Category: Book Report

Book Review: All the Trouble in the World by P. J. O’Rourke (1994)

This book examines some of the worst problems that the world thought it faced in the 1990s: Overpopulation, famine, ethnic hatred, plague, poverty, and such; for each chapter, P. J. O’Rourke goes beyond the statistics proffered by the movements and think tanks to examine the roots of the issues in the fertile beds in which they grow. As you can expect, he presents his usual irreverent viewpoint in smirky prose. For example, the chapters bear these titles:

1. Fashionable Worries If Meat Is Murder, Are Eggs Rape?
2. Overpopulation Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You
3. Famine All Guns, No Butter
4. Environment The Outdoors and How It Got There
5. Ecology We’re All Going to Die
6. Saving the Earth We’re All Going to Die Anyway
7. Multiculturalism Going from Bad to Diverse
8. Plague Sick of It All
9. Economic Justice The Hell with Everything, Let’s Get Rich

Within each of the chapters, O’Rourke visits a symptomatic location that exemplifies the problem. For “Overpopulation”, he ventures to Bangladesh and learns why so many people want to live there (it’s the most fertile soil on the planet) and muses about how overcrowded man really is by comparing population densities of other locations (such as if the entire population of the planet in 1995 would scrunch together with the population density of Manhattan, we could all fit inside a region the size of the former Yugoslavia. Bangladesh has the same population density as the suburban city of Fremont, California, so O’Rourke delves into why the country seems so overcrowded and Fremont seems so American. Therein lies the rub; American government and society are open and dynamic, whereas Bangladesh’s government is not. They have a Ministry of Jute, designed to promote jute, the leading agricultural export of Bangladesh. You know, jute–the key ingredient in burlap, which was a very popular packing material a hundred years ago.

O’Rourke gets behind the pamphlets and examines not only causes, but the factors that lead to the continuation of problems as well as some amusing extrapolations: You want to embrace diversity? They have in the Balkans. Of course, that’s not the tribalism that comes from diversity, it’s the tribalism that comes from private ownership of guns, undoubtedly.

When O’Rourke’s on, he’s amusing to read, biting, and obviously arguing from a wealth of background. When he’s not, he’s simply presenting a travelogue of places he’s traveled and drank. Still, this book is more of the former, which is what I expected from the title.

This book extends the world created in Niven’s “The Flight of the Horse”. The book comprises the short stories, “The Flight of the Horse”, “Leviathan!”, “A Bird in the Hand”, and others, as well as a new novella “Rainbow Mars”.

The short stories were published independently between 1969 and 1973, so they’re designed for independence and are farily self-contained. They describe enough of the world in which the stories are set that the reader can pick up what he or she needs to know as he or she needs to know it. In a slightly dystopian future, the UN rules the world and the position of Secretary-General is an inherited position, inherited by idiots. The sceintific arms of the UN compete in bureaucratic battles for budget, and the time travellers need to keep the current Secretary-General amused with their procurement of extinct animals. They try, but often they fail with results that we in their past will find amusing.

The longer work “Rainbow Mars”, coming almost thirty years later, builds upon these earlier stories. A new Secretary General is more interested in astronomy than extinct animals, and the time travellers have to find a way to keep themselves relevant–and they do. They need to bring an extinct Martian from the past.

Larry Niven demonstrates that he’s got a great talent for weaving myths, traditional stories, and classic science fiction stories into a narrative that pays homage to many (too many perhaps). Unfortunately, the people who put this book together put it together in the wrong order. “Rainbow Mars” should not lead off the book; it should follow those that came before it to provide context; although I had read the short stories earlier, I could have used the refresher. I guess the people who put the book together wanted to realy differentiate this volume from Flight of the Horse and Other Stories. They didn’t do us readers any favors, though.

So although I’d recommend the book for the Niven fans amongst us, I’d recommend you not read it in the order in which the publisher presents it. Read the short stories, and then the novel. Especially if you can score this book for two bucks like I did.

I know, you readers understand that if I am reading a book from the last two years, it’s probably a gift. And you’re right. my beautiful wife gave me this volume for Christmas, and I’ve read it already. During lunches at work, mostly, which identifies one of the best parts of Andy Rooney and other broadcast essays: They’re short capsules that render themselves easy to read in short doses. Unlike books you cannot put down, which require you to invest large blocs of time, books of short essays allow you to pick up the book and put it down and pick it up and put it down again. Such books fit easily into the working day and the busy nights of modern men. And let’s face it, I’ve sampled Rooney and Charles Osgood, and Rooney wins hands down.

This particular book captures a number of Rooney’s “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” segments from the television news magazine Sixty Minutes (as do many of his collections). The book starts in 1982 and finishes with some from 2003. It offers an interesting retrospective of a chunk of history I recognize as my formative years, as seen from a man who’s older than I am now. I don’t think that means much, but he does reflect on four presidential administrations, including two terms of Reagan and Clinton.

