The Reader's Closet

Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy

2011-09-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

Another blogger had a good post on the best sci-fi and fantasy books of all time, taking NPR's list and noting what she'd read and her thoughts: the post is here. I added a couple of my favorites in the comments.

What About the Kindle?

2010-11-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

This blog has been dormant for a while, but I may post from time to time as book-related thoughts occur to me. I'm also going to migrate my reading list over here from my main blog A Year With Horses, but I haven't completed that yet.

I've had an Amazon Kindle (the simpler wifi version) for about three months now - my husband has one too. After using it a lot over that time period, I've got reasons to like and dislike it. On balance, I've found it very useful, but with qualifications, and it only works for certain types of books and reading.

Likes:

It is extremely portable. If you read a lot, as I do, and travel or commute, it's a life saver. I used to travel with large numbers of books - very difficult when you're not traveling by car. Now I can just load up the Kindle before I go, and also know that if I run out all I have to do is find a network to use to download more books. It's also small enough to fit in a coat pocket, or purse, or briefcase, without hardly a bulge.

It's easy to use, and the battery power lasts a very long time (if you keep the wifi turned off). It's a nice size to hold easily, the ink technology eliminates glare (which means it works just fine outdoors unlike a computer screen), and the basic features and arrangement of the menus are very good.

Having a choice of two built-in dictionaries is lovely.

I can buy books quickly, as quickly as I decide I want them, almost within seconds. I think this is good news for publishers who are worried about lost revenue from e-books. I believe I'm actually spending more on books now than I used to, because I'm buying more, even though the price per unit is (usually) less. A fairly high percentage of the books I want to read are available on the Kindle.

My husband and I can read the same books if we choose, for the price of one book, and even at the same time.

The preview function, where you can download part of a book to try it out before you buy it, is very useful.

Not buying all those books means less to clutter up the house or have to be disposed of.

The ability to make the type size larger is very nice.

Dislikes:

I can buy books quickly, as quickly as I decide I want them. This means, as noted above, that I'm probably spending more and more likely to just buy a book on impulse. There's never that delicious sense of anticipation - but maybe it's just that I have no self-control!

I go to the library less often. I love libraries, always have since I was a child. There's something about the serendipity of finding a book just because it's near another book, and browsing the new books is especially delightful - all sorts of fun things to discover. You can't do that on a Kindle - you have to know what you want to buy. I also think that libraries are an important social and educational institution that needs to be maintained and enhanced, and I worry that, as physical books decline in importance, libraries will too.

A number of the books I'd like to buy on the Kindle are not available for it. Editions of translated or older books may not be the best ones available - sometimes they've been poorly scanned or the translations aren't good.

The formatting on some books is poor - line breaks that show up as hyphens in the middle of words, dropped text, etc.

It turns books into consumables. For books that are consumables - light fiction or other stuff you don't want to keep around - that's fine, but for books you might want to refer back to or keep, the Kindle isn't very good.

It's not good for looking things up in, or wanting to go back over things or find places to reread. Paging back and forth is awkward, and looking from an index (these can be pretty useless as the Kindle uses "locations" instead of page numbers) to the book, or wanting to flip back and forth between one place and another in the same book, is at best awkward and at worst impossible. There is a way to "bookmark", but that's not the same.

Although it's comfortable to hold and easy to use, it's really ugly. There must be some way for electronics makers to move away from the ugly industrial, filing-cabinet gray. Yuck! There are some ugly book covers too, but also lots of really nice ones that actually are decorative when you're done reading them. Also, I really miss the feel and design elements of a nice book - the different fonts and layout decisions, the nice paper and the covers (at least when they're attractive) - the "bookness".

It's no good for books with color illustrations. Some people seem to find the iPad good for that, but I can't imagine how a fine art book, with high-quality photographs, would show on an iPad - not well would be my guess.

The annotation function is hard to use - the keyboard is small and awkward. I'm also personally not a fan of the "shared annotation" function, where you can see what others have annotated and your annotations are part of the pool. To me it seems a bit creepy, and knowing what's "popularly" annotated doesn't really interest me.

