Demons, Devils, and Hellish Creatures

Having read John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things (rating: 9/10) and enjoying it, I looked forward to reading his latest novel, The Gates.  Unfortunately, a hundred pages into the book, I'm giving up.

In both books the main character is a young boy.  In The Book of Lost Things he's a 12-year old whose mother has died, and only has his books and his imagination for company.  When the story took serious turns, I thought of the book as something for adults.  On the other hand, there were many whimsical moments when I questioned that.  The theme - the transition from childhood innocence to adulthood - is certainly a serious one, and one most adults can identify with.

But in The Gates, the main character, Samuel Johnson, is a precocious 11-year old who accidentally witnesses his neighbors raising the Devil.  At the same time, with the unknowing help of the Large Hadron Collider, a portal between our world and Hell begins to open.  I know from the back cover of the book that Samuel will play a role in vanquishing Satan and his minions.  But the story is entirely too whimsical for me.  Demons with silly names, silly roles, and identity crises.  Humor, frequently in the form of lengthy footnotes to explain things to the reader, who is assumed to be young.  I think Connolly missed a chance to teach us something, as he taught us in The Book of Lost Things. And while Halloween costumes that make devils out of children can be cute, the concept of Hell is not one to be treated quite so lightly, I believe.  It seems to me that religion in the past placed too much emphasis on Hell and eternal damnation, and nowadays places too little.

As a scientist, I grow tired of seeing scientists stereotyped in fiction as feckless, irresponsible, hungry for power and at the same time prone to making Big Mistakes.  Perhaps Connolly's next novel will be better.  This one I'm getting rid of.

Dracula on Steroids

I'm a card-carrying member of the market segment of readers that likes the feel and smell and overall experience of reading a book made out of cellulose products more than the experience of reading a book made out of electrons.  But books made out of electrons appear to be catching on more and more, if you can believe the statistics.

I look at the bookshelves in my home office and bemoan how I've run out of room for new additions.  I hope my wife doesn't notice the Compulsion to Buy Books has led me to having to lay some books horizontally across the tops of others in order to get them "shelved."  I don't even want to think what she'd say if I started taking over the guest room for my office and let my current office become a library.

But e-books?  Sure, they don't take up room.  But if I don't see them lying around, I might forget about them and not read them.  They don't feel right, look right, smell right.  I can't trade them in at Half Price Books when I'm finished with them.

But what e-book publishers are starting to do with book design is pulling me in.  If a publisher can give me an experience with an e-book that I can't get with an ordinary book, I might just give it a try.  That's what I did with Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition (PadWorX Digital Media), named the iTunes App of the Week this past week.  Here we have a novel written in 1897, a novel I'd not ordinarily read because of its antiquated style, but through e-book magic has been made interactive, with music, sound effects, objects that move on the screen.  Letters and papers have to be moved with a finger swipe in order to read the letters beneath.  Tip the iPad and the rosary necklace hanging across the top of the book in an early chapter tips, following gravity.  PadWorX has taken an old book and made it fun!  This is Bram Stoker's book on steroids - a perfect piece of entertainment for Halloween, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  For a preview, see this YouTube video.

New to Hope

In Kendra Lacy's latest book, New to Hope, we have the privilege of someone describing for us the beginning of a unique and personal process.  Not only describing it, but taking us along as they begin their journey.

Kendra shares with us how her life has changed in the past year.  These changes were triggered when she finally found the right spiritual home.  She knew that it was the right place, she says, when she discovered a Narnia-themed library.  What happened to Kendra is hard for anyone but her to put in words.  It was not a conversion - she was already a Christian.  It was not an awakening - she was already awake, just not in the right place quite yet.  Perhaps we could think of the christening of a ship and watching it head for the horizon. It took just the right set of circumstances for Kendra's spiritual ship to leave the dock and head out to sea, her sails billowing with joy, like Narnia's Dawn Treader.

I encourage you to read Kendra's book and discover what all this means.  And if you want to follow her journey, follow her blog at http://newtohope.blogspot.com.  And, if you're in the Melbourne, Florida area on a Sunday morning, stop in at Hope Episcopal Church.  You'll be welcomed with a big hug, I'm sure.