Some people don’t like Rooney because he’s a curmudgeon, but I don’t hold that against him; after all, I am a curmudgeon in training. I do recognize that he’s a little to the dovish side of me when it comes to foreign policy (he’s all butter and no guns), but I find enough wisdom in his damn kids bits and other non-political things to enjoy his writing.

One thing I don’t appreciate, though, is his reluctance–even defiance–in using apostrophes. Throughout this book, he doesn’t use apostrophes in contractions–at least not consistently. In the introduction, before I can no longer enumerate the typos, he informs me he’s not using them because he composed the pieces to be spoken on television, so he’s omitting the apostrophes since he didn’t pronounce them. It’s a jarring read, especially since he later brags about how many grammar books he has on the shelf behind his desk. Still, I forgive him, since the editors of his other books and his contemporary pieces on the CBS.com Web site have convinced him that most things should read easy, too.

What of this book? It’s a font of wisdom and foolishness. It’s an I-Ching, not quite the touchstone that apparently is The Godfather, but its 500+ pages offer insight into the modern condition that most classic philosophers don’t.

This edition of The Book Wars contains advertisements for Federal Express, now more commonly known as FedEx, facing each chapter. The publisher is Whittle Direct Press, and it’s part of a series entitled “The Larger Agenda Series”. It’s out of print, and Amazon’s never heard of it, so no link for you.

Back in 1990, I was starting college, and I read the academia-critical works of Charles J. Sykes (ProfScam and The Hollow Men). So I served my tour in the Curriculum Wars, participating as appropriate, so I’m familiar with the book’s message and the time period in which Atlas wrote it.

The Sykes books are definitely partisan in tone, written to inflame the passions and mobilize the troops. This book, on the other hand, makes the reasons for the other side clear.

Atlas wrote this book somewhat as a response to Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, which details the fall of the Great Books Curriculum. I haven’t read the primary text, so I cannot comment on it.

In this book, though, Atlas explores the reasons that some of the new hippie English Department personnel (sorry, I mean resources) want to overturn the canon. Essentially, they want to introduce new ways of relating to literature, including literature from underexplored cultures. Some want new veins of ore from which they can mine publish-or-perish papers. Some want to stick it to The Man. Whatever the reasons, Atlas characterizes them more as misguided than evil. Which differs from Sykes.

Atlas defends the canon, but only slightly. He remembers a time when Joe Suburban bought Everyman’s Library editions (or Colliers Classics) of the canon and read them. Some people might not have understood them, nor picked up all the subtlety that professional interpreters would, but they realized that reading the books could better you.

I attained an epiphany while reading this book. The Curriculum Wars really are meaningless. The Old Booksters and the New Diverse Canoneers fight over the hearts and minds of kids who just don’t care. Those who want to read and better themselves will do so. Case in point: me. I read for pleasure and to keep my numble mind occupied. I survived an English Degree no worse for wear.

The real problem is that people just don’t do that anymore. Perhaps both sides have made the books inaccessible through constant obfuscation for publication, or perhaps… well, this book obviously doesn’t speculate on that.

Regardless, the book’s short–under 100 pages less ads–and it inspired me to redouble my efforts to read those great books and small remaining on my shelf. Sykes’ books incited me, but this one inspired me.

Rumpelstiltskin is the first Ed McBain book I didn’t like. Not Evan Hunter books–heaven knows the distaste I have for Last Summer–but the first Ed McBain book. I’ve read quite a few.

It’s an early Matthew Hope novel. I don’t like the series as much as the 87th Precinct series, to be honest, and I get all of the Florida color I need from Travis McGee novels. But it’s not the series that does it for me.

The plot of the book’s okay. A former pop sensation (whoops, rock since it was in the 1960s) is going to make a comeback at a small bar. She opens to bad reviews, and then gets killed. Matthew Hope, who spent the hours before her demise having curtain-climbing good sex with her, is briefly a suspect. The deceased had a trust fund due to pay out in a matter of days, so her father and her ex-husband make good suspects, with each standing to benefit depending upon the fate of the dead woman’s daughter, kidnapped at the time of the murder, don’t you know?

No, the plot’s all right, it’s the execution thereof that lacks. The book is paced poorly, and there’s no pressure on Hope. He’s a suspect, but he’s cleared quickly. So he’s got lots of time to meet new people, have a little wall-scarring good sex with another attorney, and jet to New Orleans for….well, his daughter’s around, so no sex, but just foreplay to the blossoming intrattorney relationship.

