Category Archives: Book

2013, Book, Fiction, Manic, Novel, Prophetic

The Circle (2013)

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From Wikipedia:

A young college graduate named Mae Holland unexpectedly gets a job at The Circle, a powerful tech company that serves as the novel’s Google analogue. The Circle is an internet and social media company specializing in Internet-related services and products. Mae is impressed by the trappings of corporate life on The Circle’s California campus, and devotes herself wholeheartedly to the company mission. A chance encounter with a mysterious colleague, however, introduces an element of doubt into Mae’s experience, even as her role at the company becomes increasingly high-profile.

Reading this novel caused me to delete my Facebook account.

Remember the novels “1984” and “Brave New World”? You should probably add “The Circle” to this list of books that imagine a not impossible and decidedly unpleasant future.

Do you think privacy is important? Do you have any secrets? Then you would not want to work for the company called “The Circle”. Perhaps I should call it a cult.

You will be guided throughout the entire novel by Mae as she submerges herself deeper and deeper into the company culture and philosophy. Read quickly as you experience all the minutiae of her various positions in the company. But you need to relive those details so that you feel like the smartphone automatons we see all around us in this year 2013. If you think Facebook can consume much of your time, just try and keep up with Mae’s work life.

What would happen to you if your smartphone, pad, and social web sites all disappeared? Would your world collapse?

What present day company is the model for “The Circle”? Is it Google, or Amazon, or the NSA? Does any of this make you feel a bit paranoid? Smile, some camera is watching you.

After you have raced through this nightmare (it is OK to race, this is NOT great literature) and have reached what was for me a wonderfully written ending, please let me know your reactions to Dave Eggers’ viewpoint.

Book Review, Fiction, Post-apocalyptic, Science Fiction

Wool (Hugh Howey)

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Amazon lists this book (which I read on my Kindle) as “Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo Saga)”. Under Amazon this book received 5895 customer reviews from many happy readers.

To call this “science fiction” seems for me a stretch. Nor are either “fantasy” or “apocalyptic” entirely accurate. Judge for yourself in this summary:

In a post-apocalyptic Earth the story takes place in a silo. But this silo is an inverted silo that begins at ground level and descends for something like 150 stories. To travel in this silo you must WALK on the spiral metal staircase. Inside this silo world unto itself there are living spaces, farming spaces, mechanical maintenance spaces, and the list goes on. Technology has not advanced from the time of the apocalypse so you will be familiar with all the terms.

From the start you are witness to one of the regularly occurring death sentence executions known as a “cleaning”. Only from observation windows can the inhabitants see the outside world. “Cleaning” means you are sent out of the silo to clean those observation windows. You always die during the effort.

After settling into this very confined atmosphere you learn of a suspicious death. At about this time Juliette, the heroine of the story, emerges.

That is all I will tell of the plot which unfolds with incredible descriptive attention to detail. Think of the story as a mystery one of whose goals is to discover why and how this silo came to exist. After 550 pages you too can know the answer.

2005, Book Review, Could be boring, Could Be Sad, Grim, Love Story, Novel, Unusual

Never Let Me Go (2005)

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Kazuo Ishiguro and his family moved to England when he was 6 years old. He was educated in schools in England. He writes in English. You may read more about him in Wikipedia. He is probably best know for an earlier novel “Remains of the Day” which was made into a film with Anthony Hopkins.

My copy of “Never Let Me Go” was the paperback Vintage edition. I tell you this because I refer to page 81. If you know nothing about this novel (and I try to avoid spoilers) then you might not appreciate what is happening until you reach page 81 at which point the lightning strikes. After that the novel can seem many things: strange, creepy, grim, or quite possibly boring. Because I always try to give a book a fighting chance I plowed onward determinedly. Because the premise is so threatening I just had to find out what happens to the characters. At least be forewarned this much: do not expect fireworks. Finally for me the overwhelming emotion was sadness.

2007, Book Review, Conspiracy, Detective, FilmReview, Suspense, Violent

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (2007)

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Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Triology was published after his untimely death at the age of 50 from a heart attack. Wikipedia has a discussion of his death and whether it was related to the fact that he lived under death threats for his work against right-wing extremism. His biography in Wikipedia shows him to be a man of action.

“The Girl Who Kicked” is number three in the trilogy and seems to me to be the least interesting of the three. It is largely procedural. It ties up some but not all of the details from the second book “The Girl Who Played With Fire”, thus leaving room for more installments which Larsson had planned and partially written. I read number three in a paperback purchased in England.

So far the Swedish filming of the first two books was well worth watching. Needless to say, if Sweden films the third novel, yours truly will be eager to watch it.

2009, Acceptable Trash, Fantasy, Funny at times, Sci-Fi, Suspense, TV Series

Warehouse 13 (2009)

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From NetFlix:

After saving the president’s life, Secret Service agents Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock) and Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly) receive orders to report to a top-secret location. They soon discover that their new jobs entail guarding mystical items contained in Warehouse 13. They also must monitor unusual events all over the country and track down additional mysterious articles for government safekeeping in this supernatural action series.

This B-grade escapee from the SyFy channel is just mindless fun. Pete and Myka spend their time flirting and searching for dangerous artifacts. Some episodes are better than others, but for the most part I get hooked once the plot gets moving.