The Wonder of It All

When I was a young boy my classmates at school knew what I was going to be when I grew up before I knew.  When it was my turn to tell the class, they answered for me: "Scientist!  He's going to be a scientist!"  They reached this conclusion, I believe, by the following logic.  (1) I could read better than anyone else in the class.  (2)  Therefore I must be smart.  (3) The smartest people turn out to be scientists.  (4) Therefore he's going to turn out to be a scientist.  While their logic had some errors, their conclusion turned out to be correct.  I did become a scientist.

I don't believe the other kids knew that I had my first microscope and my first chemistry set before I was nine years old.  But they might've known about my "How-and-Why Wonder Books" if I brought one of them to school.  I got some of them from school book fairs, and some at the local shopping center in Levittown (later Willingboro), New Jersey.  I remember books on rocks, and coins, and dinosaurs, and stars.  No doubt reading these books sparked my curiosity and instilled a sense of wonder that would guide me as I grew up.

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Bugs Bunny

"The Bugs Bunny Show" aired on ABC from October 1960 to September 1962, Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:00 PM.  This was something we looked forward to every week when my sister and I were little.  We'd watch 30 minutes of cartoons and then it was bedtime.  The only thing that came close was Saturday morning cartoons.  (If Saturday morning now was like it was back then, I'd still be glued to the TV set.)

A great reference for Warner Bros. cartoons is Jerry Beck's and Will Friedwald's book, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons.  This text lists and describes every cartoon Warner Bros. produced, including year of production, characters, artists and animators, plot and gags, and connections to other cartoon.  I used this book to make a list of every Bugs Bunny cartoon ever produced ("theatrical cartoons" only).  Assuming I counted correctly (!), I have seen 133 out of 167 cartoons.  Maybe seeing the remaining 34 should be an addition to my bucket list!

What did I learn from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons?  I think primarily watching these cartoons shaped my appreciation for humor.  But there were other things.  To expect fairness, but not be surprised if it wasn't forthcoming.  That indignation over unfairness is appropriate.  That retaliation and vengeance - the kind that doesn't cause real harm, only "pretend harm" - is one response to unfairness, but that this can backfire!

The censorship of Warner Bros. cartoons that I've seen in recent years is something that I find offensive.  I did not learn to fire guns at people by watching Elmer Fudd fire his gun at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck.  I did not learn that wounds in real life - even severe wounds - can heal themselves in the few seconds that it takes for a scene to change in a cartoon.  Just as I did not acquire a warped view of violence, I did not acquire a warped view of race and culture, despite the many depictions of races and cultures that are offensive to people in this day and age.

Thank you, Bugs, for being an important part of my life.

Of Kings and Legends

If you search on "King Arthur" on Amazon's website, you'll get almost six thousand results.  Of those, T. H. White's The Once and Future King (rating: 9/10) is very popular.  Why would there be so many books about this legendary king?  There is something about Arthur and Camelot and the Knights of the Round table that thrills and inspires  us.  Of course, many movies have been made telling this story as well.  When I was young, everyone had seen the Disney movie, "The Sword in the Stone."  Watching that movie told us that exciting things can happen to you, even if you're only a child.  My favorite cinema-d'Arthur is "First Knight."

I've just finished reading a very interesting book, which is actually the first in a trilogy.  Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy's The Forever King (rating: 9/10) is a very original cross-genre fantasy/thriller that brings the legend of Arthur and Merlin and the Holy Grail into the present.  (I'd read and enjoyed Grandmaster (rating: 9/10) by the same authors.)  My willing suspension of disbelief may have been stretched a bit by thinking the protagonist, a ten-year old boy, could be capable of the thoughts and actions portrayed, but it was still fun to read.

One thing I hate with trilogies is when they come out over the span of a few years and I have to try to remember what happened in the earlier volumes.  Fortunately this trilogy has been out for several years and I can move on to the second book right away, The Broken Sword, and the final volume, The Third Magic.

Kendra Lacy wins award for "Drachen"

Kendra Lacy has won an Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest 18th Annual Self-Published Book competition for her young adult fantasy novel, Drachen.  Her book will be promoted in the March/April 2011 issue of Writer's Digest.  Way to go, Kendra!

