The 100 Novel Challenge, 2009

Between the time I started the Book Walrus and now I’ve shifted my focus from primarily science fiction to a more eclectic mix of genre and classic literature. Midway through May of this year I got reinvigorated to do some serious reading and I came up with the goal of reading 100 novels by the end of the year. It would take me well into 2010 if I actually tried to review them all, so instead I’m just putting them into chronological order and giving a simple rating.

A hundred books in eight months is quite a lot for me, especially given that I’m a slow reader. It helps that I have a lot of time. I’m out of college (where I found it nigh impossible to read much beyond required coursework), working only one job and not raising children. I cut back on my primary hobby, film, and also on sleep. I rented audiobooks for my long commute and downloaded public domain (pre-1923) literature to read on lunch breaks.

And depending on your definition of “novel,” I also flagrantly cheated. About a fifth of the books are short enough to be considered novellas (20,000 – 40,000 words). A couple are short story collections (Cyberiad, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) and three are graphic novels (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth and Epileptic). Only about a tenth are long (my definition being ~500 pages and up): Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Jude the Obscure, The Ambassadors, Nostromo, The Grapes of Wrath, The Master and Margarita, The Glass Bead Game, Gravity’s Rainbow, A Deepness in the Sky and Spin.

I liked almost everything I read, which isn’t surprising considering that I was drawing my reading list from a combination of quality sources like The Guardian’s Top 1000 Novels, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Harold Bloom’s Western Canon, the Nobel Prize in Literature and top 100 lists compiled by Time magazine, The Observer, The Modern Library, The Great Books Guide and Daniel Burt (if you know me you’ve probably already guessed that I’ve compiled these into a giant spreadsheet). Keeping an open mind also helped; I’d previously shortchanged a lot of writers (often without having even reading them) and must now admit that I owe an apology to Charles Dickens, Henry James and Toni Morrison.

My rating system is very simple and subjective. I’ve put two asterisks next to my favorite books and one next to those that were very, very good. Everything else falls into the wide span from quite good down to meh. There were only five books in the whole lot that I’d give an emphatic thumb down: The Sorrows of Young Werther, A Princess of Mars, The 39 Steps, On the Road and The Passion According to G H.

I wanted to branch out from my usual interests and particularly to read more international literature. Here’s the breakdown by country: USA 37, UK 32, France 8, Russia 7, Germany 5, Japan 2, Poland 2 and one each from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Nigeria, Norway and South Africa. Everything foreign I read was in translation. The decade I read the most from was the 1950’s, with 14. I’ve seen film adaptations of 26 of the 100, of which only “The Third Man” and arguably “Frankenstein” exceeded their originals. I restricted myself to no more than 2 books per author.

Time to get a head start on my next 100 for 2010!

Some special distinctions within this batch:
Overall favorite: The Good Soldier
New favorite authors: Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton
Best genre books: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Espionage) and Startide Rising (Science-Fiction)
Best prose: Street of Crocodiles and Mrs. Dalloway
Best plot: Nostromo – Perhaps the ultimate tale of greed.
Best premise: Penguin Island – An old, nearly-blind missionary lands on an iceberg and baptizes the gentle natives, actually penguins, which leads to them being granted souls and satirically paralleling centuries of French history.
Most difficult: Either Gravity’s Rainbow, The Ambassadors or Riddley Walker (written in degenerated phonetic English saturated with post-apocalyptic slang).
Longest: Gravity’s Rainbow
Funniest: White Noise and the title essay of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Most depressing: Miss Lonelyhearts and The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Most disturbing: Jealousy
Best title: “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Volume 1: My Father Bleeds History” and “Volume 2: And Here My Troubles Began” – The graphic novel memoirs of Art Spiegelman’s father, a holocaust survivor.

The List:

"The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Wolfgang Goethe (1774, Germany)
"Emma" by Jane Austen (1815, UK)
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley (1818, UK)
"Father Goriot" by Honore de Balzac (1835, France) **
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville (1851, USA) **
"Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert (1857, France) *
"A Tale of Two City" by Charles Dickens (1859, UK) **
"Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev (1862, Russia)
"Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864, Russia) *
"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866, Russia) **
"Therese Raquin" by Emile Zola (1867, France) *
"Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872, UK)
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886, UK) *
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Leo Tolstoy (1886, Russia) *
"Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K Jerome (1889, UK) *
"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun (1890, Norway) **
"The Diary of a Nobody" by George Grossmith (1892, UK) *
"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane (1895, USA) *
"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy (1895, UK)
"The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells (1896, USA)
"Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (1898, UK) **
"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin (1899, USA) *
"Kim" by Rudyard Kipling (1901, UK)
"Call of the Wild" by Jack London (1903, USA)
"The Ambassadors" by Henry James (1903, UK) *
"Nostromo" by Joseph Conrad (1904, UK) **
"The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton (1905, USA) **
"The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad (1907, UK) **
"Penguin Island" by Anatole France (1908, France)
"A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912, USA)
"Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann (1912, Germany) **
"Sons and Lovers" by D.H. Lawrence (1913, UK)
"The 39 Steps" by John Buchan (1915, UK)
"The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford (1915, UK) **
"The Return of the Soldier" by Rebecca West (1918, USA) **
"The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton (1920, USA) **
"Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf (1925, UK) **
"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie (1926, UK) *
"To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf (1927, UK) **
"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather (1927, USA) *
"The Holy Terrors" by Jean Cocteau (1929, France) *
"The Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon (1930, UK)
"The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett (1930, USA) *
"As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner (1930, USA) *
"Miss Lonelyhearts" by Nathanael West (1933, USA) **
"Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schulz (1934, Poland) **
"Thank You, Jeeves" by P.G. Wodehouse (1934, UK) *
"The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M. Cain (1934, USA) *
"Tender Is the Night" by F Scott Fitzgerald (1934, USA) **
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck (1937, USA)
"Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh (1938, UK)
"Day of the Locusts" by Nathanael West (1939, USA) *
"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939, USA) *
"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov (1940, Russia) *
"Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler (1941, Germany) **
"The Glass Bead Game" by Herman Hesse (1943, Germany) *
"The Razor’s Edge" by Somerset Maugham (1944, USA) **
"Intruder in the Dust" by William Faulkner (1948, USA)
"The Third Man" by Graham Greene (1950, UK) *
"The Master of Go" by Yasunari Kawabata (1951, Japan) *
"The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham (1951, UK) *
"Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor (1952, USA) **
"More Than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon (1953, UK) *
"Under the Net" by Iris Murdoch (1954, UK) *
"A Door Into Summer" by Robert Heinlein (1957, USA) *
"Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov (1957, USA) *
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac (1957, USA)
"Jealousy" by Alain Robbe-Grillet (1957, France) **
"Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" by Kenzaburo Oe (1958, Japan) *
"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe (1958, Nigeria)
"The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958, Italy) **
"Billiards at Half-Past Nine" by Heinrich Boll (1959, Germany) **
"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" by Muriel Spark (1961, UK) **
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1962, Russia) **
"The Spy Who Came In From the Cold" by John Le Carre (1963, UK) **
"The Passion According to G. H." by Clarice Lispector (1964, Brazil)
"Herzog" by Saul Bellow (1964, USA) *
"Roadside Picnic" by Arcady/Boris Strugatsky (1972, Russia) **
"Gravity’s Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon (1973, USA) **
"Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem (1974, Poland) **
"Orbitsville" by Bob Shaw (1975, UK)
"A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul (1979, UK) **
"Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban (1980, UK) *
"Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee (1980, South Africa) **
"Startide Rising" by David Brin (1984, USA) **
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera (1984, Czech Republic) **
"The Lover" by Maguerite Duras (1984, France) *
"Money" by Martin Amis (1984, UK) **
"White Noise" by Don DiLillo (1985, USA) **
"In the Country of Last Things" by Paul Auster (1987, USA) *
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987, USA) **
"Maus" by Art Spiegelman (1991, USA) *
"The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson (1996, USA) **
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace (1997, USA) *
"A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge (2000, USA) **
"Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth" by Chris Ware (2000, USA) *
"Epileptic" by David Beauchard (2003, France) *
"Spin" by Robert Charles Wilson (2006, Canada) *
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (2006, USA) **
"The Yiddish Policemen’s Union" by Michael Cambon (2007, USA) *

I also found time for 20 plays, which made a healthy changeup from particularly dense prose. I’m even more uneducated in terms of drama than fiction and I thought I’d try and do some catching up in this area as well. It was absolutely worthwhile.

"Tartuffe" by Jean-Baptiste Moliere (1664, France)
"Faust" by Wolfgang Goethe (1808, Germany)
"The Doll House" by Henrik Ibsen (1879, Norway) *
"Miss Julie" by August Strindberg (1888, Sweden)
"Hedda Gabler" by Henrik Ibsen (1891, Norway) *
"Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov (1899, Russia)
"A Dream Play" by August Strindberg (1901, Sweden) *
"The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov (1904, Russia)
"The Ghost Sonata" by August Strindberg (1907, Sweden) *
"The Dybbuk" by S Ansky (1914, Russia) *
"Six Characters in Search of an Author" by Luigi Pirandello (1921, Italy) **
"Desire Under the Elms" by Eugene O'Neill (1924, USA)
"Our Town" by Thorton Wilder (1938, USA)
"Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht (1939, Germany) **
"Long Day's Journey Into the Night" by Eugene O'Neill (1940, USA) **
"The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O'Neill (1940, USA) *
"Endgame" by Samuel Beckett (1957, France) *
"Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco (1959, France) *
"Betrayal" by Harold Pinter (1978, UK)
"Largo Desolato" by Vaclav Havel (1984, Czech Republic)

Einstein and Collaboration in Research

Collaboration in clinical research (and an oblique discussion of a recent biography of Albert Einstein)

As for many endeavors, collaboration is critical to achievement of success for clinical research projects. Most successful clinical investigation undertakings will involve many people: planners, promoters, budgeters, interviewers, organizers, collectors, analyzers, writers, presenters, cheerleaders (and credit-takers!). The names for these roles may vary, but usually their shared efforts all contribute to project success.

Collaboration and partnerships exist on many levels, from the large scale (institutions such as the University of Kansas Hospital, the Research Institute, Mid America Cardiology, the School of Allied Health, other local and regional entities or collaborating medical centers across the country or around the world) to the basic level of a research nurse coordinator talking with a patient’s physician about enrollment in a study. In many cases we partner with the medical industry for new devices or medications, or with other investigators in the medical center who may work in clinical pharmacology, preventive medicine, or the school of nursing.