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So, in summary, I like and don't like the Kindle, and my book choices are beginning to sort themselves into Kindle and non-Kindle books. A book that I'm going to want to keep, refer to more than once, or where color or the need to move around in the book is essential, I'll buy the physical copy. Most fiction and any other book that I'm just going to consume, I'll buy on the Kindle.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2010-03-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

I've had this book but only recently got around to reading it: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. This novel won numerous prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and deservedly so. The story is that of a fat nerd named Oscar, but is also the story of his family from the Dominican Republic, both there and in the U.S. It's a sassy, irreverent book full of life, both good and bad. I found it difficult to put down once I started it.

Reading Versus Movies - the Impact of Visuals - Movie Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2010-03-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

I had the chance to see the Swedish movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo yesterday. This is based on the book of the same name by Stieg Larsson. (There's a second book called The Girl Who Played With Fire already out and a third soon to be available - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.) The original title of the book - "Men Who Hate Women" is less catchy but pretty descriptive. These mysteries are set in Sweden, and the mysteries are intriguing in themselves, but the cast of characters is the key thing - the two key characters are an investigative journalist and the "girl" (woman would be better) of the titles, who has a disturbing past and some odd personal traits. There is also a supporting cast of other interesting characters.

Both the books and the movie are extremely violent, and much of the violence is sexual violence. I often find that graphic portrayals of sexual abuse, rape and murder victims in movies much more disturbing than the words on paper. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination on my part, or an ability to avoid imagining awful images. When it's a movie, it's right there and no imagination is required, and it tends to really stick with me and remain disturbing. It also seems to me that movies from outside the U.S. don't have the tendency to "prettify" or downplay what actual violence, or its results, looks like - this is a big problem in my mind in U.S. movies since I believe it both glorifies violence and makes it easier to accept - European and Asian movies are often much more graphic. I think as a species we're very visual, and perhaps that's the origin of the visual impact of these disturbing scenes.

Definitely read these mysteries if you like modern Swedish mysteries and interesting characters, and see the movie if you can tolerate the gore and gruesome sexual violence, and some truly horrifying and repellent murderers.

Movie Reviews: Let the Right One In and Green Zone

2010-03-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Two very different movies -

Let the Right One In - This movie is outstanding - see it if you can - it's a modern vampire movie from Sweden, but a vampire movie with a serious twist - the vampire is a 12 year old girl, and the main protagonist is a 12 year old boy who is bullied by his schoolmates and seriously in need of a friend. The movie is alternately violent, sweet, other-worldly and realistic - there are some combinations of emotions while you watch it that are very odd. It got some notice when it came out a few years ago, but quickly disappeared - it should be available on DVD.

Green Zone - This movie is the latest Paul Greengrass (director of the latest Bourne movies) effort staring Matt Damon. It's a pretty effective piece of story-telling, with some fine performances, marred by a lack of nuance - it's hard to feel any sympathy or even understanding for the bad guys, or for that matter for the good guys, American or Iraqi. It's a pretty good action movie, though, marked by the trademark Greengrass quick cutting and camera work.

I Love Libraries

2010-03-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

I've always loved libraries. When I was a child, a trip to the library was a wonderful adventure - I would always check out lots of books. I was a fairly solitary child, and did a lot of reading. Fortunately, the library we went to when I was a child pretty much allowed you to check out anything you wanted. I read all sorts of things, and often would cruise the shelves and pick things out at random to look at.

I'm a frequent library user now, too. When I walk in the door of the library, my heart both relaxes and is elated, at the same time. I still buy plenty of books, but try when I can to get books from the library. Our library isn't a pretty one - it's modern and fairly drab looking, and it's cramped, but the fiction collection is very good, and the reference librarians are wonderful about finding books they don't have from interlibrary loan. Our library also doesn't have enough quiet and secluded places to read - I love libraries with carrels off in the stacks where you can settle in in peace. But despite its defects, I still love our library. Many libraries in our area have had to limit services or avoid spending money for things like acquiring books, since they are unable to get the necessary spending measures approved by voters. Our library has been able to get the money it needs for now, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm reading an interesting book about libraries right now - The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel. It's a fascinating collection of chapters, almost essays, on what libraries, and the concept of the library, mean - such as the library as myth, as order, as island, etc.

I need to make a trip to the library!

