Category: Books

As you might recollect, this book was made into two films. One was made in the Eastern bloc the year I was born; the other starred George Clooney and was made in 2002. I haven’t seen either, but I remember it was a big deal because it represented something of the pinnacle of Eastern European science fiction.

The result is a mixture of Event Horizon, The Forge of God, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. All it lacks is aliens bare of anything but a bowler.

To recap: a scientist rockets out to a scientific station orbiting the planet Solaris, which has an ocean which might be a sentient thing inscrutible to humans. The scientist finds out that his mentor has committed suicide, and that his two fellow residents of the space station fear phantasms apparently spawned by the ocean below. Soon, his ex-girlfriend who committed suicide begins to appear to him.

Gimlet said, “i liked lem’s idea that alien intelligence is probably incomprehensible to us, and vice versa.” I tell you what, kids, it’s not just the alien intelligence that is incomprehensible to me. The actions of the people on the station don’t rise above the level of “healthy cyphers” either. Instead of huddling together, one locks himself in the lab with whatever phantasm the ocean spawned for him, the second drinks himself blind and pops up sometimes to counsel the protagonist, and the protagonist goes to the library and researches 80 years of scholarship regarding the planet while musing about his relationship with his ex. Who is there, partly, recreated from his memories by the ocean below.

Instead of trying to communicate through the avatars, the scientists try to dispose of them (we’re told) and go mad. We’re not told what they’re supposed to represent, what the others’ phantasms are, or anything like that. No, the scientists, when they come together, theorize and then make up experiments. Then, the book sort of ends when the protagonist’s phantasm gets some degree of self-awareness and ‘kills’ itself.

Frankly, it’s not the sort of book that I prefer to read, and I only got out of it the ability to say I’ve read it and that I’ve grappled with the author’s point. I had more trouble grappling with the author’s writing, though. You cannot blame the substance on the translator.

So if you’re a Serious Student of Eastern European or Science Fiction Literature, it’s probably for you. Otherwise, stick to the Star Trek novels.

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I found this book at my first book fair in the Springfield area. The Friends of the Christian County Library book sale was laden with series pulp like The Executioner, so how could I not grab one entitled Missouri Deathwatch and set in St. Louis.

Sort of. Aside from the title and the character mentioning that the action takes place in St. Louis, there’s no real sense of place. Descriptions of locations are stock. It could have been Philadelphia Deathwatch for all intents and purposes. On the other hand, it’s better than getting details wrong so that you get a sense of misplace (see Blood on the Arch).

This book is somewhere in the 80s in the Mack Bolan series, and with any series like this run through a set of different authors pounding out a wordcount for a paycheck. This book falls toward the bottom of the range. The author pads it out with musings about Mack Bolan’s purpose for the war on the Mob and repeating the arms he carries and whatnot. So it’s not the best in the series, and it’s not bad for what it is: a short pulp novel with some action and some explosions.

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I read this book after my experience with The Ruins, and I was pleased to remember how good fiction should roll. This is my first Orson Scott Card book (although it’s a collaboration), so I didn’t know what to expect. But it’s a well-paced science fiction bit. The main character is a mute enhanced monkey who acts as a “witness” for an important scientist as she and her family join a one-way expedition to the stars on an extremely large vessel called The Ark.

The monkey becomes sentient, starts breaking his bonds and conditioning, and outwits most of the people in the book. Additionally, the family breaks down under the strains of the preliminary steps to space travel. And then the book sort of ends without any real resolution or major plot arc settlement, as this is the first of a trilogy. Still, the book was fresh enough and paced well enough that I did not mind.

I might have to pick up the others in the series to see what happens next; however, the book ended without a cliffhanger or anything, so I’m not driven.

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This book puts Scott Smith into some mighty fine company. Along with the complete works of Algernon Blackwood, I put this book down with no intention of finishing it.

It is a slow mving, chapterless tale of some American students who go into the interior of Mexico and encounter something horrible. It’s a horror book, blurbed by Stephen King for crying out loud. I meandered through almost a hundred pages of it, not pulled by the plot and not liking the characters much. I turned to find out how many pages the book was, and I caught a sentence beginning the last section of the book: The Greeks arrived three days later. And I knew then how the book ended, with all the characters dead.

