Part of the MABTW blog network - Last Updated Blog - El Chauvinisto

Archive for the ‘books’ Category

Good books to read.

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

UPDATE: 30 November 2006. a) I didn’t link Diesel; remedied. He inspired this post. b) Diesel’s brother-in-law, John, died earlier this week. Please keep John and his family in your thoughts and, where if you pray, in your prayers.

“Yes. All the books have to be in English.”

“So no Pynchon or Joyce?”

– Diesel

Alas, I’m posting too slowly… So, here’s where I steal someone else’s idea, respond to it, and turn it into a post.

These are just a few rapidly sketched thoughts. What are your favorite slightly lesser-known/intellectually regarded books and why? (We exclude the OBVIOUS canon — 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, etc.)
Here are some of mine. 1 on philosophy, 2 on pre-WW1 history, 2 SF novels about war and revolution. I’m going to deliberately avoid anything published within the last 10-15 years if I can. Let’s look for classics. (all these are lazily from memory, so apologies for typos):

“Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader”

Nearly 30 years old. A series of discussions ostensibly on music, computing, thought, philosophy, mathematics, art and consciousness.

Dreadnought, by Robert K. Massie.
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Dreadnought.html

A fascinating book. Admittedly it’s in my field so I’m biased. Well, one of my fields. A Naval history of Britain and Germany, leading up to the First World War, where the “lamps went out all over Europe and [were not] lit again…”.

The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman. A classic. She writes very well. Lead up to WW1 from a more diplomatic/political/land perspective than the sea/naval perspective of Massie.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. A great work of libertarian (science) fiction. Though not many regard Heinlein as a stylist, he certainly is one here, as his narrator has a limited and functional grasp of English.

Forever War, Joe Haldeman. A commie-pinko (I say that in jest, for new readers) SF antidote to Heinlein’s classic “Starship Troopers” (forget the film, read the book). Well written, and says a lot about America and the 1970’s. I don’t agree with him, but I think everyone should read what he wrote, and try to understand his perspective. I also think everyone should do the same with Heinlein.

Update: gwallan has mentioned Dune. I agree. I’ll add more to the update section as suggestions flow.
-wolfe

Posted in Blogroll, books | 50 Comments »

Spy Fiction: A genre in distress

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006

I’ve been busy, so no real posts for a long time. (one of these dead blogs? Probably).

That said, I’ll talk a bit about the post-cold-war spy genre.

The end of the cold war put a lot of people — Carre, Deighton, Clancy, semi-out-of-business. While 9/11 has, horribly, somewhat revitalized the genre, it’s certainly not what it was in its heyday.

Spy fiction, as a reflection of the cultural iconography, the zeitgeist,  the struggles at hand, remains important. (Hmmm, sounds a little pretentious. Oh well, I’ll live with it).

We’ll look very briefly at two authors: Henry Porter, and Mark Burnell. Both started publishing novels at what the pedantic would call the extreme tail end of the 20th century: circa the year 2000. For most, they are very early 21st century spy genre novelists.

Porter, born in England in 1953, is almost archetypically English. Naming Jeeves, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond as three of his favorite literary heroes, he grew up in cold-war Germany.

His books include Remembrance Day, A Spy’s Life, Brandenberg Gate, and Empire State.

His writing is tight, competent, and tends to return to the heyday of the cold war: the 80’s, and sometimes the ’90’s.

Characters are generally well-defined, and there’s more than a soupcon of the techno-thriller about much of his writing. Enough to make any man (and some women) at least interested.

Mark Burnell is over ten years younger. More of a Generation-X type. With several books under his belt — Gemini, Chameleon, Zoo Station, and The Rhythm Section, it’s that last that remains his best known work.

The Rhythm Section tells the story of an orphaned woman, Stephanie: her family was destroyed by a terrorist. The book is an impressively stylistic tale of an extreme identity crisis. She disintegrates into a downward spiral of addiction, sex and disaster, and then is reborn. Yet it’s not a simple tale of revenge, and the multiple aspects of her character are intriguing indeed.

The plot, is, frankly, nothing special, but the settings and character of Stephanie are spectacularly well drawn.

While my description makes it seem as though it’s some kind of violent ‘chick-lit’, that’s not the case at all. This is a good book for men, and we can enjoy it. Women too, will likely find interesting things Stephanie’s character.

The window this provides into terrorist thought is not to be discounted, either.

Porter’s good. The Rhythm Section is better. I’d say it’s a must read, if you like the genre. Of course, if you’ve not heard of it, you’re 6-7 years behind the times!

Posted in books, gender | 7 Comments »

Books Worth Reading (1)

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

From time to time I’ll simply slap up a micro-book-review here. (Maybe a longer one for more recent books).

My tastes are eclectic; as a kid, I loved SF — ’speculative fiction’ — more commonly divided into fantasy and sci-fi. Sometimes adventure stories, too. These days, I tend to enjoy mysteries, techno-thrillers, history (especially with a political, economic or military bent).

Maths, physics, and biology can also be fun, but I struggle more and more with each passing year with the latter two fields.

In semi-jest, I’ll say that I think I have moved away from SF since I think my job has become too much like the science fiction I read as a kid.

So, what am I reading right now? Two books from the late 1960’s.

First, John Kennedy O’Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces“. My girlfriend has recently discovered this and is loving it, so I’m rereading it. Perhaps one of the finest late 20th century authors of the United States, Toole wrote very little (this was his only novel) before committing suicide at a young age. In a story worthy of a novel itself, his mother took his book around (after his death) pushing it at everyone who’d read it and eventually persuaded a professor to help publish it. [I'm linking you to a review rather than an amazon link to buy the book; no scrabbling for affiliate fees here... yet!].

An incredibly bizarre coming of age story written in the 1960’s, it resonates even today nearly 40 years later.

What else? Well, Michael Crichton, father of the modern techno-thriller, initially wrote under two pseudonyms while in medical school. One of them was Jeffrey Hudson, under which name he wrote “A Case of Need” in the late 60’s.

This is an interesting tale, narrated by a pathologist, of his attempts to prove the innocence of a colleague of performing a botched abortion upon the daughter of a famous and powerful physician.

Replete with the politics (and religion) of 1960’s Boston, and pre-Roe vs Wade America, the novel seems out of date, yet the crisp and intelligent writing draws the reader in, even today.

Covering everything from how to synthesize LSD [deleted in the latest edition] to 1960’s era moral arguments for and against abortion, the novel packs a great deal in.

Perhaps that’s its one failing. The two wives of the main actors (the largely off-stage abortionist and the protagonist) are largely reactive. To be sure, Dick will view that as a plus, but they remain cardboard characters with only vague foreshadowing of divorce in one case. The denouement is a touch innocent and expectant of people to behave in predictable ways when confronted. Still, it remains an excellent early novel from a fine writer on a topic that will likely move to the forefront in the years ahead in America.

What are you reading?

Posted in books, politics | 6 Comments »