Darwin8u

Not a usual Science Fantasy reader, I approached this The Book of the New Sun tetralogy with no slight hesitation, but it came highly recommended from a friend whose judgement I trust. I loved the first half (Shadow of the Torturer and the Claw of the Conciliator). The third book however just didn't do it for me. It was brilliant at times, but dragged in certain middle sections and occasionally almost seemed phoned-in. I have enough faith in Wolfe and the reputation of this work to finish, but if I had started with book three, I might have given the rest of the series a pass.

Still, I think Wolfe brings more to genre writing than most SF/fantasy authors, so I probably need to cut him a little slack. My expectations after the first two novels was pretty high and I'm almost certainly judging him against über-high standards which he set with his earlier New Sun novels.

I'm not sure exactly why I volunteered to jump into another Dan Brown novel. What circle of Hell is designed for readers who keep returning to the crappy, popular authors (Brown, Card, Clancy) of their youth hoping for a drink from the waters of Bimini? What circle do you consine the novel's author?

1. Limbo?

Look, the novel isn't that bad. Brown can be quite entertaining if you ignore actual language and writing. I'm not sure exactly why I volunteered to jump into another Dan Brown novel. What circle of Hell is designed for readers who keep returning to the crappy, popular authors (Brown, Card, Clancy) of their youth hoping for a drink from the waters of Bimini? What circle do you consign the novel's author?

1. Limbo?

Look, the novel isn't that bad. Brown can be quite entertaining if you ignore most of the actual writing. He IS the master of page-turning historical mysteries, but I'm not sure if that says more about page-turning historical mysteries, Dan Brown, or us as readers.

2. Lust?

To be fair, while I despise Brown's actual writing, his plotting does turn me on as a reader. While I think he hit his high water mark with 'Da Vinci Code' (Yes, it's all down hill from there Dan), this novel is slightly better than the 'Lost Symbol' so I can't completely pan it.

3. Gluttony?

I think this is the most likely circle this novel belongs in. I think Brown's major issue is his self-indulgence. His style is inflated, but doesn't actually inform. His metaphors are swollen. His descriptions are possessed of majority fat and very little meat. I probably belong here too. So, here is my vote.

4. Greed?

It is obvious why Dan Brown writes this way... because we (myself included) still buy it. It reminds me of why I hate it when directors in Hollywood become successful. They stop being good and instead become hacks. The reading public, much like the movie going public, demands mediocrity if the writer/director is going to be successful. Real art is not bought, real literature is most often ignored (I know that is cliched, but it is mostly true). I think the amazing thing is that Brown started as a hack and has just perfected hackery to a point where he will be able to print money in 20 years by publishing an Italian phonebook.

5. Anger?

No. Not really. More like regret. If I am angry (Notice how I shifted from the circles being about Dan Brown to the circles being about me? If you aren't comfortable with those kind of style abortions, you should probably not read Dan Brown).

6. Heresy?

No, Dan Brown definitely doesn't belong here. I think this is a circle the Catholic church would have like to place him for 'Da Vinci Code' but 'Inferno' is mainly heretical to scholars of Dante, Transhumanists, and perhaps Malthusian alarmists.

7, Violence?

Again, because Dan Brown is aiming for the center-mass of the paperback purchasing world, he isn't going to make his novel THAT graphic. He made it grim, he made it painful, but violent. Meh.

8. Fraud?

'Inferno' is a kind of a rip-off of every dystopian SF novel about eugenics, mixed with a little bit of James Bond and a little bit of the 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,' but since all writing is a rip-off, I can't really mark Dan Brown down for this circle. If he is condemned to the 8th circle it will be more for 'Da Vinci Code', which I still believe is a watered-down, mediocre version of 'Foucault's Pendulum'.

9. Treachery?

The further down into Hell you go, the more you realize it actually takes a lot of work to earn a place at these lower levels. That alone would discount Dan Brown. It would also probably discount my review, since I just couldn't bring myself to spend an inordinate amount of time reviewing a book I wasn't all that impressed by.