Shudders from "Shutter Island"

While traveling recently I finished reading Dennis LeHane's Shutter Island.  I was intrigued by the trailers for the movie (which I've not yet seen).  U.S. Marshals arrive on an island which is home to a high-security mental institute for the criminally insane; their task, to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients/inmates.  Suspense, mystery, creepiness, a dark gothic setting, and a healthy dose of insanity make for a story whose conclusion caught me completely by surprise.  Always fun when you don't see it coming!  And just enough to make you think, and you leave you feeling slightly "disturbed."  I highly recommend this book - if you haven't already seen the movie.

LOST Knowledge

When I was a boy I was always excited when a new book from the Weekly Reader Book Club would come in the mail.  Now, far from boyhood, I still get excited when a book comes in the mail.  My wife will pick up the mail and tell me, "You've got a present!"  And that's what it feels like.  Nine times out of ten it will be something from Amazon or an Amazon reseller, but sometimes it will be something off of eBay.  The anticipation is such that I can't resist following the shipment using the tracking number Amazon gives me.

Now I have something else to look forward to: The LOST Encyclopedia, by Tara Bennett and Paul Terry.  I don't watch much TV, but once my friends got me interested in LOST, I was hooked.  The combination of mystery, personal stories, survival, philosophy, and even science fiction was irresistible.  My wife and I rented all the old episodes we missed and had marathon LOST-watching sessions each week, catching up as quickly as we could.  And then we stayed with it to the end.  (Although my wife started to lose interest in the last season or two.)  I knew that someone would come out with the definitive "canon" that would tie all the loose ends together for me, and show me things I missed or didn't recognize at the time.

I can hardly wait!  Better go track the package and see where it is now ...

Thidwick

... is a moose.  The cognoscenti know Thidwick is a big-hearted moose.  Dr. Seuss tells the story of Thidwick and how the other animals took advantage of his hospitality.  It was one of our favorite books when we were little.

Growing up in a small house in Central Florida, there was never much room for storing things.  That didn't stop Mom and Dad from putting up shelves everywhere they could in the garage.  But it did mean they didn't save toys and other items from our childhood.  So I was quite surprised when - not long after mentioning to Dad how I wish I still had Thidwick - a large envelope showed up in the mail, containing the one and only Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose.  Dad had kept it all these years.  Maybe it was sentimental to him as well, since he used to read it to us.  Now it sits on the shelf waiting for the day I can read it to our granddaughter.

A protege of Dr. Seuss, P. D. Eastman, was the author of other books that were part of our family culture.  Our daughter Kendra loved Are You My Mother.  And Go, Dog, Go was another favorite.  In fact, when we see a bunch of people all headed in the same direction, we still say "they're going to a dog party."

The Angel's Game

Last month I posted on some books by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  The Shadow of the Wind and The Prince of Mist were both very good books.  Unfortunately, I can't say the same about The Angel's Game.  What little mystery threads through the novel is insufficiently engaging.  Certainly there is nothing endearing when it comes to the main characters.  Although the author's style can't be faulted - he really writes very well - I just didn't care enough about what was happening to read the second half of the book.

Things That Make Me Gag

I have to get this off my chest.  There are some things I can't stand about certain science fiction and fantasy books.

• Vampires and zombies.  Come on, hasn't this fad run its course yet?
• Cover art and book design for Baen Books.  (See, for example, the Honor Harrington series.)
• Titles or author's names rendered with anything resembling Olde English Text font.
• The steampunk genre.  And Victorian-era filigree.  Yes, I played the Bioshock video game.  Until I got permanently stuck.  But the aesthetic did little for me.
• Cover art on several books in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
• The fad of showing a cloaked and hooded character on the cover, frequently without showing any facial features.

Okay, I feel better now.  Thank you for indulging me.

Oh - wait, wait, wait.  Something unrelated that also annoys me: depicting Native American women in paintings as young Caucasian women wearing make-up.