A Couple of Movies, a Book and a Play

2010-03-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've been trying to see some of the Oscar contenders that I haven't already seen. I got to see both An Education and Crazy Heart. These movies couldn't be more different, but they are both well worth seeing, especially for the performances. Crazy Heart features a compelling performance by Jeff Bridges - I think he may get the Oscar nod. I'm not a particular fan of country music, but this music is music I could like. T. Bone Burnett was very involved in this movie, and it shows in a good way. Although the movie is a sentimental mishmash of themes often explored in movies, the performances are exceptional across the board. An Education is an early 1960s coming of age story, involving a fine performance by Carey Mulligan as the teenage protagonist. This movie is a bit contrived, but the performances lift it out of the ordinary.

I just finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - this book won the Booker Prize, and unlike many of the recent Booker winners, which often seem mannered or obscure, this one is a very good historical novel, involving Henry VIII, Cromwell, and Thomas More, among others. So the story is somewhat familiar; one of the things I liked best about it was that, unlike many other historical novels, there was little "exposition" or explanation of who people were and what they were up to - the novel just dumps you into the experience of the time, particularly taking the point of view of Cromwell, although interestingly enough, in the third person. This one is well worth reading.

Our local community college has a fine theater department, and last night I had the chance to see a performance of Angels In America, a play from 1992 written by Kushner. It's hard to summarize what this play is about - it's about many things, including obviously the effect of the AIDS crisis on gay men in New York City, but it's about many more things than that - justice, love, loyalty, imagination and more. I need to rent the miniseries that was made of it to compare. Although it was long - 3 hours with two 10-minute intermissions - it was compelling.

Review: Animals Make Us Human

2010-02-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

For a review of the new book by Temple Grandin (and Catherine Johnson), Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, please see this post.

Movie Review: A Single Man

2010-02-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

A Single Man is well worth seeing, if only for the masterful performance by Colin Firth in the leading role. It's sad and romantic at the same time, and beautifully shot. It's a fairly insubstantial story, but with undercurrents of sadness and repression, and very resonant of the period it is set in.

The Fate of Independent Bookstores

2010-02-02T03:23:00.000-08:00

Please take a moment to read this post at Three Percent (the blog of the University of Rochester's translation program), where there is a guest post by Jeff Waxman of the Seminary Co-op bookstore in Chicago, about what is happening to independent bookstores - it's thoughtful, provocative and a bit depressing to me.

Review: Ransom by David Malouf

2010-02-01T17:26:00.000-08:00

This small book, Ransom, by David Malouf, was a delight. I've been trying to not just mindlessly read fiction, but to be selective and read only books that really compel me to read them or have an angle that is particularly interesting. This book was both compelling and topically interesting to me - it is a reimagining of the episode from the Iliad where the Trojan king Priam goes to Achilles to ask for the return of the body of his son Hector, whom Achilles has killed. It's one of the most moving parts of the Iliad, but this book takes that premise and puts flesh on it in the most lyrical and lovely way. Highly recommended.

Review: Bright-Sided

2010-01-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading - well, actually, reading parts and skimming others of, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. I think this book would have made a good essay, but it's a bit stretched as a book. I very much enjoyed her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, on the economic underbelly of the American dream.

Her latest book has some good points to make, particularly on the relationship between consumer capitalism and positive thinking:

But if early capitalism was inhospitable to positive thinking, "late" capitalism, or consumer capitalism, is far more congenial, depending as it does on the individual's hunger for more and the firm's imperative of growth. The consumer culture encourages individuals to want more - cars, larger homes, television sets, cell phones, gadgets of all kinds - and positive thinking is ready at hand to tell them they deserve more and can have it if they really want it and are willing to make the effort to get it. Meanwhile, in a competitive business world, the companies that manufacture these goods and provide the paychecks that purchase them have no alternative but to grow. If you don't steadily increase market share and profits, you risk being driven out of business or swallowed by a larger enterprise. Perpetual growth, whether of a particular company or an entire economy, is of course an absurdity, but positive thinking makes it seem possible, if not ordained. (p. 8)

She also makes the point that positive thinking can also be used to support and excuse enormous income inequality, and encourage a sense of entitlement that fuels consumer spending, at the cost of ever-greater consumer debt. It can also, in the case of the positive thinking expected of those who have cancer, serve to mask the evidence that the increase in certain cancer rates may be caused by increasing environmental pollution.

The tone is sarcastic, but the book makes some very good points - even if they could effectively have been made in a shorter format.