So I read the Wikipedia entry for the book to see if I would have liked it. And you know what? It didn’t get better from where I left off reading the book. The conceit behind the book doesn’t lend itself to much scrutiny, ultimately: a strange vine takes over people. It’s only at this one place, the ruins of the title. The local natives have salted a ring around a hilltop to keep the vine there, and they prevent anyone who crosses the threshold from leaving and carrying the eldritch vine with them.

Come on, that’s a conceit for a screenplay, which no doubt is what Smith had in mind. But if the freaking vine kills everyone who comes there, how come people keep saying they’re going there? How do the natives know to keep the vine at bay? I doubt the book answers anything; the plot on Wikipedia seems to be nothing but getting young, attractive Americans up to the Ruins to kill them.

I wasted a couple nights slogging through the first hundred pages. I’m glad I didn’t waste many more finishing the book.

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This is the second book in the Tarzan series. Given its origins in pulp fiction, one must forgive some of the circumstances that come around for no other purpose than to spin a good yarn.

Tarzan leaves the United States after leaving Jane to his cousin, who has assumed Tarzan’s birthright. Then, he enlists in the French secret service. Stop snickering. Then he goes to Africa on a mission, meets some of the desert nomads, is almost killed, and then catches a ship that also holds Jane’s best friend. Tarzan is pitched overboard by bad guys, but he survives by swimming to Africa and then has some adventures becoming the king of a tribe and going to a lost city of gold. Meanwhile, Jane meets her friend, who tells her Tarzan has died. They start cruising up the west coast of Africa and are shipwrecked near where Tarzan’s cabin from the original book lies. Then Tarzan comes back, finds his cousin has died, rescues Jane from some bad men, and they are married.

Man, if I were Jane, I would never get on a boat again. I wonder what will happen in the next book, too. These pulp adventures are a guilty pleasure.

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This is a collection from one of those poetry contests that makes everyone a winner and then puts all the winners into a book and then sells the winners copies of the book for $50. Full disclosure: I appeared in one of these books in 1984, and my sainted mother bought a copy. I probably even still have the copy of the Henderson Highlighter that reprinted the poem. But I digress. As for book quality, this isn’t the phone directory of the olden days like my poem appeared in, with 15 poems to a page of newsprint. This is actually like a real book of poems, with one or two per page.

Unfortunately, the poems aren’t that much better than I could have written in the sixth grade. I’m sorry, that’s not true; some of them are on more sophisticated subject matter, but that doesn’t mean that many of them are any good.

On the one hand, it really is awful that I subjected my children to hearing these as I read them aloud. On the other, it’s good to run through a bunch of these poems, especially after one has gotten a little bored with Ogden Nash, to recognize, again, what good poetry is.

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This book is the novel that launched two films. The paperback I have is not a true tie-in since it doesn’t have the stars of the original on it, but it does mention that it will soon be a major motion picture.

The book hinges on four guys who take a subway train hostage. It’s gritty seventies suspense, and seems somewhat dated because these days we expect more dastardly plots than the lives and deaths of sixteen hostages. The book bounces between scenes and characters and occasional flarings of violence.

Frankly, I don’t see how you make it into a movie featuring Mattheau or Washington, since the dispatch cop isn’t a featured player, but there you go.

Good piece of writing. I enjoyed it, but it does seem dated.

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So far, I’ve kept my word. I didn’t buy this book, I checked it out from the library. It’s not that bad of a bit, really, compared to some of Parker’s other recent entries. In it, Hitch and Cole rescue April Kyle Susan Silverman Allie from a whorehouse and they move to Brimstone, a town on the upswing. There, a revivalist preacher works to shut down the saloons. Hitch and Cole work as marshals and set up shop and home with Allie and the daughter of a farmer. The unholy alliance between the preacher and the biggest saloon owner breaks down violently, and Spenser and Hawk Everett and Virgil call winner. Then they decide to leave Brimstone and return to Appaloosa to settle down.

I think I got the major things, but I left out a sidebar about an Indian with a vendetta against the saloon owner. But Parker could have, too.