If for whatever reason, during the last twenty years, you've missed John le Carré's anger, and if his last 10 books were too subtle for you, and if you didn't catch le Carré's moral outrage in 'the Constant Gardner' and 'a Most Wanted Man', then you might need to skip 'A Delicate Truth'. In his newest novel, John le Carré tackles the amoral world of private contract espionage, rendition, and ineptness. Le Carré attacks Western ethics, Western hypocrisy, the West's venal “war gone corporate.”

John le Carré war is a battle of young idealism vs amoral and often incompetent mercenaries. It is a war of principled, but flawed individuals vs what Olen Steinhauer summarized as the "shortsightedness, hypocrisy, lies and unfettered greed that plagues the “post-imperial, post-cold-war world".

This isn't the most artful of le Carré's novels, but it is probably one of his sharpest. He dares the reader to follow him in his role as a latter-day Jeremiah of espionage and statecraft. He condemns the hypocrisy and the false gods of the Post-Iraq War/WOT West in his aim to "root out, pull down, destroy and throw down" the inhuman idols of the West. His NeoCon critics might aim for le Carré's eyes, but they can't destroy his vision or overlook his balls

There are many parts of Dickens' writing that I love and few pieces of his that fall short of complete adoration. 'Great Expectations' is one more of Dickens' absolute masterpieces. I love how with 100 pages left you can almost feel the universe shift as Dickens grabs the crazy, once loose strings of his moral narrative and begins to pull it all together.

I think a significant part of the magic, for me, of 'Great Expectations' is found in the minor characters. Everyone from Uncle Pumblechook, Miss Havisham, & Mr Jaggers, to Mr. Wemmick and the Aged Parent (the Aged P.) could be the center of their own Dickens novel; each life is given a warmth (or where there lacks warmth, a round coldness) that keeps the novel propelled on.

You can't have a Dickens novel without a little bit of melodrama and a bit of Victorian moralizing. However, with 'Great Expectations', Dickens does this with a soft touch. He isn't as confrontational about social ills as he is in 'Hard Times' or 'Oliver Twist' and he isn't as melodramatic as he was in 'Tale of Two Cities', but even so, I completely enjoyed this gentle, more muted Dickens.

Reading Roth is almost a spooky, sexual experience. I say that knowing this will sound absurd, trite and probably hyperbolic. But with Roth, his words are imbued with an almost carnal power, a spectral courage, energy and life. IT is like watching an absurdly talented musician do things with an instrument/with sound that bends the edge of possible.

Reading Roth, I can understand how the audience in Paganini 's time wanted to burn the man for witchcraft, feared the man for his deal with the Devil. I'm not sure who Roth sold his soul to, but Roth's run of novels: Operation Shylock (1993) Sabbath's Theater (1995) >> American Pastoral (1997) >> I Married a Communist (1998) >> The Human Stain (2000) can only be thought of as the greatest series of novels produced by ANY writer at anytime. Maybe Shakespeare had a better run. Maybe Proust. Maybe. For me, these five novels, ending with 'The Human Stain' are the apex of 20th Century writing. Spooky.

While I enjoyed the book and my kids were entertained, like a lot of 19th century adventure stories I am more impressed by its staying power and influence than the story or writing itself.

The strength of 'Treasure Island' is its characters. Even minor players in this pirate/treasure/tropical adventure story are fascinating. The plot had enough ups and downs and twists to entertain, but like Jules Verne's and H.G. Wells' minor novels, Stevenson's writing just wasn't interesting enough to draw me back for a second draft.

Neil Hunt's narration was varied enough for the characters without being overly distracting from the story.

Haney's memoir of Delta Force is one of those influential military memoirs that sets the bar for future warrior authors. You can see its influence on the recent 'No Easy Day' (the memoir by one of the Navy Seals who hunted and killed OBL) and countless other minor trooper tales. That isn't to say this is a perfect memoir, nor a perfect history of Delta Force.