Meanwhile, the author fits in his characteristic asides, but they’re rather clumsy. There’s a three page treatise about how a woman can have red hair and blonde pubic hair, including the relationship of melanin levels and genetics in the occurrence as well as the difficulty experienced by a woman in the 1960s and 1970s growing up with it and how it impacts her psychological and sexual development. Wow, that’s quite a bit of research, Mr. McBain. Thanks for sharing your report with the class. Fortunately, the three pages end with some lamp-crashing, nightstand-tipping good sex.

It’s a short novel, clocking in at about 215 pages. I slogged through it. If you’re a big fan, you will, too, but I don’t recommend it for someone looking for a good, light read.

Sometimes it strikes me how readable the classics are. I’ve always found the works of Hemingway exceedingly accessible. Of course, I find the works of William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson accessible, and often funny. Regardless, I’ve recently been on a Steinbeck kick since I picked up a matching set of some of his books in nice Collier hardback editions (although I must include the obligatory Amazon link to a paperback edition). I’ve read Cup of Gold and The Winter of Our Discontent and enjoyed both. So when I was looking for a more classical turn from the sci-fi on my shelves, I went back to this collection of Steinbeck novels (for which I paid $1 each at an estate sale–good deal at those estate sales). And I selected Of Mice and Men.

I’d never read it before. I realize many of you read it in high school, but somehow I dodged it in high school and in my numerous college classes. Yeah, I got an English degree, but before you use this single anecdote to thrash English programs and modern education today, remember I chose to read this of my own accord at 31. On the other hand, such enlightenment probably is a statistically insignificant minority of college graduates, so feel free to thrash academia anyway. I do.

So, about the accessibility of this book. It’s written in modern English, even modern American, so it requires no footnoting. And unlike modern “classics,” old time classics, part of the canon disparaged by peers of mine in English programs who never evolved beyond English majors–that is, they never grew up and got jobs outside of the English department–some of these books dealt with weightier matters than nihilistic couplings of college professors or the emotional melodramas favored by Oprah. No, life and death were on the line.

The edition I have clocks in at 186 pages, but the margins are wider than the term paper from a twelfth-grade wrestling stand-out, so it’s a quick read. Not Old Man and the Sea quick, but I went through it in a couple days. Another good selection if you want to impress your book club with your classical educational leanings but don’t want to spend a lot of time on it.

Of Mice and Men tells of two traveling farm workers, Lennie and George, who find work at a ranch after getting in some trouble in Weed and leaving in a hurry. They’re working to earn enough to buy their own land, but of course they encounter obstacles, or mainly an obstacle, and then there’s a surprising ending where George has to defuse a nuclear bomb while Lennie holds off a number of Columbian revolutionaries with a half-full revolver and a bottle of whiskey….

Well, not really. It’s not that bang-and-flash, but the book delves into the nature of friendship and man’s obligations to right and wrong better than most blockbuster thrillers or buddy cop movies do. Plus, it makes you sound smart to allude to a John Steinbeck novel, which is why I do so frequently. Maybe it won’t make you sound smart. Maybe it only makes me sound like I’ve read only one Steinbeck novel, once, in high school. But I am a slightly better person for it and I’m not angry at the writer for wasting my time. Does that count as a rousing endorsement? You bet.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, and that goes for stupid is as stupid does and a fool and his or her money are soon parted. This book collects a number of essays and nonfiction pieces that appeared in The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, and other periodicals or publications. Each essay explores a scammer or a scam in detail, but most of the scams come from around the turn of the century (as the book itself is almost forty years old).

Two things strike me:

• The heights that the best scammers reached.
  Charles Ponzi, whose very name is synonomous with the pyramid scheme, bought a bank and a brokerage firm with the money he made from working class Bostonians who wanted to earn fifty percent interest in 90 days. Oscar Hartzell lived for over a decade in style in London while purportedly seeking to settle with the English monarchy for the Francis Drake estate–but really he was just after his “investors'” money. That’s long jack, my friends. Nowadays, nobody lives that high on the hog with so little production but venture capitalists, their pet executives, and government officials. At least swindlers used their wits and not their contacts.

• The same scams are still running.
  Three specific examples: The Nigerian scam (help me transfer my ill-gotten gain from my African country); the here’s-a-bag-of-money-you-can-hold-it-if-you-give-me-slightly-less-of-your-money-as-a-deposit (which really needs a popular nickname), and the pyramid scheme (now more popular than ever as women’s “Gift Clubs”). The population is getting more technologically knowledgeable, but not necessarily more savvy.

Of course, the best swindles aren’t in this book, because the best swindles are not reported or solved. Still, the book’s an interesting read, but not widely available. I paid $6.00 for this copy….wait a minute…the penciled-in price claims it’s a 1966 first edition, but it looks like a book club edition….

Fine art of swindling, indeed. Curse you, Sheldon! Next time I am in your book shop, I am pulling the books out by putting my fingers at the top of the spine.