I recently read an excellent biography of the great theoretical physicist and thinker, Albert Einstein. (Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson). Undoubtedly one of the most brilliant human beings in history (he was named man of the 20th century by Time magazine), he made incredible contributions to our knowledge of science ranging from the atom to the entire universe. His field theories of special and general relativity are responsible for our basic understandings of energy, the wave and particle properties of matter, the interactions of space and time, and the relationships between the various basic forces the govern the universe. These insights have led to countless practical applications that have shaped our individual lives and the course of human history.

However, it is evident that the majority of Einstein’s really major contributions were made early in life. Although he undeniably was an independent thinker who conceptualized his major theories by himself (his famous “thought experiments”) it is also clear that he benefited greatly from the insights, support, and interactions of a variety of others including fellow students, certain professors, friends, contemporary scientists, and prior giants in the fields of physics and mathematics such as Planck and Maxwell. His first wife was herself a pioneer as one of the first women to take training as a physicist at the university level, and served as a sounding board and supporter for Einstein’s ideas.

As Einstein became older, he became more isolated in pursuit of his research, with his interactions with his peers (Bohr, Heisenberg) rarely collaborative and more often argumentative. He began to ignore new developments in theoretical physics (strong and weak nuclear forces) and spent much of his later career attempting to discredit the implications of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty that they imply (God does not throw dice). He never completed his work on a unified field theory, which for the last 20 years of his life was largely a solitary endeavor.

I suggest that one message to be obtained from reading about this great man’s life is the importance of maintaining collaboration and partnerships in research efforts. No one person will likely have the brilliance and power of Einstein’s intellect or his gift of insight. We need to work together to pool our talents and energy to achieve our investigative goals and to enhance our research undertakings. Sharing ideas, supporting each other’s efforts, and working together for common goals are necessary substrates for successful clinical research.

Jim Vacek
February, 2008

Summer Reading: Assassin's Apprentice

In general, I don't enjoy the use of the first person in narrative literature. I think this is because many young adult books are written in the first person, and so I frequently associate the technique with the trashy sci-fi compendiums I used to read in elementary and middle school. The first person also tends to give away the ending to a certain extent, since any protagonist who manages to find time to sit down and write a 400-page tome about his adventures (using a quill and vellum, no less) can't have fared too badly in his own tale. How different the speculation around the ending of Harry Potter would have been had the series been written in the first person!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Assassin's Apprentice, which is written exclusively in the first person, is an excellent book. The story is told by Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, the eldest son of the King of the Six Duchies. The Duchies are beset by the Red-Ship Raiders, a powerful group of pirates who are waging war upon the coastal towns of the Duchies. Secretly training to be an assassin for the king, Fitz tries to navigate court intrigue and his own adolescence without ending up dead.

Of the several things I love about this book, I especially enjoy the fact that in the grand scheme of things, not much happens. This is the first book of the Farseer Trilogy, and Hobb seems to think that there will be plenty of time for defeating the bad guys later in the series. She is much more interested, in this first book, in giving us a chance to get to know the world which she has built, and so the plot is mainly centered around the details of the life of Fitz. That's not to say the book is humdrum, however; the life of a royal bastard secretly training to be an assassin in the midst of a war is anything but boring, but the war itself, though important, provides a backdrop, rather than an impetus, for the plot.

Hobb also clearly values poetic writing, and her prose, though not difficult, is refined, with the occasional SAT word ("lambent") to keep readers on their toes. Phrases like "the brittle night sky" and "the hounds of a man's mind" seem perfectly at home within the rest of the text. She has even created a character, the witty royal jester, who exists at least partially to show off her skill at turning a twisted phrase.

The third great thing about this trilogy is that it is actually the first of a trilogy of trilogies, all set in the same world, the Realm of the Elderlings. The first two trilogies, called the Farseer Trilogy and the Liveship Traders Trilogy, have no relation to one another other than that they take place in the same world. Or so I believed, until I was told that the Tawny Man Trilogy ties the two together. I read The Liveship Traders last summer, and the Farseer Trilogy several years ago. Both, as I recall, feature intricate but believable plots, so I am very excited to see how it all fits together once I finish re-reading the Farseer Trilogy to refresh my memory.

Grade: A

Summer Reading: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Title: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Author: Susanna Clarke
Published: September 2004
Genre: Fantasy/Alternate History

Novel Recipe: Take the entire set of Harry Potter novels, place in a winepress and squeeze. Strain juice through a filter and discard seeds, skins, and other particulate matter. Cook until condensed into a thick syrup, skimming off the foam constantly. Add a liberal dose of Jane Austen until the mixture becomes loose and drinkable and stir vigorously before pouring into wine bottles. Allow to sit for ten years before serving with a garnish of The Silmarillion and a healthy sprinkle of World-building.

My Thoughts: A book about magic in England cannot be spoken of without the obvious comparison to Harry Potter, and the same is true with Clarke's debut novel. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is The Silmarillion to Harry Potter's The Hobbit. Strange & Norrell is dense reading, clocking in at between 800-1000+ pages (depending on your edition), and reads more like "Literature" than ordinary "Fiction," being written entirely in a style that recalls Jane Austen and sprinkled throughout with liberal footnotes (some of which take up more than half the page). The novel is not for the faint-hearted, but immensely rewarding for those who can look past its "stuffy" style.

