Books I’ve Read

Mini Book Reviews

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
by Melanie Rehak
A great exploration of the history of the popular girl detective novels and the women who wrote them. I learned a couple of surprising things — that Nancy Drew was far and away the most popular of the Stratmeyer Syndicate’s kid book series, blowing away the Hardy Boys by a mile. I was also surprised to learn how much the Syndicate actually contributed to the novels. I was always under the impression that the ghostwriters, like Mildred Wirt Benson, got a raw deal because they wrote all the books but never got credit. But in reality the writing was more of a collaboration between the Syndicate (which was primarily Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) who created all the characters and wrote detailed plots; and the ghostwriters, who filled in the details and dialog. That’s kinda cool — I’m terrible at working out a plot, but I can write great scenes and dialog.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
Re-read this after a quick read last year.

Deception Point
by Dan Brown
A fun mindless thriller that was entertaining and relaxing.

The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
I loved this complex novel about a man with a genetic mutation that causes him to be thrown backward and forward through time. Far from a fun or interesting quirk, his time travel is distressing and difficult — he can’t take anything with him; not even the fillings in his teeth. He can’t control where or when he goes, but shows up at various points in his own life, especially at traumatic events. But he also gets thrown back to visit his future wife when she was a child, beginning a romance that transcends time.

The Seven Daughters of Eve
by Bryan Sykes
A great science novel that’s not too intense or boring. Sykes is a Oxford scholar and human geneticist that has discovered a way to trace, through DNA, our matrilinial ancestry.

What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
by Thomas Frank
I just started this, and it’s shaping up to be an entertaining and interesting read.

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Books I’ve Read Recently

The Nanny Diaries
by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
I enjoyed this light, comic novel as a easy summer reading book. I have to admit being frustrated by the level to which “Nanny” — the young female protagonist — put up with the crap of the Manhattan family that hired her to take care of their son. Any reasonable person would have walked away from the employment situation, so it’s hard to suspend disbelief at some of the plot points. But it was a fun peek into a society I don’t have access to.
A better summary from Amazon: “The Nanny Diaries is an absolutely addictive peek into the utterly weird world of child rearing in the upper reaches of Manhattan’s social strata. Cowritten by two former nannies, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the novel follows the adventures of the aptly named Nan as she negotiates the Byzantine byways of working for Mrs. X, a Park Avenue mommy.”

The Watchmen (Absolute Edition)
by Alan Moore
Unfortunately, I don’t time to write a review that would do this book justice, because it deserves a couple pages of thoughful analysis and philosophical examination. It’s an extraordinary graphic novel, written in the 1980s that still resonates in today’s political and social sphere. The author — Alan Moore — also wrote the graphic novel V for Vendetta, which was recently made into a movie (although he disavows any association with the film version). The watchmen is the story of a couple of generations of masked crime fighters, set in real cold war America in the 1980s. Unlike the primary-colored superheroes that we’re all familiar with, these complext heroes explore the moral ambiguity of vigilantism and of society itself.
I bought this after reading an Entertainment Weekly review that quoted some of my favorite writers and television producers (Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, the producers of Lost) as saying it was an enormous influence on them, and the influences are clear. One of my favorite things about both Whedon’s stories and about Lost are the subtle plot details that pop out on second and third viewings — a technique that’s used to extraordinary effect in The Watchmen.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design
by Raph Koster
I need to re-read this book to write a good review of it, and to really grasp what I read. That isn’t the fault of the book at all; it was great. It’s entirely on me that I didn’t get a complete picture because my free time to read has been so scattered lately, and it’s difficult to put a book down and pick it back up and remember where I was. I’m going to go over this book again after I finish reading the book I’m currently enjoying, which is:

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
Melanie Rehak
I’ll write up a full-scale review of this book when I’m done with it, because I’m thoroughly enjoying reading this great book about one of my childhood role models.