I have read O’Reilly’s first two nonfiction offerings (The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life amd The No-Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America), so you can expect I’m somewhat a fan of O’Reilly’s message. Be that as it may, you should know that I don’t fully appreciate, in an O’Reillyriffic way, his television show; as a matter of fact, I drew attention to my recent personal record of watching forty minutes of his sixty minute show. I don’t even bother with his radio show. So my enthusiasm for all things O’Reilly is somewhat tempered.

His books, though, and in particular this book, captivate me. Contrary to what his schooling and his valuable work experience with CBS, Fox, and so on, bring him, he’s a better read than a watch. He gets to elucidate his points in far greater detail than when he’s got a two minute Talking Points Memo or five minutes to spar with someone with an opposing viewpoint. Still, The O’Reilly Factor is nice, and The No Spin Zone drops a lot of names, but this book is the masterwork of them all.

The title question frames the message. Who’s looking out for you? O’Reilly contends that none of the power structures out there, from the government to the media, really have your individual goals and best interests in mind. Of course not; those institutions really aren’t about your best individual interests, but they often act as though they are, so it’s a point that we the people need to remember.

Of course, even though I agree with his points in the book, O’Reilly has a couple things to with which I contend. First of all, he’s a blowhard. He even illustrates this in the book when he quotes himself disagreeing with an opponent and calling him a pinhead. However, I get the sense that he knows the role he’s playing, that he is a bit over-the-top. Kind of like Rush Limbaugh speaks with a tongue-in-cheek in many cases. I don’t get that sense with many opposing viewpoints, from Michael Moore to Molly Ivins and Barbara Ehrenreich.

Second, O’Reilly asserts that he’s on your side. Well, no, but thanks, Bill. I know enough to know you’re suspect as well. You don’t know me, and you might crusade for an idealized collection of people you know as the little guy, but unless I know you personally, I still see you through the filter of MegaOther–that other person who speaks to many people anonymously and individually. So you might be good to your friends, and you might be good for me as you pursue your audience, but I don’t put all my faith in trust in you, Bill.

I know you’ll understand.

Still, gentle blog reader, I’d recommend this book highly. I have given it as a gift this Christmas to a family member I value highly. So although I won’t give it to all six of you regular readers (especially since Heather can just read mine), I’ll give you my honest opinion that it’s worth reading.

Take it for what it’s worth. I’m only looking out for my personal integrity as a reviewer. You might not even like it.

I picked up this book on one of the book-buying binges Heather and I shared last month. I found it in the business section of A Collector’s Bookshop, Sheldon’s new hole in the wall in Maplewood. He doesn’t have much on hand, yet, but I expect that to change. Regardless, this looked interesting. So it is.

Craig has structured the book around 10 common sense rules, with each chapter containing a capsule analysis of several deals that epitomizes the rule, or proves how ignoring the rule can break a deal. For example, one rule is “Take advantage of your adversary’s weakness” (Chapter 2). Essentially, it boils down to buy when the seller has to sell. France needed a hunk of money to finance its European wars, so the United States got the Louisiana Purchase at the bargain basement price of three cents an acre.

Because of Craig’s background as a big dog attorney means he focuses a lot on the leveraged buyouts of the 1980s. To be honest, all I really remember about them is the mythology handed down as received wisdom, mostly from people who disapproved of them. However, as encapsulated in these vignettes, it makes sense in some cases. Even breaking up companies that are underperforming. Call me a capitalist.

The book weighs in at under 200 pages, and the easily digestible chapters and sections make it a book you can put down. And pick back up. I read this book at work, during lunch breaks, without missing beats. Some books are good for that.

So this book is worth a read. The rules are common sense, but the rewards for following them, as well as the negative sanctions for not following them, offer concrete illustrations that The Art of War does not.

Wow. 1996 this book was published. A Mike Hammer novel. A two-fisted, hard-boiled detective novel, something straight out of the pulps. Right before the dot-com bubble. This isn’t a Perry Mason novel from the 1960s, which you can lose yourself in because it’s timeless and only when you concentrate do you notice they’re not using computers. Mike Hammer knows of all these things and ignores them because he’s a throwback.

Mike Hammer’s older, but he wouldn’t admit it. He’s also been shot up and is recovering, although not as fast as he would with strict, or even any, bed rest. A dying war buddy lets Mike know he’s hidden billions in stolen mob money and challenges Mike to find it. It was bad enough that the mob shot Mike up, but once they think he knows where the stolen billions are, they squeeze. So does the IRS. And Mike can’t hold a gun, so he’s got to go on his reputation and his balls. And those of his secretary Velda, whom Mike realizes he ought to marry.

Wow. 1996.

