. There's very little plot. In fact, one English marketer noted that the book wouldn't do well in the UK because people there want plot more than anything else.

I'm a plot fan too. So I had trouble with the book. I don't think I could have read it. For me the philosophical processes of analyzing alternatives and meaning are tedious. I do understand why and how such cogitation can be appealing. It's just not appealing to me. While driving down the road, I could let the philosophical verbiage go in one ear and out the other. When I listened to the last two CDs at home, I kept falling asleep.

BUT, did you notice that I finished listening to the whole book? When I awoke and found that I'd slept through a track, I went back and listened to what I'd missed. Why? None of the tedious philosophizing was imperious or pompous. None of it was trivial. In fact, it was all tied to the "reality" Barbery created in the book. There were far too many big issues raised for me to keep track of. I think I could have spent a month with this book if I was of a mind to think through all the ideas she raised. But, I'm a plot fan.

AND, the three main characters are just amazing. There's a middle-aged Parisian concierge in an upscale condo building. She acts like the dumb country bumpkin the residents expect her to be. But in her back room she's reading Kant and Tolstoy, listening to Purcell and Mahler, and studying 17th century Dutch still life paintings. In her spare time, she's seen all the arty films of Yasujiro Ozu.

There's a friendless 11-year-old resident of the building, who is equally bright and forced to keep that quality under cover to satisfy her bourgeoise family. (She gets to narrate a third of the book through her journals.)

And then there's the new guy in the building. He's a rich Japanese businessman who, while being a successful importer, is also a secret intellectual, whose tastes in art and philosophy match those of his new concierge.

And then there's the ending. Eleven year old Paloma says, "I learned 'never.' It's awful!"

Have you read The Elegance of the Hedgehog? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or, if you read it, don't forget to tell us about your experience.

Caryn James' review in The New York Times
Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post
Why The Elegance of the Hedgehog Is For Grownups by Delia Lloyd in Huffpost Living
Viv Groskop's review in The Guardian

Your choices are the book, the recording, the Kindle version, or the French film on DVD.

26 April 2011

Reading in Antarctica 80 years ago

In 1928, Admiral Richard Byrd led a scientific expedition to Antarctica. His chief scientist and second in command was geologist Larry Gould. Gould did real science and confirmed that Antarctica was geologically similar to the other continents.

When the Byrd explorers returned to the US in 1932, they were famous heroes and many of them went on speaking tours around the country. Gould also wrote a book about the expedition titled Cold.

Gould went on to become a geology professor and president of my alma mater, Carleton College. The college has kept the book in print for decades. (Used copies are still available at Amazon.com and ebay.) Then last fall, Northfield's Cannon River flooded. The basement of the college's West Gym filled with water. The swimming pool's pumps and the building's HVAC system had to be replaced. And the remaining copies of Cold became sponges.

My talented wife now has the job of editing the text for the next edition of Cold. She reports that it's well-written and interesting. And, luckily, the 50+ photographs in the book are available for republishing in the national archives.

In the process of editing, she found these amazing discussions of reading in Antarctica over 80 years ago. (What was Jean Christophe, by the way?)

[Reading during the "winter night"]

I believe the most important single source of recreation that made the time pass easily was our library of some 3,000 volumes.

When we were looking forward toward the winter night all of us anticipated great times with the books, but few of us, I think, had such ambitious projects as did one man who came to me one day early in the winter and said: “Larry, do you know what I am going to do during this winter night?” Of course I hadn't the slightest idea.

“Well,” he said, “I am going to learn aerial surveying and navigation and read the Encyclopedia Britannica through.”

It seemed a fairly ambitious program to me, but I didn't want to discourage the man so I assured him that if he carried out the project he would certainly achieve the essentials of a liberal education. His literary aspirations were rather short lived. He did start with volume I, letter A of the encyclopedia and got as far as “ammonium tetrachloride.” I saw him throw the book down with a look of disgust and asked him what was the matter.

“The stuff in that d--- book is no good for an aviator,” he replied.

Commander Byrd had charged me with the responsibility of collecting the library as part of our preparations back in New York. I asked him what sort of books he especially liked to read. His reply indicated considerable catholicity of taste: “Dickens, detective stories, and philosophy.”

And of all the various classes of reading matter that were represented detective stories were the most widely read, with accounts of other polar expeditions making a close second. The most widely read single book of all was W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions. Donn Byrne and Joseph Lincoln were more exhaustively read than any other two authors -- Mark Twain came next. We had a complete set of Kipling's works which was scarcely touched. As for myself, had the winter night given me opportunity for no other reading than Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe and Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga in its entirety I should still have considered it well spent. To me these are two works of this day that will live if any do. Jean Christophe is the most satisfying work of art with which I have ever come face to face...

[Reading while returning from the Queen Maud Mountains, a three-month geology expedition by dog sled that encompassed a total of 1,525 miles .]