Grade: For being a debut novel - A+
If it had been written by a more veteran novelist - A

From the Publisher:
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England--until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.

Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic, straining his partnership with Norrell, and putting at risk everything else he holds dear.

More Detailed Thoughts (and Spoilers):
I've been wanting to write a review of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell since I bought the book a year ago. Unfortunately, due to classes, it took me nearly three months to finish it, and by then my impressions were too scattered to be of any use, and all I could do was insist that people I knew really really need to read it, without being able to explain exactly why. But now that I've read the book over a second time (this time in less than a week), I feel like I can give a coherent review, though it may spiral into the realm of swooning fangirlism before too long.

To begin with, I never heard or saw any of the hype surrounding this book when it was published in hardback. I merely saw the striking covers at the bookstore and thought the cover copy sounded like something I would read. It took another year or so before the book made it to mass market paperback for me to buy it. To give those who haven't seen it a taste of how well this book was received, the back cover not only contains the synopsis given above, but three quotes praising it, as well as a listing of awards Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has won (including the Hugo, World Fantasy Award, and Book of the Year from Book Sense), AND three solid pages of quotations praising it at the front.

Now, normally that much praise would make anyone wary. After all, can a book really be that good? The answer, at least from this camp, is a resounding yes. Susanna Clarke wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in a style reminiscent of Jane Austen, complete with archaic spellings, sarcastic potshots, and social commentary on practically every character. Not only that, but the book contains hundreds of references and footnotes to other fictitious works and stories such that one could believe that Strange & Norrell really is a factual book. While some people might be tempted to skip the footnotes, thinking they are unimportant, I found some of the most witty lines of the entire novel in said footnotes. I think what amazes me the most about this novel is that Clarke's voice never slips in 800+ pages; the entire novel is solidly written in the Austen style. Add to that the fact that this is Susanna Clarke's debut novel, and one should easily be able to see why this woman is now my No. 1 author hero of all time.

And now that all the praise and fangirling has been taken care of, it's time to delve into the plot. As the synopsis states, Mr Gilbert Norrell, a hermit and book-miser, claims to be the first and only practical magician in England (as opposed to theoretical magicians, who sit around reading and publishing about magic) in more than 200 years. After some coersion and a rather impressive demonstration of bringing a woman back from the dead, the British government realizes how powerful a weapon they have in Mr Norrell, and set about having him help in their war against Napoleon. Mr Norrell grows famous for confounding the French Army by blockading all of their ports with illusionary war fleets made of rain among other tasks. As regard for English magic as a respectable profession grows, Mr Norrell finds himself innundated with attention even as he tries his best to continue destroying all other magicians in England with help from his servant John Childermass (who in looks is Severus Snape's doppelganger). Still, he ultimately finds himself a talented pupil in Jonathan Strange, a man who is every bit the charming, tempestuous, and mysterious magician that Norrell is not.

After Strange returns from Portugal, where he helped fight Napoleon at the front lines, he is understandably stifled by his teacher's reclusive tendencies (not to mention his habit of lying to Strange as if Strange were the competition). The two eventually part ways over whether faeries should be used in English Magic, and Strange spends much of the rest of the book attempting to provoke Norrell into an early grave.

Meanwhile, Mrs Pole, the young lady whom Mr Norrell brought back from the dead early in the novel, and Stephen Black, a servant, are placed under the enchantment of a faerie known as the gentleman with thistle-down hair. This gentlemen alternately fears and derides Strange and Norrell, and does his best to hinder their self-proclaimed mission of the Restoration of English Magic. While on a first read it is hard to figure out just how the plots intertwine, everything falls into place in the last third of the book (the volume titled "John Uskglass") with a seamlessness that is really breathtaking.

Historical figures such as the Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron, and (of course) Napoleon Bonaparte flit through the book. Many of my favorite lines occur when Strange meets Lord Byron during a self imposed exile from England; the two instantly dislike each other and write to their mutual publisher complaining of the other's shortcomings.

This is not to say that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell doesn't have its shortcomings. The parade of historical figures (especially when concerning the government) can be mindboggling, and the fate of Henry Lascelles feels particularly rushed. However, these are small complaints, and are easily overlooked. Despite all my effusive praise for this book, I will note that it is not for everybody. Many will, no doubt, find it heavy reading. The style and profusion of footnotes are sometimes reminiscent of assigned reading from classes in obscure English Literature, and the book is so very dense that it may require a second or third read to figure out exactly what happened to whom and when.

Still, for those who like their novels almost unbelievably smart as well as well-crafted, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is more than worth the effort.

Review/Musings on Harry Potter

I used to view the entire Harry Potter phenomenon with a bit of bemusement. I had already been reading fantasy books for years when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released, and while I enjoyed it, I never imagined that it would turn into the international phenomenon it has become. From my perspective, J.K. Rowling was simply following in the footsteps of Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard?, Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week, among many others. I couldn't understand why people were going nuts over Harry Potter when these other books had been largely ignored, by comparison.