The style’s definitely a throwback, but the character also recognizes his age and that the world’s changed around him. Outstanding. Of course, Ayn Rand liked Mickey Spillane, so who would I be to argue. It’s a little weird to have a hardback Mike Hammer, though. This book definitely belongs in a dimestore format, in the mass market paperback. After all, Mike Hammer’s a product of the 1960s, same as Mike Shayne, Shell Scott, and Parker. They just didn’t have Stacy Keach to lend them credibility with a television character in the 1980s and 1990s (well, Parker did, but they changed the name and the focus of the character in the Mel Gibson movie).

I liked the book, and I read it relatively quickly. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the good guy wins. Thank genre fiction.

If you read one economics book this millenium, this should be it.

O’Rourke redoes his Holidays in Hell schtick by visiting, and examining the economies of, a number of disparate nations. Sweden, Hong Kong, Tanzania, Russia, Albania, America (well, Wall Street), and Cuba. He rates them as good capitalist, bad capitalism, good (in 1998) socialism, or bad socialism. Each location gets its own chapter, and he visits each. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go to Albania to discover how it’s doing in capitalism, but O’Rourke’s nuts. And a good writer.

I don’t have any bones to pick with it. Read it. An amusing composite of research and travel with commentary that I agree with. Hey, I paid $8.00 for the book in a used book store. That should tell you how much I appreciate O’Rourke.

This is a Dilbert book, but not a collection of cartoons. Not exclusively, anyway; Adams manages to illustrate his Dilbertal points with some cartoons, though.

The book is schizophrenic. The majority of the book is the kind of humor you would expect from Adams, a wry look at working in the white collar world. It details how you can derive joy from your daily drudgery in pranking your co-workers, avoiding real work, and gaming the discordant system. It features chapters on managing your boss, reverse telecommuting, annoying your co-workers, and surviving meetings. Pretty standard Dilbert stuff.

However, about sixty percent of the way through the book, it veers more into personal. Sort of self-helping. Adams describes creativity, as filtered through how a cartoonist works. He describes where creativity comes from, how to manage creativity, and how to be funny. He then talks a bit about criticism, works in an unrelated (but amusing) story about the time he pranked exectuives by pretending to be a corporate image consultant. He finishes the book up with a short peek into his daily writing life and then a short memorial piece to his (or his girlfriend’s) cat.

The book probably would have been better as two books. Still, it’s a quick read. Worth a couple bucks. It affirms and reinforces all my personal bad habits, which is all a “working” man needs sometimes.

I bought both of these books in the used bookstore orgy that was the last two weekends, and since they’re similar in nature, I thought I would review them together.

Not only they both humorous books of lists, but both came out in the late 80s and early 90s. The contents of the The Enemies List stem from columns written in 1989 and 1990; the later chapters delve into the early Clinton years (and have this naive optimism that Clinton will be a single term president). The Top Ten lists were compiled when David Letterman followed Johnny Carson, for crying out loud. In addition to being humorous, both of them are time capsules of a sort. Time capsules that indicate, very clearly, some things don’t change, but some things do (sorry–I have to pound that movie out of my brain).

The thrust of The Late Night With David Letterman Book of Top Ten Lists is obvious. The Enemies List compiles a list of people and organizations that P.J. thought should be included when we revived the traditions of Tailgunner Joe. The original essay, from the July 1989 American Spectator, proved popular; readers wrote in with their own suggestions, so the magazine published them and revisted the topic several years running. Hence, much of the book lists people who the magazine or its readers think impair the proper functioning of the nation and who should be hounded.

The same politicians from almost fifteen years ago are the same punchlines in some cases. Al Sharpton, for instance, is a common motif in Letterman’s collection. In O’Rourke’s more serious obra, we see the same names we curse today. Diane Feinstein. John Kerry (who would almost seem to have served in Vietnam longer than in Congress based on the way he talks about it–as though the former determined his behavior and honor more than the latter–it’s almost like M*A*S*H in a way, wot?). Lt. Governor Gray Davis. O’Rourke exempts Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was 14 years ago.

Both books are quick reads (obviously). The Letterman book is much more topical humor, so it’s probably the better of the two for pure humor value. However, the O’Rourke book contains a very good essay, “Why I Am a Conservative in the First Place”, which is worth the price alone (well, it’s worth the four dollars I spent anyway). Unfortunately, O’Rourke’s compiling for most of the book, so the writing is done by American Spectator readers, but those comments or paragraphs that O’Rourke writes demonstrate his wit. It’s not Holidays in Hell or Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, or Give War a Chance, but I still want to be P.J. O’Rourke when I grow up.

Finally! I review some books I like, even though I don’t necessarily agree with the implications. Cripes, fourteen years. I hate the implication that I have watched that much history as an adult.