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Mini Book Reviews

I’m currently making my way through a couple of bigger books — The Watchmen (Absolute Edition) by Alan Moore, and A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. But in between I’ve read a couple of shorter, fun books.

The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island
by Weta Workshop
An extraordinarily detailed bestiary and ecological guide to the fictional world of King Kong’s Skull Island, written as though it was a “real” account of the several scientific expeditions to the island after Kong’s demise in New York.

Going for the Bronze: Still Bitter, More Baggage
by Sloane Tanen
This is a hilarious picture book of tiny little exquisitely designed dioramas, starring fuzzy little chickens acting out funny human dramas.

Al Capone Does My Shirts
by Gennifer Choldenko
A fun eighth-grader’s novel about a 13-year-old boy — “Moose” Flanagan — who goes to live on Alcatraz Island in 1935 when his dad takes a job there as an electrician and prison guard. The move is prompted by the family’s need to place Moose’s older, autistic sister Natalie in a school that can help her become independent. Moose isn’t happy in his new home; he never gets to see his dad, he has to look after Natalie, and the warden’s daughter Piper is a scheming trouble-maker. But Moose eventually finds his place by becoming friends with other kids who live on the island and making contact with one of the island’s celebrated prisoners — Al Capone.

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The House on the Point: A Tribute to Franklin W. Dixon and The Hardy Boys

The House on the Point: A Tribute to Franklin W. Dixon and The Hardy Boys
Benjamin Hoffs (Tao of Pooh, Te of Piglet) rewrites the classic Hardy Boys book “The House on the Cliff” from the ground up — starting with the framework of the original 1927 version of the story and restoring its charm (rewrites to the book in the 1970s updated the settings, while stripping much of the appeal) and filling in those niggling plot holes that one overlooks as a child but which stand out for adults returning to the nostalgic stories of their youth.
Hoff’s version is very much a tribute, not a parody or pastiche, of the enjoyable, escapist novels we adored as kids. And his additions to the novel (especially to make characters more three dimensional, and settings more vibrant) work very well. The effect is quite seamless — without the explanation of what’s new in the appendix one might never suspect that this isn’t the same book we read years ago.

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Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think : A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Professional web designers probably read the highly popular first edition of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability when it came out in 2000, but the second edition is worth a re-read, because author Steve Krug has honed his craft to a fine point, and everyone can use a refresher on the basic principles of usability and user testing.
Amateur designers may not have heard of “Don’t Make Me Think” — and if so, they should grab a copy right away. The book, like its subject matter, is light, minimal and to the point — a slim volume designed “to be read on a plane” (in the authors words) but covering some of the major problems that make websites difficult to use.

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Stakeout on Millennium Drive

I hate throwing in the towel on books. I feel guilty if I can’t get through one, and I will struggle to the end of even the most difficult stuff. And I wanted to like Stakeout on Millennium Drive; I really did. It is, after all, a book set in Indianapolis, by a native writer, Ian Woollen. We just don’t have enough of those, so I was hoping to write a glowing review of a “must read” book. He even sent the book to IndyScribe so we could review it. It’s a murder mystery, and I love those.

The premise of the story is that a police officer shooting has occurred on “Millennium Drive” (a fictional street the approximate location of which I wasn’t able to determine) witnessed by a reporter named Kurt Blackwood on a ride-along with said policeman, Louis Garcia. Blackwood is a bit of a crackpot and writes for a fictional alternative local paper — the “Whipping Post” — where he writes a tinfoil-hat column called “Naptown Nuggets” (that name alone made me want to reject the book). Officer Garcia gets shot and killed by a woman as he tries to knock on her door to break up a domestic dispute between her and her husband. Despite the testimony of the reporter, the inquiry into the shooting determines the husband fired the gun, and that the incident was an accident, so the case is closed.