Ancient and Medieval Warfare - it's all in the details

There are few people who don't appreciate a good bargain.  I found Arthur Banks' Atlas of Ancient and Medieval Warfare in a local used bookstore and resisted the urge to buy it, thinking I might be able to get it cheaper.  The original price was $25.00 when it was published in 1982.  The store was asking $17.50.  For a used copy in similar condition at Amazon, you'd have to pay about the same amount.  But of course I checked eBay too.  And there it was ... except for no dust jacket, the same book in excellent condition, for $1.99 (MTS Books in Greensburg, PA).

I call that a bargain!

What made me want this book?  It is chock full of black-and-white detailed maps of Europe, the Near East, India, China, Japan, and Korea, covering battles from 1231 B.C. to 1542.  The maps show movements of armies, locations of fortresses, and important geographic features.  There are explanations of the reasons behind the battles and the strategies of the opposing forces.  There are lists of dynasties and commanders.  There are dates and numbers and tactics.  There are people and places and events I've never heard of before.  I can't think of another book I've ever seen that was so information-dense.  It is a very interesting volume of military history.

"He's dead, Jim"

"He's dead, Jim."  Or so said Leonard McCoy on a number of Star Trek episodes.  It's one of the few examples of "geek" culture that my wife and I share in conversation.  But if McCoy was talking about the citizens (denizens?) of Elysian Fields in Bruce Balfour's The Digital Dead, the phrase would carry with it layers of meaning.

I've said that The Digital Dead is one of those books that I abandoned reading.  I gave it another try, however, and I'm glad I did. Sure, The Digital Dead has more subplots "than Carter has little liver pills."  The focus of the story is on a commercial enterprise, Elysian Fields, that gives digital copies of people a virtual reality afterlife.  Of course, this technological power is misused.  And so we have nefarious politicians, teleportation gates, extremely dangerous manifestations of AI, archaeology, alien culture, and more chase scenes and gunfights and sabotage than many thrillers.  And since this is a sequel to The Forge of Mars, we have Tau Wolfsinger again as the main character, with his Navajo background and religious beliefs.

Yes, I had a bit of trouble keeping all this straight, but I still thought it was a decent book.  The author clearly set things up for a continuation of the story, but I haven't found one that he's written.  (Prometheus Road was not it.)

Author's websites, for reference:
Bruce Balfour
The Forge of Mars

Of Zoos and Nerds

On occasion I find it necessary during a chaotic workday to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, saying "If I ran the zoo, there's no telling what I would do!"  If they would only put me in charge, I'd run this place differently!  Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo is often credited with the first appearance of the word "nerd", a term my family doesn't hesitate the use in referring to me.  I tend to use the word only as a brand name, referring to one of my favorite candies.

My earliest memory is of my third birthday.  A fragment of one of my birthday gifts, a book with descriptions of wild animals and black and white drawings of them, has survived.  Over the years the cover of this book and a number of pages disappeared.  But recently I did some research and discovered that the book was Francis Wardle's Zoo Book, published in London in the early 1950s.  Intrigued, I managed to find a used (and intact!) copy for sale on the Internet.  It was very interesting to see - for the first time in 50 years - an intact copy, including many pages my battered copy no longer has.  The cover does not look familiar, but it's a dustjacket and it probably didn't last long in my little hands.

I loved this book when I was little.  I asked my parents not long ago what caused them to give a three-year old a book like this.  I couldn't read it.  The animals are arranged by their taxonomic Order in the animal kingdom.  (I wouldn't know artiodactyla even if I could read!)  And it wasn't even published in the States.  But they couldn't remember.  The book remains both a mystery and a memory.

Banned!

The American Library Association's annual Banned Books Week is coming up September 25 to October 2.  Of 50 some-odd banned books listed in the September 2010 issue of AARP Bulletin, I found that I've read a respectable 17.

I don't know if this is listed on a "banned books" list anywhere, but I've also read Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book."  Formally known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (rating: 6/10), I borrowed this from a fellow student when I was finishing my senior year of high school in 1973.  It was a deliberately rebellious act, given that the nation was still dealing with the tragedy of the Vietnam War (though that would soon come to an end).  We lived near an Air Force base, and I knew a boy at school whose father was a pilot who had been shot down over Vietnam.  Another boy had a father who was a POW.  I did not disrespect the patriotism and commitment of those in the armed services, but I was definitely of the mind we should not be fighting in Vietnam.