Review: The Red Door

2010-01-26T17:08:00.000-08:00

Another mystery - The Red Door by Charles Todd, who are actually a mother/son team writing under a pseudonym. The mysteries in this series are set in immediate post WWI England, and feature a Scotland Yard detective with some serious burdens left over from the war. They are fairly workmanlike and atmospheric, and this one was quite a puzzle. I found it less entertaining than some in the series, as the number of related characters was complex and the twists a bit mechanical. But the series is always well-written and entertaining.

What To Read?

2010-01-26T02:51:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about how to reconfigure my reading. I started talking about that in this post. Recently, I took a walk through a bookstore to see what areas attracted my interest. I am clearly much less interested in fiction - perhaps my superficial forced march through it over the years has dulled my interest. For now, I'm only going to get fiction from the library and I'm going to be ruthless about dropping reading a book if it doesn't really grab my interest.

The things that interested me were mysteries and science fiction (although rarely fantasy) - these are fiction but have an element of puzzle or oddness to them as well, and they rarely require close reading but are rather pure entertainment. I've been a connoisseur of mysteries since my childhood. Memoirs and autobiographies caught my eye - not the celebrity or "great lives" ones, but rather those of people who have struggled, either with circumstances or themselves. I've always been interested in science and nature writing, including about animal behavior and the natural world, particularly biology and ecology. I'm interested in books about spirituality, mythology, human culture (including food culture) as well as personal essays. History and current events interest me less than they have, although I may deal with books on those topics the same way as I'm going to deal with fiction.

Except for the books I'm reading for pure entertainment, I'm going to try to slow down my reading and chew and digest a bit more, and take some notes. This may guide me on my further reading adventures.

Movie Review: The Lovely Bones

2010-01-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

My older daughter and I went to see The Lovely Bones last night. We're Peter Jackson fans (his WETA Workshop was behind a lot of what made Avatar outstanding), ever since we were blown away by the Lord of the Rings. One of his weaknesses as a director is that he can pretty much operate without constraints at this point, and both King Kong and The Lovely Bones, as well as the Return of the King, suffered from this. Return of the King was an outstanding and ground-breaking movie that well-deserved its Oscars, in my opinion, but both it and his two movies since suffered from "bloat" - he sometimes tries to stuff too much in and doesn't edit tightly enough. He does also have a tendency to get carried away with his own prowess in using special effects. He is, however, a skilled editor in terms of composition and interplay of scenes, particularly those involving strong emotions and close interplay of actors, and these parts of The Lovely Bones are the parts that work well.

(One side note - one of Peter's earliest and most interesting films, made on a shoestring and completely lacking in special effects, is Heavenly Creatures, which was also, I believe, Kate Winslett's movie debut when she was a teen. This small, intimate movie has some horrifying elements similar to The Lovely Bones.)

There is too much pop-art special effects in the afterlife sections of the movie, which trivialize this part, but there are also scenes of great beauty and emotion in the afterlife. And one important point - if you have children who are not yet adults, I'd think twice about seeing this - it's about every parent's worst fears come to pass; and I wouldn't want my non-adult child or to see it as it might cause some serious nightmares. And some of it is emotionally wrenching and horrifyingly gruesome. Otherwise, well worth seeing for the performances alone, despite its defects.

U Is For Undertow

2010-01-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

I just finished Sue Grafton's U Is For Undertow. I would describe it as pleasant, a quick read, and workmanlike. It's not a must-read, but if you like her mysteries, you'll enjoy it. I think some of her others are better, but it's the standard issue for her and just what you'd expect. I do like her private detective - a feisty independent woman with her own set of issues.

Lit, by Mary Karr

2010-01-14T03:43:00.000-08:00

One of the categories of books I want to spend more time with is memoirs, and autobiographies, not of the "I-went-there-and-did-that" type, or tales (partly or wholly ghostwritten) of celebrities, but honest, clean, thoughtful writing. Mary Karr's Lit: A Memoir fully deserves all the praise that has been heaped on it - it is scathing, beautifully-written and touching at the same time. It feels deeply honest to me. Read it if you can.

How To Read?