We were in such excellent physical condition from the hard work of the summer that we travelled along with great ease, especially as compared with the hard work that had accompanied our southward trek. But the dogs were showing the effects of the gruelling summer's work and we had to be careful for their sake, and, purely on their account, we decided to limit ourselves to 23 miles per day. Some days when the surface made sledging easy for them we made good this distance within six or seven hours, nevertheless we forced ourselves not to get impatient but stopped and made camp…

There is much more variety in a polar night than there is in a polar day, and besides, one can create light when he tires of the darkness. But there was no way for us to induce even semi-darkness...

I don't know just what I should have done with all my free time had it not been for the few books that we had brought along with us. Each man had been allowed one book and ordinarily I should have brought Browning with me, but I had been reading him off and on all winter and elected to bring a thin paper edition of Shakespeare, complete in one volume. I regaled myself with Hamlet and Macbeth and King Lear and Love's Labor Lost and The Passionate Pilgrim, trying to fall asleep. When the day's journey had been particularly easy we would have supper over and be finished with the work for the day, ofttimes as early as 6 o'clock. I would crawl into my bag and lie there and read until 12 o'clock or later before going to sleep.

But I ran out of Shakespeare. One doesn't realize how much reading he can cover when he has five to seven hours per day without any kind of interruption. It had never before occurred to me that one of the real advantages and benefits of an Antarctic Expedition would be the opportunity to read Shakespeare in his entirety. I have never appreciated all the tragedy of Lear quite so much as I did in this reading of it out in the midst of the Ross Shelf Ice.

Mike Thorne had brought along W. H. Hudson's Purple Land and though I had read it but a few weeks previously, I read it again with the delight I always find in Hudson's exquisite prose. Eddie Goodale had brought a volume of English poetry which I devoured and in which I was glad to find one of my great favorites by Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." O'Brien had a big thick volume containing H. G. Wells short stories. I read this too, and it would have afforded me no end of satisfaction to have dropped this volume down the deepest crevasse I could find, but O'Brien objected strongly. He had borrowed the book from Russell Owen who wanted it returned...

The Research Vessel Laurence M. Gould was commissioned in 1995 and is chartered by the National Science Foundation for use in the oceans between Chile and Antarctica.

The RV Gould at Ross Station, Antarctica.

18 April 2011

Sunday, the library is closed

Already we suffer from reduced public spending. The Northfield library used to be open on Sunday afternoons in the winter. No more.

So, when I came home on Saturday wtih a book I'd already read and didn't want to reread, I was stuck.

What it meant was a 35-mile ride to the nearest bookstore. It was a nice Sunday afternoon. Driving the Prius meant I used less than 2 gallons of gas for the round trip. Still, it was a luxury I would think more than twice about after writing checks today for income taxes. (Tom Paxton, at the time of the first auto industry bail out, wrote a song, "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler." Later he updated the song to "I am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae.") Today, I want to change my name to GE. I don't want any of its billions in profits. I just want to avoid paying taxes on my income like it did.

Back in the halcyon days before I saw our tax returns, I made the drive to the bookstore and came home with several books. One of the was A Test of Wills, that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Another was Last Rituals by Yrsa. Yrsa is another of the Icelanders who usually do without a family name. When publishers outside of Iceland demand a second name, she gets her revenge by saying, "I'm Yrsa Sigurðardóttir." (Go ahead try and write or type that one.) It's so difficult that her publisher transliterates her name into Yrsa Sigurdardóttir.

Enough about Icelandic names.

The cover of the book says that Last Rituals is "A Novel of Suspense." An unnamed USA Today reviewer was more accurate when describing the book as a "fascinating and deliciously creepy mystery." The closest to suspense I could identify was what was wrong with the main character's teen age son or how long would it take for the divorced Icelandic lawyer, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (Þóra Guðmundsdóttir) to get into bed with the gorgeous German guy who was directing the investigation.

No suspense, but definitely creepy. And sort of fascinating. The story is strung out like a trail of breadcrumbs behind Hansel and Gretel. One thing leads to another and another. Sometimes the trail is a dead end, but if you haven't eaten the breadcrumbs, it's possible to get back to the main route.

Yrsa writes well and translator Bernard Scudder does a great job of putting things into casual and correct English. Thóra and the German factotum talk to each other and to the people involved in a grisly murder. The dialogue moves the plot along very well (I've noted that before; for me it's usually much better than straight story telling most of the time.)

The victim was the son of a wealthy German family researching Medieval witch burnings in Iceland. His death seems as symbolic and horrifying as the persecutions he was studying. Matthew, a representative of the German family, needs help understanding Iclandic and Iceland. Thóra is an attorney who could use the generous fee offered by the family. Besides, she's a quick study and smart. The local police are on the fringe of things, but pretty much quit investigating when they're satisfied that their suspect is guilty.

So, no suspense. If there was any suspense, it happened in the back story. Lots of creepyness. Not very delicious. But it's a well-told story. Several of the characters are interesting. Ysra has written a couple more novels about Thóra, and I'll be looking for them in the library. (Buying books is on hold for awhile.)

Have you read Last Rituals or another of Yrsa's novels? Did you like it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

Yrsa's Facebook page
The publisher's web page
Maxine Clarke's review at EuroCrime
Karen Russel's review at How Mysterious!