The Book of Air and Shadows

I confess.  I'm not a big fan of "literary" fiction.  I often find it pretentious, the author trying to sound smart, or conversely, trying to make the reader feel stupid or at least uneducated.  Either goal, of course, makes for a poor author but I'm convinced they're out there and they're supported by similarly pretentious editors and publishers.

Nevertheless, I keep trying them in an effort to prove myself wrong.  Surely there are authors that write masterfully in the English language while at the same time, can tell a darn fine story.  Well, I've found one in Michael Gruber.  The Book of Air and Shadows is a fantastic fictional story, a thriller of sorts involving the discovery of a long lost unknown Shakespeare play.  The book has all of the elements I love including a fascinating plot, intrigue galore, cool settings, and complete characterization.  But, this is truely a "literary" novel in that Mr Gruber has produced a genuine work of art.  He does not stoop to the devices of lesser (although perhaps best selling) literary authors such as I refered to in the first paragraph.  He does not use a large word where a smaller one will do just fine, merely for the sake of using a larger word.  He doesn't lose the reader in a maze of prose, forcing them to re-read sections to try and figure out what the author is trying to say.  This book is not boring in any sense but rather vibrant.  It's like the difference between a black and white photograph and full color.

This novel is one of the best I've read all year.  I checked out Mr Gruber's website and paid special attention to one of his essays, "Writing Life: A Short Guide".  I often look up authors of books I enjoy, attempting to glean tips on how to improve my own writing and Mr Gruber summarizes much of what I've read elsewhere.  For example, most authors say a good writer is first, a good reader.  Mr Gruber puts it this way: "Read both stuff you like and difficult stuff that people you respect have told you is great."  That's what I try to do and the main reason I read what are considered to be the great classics as well as those books that are classified as "literary" novels.  Thank-you Michael Gruber for a great book, and the will to keep trying those other "literary" books.

Pattern Recognition

Every once in a while my reading choices take on a decidely different flavor.  I feel like I need to try new things, especially authors that have great reputations.  So I was at work late last week and for only the second time I can remember, I had forgotten to bring my reading material with me and so was "forced" to go to the store and pick something out.  I seized the opportunity to try William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

William Gibson, for those that don't know, is the patron saint of "cyperpunk" literature.  Cyberpunk can be loosly defined as a combination of cybernetics and punk and has been described as "high tech meets low life".  Usually his books are futuristic and definitely science fiction but this particular novel takes place in the present day (published in 2005).  The protagonist is Cayce Pollard, an internet fanatic who works for various corporate clients who hire her to evaluate potential corporate logos due to her uncanny ability to discern their mass appeal.  Her hobby is to find meaning and patterns in a mysterious collection of videos that are being broadcast on the net called "the footage".  But her hobby and her work overlap when she is hired to find the source of the footage which leads her on a quest around the world.

I find this novel very hard to describe...almost as hard as it was to read it.  I really worked hard to follow the plot and while I was impressed by the author's use of dialogue to convey his characters' inner thoughts, I just found it difficult to follow.  The subject certainly ties in to today's young people (18-25) who seem to practically live on the internet and he captures their attitudes perfectly.  But that alone does not make for a good story.  They say Gibson writes for the intelligent reader; of this I have no doubt.  But I tend to think of myself as pretty intelligent, and I certainly read a lot, but I just found myself wishing the book would hurry up and end.  If I were less of a completist, I probably would have just tossed it aside.  But I stuck with it and actually enjoyed the final 50 pages or so when the action/thriller elements took over.  But unfortunately, by then, I really didn't care what happened to the characters.  Not a good sign.

So will I read more books by this author?  Doubtful.  Am I glad I read this one? Yes because now I know his style and can more easily pass up his other works when I'm browsing the book store shelves.  The only possibility that I can see right now is to try Neuromancer because it is such a definitive work in the science fiction genre.  But still that's doubtful...

But by way of contrast, I followed that book with Jeffrey Archer's second-to-last entry in his Cat O'Nine Tales collection, called "The Commishioner".  This story was a delightful entry, telling the story of a repentent ex-con who tries to pull one last scam and take advantage of a retiring police commishioner.  He does not succeed but how the scam comes to light falls into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category. 