So when I was last in Milwaukee, trolling for cheap sci fi to sate my genrelust, I came across a couple of James P. Hogan books: the previously reviewed The Multiplex Man, priced at $5.95, and a softbound Paths to Otherwhere, priced at $2.95. I took them both, obviously, and it was only when I got back to my hotel room and was choosing which to read first that I noticed Paths to Otherwhere had a blank back cover. And the title page said something about the new blockbuster, Paths to Otherwhere, coming out in 1996. Holy carp! I thought to myself. I paid $3 for a James P. Hogan advanced copy! That’s almost as big of a deal as the time I found a May 1984 issue of Gallery there after pawing through Hustler, Penthouse, Playboy, Oui, and Swinging Japanese Schoolgirls for an hour, blushing the whole time undoubtedly (but undeterredly).

So this particular edition was a bargain, but what about the content?

This particular novel takes place in a slightly darker shade of the present, once again where the government and the military nefarious oppressors of common man. Within this dark future-present, a group of scientists discover a way to send their consciousnesses into counterparts in alternate universes. The military wants to use the technology to get an edge over its rivals as the final war for the West is coming. The scientists, on the other hand, want to explore for the mere love of science.

The scientists strike upon a distant universe where WWI ended peaceably in 1916 and it truly was a war to end all wars. As a result, the world is a libertarian paradise with Virginia Posterel-approved aesthetics. But the Powers-That-Be-With-Guns in their universe want to prevent the scientists from escaping to that Otherwhere.

Hey, it’s a decent sci-fi bit. It’s not Inherit the Earth, but it’s okay. The early portions of the book set the foreshadowing for a more climactic and higher-stakes ending than the book offered. At 405 pages, the book’s a bit overlong, too, but it’s readable, and its musings on the possibility of alternate universes and mirror images of people will ensure that my story “Extra Life at $1,000,000”–previously written, I assure you–appears to be a pale copy of this original. Curse you, James P. Hogan!

Recommend it? Sure, especially if you can find a low price version of it somewhere. It’s no longer in print, so eBay and other auction sites, as well as garage sales, might offer it to you cheaply. Worth $2.95 for the collector’s item I got anyway.

This particular book is the source of Noggle’s Spurious Law X: Never buy a fiction book where the author has included an acknowledgements section. Especially if the author thanks the NEA.. Of course, I bought this book through a book club, so I missed would have missed that anyway.

I bought this book based on these factors:

• It’s set in Wisconsin, my home state.
• Its plot involves a young woman coasting through her 23 years of life who must evaluate her life’s direction when her high school and college sweetheart and bethrothed, with whom she’s grown disenchanted but with whom she was coasting toward matrimony anyway, dives from the titular pier and ends up in a coma. Hey, I know what it’s like to re-evaluate your life. I was twentysomething once, and I am about ten years shy of my mid-life crisis.
• I have tinkered with the beginnings of a literary novel with a similar theme and wanted to see what I could steal learn from this book.

So what’s not to like about the book?

1. The author’s not from Wisconsin, nor does the author appreciate Wisconsin. The author lives in Northern California, and hence focuses her coastal lens on the quaint people in the Midwest. The main character talks to another former Wisconsin resident, and she calls them Wisconsonians. Damn it, we’re not Wisconsinians, we’re Wisconsinites. The author also uses the simile bland as Wisconsin. Listen, sister, you don’t do that.

   I’ll admit, I have a chip on my shoulder about the way some coastal types see the rest of the country. If I even catch a slight sniff of superiority from someone who assumes that the relevant country ends at one piedmont or another, I cross my arms and the person’s lost me. Whether it’s an author telling me that life doesn’t begin until you move to New York City or a billionaire venture capitalist saying that offshore developers are as good as the developers in St. Louis–nay, even as good as the developers in SILICON VALLEY, I get the urge to curl the fingers and let fly. Maybe I’m just wound too tight, but I don’t care for the theme.

2. So let’s just elaborate on the plot, shall we? The main character doesn’t deal with the aftermath of the aforementioned dive. She goes mechanically about her life, alienates her friends, and then when the boyfriend wakes up, kinda wanders into a breakup with him. Then, bam!, it’s section two, wherein she drives to New York City and enjoys some liberation from her Midwestern lifestyle, if you can call “sleepwalks through a relationship with a mysterious and uncommunicative man and through an undirected life in New York” liberation. Just when she’s getting into New York, bam!, she returns to Wisconsin and rediscovers friendships she’s let go and whatnot so she can sleepwalk through them, too.

   Suffice to say, I didn’t care much about the main character, nor did I think much of her “decisions.” I thought the mysterious and uncommunicative man bit was cool, until he revealed his secret torment to her when she had returned to Wisconsin. Quite frankly, it was a rather simplistic and unbelievable revelation. I won’t ruin it by divulging it here. At least they shared some rather vivid boom chokka wokka in the book, which helped keep my interest. Smuttier than Valley of the Dolls, believe you me.