There is no denying that Harry Potter satisfies all of what I think are the requirements for good fantasy (not necessarily an exhaustive list):

• An engaging, original, well-realized fantasy world


• Simple yet evocative writing which can be understood after one reading


• Plenty of action


• A high "that would be so cool" factor


• A well-defined objective to be accomplished by the hero

On the other hand, so do both of the titles I mentioned above, as well as thousands of other fantasy novels, for adults and children, none of which have become anywhere near as popular as Harry Potter, and for a long time, I couldn't understand why.

However, after reading all seven of the Harry Potter books in rapid succession this month, I've realized that the Harry Potter books do indeed have something that many fantasy novels lack: compelling characters. Although she frequently defines them with melodrama and outrageous emotional outbursts, Rowling's characters are undeniably human. Harry and his cohorts suffer all (and then some) of the uncertainty, pain, anger and fright that people fighting ultimate evil while simultaneously going through puberty might be expected to feel. By contrast, many fantasy heroes, after being plucked from their humble beginnings, stoically put real life on hold and forge ahead with whatever Herculean task the author has set them without bothering with pesky emotions too much.

The requirements I outlined above make for great escapist writing. If you want to take a mental holiday for a while, then any book satisfying those requirements will do the trick. However, to get people really worked up about something, an author needs to do more than create a world that people care about, he or she needs to create characters that people can laugh with, cry with, yell at when they're being stupid, and fall in love with, and Rowling does this well. Not with very much finesse, but well.

That's not to say that Rowling has a monopoly on inspiring empathy; the success of the Harry Potter series undoubtedly involved a certain amount of luck as well as talent. However, the books certainly had the potential to become wildly popular, not to mention the widest possible target audience, so in hindsight, it shouldn't have been a surprise that they did.


Grade: A-


For adult-oriented fantasy that features emotions, check out George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, and Terry Goodkind.

Summer Reading: Recursion

Title: Recursion
Author: Tony Ballantyne
Published: August 29, 2006
Genre: Sci-fi (near-future, kind of)

Novel Recipe: Take one part Tad Williams' Otherland and mix with an equal part of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Add two generous scoops of Von Neumann Machines and blend thoroughly. Strain and finish with a spoonful of 1984 by George Orwell and a twist of lemon.

My Thoughts: A less than interesting world saved by a very interesting character, Recursion is light on the science, but plays well with its fiction. Ballantyne's chosen mode of storytelling makes for a slightly convoluted story that takes some musing afterwards to puzzle together. Overall, not spectacular on its own, but intriguing enough to make me pick up Ballantyne's other novels.
Grade: C+


From the Publisher: It is the twenty-third century. Herb, a young entrepreneur, returns to the isolated planet on which he has illegally been trying to build a city–and finds it destroyed by a swarming nightmare of self-replicating machinery. Worse, the all-seeing Environment Agency has been watching him the entire time. His punishment? A nearly hopeless battle in the farthest reaches of the universe against enemy machines twice as fast, and twice as deadly, as his own–in the company of a disarmingly confident AI who may not be exactly what he claims…
Little does Herb know that this war of machines was set in motion nearly two hundred years ago–by mankind itself. For it was then that a not-quite-chance encounter brought a confused young girl and a nearly omnipotent AI together in one fateful moment that may have changed the course of humanity forever.

More Detailed Thoughts:
One should go into Tony Ballantyne's Recursion knowing that it is not one book. Recursion actually contains three seemingly independent plotlines told in alternating chapters. To make it even more confusing, the stories are chronologically offset by 50-100 years. The best way to describe Recursion is to treat these plotlines separately.

First, there is the Herb plot, which takes place in the year 2210. Herb comes from an old money family, and is pampered and privilaged to the point that he decides to illegally grow a city, convinced that his family's wealth and influence will protect him if anything goes wrong. He does this on an unmapped planet, dropping a single Van Neumann Machine (from here on abbreviated to VNM), which is programmed to use the planet's raw materials to construct copies of itself and then use those copies to create a city of shining towers and airy bridges. Herb, predictably, doesn't debug his code, and the VNMs end up devouring the entire planet. The Environmental Agency (which is Greenpeace, the Thought Police, and The Man all rolled up into one package) decides the best way to punish Herb for planetcide is to send him across the universe to fight an invading force of VNMs which are faster, stronger, and smarter than Herb's. His only guide? A snarky robot.

Second, there is the Eva plot, which takes place in 2051. Eva Rye lives in a world overseen by the agency Social Care, which keeps tabs on every human being, attempting to keep every person happy and well adjusted. Despite it all, Eva is depressed (surprising, right?) and manages to stay off the radar of Social Care long enough to attempt suicide by overdosing on painkillers while on a train. She is revived and sent to an institution, where she befriends three other misfits. Eva and her new friends are all diagnosed with severe paranoia, but they of course believe that they're under the survaillence of a sentient AI dubbed "The Watcher." Eva and her friends attempt to escape the institution while simultaneously trying to decide whether their escape is their own idea or whether they are led by The Watcher.

Lastly, there is the Constantine plot, which takes place in 2119. Constantine Storey is a "ghost," a billion dollar corporate spy whose greatest advantage is his complete and utter unremarkability. Not only are computer subroutines dedicated to erasing all traces of Constantine from any database he encounters, but he is also aided by four separate personalities in his mind, dubbed Red, Blue, White, and Grey. Each personality has its own strengths; for example, Red is observational while Blue is artistic. And yes, before you ask, the personalities do talk and argue within Constantine's mind. Constantine is in Australia on a covert operation, but his world is starting to literally fall apart at the seams.