2010-01-12T03:25:00.000-08:00

As a result of beginning to think about how to reconfigure my life as an empty nester, I've been thinking about how and what I read. In thinking about how to reduce/reorganize both my physical objects and time commitments in order to free up time for new activities to pursue - see this post for more about that - it's become clear to me that my books and my reading, as currently configured, are an impediment and a weight holding me down. I need to change some things. I'm only in the earliest stages of thinking about this, but I can see some places where I may need to make some changes in order to pursue my themes of Adventure and Creativity/Self-Expression.

I've always been a compulsive reader - I'll read anything put in front of me, even cereal boxes if there's nothing else. I have used reading as an escape and as a source of identity - I was a Reader. I increasingly think that I have used it in a somewhat mindless way, particularly lately - it's almost just a way to fill time so I don't have to think about what else I could be doing - which is challenging and a bit threatening. I've always felt I had to read, and read a lot - lists of books to read, buying lots of books, and great stacks of them everywhere waiting to be read. At this point in my life, the books themselves and the feeling that I have to read them all, seems like a bit of a problem. I also remember very little of what I've read, which means that a lot of my reading has been pretty mindless.

So I've been thinking. What if I were to prune my library? (Husband of course would have to be part of this process, since it's his library, too.) What if I were to identify the books in my library that are important to me, and have those organized and available? - right now I couldn't find them if I tried. What if I were to get most books from the library, one or a few at a time, and look closely at them to decide if I really wanted to spend time on them - fiction is holding less interest for me right now, for some reason - I do the page one and page 50 test - if I'm not captured by the book by reading those pages maybe I don't have to spend time reading it despite its reviews or prize-winning status. Our library has an excellent inter-library loan program which means I can get many things that they don't have. I'm in the process of identifying a few areas where I do want to continue to build my book collection - nature/ecology writing, some other science writing, and some history, for example. I need to give myself permission not to read every book and not to finish every book I start - I used to be a compulsive book-finisher but lately I've just not been getting through things even though I feel I ought to. If I want to read a junky book for pleasure, I can - it's entertainment and that's OK. I need to experiment with audiobooks - I've never done those.

And I need to experiment, with new areas and new things. I do a bit of that now - I browse the new books shelves at our library, particularly the non-fiction, to pick out some things that are interesting, and look through them for fun. I need to do more of that. And for my birthday this year, I'm getting a subscription to Open Letter - a publisher of books in translation - the subscription means I'll get 10 books over the year (yes, more books, but I'll pass them around to others and on if they're not keepers) that will surely broaden my horizons. Same rules for movies and other entertainment - it's OK to watch junk for fun or as a way to have some time out with a family member or friends - but it's also important to me to experiment. My husband loves foreign films, so we'll be watching more of those.

And in the reading I do, I need to be more selective - I'm still identifying focus areas - and I want to figure out some ways to pursue themes and more intensively read and study - as long as I'm not just imposing a new "must-do" along the lines of my usual compulsive reading.

I think this is going to be fun!

Review: Two Self-Help Books

2010-01-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

For a brief discussion of David Allen's Getting Things Done and a review of SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck, by Julie Morgenstern, please see this post.

Movie Review: Avatar

2010-01-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

Avatar is an amazing achievement - I agree with those reviewers who say that its impact is equivalent to that of the original King Kong or the first Star Wars movie. At this point, I don't have to suggest that you should see it - you've probably already seen it. The technical achievement is outstanding - the main CGI characters are as fully realized as Gollum/Smeagol was in the Lord of the Rings - the mobility of expression and nuances are all there (but then WETA was doing the special effects on both, so there's a connection). I loved the realization of the Pandora world, and the 3D really enhanced the experience. I was actually as much, if not more, impressed, by the effect of the 3D in the scenes where only humans were involved - some of the meeting scenes, for example. It felt as if you were in the same room with them, that they were just there with you. It was very powerful, and I see the 3D technique being used soon even in "ordinary" (that is without CGI characters or novel worlds) movies, to great effect. I would also expect the techniques to revolutionize the televising (or simulcasts in movie theaters) of sports, music and other performances.

All that said, I was somewhat troubled by the Avatar story line. It was a little primitive, and I don't mean that as a compliment. It was too much "white guy who doesn't know he is a hero rescues good primitive people from bad, rapacious corporate and military interests". The villains were stock caricature figures with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever - it was impossible to understand or empathize with their motives. It was one-dimensional, and frankly the male hero was very simplistic and lacking in dimension. I did very much enjoy the female alien lead character - she was very well-developed, and I liked some of the scientists as well, who were better realized.