But Blackwood, who hears the voice of the slain policemen in his head, believes that the real facts of the shooting were covered up because there was some connection between the quarreling couple responsible for the shooting and the Mayor of Indianapolis, a fictional character that seems to be modeled on former mayor Steve Goldsmith (references to privitization and corruption abound). So Blackwood begins a stakeout of the street to gather more information, and at the same time begins writing reports on his progress in the form of long, rambling, disjointed letters to the Assistant Deputy Mayor of Indy (Randall Fleck), whom Blackwood conveniently has dug up some dirt on. The novel is composed almost entirely of these letters, with some short snippets of narration about Fleck’s reaction (or non-reaction) to these epistles.

You can see my problem, can’t you? If you were given a bunch of nutty ramblings about something you didn’t have a reason to care about, would you sit and read them? Even if they were conveniently bound in book form?

Woollen inserts a lot of interesting Indianapolis history into Blackwood’s ramblings through the character’s backstory; his family were long-time residents and had connections to early local architecture and culture movements. But I was bothered by the character expressing scathing feelings about the city. Everyone’s entitled to his own opinion, of course, but I wondered why an author would bother to set a book in a city that they appear to strongly dislike.

And as the letters to Fleck progress, Blackwood seems to lose track of his goal of ferretting out the truth as he interacts with the “colorful” characters of Millennium Drive, who hang out at his van and talk to him, and later invite him into their homes, instead of calling the police as anyone with an ounce of sense would do. He even becomes friends with the woman who shot officer Garcia and contemplates attempting to sleep with her. The point at which Blackwood begins a discourse on his sexual proclivities was one of my stopping points. I tried to power through it, but I got as far as the street’s pro-wrestler native american attempting a spirit-cleansing to exorcise the spirit of Officer Garcia from Blackwood’s head before I had to stop.

There was every reason for me to enjoy this book, but I couldn’t wait to put it down whenever I had it in my hands, and I dreaded picking up again. I even began cheating on it with other books on my to-read list. If you want to tackle the book, let me know how it wraps up. I wouldn’t mind knowing how it ends, but I just can’t devote the time to get there myself.

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Scaling Down

I borrowed the book “Scaling Down” (by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker) from my girlfriend Stephanie, because we’re both attempting to sort through the things we own and uh, scale down. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to merge households, and for two people who both own two-story, multi-bedroom homes packed with stuff, that ain’t easy.

We also want to be free from the tyranny of stuff – the constant, time-consuming job of organizing/labeling/using/cleaning/repairing and then recycling/donating/discarding things. All that takes up too much of our time, when we could be doing fun stuff instead, like taking the dog for a walk or going on road trips or reading books, or having you over to our house for tea and board games. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? We would.

“Scaling Down” is a fantastic book; I wanted to share it immediately with other people as I was going through it. It addresses the key issues about our relationship with things; namely that we have some emotional relationships with stuff that we have to get past before we can accept that we own the stuff, rather than letting the stuff own us.

The first part of the book covers “the Culprits” — the habits that we form that keep our life in clutter, and the pressures from the society we live in that help keep us disorganized. “The Paper Tiger” is a critical chapter on dealing with paperwork that we have stashed all over the house. What do we need to keep, how do we organize that, and what should we be shredding and disposing of? And the tyranny of collections — yep. That’s a lesson I need to learn, myself. Then they cover clothes. That’s an area I desperately need to master.

The second section of the book is about special situations that crop up in life that stir up the chaos of things in our lives — for example the necessity to separate and dispose of the belongings of a parent that has died, or our situation — merging households.

The third section of the book is all about strategies for taming the beast – how to sort and discard things, where to find homes for your stuff, how to keep from bringing more stuff in. When I lived in a tiny apartment, I used to have a rule that worked well — I couldn’t bring anything into the house unless something of equal size and shape left. That rule fell by the wayside when I bought a house, but I think it’s time to bring it back.

There’s a great deal in the book that is really common sense, but there’s also some great ideas that one wouldn’t immediately think of; like their challenge to not go shopping for a month. That’s an interesting idea that I’d love to try. It would be hard when it came to food, and sometimes personal grooming supplies, but I’ll bet other than that I could do it.