My favorite of the three is the Constantine plot, which is much less predictable than the other two (the Eva plot is by far the most generic), and contained some interesting twists. Constantine is also an extremely interesting character, though this might be my own NaNoWriMo tainted prejudices showing through. We don't know what Constantine's mission is for a long time, or how his storyline fits in with the others, but everything falls into place within the last 100 pages or so.

As characters, Eva and Herb are less likeable, Eva being a generic "misfit chosen for a Greater Purpose" and Herb being a standard "rich boy who Learns a Lesson." The novel plays with some fairly standard themes of humanity (determinism vs free will, good of the few vs that of the many), but it does so in a completely secular realm, which I found interestingly reminiscent of Asimov's Foundation series. Yes, Asimov did it better, but the world glimpsed in Recursion was interesting enough to get me interested in Ballantyne's later novels, so it does its job well. First novels are rarely perfect. I think it says quite a bit about my enjoyment that even as I review the book, I'm trying very hard not to give away the ending(s).

After a single read, there are still a few points in Recursion that have me scratching my head. Fortunately, the author thought to label each chapter with which plotline is being furthered, so I may do a reread in which I read each storyline separately. I'll report back on whether that changes my opinion of the novel if/when it happens.

A technical note: I came into the novel with a rudimentary understanding of what a Von Neumann Machine is, so I found the sometimes vague allusions to them enough to be believable. However, most people might find them a little too much like magic science.

Review of “Altered Carbon” novel by Richard Morgan

Overview:

In Richard Morgan’s 2002 debut, cyberpunk is blended seamlessly with hardboiled noir in a futuristic dystopia where the mind can be stored in a mechanical cortical stack and bodies are worn like interchangeable clothes.

Plot Summary:

Six pages into this ~400 pg novel our protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is shot and killed.

Next chapter. Kovacs finds himself downloaded into a new body on Earth, light-years away from his home. His mandatory criminal sentence has been given a six-week reprieve courtesy of Mr. Bancroft, a rich, influential Meth (as in Methuselah, who supposedly lived 969 years). Kovacs has been hired based on his reputation for the sole purpose of solving Bancroft’s own death, attributed to suicide by the local police whose advanced forensic techniques have shown no clues or suspects to the contrary. Bancroft finds the diagnosis impossible, since he lacks motive and was surely aware that the large clone facility he owned would immediately place him in a new body (a process known as “re-sleeving”).

Kovacs must find out what happened in the roughly 48 hours that occurred after Bancrofts last remote backup and his violent death. He has a wealth of experience as an Envoy (an elite, but cruel, military organization akin to a space-age Delta Force) and as a criminal of various trades, but he is a cultural outsider on Earth with little in the way of clues or trustworthy allies.

Review:

“Altered Carbon” grafts the style of Mickey Spillane’s amoral criminal underworlds onto the type of dystopic cyberpunk universe recognizable to fans of “The Matrix” or the works of Neal Stephenson. Both halves of Morgan’s well-balanced noir/SF equation merit discussion.

The future-Earth of “Altered Carbon” is informed by the technological, social and pharmaceutical trends available to the culturally literate 21 century writer, an asset that makes Morgan’s book feel viable and contemporary. However, the aesthetic is fairly obvious and familiar by modern standards: neon lit streets (now with ads broadcast directly into the minds of those passing by), unsavory dens of drugs and prostitution, black-clad citizens with biological and synthetic enhancements, etc.

What makes “Altered Carbon” unique is not just the addition of sleeving into new bodies, but the skill with which the idea is executed. The nuances are worked out and plot holes avoided. The background is fed to the reader gradually and in an unobtrusive, highly-integrated way. Most importantly, the implications are fully explored and applied in enough original variations to make the idea seem fresh (although it’s far from new) and sustaining.

The detective/mystery side of the book also draws heavily from its own genre traditions, particularly film noir and the pulp novels of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Morgan doesn’t quite possess the flowery prose stylization of Dashiell Hammett or the cynical weary rasp of Raymond Chandler, but he has the rawness, directness and attitude of Spillane’s best work. The result is that “Altered Carbon” reads quick and hard, chock full of violence, sex and crime in a way that will alienate or disgust the more sensitive and earn dubious accolades from angsty adolescents.

However, woven into the surface qualities that elicit unsophisticated, but fully earned, citations as “cool” and “hip” is a complicated critique of morality gone rotten. Morgan makes his readers cheer for acts of cold-blooded violence one moment and just as easily makes them realize the disturbing or reprehensible implications the next. Kovacs is a remarkably despicable character who earns our redemption (if at all) more through charisma and determination than by possessing the type of underlying personal code trademarked by characters like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. Kovacs is effective at what he does primarily because he is able to lie and trick, not because he possesses the typical array of cyberpunk hero skills like fighting, hacking or even being observant.

The moral ambiguity and instability mounts steadily, culminating in a series of dark revelations. The narrative makes ample use of genre staples like femme fatales, alley chases, crime lords, vicious assassins and even underground boxing but does so with wit, energy and personal style where baseline originality is lacking. The mystery itself, while slow to get off the ground, is a satisfyingly clever and elaborate plot with the undertone of conspiracy and paranoia that accents the best cases. However, Morgan hasn’t quite gotten the knack of inconspicuously slipping in clues and it’s often obvious when something will later be important because he gives an extra paragraph of explanation more than he usually dedicates to innocent details.