Next up, the second in the Magician's House Quartet, "The Door in the Tree", a young adult novel by William Corlett.

The Road

So there I was, flying back from Washington DC last Thursday evening, and all set with my well-planned reading agenda.  I actually like to fly because I get a lot of time to read while waiting around in airports and on the plane itself.   But lo and behold mother nature stepped in and decided to storm over Dallas, causing our airplane to have to divert to St Louis to avoid running out of fuel.  My first reaction was, "Oh crap!  What if I miss my connecting flight home?"  But my immediate second thought was, "Cool!  I'll no doubt finish my book ahead of schedule and will be forced to buy another one in St Louis!"  Yes, I am one of the "gently mad".

So we spent an extra hour on the ground in St Louis plus travel time to Dallas but fortunately, my connecting flight was also delayed allowing me about 15 minutes to browse the airport bookstore.  I didn't need that long though because I've promised several people that I would read The Road by Cormac McCarthy just as soon as I could get my hands on a copy.  And, of course there were stacks of them (with the movie tie-in cover) right up front.  So it would be a happy homecoming afterall.

Lots has been written about this book and, of course, it won the Pulitzer Prize, an achievement which many people seem to value.  For me, I chose it due to opinions of people I respect and trust.  The novel is billed as a post-apocalyptic novel and I suppose it is; at least the setting would concur with that assessment.  But it's really so much more than that.  On the surface it's about a man and his son, travelling along a road to get to somewhere that they hope is better.  There are quite a few encounters along the way that serve to drive the plot to its conclusion.  But where this novel succeeds is through its multiple layers.  Depending on how far the reader peels back that onion, he or she is likely to have a different reading experience.  The author is conservative in his word count but depicts so much with his word choice.  You get the flavor of the setting with very few descriptions but this bleak landscape is vibrant because of his writing skills.  And the relationship between the man and his son was written beutifully.  I got their personalities and outlook on life right away through there limited dialogue. 

I've not read any other books by Cormac McCarthy but I suspect I will now.  In this book, he doesn't use quotation marks or apostrophes but it didn't bother me at all.  In such a world, how could such trivial things matter?  We are never told the name of the main character, the "man" or his son, and we never come to understand just what happened to destroy the world prior to the beginning of the book.  But so what?  It isn't about that.  It's about this relationship between two people and just how far a father's love can go to protect his son.  This is not a cherry, happy read but nevertheless gives the reader a deep sense of purpose and certainly gives us pause to think.  I can tell you it made me happy to be back home with my family.  Thanks to all of you who recommended this to me.

Next up: an ARC called, The Trade by Fred Stenson.

The Confusion

I've been holding out on you.

As most of you know I read a book during the half hour or so before I go to work each workday morning. Since I only read about 30 minutes a day on it, I often take over a month to get one completed. Well...I also usually pick a "project" book to read...over a much longer period of time...even if takes a whole year. That means I will read a chapter or so here or there, perhaps a larger section, or whatever I feel like. I'll pick a book that is either very very long, or long and difficult. I just don't want to feel like I need to read it in a week so I rush through and can't absorb the whole thing.

So last year I selected the first volume of "The Baroque Cycle" Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. I had never read Stephenson before but he has quite a reputation for deep, thoughtful writing; some would even say complicated. "The Baroque Cycle" is a set of three volumes and actually covers 8 novels. Quicksilver contained the first three. And yes, I did take the entire year to finish the volume although I did read each of the three novels just like I would read any other novel; i.e. not spread out over time.

So this year I continued with Volume 2: The Confusion. This volume can be...well...confusing in that the two novels contained therein take place simultaneously and are therefore presented at the same time as well. We read one chapter of "The Juncto" and then one of "Bonanza" and then back again. Really, it's not so confusing because the whole Volume 2 reads like one big novel. I started reading back in January and have taken my time getting through it.

Getting through it is a good way to put it actually. Had I tried to read this one start to finish I never would have made it. The story itself is engaging and the plots and subplots are intriguing. The characters are over-the-top and that makes them fun. There is some really good humor trickled throughout, mostly involving the situations the main characters get themselves in to. I would have preferred to see an index of all of the characters though. There are literally hundreds of them, many with obscure names, and I just couldn't keep track of who was who. The first volume did include such an index and I referred to it often.