An enormous achievement and a deeply flawed movie. It will be a classic, and is a milestone in cinema.

Movie Reviews: Invictus and Up In the Air

2010-01-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

I've recently seen several movies, among them Invictus and Up In the Air. Invictus is a sports story, but much more than that - it's a story of how Nelson Mandela used the South African rugby team, formerly supported only by whites, to bring the country together after the end of apartheid. Matt Damon plays the captain of the rugby team, which is a long shot in the world cup. A very moving story, which shows the power of forgiveness, as well as the calculation that went into that forgiveness. And be sure to stay for the credits - there's some special stuff with them that is very interesting and moving.

Up In the Air is a fun movie, and a fine one, with several excellent performances. George Clooney is the traveler whose profession is firing people. There are many excellent cameo performances among the people being fired. There is an interesting old way of doing business/new way of doing business tension that isn't resolved until the end, and a very appealing younger female character. There's romantic action that ends up not being quite what it seems. It's really about how we define ourselves and how we find a place to feel important and valuable. See it if you get the chance.

Review: Food Rules

2010-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

For a review of Michael Pollan's Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, please see this post.

A Couple of Links on Publishing and Literacy

2010-01-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's New York Times had an interesting article, "A Savior In the Form of a Tablet", by David Carr on the possible effects of an electronic tablet (there are rumors that Apple is about to introduce one) on publishing, particularly publishing of magazines and other periodicals.

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By chance, I discovered an interesting group which promotes the reading of books to children in doctors' waiting rooms - Reach Out and Read.

Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

2010-01-02T17:44:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. It took me a long time to finish - it isn't one of those books that pulls you easily along, it's denser and more substantial than that. But in the end I was sucked in, to the very end (my edition is 656 pages long) - it's an amazing book about magic, illusion, the Holocaust, comic books and their creators, love and family. The characters are vivid and alive, and the book deserved its Pulitzer Prize. Read it and rejoice in the power of the writing.

A Few Good Nature Guides

2009-12-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

Please see this post for brief descriptions of the following nature guides:

David Allen Sibley - Guide to Trees

Donald W. Stokes and Deborah Prince - A Guide to Nature in Winter

W.A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys - Snow Crystals

Food and Cooking

2009-12-28T12:41:00.001-08:00

See this post for a description of Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food.

Review: Under the Dome

2009-12-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

I just finished Stephen King's Under the Dome. Like almost all Stephen King books, it's massive - my edition clocks in at 1072 pages. And like all Stephen King books, it's a quick read - he's a master of pacing and flow. He's done this book before - The Stand - and The Stand was better. But most Stephen King books are pretty good, and this one is too. I used to look down on Stephen King, until I read an essay by him in Best American Essays one year about his getting run down by a car while walking and his subsequent recovery. It was outstanding. I'd always thought of Stephen King as the sort of thing people who didn't read read, if that makes sense. And although I may have been partly right, I was also partly wrong - he's a very effective writer and some of his books are excellent. The first book of his that I read was Lisey's Story, which was mesmerizing.

Under the Dome has that wonderful small town feel - I grew up in a small town and he does them to perfection - that close-knit, almost incestuous feel where everyone knows everyone and their business. There are numerous vividly-drawn characters whom you get to know and like, and the usual complement of psychopathic villains. The premise is entertaining - a dome, ultimately determined to be of alien manufacture, seals a town off from the rest of the world. The social breakdowns, and petty dictators who try to take things over, are familiar. There are the good guys and the bad guys and it's usually pretty clear who's who. In The Stand, there were some people who could have gone either way, and they were particularly interesting, but not here - the bad guys are pretty much bad all the way through.

He also does children really well - there are some outstanding child and young adult characters who reminded me of the children in It. The women characters are also very well-drawn - believable and also sympathetic. This book, however, isn't one of his best ones - insufficient action during the middle portions and the alien/mystical/scary parts aren't as well developed as in his best books. Still entertaining and fun to read, for sure.

Review: The Dead of Winter

2009-12-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of mysteries since I was a child - I started with some of the great classics, including Marjorie Allingham, Dorothy Sayers and of course the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories - I had a hardback copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes, and it was so well-read that the front cover had come off and had to be held on with masking tape.