I'm so grateful that we live in a country where we can read whatever we want and form our own opinions, even unpopular opinions.

Spooks

Anyone following this blog should know by now that I not only read books written for adults but also some written for "young adults" and children.  (I'm thinking the term "juvenile fiction" is probably going out of style because of the connotations of the word "juvenile.")  I just finished reading The Spook's Tale and Other Horrors by Joseph Delaney, one of the series (for older children, not quite young adults?) titled The Last Apprentice.  This series concerns the supernatural adventures of a young man, hundreds of years ago, who is apprenticed to a "spook", someone who battles witches and demons and evil creatures of many kinds.  The books in this series are all dark in mood and setting, but the stories are all compelling and chilling.

Somehow I'm reminded of the series of horror/supernatural/mystery novels for children written by John Bellairs.  When our daughter was growing up it was a family tradition for several years to get every new John Bellairs book that came out, and each member of the family would read it.  In contrast to the Last Apprentice series, the books by John Bellairs are set in present day, and are not as grisly, but there is plenty to capture the imagination.

Nonlinearity, and Life as an Adventure

In the early '70s, while I was in high school, I discovered a series of books in the public library called "TutorTexts."  Each of these books taught you a particular subject through what was called "programmed instruction."  Each page or two would introduce a new concept and test your new knowledge by asking you a question.  Depending on your answer, you would be guided to one of two other pages in the book.  If you were right, you were rewarded by picking up the subject from the page number for the right answer.  If you were wrong, you were guided to a page that explained why.  Then you would be steered back into the training again.  It was a nonlinear way to read a book, because a reader's journey could take many different paths, and none of them went in perfect linear order from the first page to the last.

When my daughter was young she enjoyed reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series and the "Time Machine" series of children's adventure books.  The concept in these books was very similar to that used by the TutorTexts.  Based on the storyline presented to you, you would periodically have to make a choice about how you - as a character involved in the story - should act.  Depending on your choice, you would be guided to a new page and the story would pick up from there.  Unlike TutorTexts, however, it was possible to get to the end of one of these books and actually fail to save the world, or die at the hands of monsters, or the like.  Then you had no choice but to go back through the book and try to make choices that would lead you to the successful ending.

"Life is an adventure" is a cliche that is not universally embraced.  There are times when I wish I had the freedom to more easily steer that adventure.  Certainly there are always choices to be made, leading to successful or not-so-successful outcomes.  But if I could really "choose my own adventure," I would have less uncertainty to confront in life, and be able to enjoy the journey, knowing that I didn't have to worry so much about the destination.  After all, we usually don't get to go back through the book of life and try new choices if we find that our recent ones lead to failure.  What happens is that we learn from our choices, our mistakes, and use what we learn to make better decisions in the future, but the sum of all these decisions is still a journey that can't be repeated.  That puts more pressure on making the right choices the first time around.

Precocious Reading

Back on July 16 I posted about the positive effects of reading to very young children.  I just bumped into a blog that deals directly with this: "Raising Readers, Writers, and Spellers" at Psychology Today.

Rivers of America

I recently picked up a used copy of Peter C. Mancall's Land of Rivers: America in Word and Image.  This is a collection of writings over the past few hundred years that describe the place of rivers in America's history.  The essays and excerpts are accompanied by a number of incredible photographs and artwork illustrating America's rivers.  There are pictures of floods and baptisms and waterfalls and commerce, from 17th century woodcuts to photos by Ansel Adams.

This book reminds me of the Rivers of America series of books that were published (and republished) from the 1930s to the 1970s.  Each edition in this series of over 60 books is a historical narrative devoted to a single river.  Many of them are familiar - the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Hudson, and others - but I have to confess that some of them I had never heard of before.  The Housatonic?  The Sangamon?  And where the heck is the Winooski?  There for a while I thought I would start collecting this series; I have a weakness for series of books, especially if they deal with history, or the outdoors.  But shelf space is at a premium in my house, so I decided to forego this pleasure.