The story itself revolves around two major characters (one for each novel) in and around the year 1689. Half Cocked Jack is the "King of the Vagabonds", truly a criminal mastermind in a happy-go-lucky sort of way. The other is Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, a sometime fianceer, sometime secret agent. They have adventures galore throughout 17th century Europe and all across the globe. But in the end I have to wonder if I am smart enough for this book. Mr Stephenson uses lots of words and phrases from other languages and even though the reader can usually get the gist from the context, it makes for some real effort on the part of the reader. That's OK and I don't shy away from smart reads but this book, as I found in the first volume, suffers from "too much." Too much plot, too many characters, and too much description. I felt like the author was spending as much time, and print, trying to impress me with his superior intellect as he did trying to entertain me. I love it when a novel teaches me something, be it facts or a new way of looking at things, but I have great difficulty when it becomes a chore to read a novel. I almost always finish a book that I start (even if it takes me a whole year) and I still plan to read the final volume next year.

So on the whole I would only recommend this series to those who like a more extreme reading challenge and have the time and energy to put into it. Not for the casual reader.

A Canticle for Liebowitz

I finished up Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Liebowitz last night and I must say I'm not particularly looking forward to writing about it today. For those of you that are not familiar with this work, it is considered a classic of science fiction, and even a classic in the entire universe of literature. Written in the 1950's it is probably one of the first novels ever written concerning a possible post-apocalyptic society.

So why am I hesitant to write about it? This book has achieved cult status. It is so well regarded by the science fiction intelligencia that to question it in any way is almost sacreligious. So of course I will proceed directly down that path and risk the scorn of those that would say I'm just not intelligent enough to appreciate it. I have never strayed from my mission to point out elitism where I find it and I don't intend to start now. Of course not everybody who raves about this book is an elitist and I'm fully aware that different books appeal to different folks. And don't get me wrong, I don't hate this book or even actually dislike it. There is a lot here that is intriguing and parts are quite thought provoking.

The premise is that some 600 years after a nuclear holocaust in the 20th century, some "artifacts" belonging to an engineer named Liebowitz have been found in an old fallout shelter. An abbey of Catholic monks who exist in a sort of Dark Ages struggle with how to deal with these artifacts. The book is divided into three parts with the second part taking place 600 years later at the onset of a new Renaissance with the final third taking place yet another 600 years later at a time of another potential nuclear war. There are all kinds of themes in this book, not the least of which is that history repeats itself and seems incapable of learning from its mistakes. Overall, the book depicts a conflict between knowledge and morality. There are huge religious underpinnings throughout with the Catholic church being the one true bastion in the abyss to which we can all hold on to in times of crisis. I do not happen to be catholic and was somewhat lost in all of the catholic rituals occurring and dogma expressed. Perhaps if I knew more in this area my interest level would have been higher. But there is also a lot of latin used in this novel, with no benefit of translation for those readers like me who are unfamiliar with the expressions. This served as yet another way for my mind to wander instead of following the plot.

But more than any of that, I simply found the story lacking. The first part was OK; I actually liked the unassuming Brother Francis who found the original artifacts and was interested to find out how an entire sect could grow from these items. But the second part was a jolt with all new characters, a different style, and different themes. The third part only served to lower my level of caring about what happened next. Overall, there are certainly less entertaining books out there but I wouldn't recommend this to the casual reader. It would, however, be a good one to study as part of a class where a lot of discussion takes place.

The third short story in Stephen King's collection, Skeleton Crew, "Monkey" had just the opposite effect on me. Here is a tightly woven story that epitomizes the short story form. And if you like horror, this is one of the greats. The monkey itself, one of those toys with the wind up clanging symbols on his arms turns out to be one fantastic creepy icon, much like clowns or creaking stairs. King uses his classic method of bringing out his characters' worst fears of childhood and translating that very real horror to them as adults. This is turning out to be a great collection of stories indeed!

Next up is Dean Koontz' Odd Thomas.