The Dead of Winter, by Rennie Airth, is the third John Madden mystery. The others are River of Darkness and The Blood-Dimmed Tide. These are historical mysteries set in England during the period from the First World War through WWII. The most recent one is set during WWII, and vividly evokes the fears and privations of that time. The books are well-written and also compel you through the story. The characters are also likable with the exception of the murderer, who remains an enigma to the end. There's some good police procedural action going on as well.

If you enjoy classic mysteries, or like historical mysteries, you will enjoy these books.

Movie Review: The Road

2009-12-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

I had the chance to see The Road a few days ago - it is only showing in a few theaters so we had to drive a ways to see it. I'm a big fan of Viggo Mortensen's acting - most everyone knows about his role as Aragon in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but find the time if you can to see A History of Violence and Eastern Promises (for which he got an Oscars Best Actor nomination). Viggo is a very subtle, understated actor, and the part of the Man in the Road suited him well. Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the Boy, did an exceptional job as well, and Robert Duvall has a wonderful small appearance.

I would say that this was a good, not great, movie. I think the Cormac McCarthy book (also called The Road) on which it is based isn't sufficient to build an entire movie around - it's really almost a parable or thought experiment - the beauty and horror of it are in the spareness of the language. The incidents are few, but the movie has a certain bleak grandeur, and hews closely to the book. Certainly worth a look if you can find it.

Review: Win-Win Ecology

2009-12-05T11:19:00.000-08:00

For a review of the book Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth's Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise, by Michael L. Rosenzweig, see this post on my blog In Our Own Backyard.

Review: Love Soup

2009-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

For a review of Love Soup by Anna Thomas, please see my post on my other blog, CrazyVeggieLady.

Box of Books

2009-12-04T02:17:00.001-08:00

Every Christmas, for a number of years, my husband and I used to get a box or large bag of books each for ourselves for Christmas - we both love to read and it was the perfect present as you felt free to splurge on books you wanted but might otherwise not have bought. We've gone back to that again this Christmas - the last thing we need is more stuff but more books are very welcome!

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On a blog note, in the listing of books read, being read, in the stack to be read, and to be found and read, I've added the date of the last update in the title of the link.

Review: Invisible

2009-12-01T03:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't much like Invisible by Paul Auster. He apparently is a well-regarded American fiction writer - some prizes and nominations. Although it was easy to read to the end - the plot line is quite compelling and carries you along - I found the book rather "sterile". I never was really all that interested in the characters, and the plot seemed contrived, although I was interested enough to want to see how things turned out. It seemed like an exercise, somehow, and didn't really draw me in.

Some Book Reviews Concerning Horses

2009-11-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

Over on one of my other blogs, A Year With Horses, I've done a series of book reviews on horse-related topics:

Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider (Mark Rashid)

A Horse's Thought - A Journey Into Honest Horsemanship (Tom Moates)

Old Men and Horses: a Gift of Horsemanship (Ross Jacobs)

Be With Your Horse: Getting to the Heart of Horsemanship (Tom Widdicombe)

Review: Eating Animals

2009-11-27T03:29:00.001-08:00

For my review of Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, please see this post at my other blog CrazyVeggieLady.

Review: The Face On Your Plate

2009-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

For my review of the book The Face On Your Plate: The Truth About Food, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, see this post on my blog CrazyVeggieLady.

Reviews: A Cookbook and a Mystery

2009-11-22T08:44:00.000-08:00

Please go to this post to read my brief review of Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Since it's a cookbook, the post is on my food and cooking blog, CrazyVeggieLady.

I also recently finished an interesting mystery by Hakan Nesser - Mind's Eye (translated by Laurie Thompson). Nesser is Swedish, and has a number of other books out - Borkmann's Point, Woman with Birthmark, A Rather Different Story and Carambole. I've read the first two and need to look for the others. I've been reading a lot of Scandinavian mysteries lately - from Sweden, Norway and Iceland - and at some point I should collect my thoughts and do a post on all of those - there's a lot of good mysteries being translated now.

His books are very interesting - the detective, Inspector Van Veeteren, is a fascinating character in his own right. The plots and characters are interesting, and the books are well-written. I would describe them as atmospheric, psychological, police procedurals - there's a lot going on and the books really draw you in. Highly recommended.