The very nature of Delta opererators, and the unit they served in, practically requires that memoirs of Delta Force (and the SF or Navy Seals) will always be viewed as partial truths, shaded stories, rumor, and myth. But like David Hackworth's 'About Face' before, this memoir is informative and entertaining. It is a single data point but shouldn't be taken as the gospel of anything, just a single (slightly biased) retelling of one man's memory of how things in a very elite military unit functioned.

One of my favorite memoirs of all time. IT was perfect in its pacing, its pitch. It was a beautiful, but unsentimental look at youth, poverty, family, and all the cracks and fissures that the world creates to swallow the dreams of youth. Wolff's language still rings with me. I find myself, going back and reading whole passages of 'This Boy's Life' just to drink the language and the rub against the energy and charge of Wolff's vitality. A good memoirist gets the reader to experience the artist's past life through his words, a great memoirist seduces the reader into a place where the reader suddenly recognizes the universal experiences in our shared lives.

There were parts of the book I felt like Tobias Wolff was not writing his history, but mine. The details of our lives might have been different, our stories might be adolescent antipoles, but I read Wolff and I think he has robbed me of my emotions, faked my youthful hope, slandered my stripling reputation, and squandered all of my schoolboy potential.

While I enjoyed this collection more than Sedaris' previous book 'Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk', it just didn't rise to the levels of his great collections ('Naked' or 'Me Talk Pretty Someday'), or even his very good collections ('When You Are Engulfed in Flames' or 'Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim'). I just feel like he is retreading the same ground, picking up the same litter, and is starting that phase in his career where he is like a band from the 80s that isn't creating as much as exploiting his better work.

I hope I am being overly pessimistic, and maybe I am just jaded from the horrible audio experience my wife and I had last night listening to him at Gammage Auditorium in Tempe, AZ, but it seems that the reading typified my feelings about his book. Sedaris was reading to a comfortable group in comfortable shoes, reading comfortable stories. We all laughed at the appropriate parts, we all knew what we expected and David Sedaris delivered the goods -- mostly.

The audio quality wasn't great, but I walked away mostly amused that I somehow ended up parting with 1 credit at Audible, $15 bucks on Amazon, $45 for a live reading, and while mildly entertained ... I wasn't particularly blown away. It was like I was a beer-bellied, middle-aged man at a Journey concert. I figure I didn't pay for the new set, just for the couple hours of nostalgia at how great it was ten or twenty years ago. Now, I've just got to figure out now how much nostalgia will cost me tomorrow.

I keep reading Cormac McCarthy to find a single crack of light in his dark, grotesque lyricism. 'Outer Dark' as a novel is unconventional and amazing. The story was allegorical without being stiff, it was regional without being provincial. Like most all of McCarthy's work, it is Biblical in its power and intensity.

In 'Outer Dark', McCarthy is throwing chert boulders at the dark center of the Universe. He isn't interested in little themes. Even in his small books he is taking on ideas as large and slippery as fate, guilt, agency, and God. Structurally, Outer Dark was drum-tight. The prose and the vernacular/archaic dialogue were both crisp and amazing. 'Outer Dark' is prose art at a high-level and it scared the literary Hell out of me.

The thing I liked most about Saunders' quirky fable is how innocent and honest his writing can be without becoming saccharine. He manages with his simple narrative and his prose ticks to walk up to the line of absurdly sentimental and overdone, but then slinks backs down.

Obvious comparisons should probably be made to David Sedaris' modern bestiary: 'Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk' and Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr Fox'. Saunders's story 'Fox 8' seems to belong to that same family group descended from the Aesopica. Not my favorite genre, but Saunders could write a phone book and I'd go out and buy it and read/listen to it.

While Saunders might consider his narration style to Leo Kottke's singing voice ("geese farts on a muggy day"), I think his voice is a perfect compliment to his writing.