Ultimately, “Altered Carbon” can not really be considered the most important, original, stylish, strange, believable, dark, thoughtful or well-written novel but it scores well across all criteria. Morgan is the type of talented late-comer that re-invigorates material with the Tarantino-type sixth-sense for knowing what to borrow and how to spin it.

Altered Carbon’s release in 2002 stirred quite a bit of hype and a touch of controversy too. It won the Philip K Dick Award and had its film rights snatched up almost immediately for a hefty sum, but received backlash from intellectual quarters such as Inchoatus, whose reviews I usually respect. Make sure to read the accompanying rebuttal.

To cover for my personal bias I’m presenting a more fluid scoring this time around.

My Grade: A+ (not because it’s perfect, but because it’s a personal favorite)

More objectively: A

If you don’t care for one of either cyberpunk or noir: B+

If you don’t care for both cyberpunk and noir: B-

Review of “Hothouse” novel by Brian Aldiss

Overview:

Hundreds of millions of years in the future mankind, indeed animalkind, is in the decline. Humanity is evermore eclipsed by vegetable life, which thrives in the endless sunlight of an earth that has long since stopped revolving.

Written in 1962 as a series of five short stories and later republished as a contiguous novel.

Plot Summary:

Lily-yo is the leader of a matriarchal band of feral humans struggling to survive a merciless existence in the mid-canopy of a distant-future jungle where the entire sunlit surface of the earth is covered in interconnected Banyan trees. She soon abolishes the tribe sending the children off on their own and leading the adults on a ritual/journey/suicide in seedpods bourn into space.

Meanwhile, the children led by the in-fighting Toy and Gren head on a journey to establish a new colony. They are in for far more then they expected and soon encounter the various predatory vegetables writhing throughout the jungle, an intelligent morel (fungus) with an agenda of its own, several disparate animals competing for an ever-diminishing number of ecological niches and much more. To spoil the intriguing locals visited along the journey would ruin much of the fun, but suffice it to say that Aldiss adequately explores the possibilities of his influential, compelling landscape.

Review:

Aldiss has a powerful propensity for imagining and developing environmental extremes and his greatest strength lies in his imperturbable ability to evoke a sense of wonder and otherworldliness. In the first segment of the book Aldiss appears to explore and exhaust so much of his initial premise that the reader might begin to panic and worry that no material (or purely redundant material) will be left for the rest of the book. Fortunately, the author’s imagination is up to the task of generating original and interesting new niches for life to blossom.

That being said, the later sections aren’t quite as powerful and evocative as the early locals and the serialized, episodic nature is conspicuously choppy in terms of narrative flow.

Aldiss succeeds best at evoking grand imagery, but he doesn’t seem to have the patience for clear and expressive descriptions. The result is quick-sketched moments of beauty and wonder that lack specificity and atmosphere. (see Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for an example of vividly realizing a jungle setting). For instance, aural and olfactory qualities are rarely mentioned. There are few visceral description of the heat or textures nor is there much mention of the complicated dappled lighting that must inevitably have made life in the mid-canopy a perpetual twilight. The physiological reaction of the characters to their environment fails to make the reader feel physically present. In a particularly sloppy twist about a third of the way into the book, Aldiss gets around to mentioning that humans have shrunk to a fifth their original size, but never mentions whether the measurements he uses in his descriptions are relative to the characters’ size or the reader’s size (inches, feet and yards were all based on length of bodyparts). He seems to switch between the two scales inadvertently throughout the book.

This fits with the general style of the novel which clearly lays out a pattern of soft science. I think more rigorous thought and technical acumen could have only improved the novel, but it is first and foremost and globe-trotting survivalist adventure and not a scientifically grounded planetary survey. In fairness, Aldiss can often reasonably fall back on the built-in defense of his characters primitiveness and logically limited knowledge to explain away the lack of technical detail and the speckling of unplugged plot holes.

On the other hand, the author tends to use the prehistoric (or posthistoric in this case) savagery of his protagonists as too easy an excuse to avoid character development, dialogue and realistic reactions.

If I seem to be rather harsh, I should mention that taken as a whole, Hothouse is a remarkable and awe-inspiring novel with an exciting adventure at its heart. I found it to be a condensed, if less matured, alternative to Aldiss’s Hellconia series from the 1980’s which revisits similar themes but with a sluggishness that often overwhelms the scenes that should fill us with wonder.

Grade: B

The Sarantine Mosaic

I'm sure that by now Brian is regretting his decision to visit the cesspool of uncouth boorishness that is Vienna, but I'm holding down the fort here by posting a review of The Sarantine Mosaic, a two-book series by Guy Gavriel Kay, which is made up of the books Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors.

This series, while not as strong as some of his earlier works, such as The Lions of Al-Rassan, Tigana, or A Song for Arbonne, is still characteristically Kay. Like all Kay books, the two in The Sarantine Mosaic feature an epic scope, richly detailed settings, complex and well-developed characters, tortuous plot development, and a pseudo-historical setting; in this case, a fantasized, slightly magical version of the city of Constantinople (Sarantium) during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (Valerius II). I'm not going to give a plot summary because if you want a general overview of the events in the book, you can simply read up on the life of Justinian I. Kay only maintains historical accuracy when it suits his purpose, however, so browsing Wikipedia (or whatever other source you choose) won't reveal any secrets.