The last section of the book is the dessert — the rewards of living small. All the stuff you can do and enjoy when you no longer have to worry about keeping track of all your crap. So buy this book and read it — when you get to the dessert you’ll be glad you did.

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Stranger In a Strange Land

This is a book club, book, so of course I have to abide by the first and second rules of book club and not talk about it before we meet. But I have to write about it soon, or I’m going to forget details of what I wanted to say about it. So, book club members, don’t read below the fold.

Stranger in a Strange Land is a Robert Heinlein classic, written in 1960, which had an vast influence not only on science fiction (it won a 1962 Hugo Award, and dramatically change the genre), but on 60’s “Age of Aquarius” culture as well. The classic that everyone is familiar was originally much longer; when Heinlein presented his publishers with the manuscript, they thought it might be too much for people to take in, so they had him re-write the novel, cutting out about 60,000 words and slimming it down. In 1991, after Heinlein’s death, his wife discovered the orgininal, longer manuscript which she had published. This is the version I ended up with from the after putting the book on hold at the public library. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The story is that of Michael Valentine Smith, a young man born on Mars after a first, failed space mission to the planet. A second mission years later retrieves Smith, who has been raised by the ancient race of Martians, and who knows nothing of Earth culture or even of women. He manages to make his way in the world with the help of a wealthy Hugh Hefner-esque novelist named Jubal Harshaw, and Harshaw’s harem of women, learning about our terrifying and confusing planet and at the same time having a profound influence on it.

This is an extremely thought-provoking book, that’s for sure. I’m glad I read it. I don’t know that it’s my favorite book, or that I particularly like Robert Heinlein as a person (or at least the guy as he was in 1960). But I certainly spent a number of mornings standing in my shower pondering different aspects of the novel.

One of the first things that struck me is the similarity between this story, and the Bildungsroman narrative from The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” — innocent, naive young man bewildered and buffeted by a loud, greedy terrifying world, but who ultimately conquers it by turning its flaws against it. It also helped that I pictured the whole novel taking place in a groovy space-aged bachelor pad like in the movie, complete with those egg chairs.

The other thing I noticed was that I had the old Heart song “Magic Man” playing in my head throughout reading the book. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that either The Who or Heart had read this novel.

Smith returns to earth and, while still trying acclimatize himself to our atmosphere, becomes a tug-of-war object for political factions of the world. He has two things everyone wants: vast wealth inherited from his dead astronaut parents (who left him pretty set up) and claim rights to the planet of Mars, which everyone wants to invade. The global government has him held captive, while parading around a double. So a kindly nurse in the hospital where he’s held sneaks him out. With the help of her reporter boyfriend, they get Smith to the Harshaw household, where they begin to teach him about the world, and he sets about showing them his special martian-taught abilities – telepathy, telekinesis, and out of body movement being among them.

Anachronisms

One of the comic effects of reading the book in 2006, some 40 years after it was written, is that we can compare Heinlein’s vision of the future with technological and social advances that have come since.

Major things that Heinlein missed: the internet, cell phones, and the feminist and gay rights movements, all of which would have had a drastic effect on his story.

He does put the stereo together with the television and give greater abilities to his version of the telephone, but the phone remains firmly anchored to the wall, which would have changed some plot points, like the Ben Caxton kidnapping.

The way that women act and are treated in the book; pissed me off a bit, I have to say. And don’t get me started on what little he has to say about gay people. He expounds a lot on what the future of love relations between men and women are like and should be like, but all through the narrow lens that love relationships are only between men and women, with men being the dominant figures in the equation.

Flaws

Heinlein does a great deal of lecturing in the novel on the state of the world, which I had imagined was part of the padding that got cut out of the longer version of the book. Turns out after talking to people who read the slimmer version: not so much. A lot of the framework for the book is nothing more than Heinlein expounding on what’s wrong with human society, with Smith serving as the fish-out-of-water lens to expose that.