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I think David Barry wanted to write A Christmas Story for our generation. The book is short (117 pages, which is just right for a movie script). It’s a sweet little story that’s not full of quite the absurdity of his normal work or his full novels, and it’s cut into a short number of scenes. It tells the story of a dog’s death on Christmas Eve against the backdrop–or maybe it’s the foreground–of the children’s participation in the Christmas pageant.

Now, the text itself is not 117 pages. As a matter of fact, almost fifty percent of the book is old pictures and illustrations designed to visually evoke the scenes, although they are not direct illustrations of the scenes. It’s Lileksian.

It’s a plenty short piece and an easy read, so it’s worth its time.

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This is a lightweight tip book, a self-help bit. It focuses mostly on staging your home when you’re still in it and provides a lot of ideas about how to alter your furniture arrangements and little things you can do with your accessories to help sell your home. As such, it wasn’t that helpful for me, since we’re vacating before selling.

However, if you’re selling your house with your stuff is still in it, this book is probably worth your time.

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It takes a strong man to buy a book of photography depicting cats and then to admit it on his blog, publically. At least that’s what I tell myself before the beatings start.

This book focuses on cats in the workplace, mostly in New York City, in 1979. It’s worth more for the backgrounds of the workplaces than the cats in the foreground. A liquor store that Ed McBain would have described. The window of a bodega looking out on the New York street. Broadway full of 1970s cars. That sort of thing. I think I’m turning into James Lileks. Moreso. Of course, I’m not scanning them and making a Web site dedicated to them. Yet.

Also, if you like kitties, this book has them. No chinchillas, though.

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Of course, I’ve seen the film with Alan Ladd as the titular Shane, and I own the The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking album which samples from the same, so when I saw the book, I bought it. It is the short novel (120 pages) upon which the film was based. Like True Grit, the book is told in the first person narrator through the eyes of a child. In this case, it’s the son of the farmers with whom Shane comes to becomes friends.

The book differs from the film in that Shane’s relationship with the husband is more brotherly, and the husband knows that his wife is attracted to Shane. At one point, he gives her a very Hank Reardon sort of “I understand because he’s so much better than I am” speech. I guess they couldn’t develop that sort of relationship in a short movie. Also, I don’t remember the film taking place over the course of a year, but I might be mistaken. Also, the boy does not chase after Shane when he rides off.

Still, an enjoyable read. A lot of people must agree, since the 1983 printing I have is the 65th.

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Let’s face it, looking at the cover of this book, a cheap black binding with only the words “Private Edition” underlined in pink cursive, one gets the sense that this might be a certain type of book. When one reads the first line of the first story, “As I fastened my dress–the soft, pretty one of pongee that I made especially for Dad’s arrival…”, one might think, Holy pongee, it is that kind of book!.

But one might then remember that this is a Macfadden Publishing collection from its old True Confessions style magazines. Instead of hardboiled morality plays featuring violence and stoic codes, we get gushy melodramas about how to deal with moral failings of the heart and lovelife. Unfortunately, many of them deal with contrived and rather silly “failings.” In the first, a woman’s hopes of a good marriage to a loving man are almost lost when it’s discovered that his first wife, presumed dead, is alive, so the protagonist is not really his wife. She shuns the husband then, fearing a scandal. Or another woman calls off a marriage and enters a life of charitable service–because her mother was a shoplifter!

The book isn’t a very good read, and it is most interesting as a historical document possibly offering insight into the mind of a young woman in the years after the war. These were her concerns, these were the parables to show her how not to get into trouble and how to find redemption if she got into trouble. Or at least these were the concerns peddled to her by Macfadden Publishing. Given that it made Macfadden himself rich, he must have touched someone and convinced them to buy these stories.

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This is a shorter 87th Precinct novel from the 1970s, before hardback bloat demanded every book be 300 pages. A blind man is murdered, and then his blind wife is murdered and the apartment tossed. Is someone murdering blind people, or were they targeted specifically? That’s the question for Carella and the gang.

Funny, the book deals with veterans back from the War (Vietnam) and shenanigans in the military, but in 1977, McBain didn’t feel the need to foam about LBJ, Nixon, or Carter. Was George W. Bush just that evil that McBain couldn’t refrain in later books? It’s fortunate he did, otherwise he would not have sold so well nor built a legacy which makes his later political rhapsody tolerable.

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