If this sounds like a lot to pack into two books, it is. The Sarantine Mosaic is a demanding read, with every one of its over 1,100 pages packed with information. None of the characters, descriptions or events are throwaways, and anyone who thinks otherwise will soon be kicking himself for not paying closer attention to the description of the Emperor's handwriting style when it becomes important 300 pages later (not an actual example from the book, but similarly minute items are given prominence quite frequently).

Kay does a good job of giving the reader subtle hints and reminders when he references events or people that haven't been mentioned for a few hundred pages, but it is still tough to empathize with all of the dozens of characters comprising his cast, and that makes some of the poignant moments fall flat. Kay forces you to pay so much attention to the smallest details of his writing that sometimes the emotional effect of his text is lost as you try not to miss significant word choices.

I want to let Kay speak for himself a bit here, because the back of Lord of Emperors contained an excellent essay by Kay on his writing process and his views on the fantasy genre, which I think it will be helpful to share:

"Fantasy has never been in its essence about constructing elaborate magical systems for dueling sorcerors or contriving new versions of an enchanted ring or further variations on the use of hypens and apostrophes in invented names. Fantasy is—at its best—the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focusing beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promise of the future. It is—or so I have argued for years—a genre, a mode of telling that offers so much more than it is usually permitted to reveal." (560)

Kay's writing perfectly matches his views. When the current Harry-Potter-induced fantasy craze ends, and all the books written by 15-year-old kids who were following the "sorcerers + magic rings + weird names = bestseller" formula that Kay denounces are forgotten, mouldering in dusty basement boxes across the country, Kay's books will still be on bookshelves, well-loved and well-read.

Grade: A-

Secret Influences of Harry Potter

Over the last ten years it has been very much in vogue to trace the many literary influences that are “borrowed” by J. K. Rowling in her popular “Harry Potter” series. Usually these analyses focus on Tolkien fantasy and Greek mythology. This essay will delve into a less frequently cited but equally influential subgenre that has shaped the Harry Potter novels: the myth of England.

England is a fictional island nation replete with kings and queens, carriages, castles and crumpets. As a genre, readers usually refer to its elaborate mythology as “English literature” or “English history,” terms that I will use fairly interchangeably even though hardcore fans insist upon a subtle distinction. Like many successful franchises, an entire convoluted “universe” developed with central classic works and innumerable spin-offs, each with ardent fans and skeptical critics.

Like Tolkien fantasy and its self-evident lineage from the J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series, scholars also tend to look for a foundational English literature work although they disagree with rather it should be found within the subgenres of Arthurian legend (popularized by T. H. White in his “Once and Future King”) or in Shakespearian literature. Clearly English literature borrows heavily from both and even evolved a smattering of Steampunk elements when later fabulist authors such as Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters introduced the “Industrial Revolution” or “Victorian” cycle.

Speculation as to where Rowling would have been able to come into contact with English literature ranges wildly. The period between 1980 and the present was certainly an era where English literature had fallen out of a favor with the public and was rarely seen except in specialty stores. Nevertheless elements of Rowling’s novels show undeniable traces of the English mythology.

Consider the bizarrely structured Hogwarts School with its subdivision into competing, strangely named “houses” complete with a highly stratified division by year, housemasters and exotic impractical rituals. Often thought by poorly-read critics to be a product of Rowling’s imagination, an observant reader can spot suspicious similarities to earlier institutes ingrained in the mythology of England such as Oxford and Cambridge.

Once the idea takes hold, the scholar can find a myriad of references, nods and outright plagiarisms. The train which travels to the school is right out of the Industrial Revolution cycle, with a little of Steampunk’s back-cast eye towards how a primitive society might develop technology parallel to our own. Hagrid’s cottage and the nearby town of Hogsmeade are both clearly modeled on English cities, architecture and society. Other critics have pointed out the similarities between the Quidditch, with its nearly incomprehensible set of arbitrary rules, and the reoccurring English fairy tales about cricket and polo.

It is perhaps timely that an author should revive an interest in such an antiquated and romanticized subgenre as the myth of England. After all, Rowling’s broad adventure-chocked simplifications and chummy schoolmate camaraderie are a welcome break after the fractionalization and variety of late English literature creations. One had literally to rely upon the supplements of intricate maps, character charts and timelines just to follow the main plots, not to mention the billboard hierarchies, intricate politics and endless rise-and-fall-of-an-empire wars. Die-hard, socially inept fans had even retreated into private languages like British English, Cockney and Scottish which will remind social scientists of similar phenomenon with Tolkien’s Elvish and Star Trek’s Klingon. The diversity of authors each writing offshoots and spin-offs aimed at obsessive specialty audiences had introduced a plague of contradictions and created an exclusionary subculture nearly as vast as Star Wars.

Traditional English literature has meanwhile lost its shine, wallowing in an endless repetition of chipper street urchins, gnarled misers and sexist depictions of powerless women. Its canon of worn clichés perpetuated by its “classic” authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf have been replaced by more exciting and culturally relevant authors.