3. Come on, the voice of the book, the first person narrator, annoys me. She sleepwalks through the entire thing. Personally, I’ve been told for over a decade that my female characters are lacking, werd, and I swear, if the main character of this bit represents an authentic feminine point-of-view, you can expect strictly male characters in my work from here on out. Genre fiction set on planets where men reproduce through fission, I kid you not.

   The main character’s adrift too much for me to like the book, and I don’t see any change in her. At all. So what’s the point of the book? I mean, sometimes the point is the character learns something, but the main character doesn’t indicate any change, other than she returns home to her “bland” state. Give me a break. The heroine crossing the return threshold? She’s supposed to bring something back, darling.

As you might expect from an NEA-funded book, this is a book of “nice moments.” Some parts of the writing are very vivid. So what? Unless they advance the story, these moments are meaningless filler. The whole book’s meaningless filler, a great big slab of life vignette. Unfortunately, it’s an uninteresting life.

If Ann Packer had confronted me with this sort of thing in a writing workshop, I would have given her the business. Of course, that’s why I was hated in writing workshops, fellows, and why I stood pat with the B.A. in Writing-Intensive English. This book shows why I am going to stick to the genre stuff, too. The reader will get a pretty good idea of the scope and nature of the book by the nature of the problem, whether a murder or an invasion from the hordes beyond the mountains. With literary fiction, too often the point or plot is lost in the “nice little moments.”

Kinda like if a Renoir is lost in the Rossian “happy little trees,” if you catch my drift.

Criminey, you people are going to think I never read anything I like. I admit, I’m on a bad streak here, but I have several hundred tomes on my To Read shelf. Certainly, I’ll like something.

Equal time: Here are some other reviews of the book, including one from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that fawn all over the piece and validate the NEA awards. Go read them if you want to know what paid people think of the book.

Well, I’ve gotten a new membership in the Quality Paperback book club, so I can get cheap, household wall friendly copies of books that I might disagree with, violently.

First on the list: When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden by Bill Maher. Anyone else remember him with Geena Davis in Sara? No? His agent’s undoubtedly relieved.

Something about Maher’s political stands as the leading libertarian dished out by HBO bothers me. Some of his stances seem okay, but every time I would watch Politically Incorrect or Real Time with Bill Maher I am yoked into agreement with him just enough that I suffer a physiological response when he expresses something I heartily dispute. So it was good for me to get my hands on this book so I could isolate exactly where we differ.

Fortunately, I didn’t pick up a heavy tome. This book is a quick collection of musings coupled with posters designed for the War on Terror. One, Bill Maher is for the War on Terror, is for a strong response, and recognizes it’s a clash of civilizations. Not toeing the Libertarian isolationist party line, but that’s ok. I don’t either. The biggest thrust of this book is that we need to stiffen up, stop pretending to have security in our airports, and act like we’re at war. Okay, I dig the whole stop-partying-like-its-1999-already thing.

Maher also hits some of the themes of proper libertarian thought when he wants to legalize drugs, continue with free speech, and that the federak government should focus on its two proper roles, police and defense, but a little less on the policing, thanks.

But Maher jumps the libertarian rails when he invokes Barbie E’s Book of Shadows and raises the whole anti-capitalist raise-the-minimum-wage bit. He wants to cut subsidies (yes!) but dispense more foreign aid because we can (not to further our interests, but because it’s nice), and by “we” he means with your compulsory tax donation, friend. Hey, he gives 50% of his income seven figure income, you give 25% of your lower five, what’s not to like?

Also, amid the rallying cries of “Every citizen a soldier!” and “Vigilence is the eternal price of liberty!” (my interpretations, but his bits are entitled “Make Them Fight All of Us” and “Neighbors Looking Out for Neighbors”, I am not stretching it too much), but he’s in favor of gun control (he thinks Reagan could have rammed it through immediately after the assassination attempt). Every citizen a vigilent soldier with a cell phone to call the authorities! Hardly the militia that the forefathers envisioned which Maher almost wants.

I’d recommend the book when it gets remaindered. It’s got a good crystallization of Maher’s thoughts behind his glib comments (the crystals are 1-2 page miniature essays akin to Dennis Miller’s rants but not as clever and just a little more earnest). It’s also a quick read, being short pieces jammed between the sofa cushions of posters and pages containing quotes from the pieces.

Personally, the book has changed my life. I now remember to turn out the light when I leave a room to stop wasting energy. It’s a small part I can play to making the country more energy efficient and lowering my energy bills a small percentage. I’d forgotten its simple importance. I’ll be adamant about doing it until I forget again next week.

No, I have nothing better to do than to read Russian short novels, which run about 150 pages of translated, well, Russian writing. And I don’t just mean the Russian language.