Stacking the Deck – Smith gets to do a lot of shit that regular humans can’t do, because he has magic Martian powers, and an endless supply of wealth. It’s very easy to set up a free-love “church” to teach everyone martian-speak while getting it on, if you have the cash for a super-cool high-tech love shack and telepathic powers that enable you to control when babies are conceived while you’re doing “it.” I suspect in the real life free-love communes that were set up after this novel came out, they ran into a few difficulties in these areas.

The Old One’s Problem – why doesn’t he ever address this issue? This is the crux of the book; Smith sets about “changing humans” by teaching them the Martian language so they can learn, through the vast store of Martian knowledge, about science, relationships and interaction, with the goal of fixing the “wrongness” that is human kind. But that’s going about it from the back end forwards.

The thing Martians have that we don’t that gives them their vast, benevolent and loving society, is the Old Ones. They have their “dead” folks or “discorporated” in Heinlein-speak, hanging around telling them how to do shit. The vast store of Martian knowledge is ever-present. Rather than fixing the symptoms of the problem by tapping into Martian knowledge, why wouldn’t Smith fix the actual problem by figuring out why we don’t have Old Ones on Earth, or (because we’re omniscient and we know Earth has Old Ones) how to reach the Old Ones from Earth to get them to tell us how to solve disease, build things, and have ESP with each other?

But of course, the answer to that is obvious; that would defeat what Heinlein’s trying to do — he’s not here to tell a cool story, but to deliver a lecture on what’s “wrong” with humans, and to advocate for free-love to “fix” all of our problems, rather than solving the mysteries of the universe.

Continue ReadingStranger In a Strange Land

Best Lesbian Erotica 2006 (Best Lesbian Erotica Series)

Best Lesbian Erotica 2006 (Best Lesbian Erotica Series)
by Tristan Taormino, Eileen Myles

This was better than most lesbian erotica books I’ve read, I have to say. I’m normally not a huge fan of the genre because it’s often so badly written that I can’t suspend my disbelief long enough to go for the ride. (So to speak.) I just get irritated by what I’m reading. Most of these stories were better written, or at least well edited enough not to tick me off before I could grok what the story was.

That said, there’s a huge issue of personal taste involved when it comes to the stories in this book, and to the genre in general. I’m really not wired to find the idea of sadomasochism/bondage/dominance appealing or intriguing. I’m not offended or grossed out or against it in any fashion. I fully support other people’s decisions to consensually tie each other up if they want to. But it’s not interesting to me, and I’d say roughly half these stories included it in some fashion or another. After awhile, I just skipped over them. I wish the genre were broken down further so that I could opt out of that particular flavor of short story.

I also have to admit that I’m not all that interested in the idea of gender role-playing or exploring masculine identities, or at least not to the extent that the stories in this book do. I know that these are ideas that the lesbian community is exploring and examining, especially as more transgender people start to recognize who they are and how they fit into society in general and the lesbian community in particular. But it’s also outside of my set of interests, and probably another way that I would break down the genre into categories so that I could opt out of skimming then skipping things that don’t interest me.

2019 update: Hellllooooo denial. I think there is some element of other people’s coming out process as trans masculine that is really put me off the idea of transitioning though. There was a lot of he-man macho posturing among trans men coming out that was uncomfortable and smacked of abuse.

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Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme

Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme
by Chris Roberts examines the history behind children’s nursery rhymes. Most children’s rhymes came from adult songs and poems that were handed down and altered over centuries, and most were expurgated for childrens ears in the Victorian age. Roberts traces many of them further back and examines various theories of their origins. Hearing the unexpurgated versions is interesting, and the book is an entertaining read, but is a bit light on sources and a bit long on speculation, with a few too many off-topic asides. Many of his explanations make sense, but a few too many of them seem to have the same set of explanations, or no clear reason why one theory would be preferred over another.

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