Notes from the Underground starts out with a 20-30 page commentary on the nature of man, at least as perceived by a Russian narrator, or more to the point, a Dostoyevsky narrator. John Galt’s speech, it ain’t. This particular narrator breaks down the fourth wall, so to speak, and addresses the reader of his notes directly and patiently builds a case that madness really is the only possible way to defend free will. For if scientists can eventually describe the means by which each man and woman will act in his or her own preceived self-interest in each situation, the outcome is always predetermined by the individual, the perceptions, and the situation. So madness would be the only random number generator (my words, not Underground Man’s and not Dostoyevsky’s nor his translator’s).

I can see how this appeals to college students. On the other hand, I am no longer a college student, so I have little time to sit around saying, “Whoa.” Nor am I driven any longer to explain the use of the first part of the novel as a means of discrediting the double-effect narrator who then goes on to rationalize his particular Soren-Loves-Regina, Soren-Spurns-Regina (that’s Kierkegaard, you damn kids!) episode. Fortunately, though, I don’t have to write those sorts of papers any more, and I don’t have to feel guilty for wishing there was just one double homicide with a missing witness that the hero, a down-on-his-luck former police officer turned security guard (with Kirk Guard, maybe) must track down. But I would settle for some narration for crying out loud. Maybe a plot, Fyod?

Part 2, the second movement of the novel, takes us into an example of the narrator’s boorishness. As if the first half of the novel didn’t. The second part has other characters, to whom the narrator can act as a boor, and then the narrator ends up in bed with a prostitute he might love, but to whom he must be a boor and then whom he ultimately rejects so he can pursue his scholarly life, which seems to be perfecting the art of boorishness. Personally, I only made it through the thing because I’d read Crime and Punishment previously, so I wasn’t sure whether this guy would snap and kill his former classmates, his man, or the prostitute. Maybe two of them at once, and then the cobbler on the corner would see it and flee to a retreat on the Caspian Sea….. Never mind.

With this book, I think Dostoyevsky’s making fun of academics, but the ultimate irony is that only academics read this mockery of academics.

I spent over a week trudging through this short novel. I’ve gotten the satisfaction of having read something normal suburban types in middle America don’t read, so I flout the stereotype laid upon us by academics. I wouldn’t recommend it as a read for everyone, though, unless you want to severely put off your friendly informal book club by recommending it and then cribbing some of the lines from this piece (think it over, El Rojo).

As if to rinse my head out of the The McBain Brief, I quickly read Lullaby, the fortieth (!) novel in the 87th Precinct series. Written almost forty years later than some of the short stories in The McBain Brief, Hunter McBain’s proficiency has definitely increased.

As usual, the novel follows the squad of the 87th Precinct in The City. Again, McBain introduces several plotlines into the story, which he might or might not connect later. Carella and Meyer catch a squeal for a double murder–a baby and her babysitter–on New Year’s Eve, or rather, New Year’s Day. Kling prevents a bunch of gangbangers with baseball bats from killing a guy, and the guy’s none-to-happy to have been saved.

I love the 87th Precinct series and McBain’s depictions of The City. Harsh, brutal, and strangely romantic. Of course, I have a City that I love, and I see our love story in McBain’s characterization. This story takes place in a particularly harsh portion of winter, where leaden skies threaten and deliver snow (I miss you, baby).

McBain’s writing style is not only poetic in theme, but in style, too. You have to look for it, which you do if you have an English degree, but check out the line breaking for effect:

Angela Quist was an actress.
Who lived in a loft.
But Angela Quist was in reality a waitress who took an acting course once a week on her day off, and her loft was a twenty-by-twenty
space sectioned off with plasterboard partitions from a dozen similar small spaces on the floor.

Or this:

And suddenly there she was. Standing there. Standing in the door to the room, a knife in her hand.
He had to go for the knife.

Anyone who’s had a poetry class knows repetition and its impact. But most poems don’t have knives, at least not ones printed in anthologies. At poetry slams, the poems have knives and the poets have knives and everyone applauds politely. But I digress.

Much like McBain does, digressions and streams of consciousness that flow around sandbars but back into the general plot. To great effect.

So it’s the fortieth book (and since it’s been fourteen years since publication, many more have come since then). Is it a good place to jump in? Well, if you’ve not dabbled in the 87th Precinct before, perhaps your first should be something earlier (the first three appeared in 1956). McBain’s dilated the time a bit, so the same main characters haven’t aged that much; elapsed time has been maybe a decade. But some of the returning characters are evolving somewhat, so you’ll not know about Bert Kling, who started out a patrolman, and his lifes and loves, or about other characters reminisced. Still, you have to start somewhere, so if you can pick this up in hardback for a buck at a garage sale, do so.