As of this writing, only season 1 is available on DVD.

OK for kids.

Call it acceptable escape or whatever, just tune out and enjoy.

I LOVE TRASH!

Book Review, Clever Use Of Words, Fiction, Funny at times

Cloud Atlas (2004)

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“Cloud Atlas” is David Mitchell’s third novel. See Ghostwritten (1999) and Black Swan Green (2006). Much like “Ghostwritten” this fiction novel consists of several independent streams each of which has some connection with at least one other stream. Somewhat unusual is that one stream (chapter) (such as a conspiracy story about corruption and poor design relating to a nuclear reactor) ends suddenly in the middle of a sentence only to pick up several chapters later. Mitchell is a clever and somewhat trendy wordsmith. Scattered throughout are fun phrases such as “prostitute Barbie” and “Andrew Void-Webber”. In general he seems to be very pessimistic and cynical about human beings although he allows some happy endings.

I must admit that there was one (independent) chapter in the middle of the book that I did not have the energy to read. It is written in a heavy and strangely spelled dialect that seems to originate somewhere in the far south of the United States. I could be wrong. But I really enjoyed the rest of the novel. Don’t be put off by the first and last chapters (which are also the first and second parts of a story about missionaries taking advantage of natives) which are written in a somewhat older, archaic style.

“Ghostwritten” and “Cloud Atlas” have similar constructions. I never finished “number9dream” which did not appeal to me. “Black Swan Green” is more traditional in construction and is about a bullied young boy. Eventually I will get around to reading “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”.

Book Review, Funny at times, Indian Culture, Novel, Violent

The White Tiger (2008)

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Aravind Adiga has written this novel (276 pages in paperback) in the first person of an Indian servant to a wealthy Indian. It won the Man Booker prize of 2008 (but don’t all published books these days win some prize ?). As such it is a witty or sarcastic criticism of many of the problems in India: poverty, corruption, class divisions, etc. The book pretends to be a succession of letters that “The White Tiger” (the name the protagonist assigns to himself) has written to the Premier of China to explain the unfortunate culture of India. If anything, the theme is that of an individual brain-washed into accepting his “inferiority” who fights to rid himself of that image. At times outrageous, funny, violent, call this merely an entertaining read.

Autobiographical, Book Review, Bullying, Clever Use Of Words, Revenge, Sexual Episodes, Violent, Vulgar

Black Swan Green (2006)

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We already reviewed David Mitchell’s first novel Ghostwritten (1999) in which we list his novels in order of date written.

After reading “Black Swan Green” I should probably re-read “Catcher in the Rye”. In Mitchell’s version, Jason Taylor is a 13 year old student living in Worcestershire, England. For a well-written review see the Wikipedia review. If there is a theme that stands out, it is Jason’s struggle to fit in with the crowd, made very difficult by the fact that he stutters and that he is bullied mercilessly. It doesn’t help that his parents don’t get along.

2005, Book Review, Child Molestation, Complicated, Dark, Detective, Explicit sex, Kidnapping, Occasional gore, Plot Twist, Rape, Revenge, Serial Killer, Sex Scenes, Suspense, Violent

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2005)

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From the book jacket:

Harriet Vanger, scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Stieg Larsson has written a trilogy entitled “Millennium” whose three books in order are:

  • The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
  • The Girl Who Played With Fire
  • The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest

My Vintage Books paperback edition is 644 pages long. Because the book is such a page-turner I devoured the book in a weekend. I was intent on reading the book before I watched the Danish film version.

Much of the narrative alternates often between the activities of Blomkvist and Salander, somewhat like ships in the night. Eventually they work closely together. Take “closely” to have two meanings because Blomkvist in the course of the novel sleeps with three different women.

Expect some graphic rape scenes, sadistic serial killings, and really nasty members of the Vanger clan. Also expect to have a lot of fun.

Initially I tried to maintain a written list of the many characters. Finally the novel itself provides a table of Vanger family members to which I often referred.

Book Review, Clever Use Of Words, Manic, Novel, ShortStories

Ghostwritten (1999)

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Currently (2010) David Mitchell is the “it” author. There have been many articles about him, especially one in the New York Times Sunday magazine section. He is said to have re-defined the novel. You can read about him in the Wikipedia article.

Mitchell’s novels are as follows:

  • Ghostwritten (1999)
  • number9dream (2001)
  • Cloud Atlas (2004)
  • Black Swan Green (2006)
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)

If you like T.C. Boyle (especially his short stories), you will also enjoy David Mitchell.

Let me tempt you with “Ghostwritten”, his first novel. Each chapter is a somewhat self-contained short story, but not really. The chapters eventually wrap around to where they started. But the fun “trick” is that each chapter after the first contains within some sly reference back to the previous chapter. If you did not read that previous chapter carefully then you might just miss the reference in the succeeding chapter. I’ll give you a hint for chapter one, namely, “telephone call”.

To tempt you a bit more I’ll describe chapter one. All chapters are written in the first person as I recall. In chapter one the speaker is the Japanese cult fanatic who personally released the sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. In the entire chapter while he is fleeing the scene and hiding in some remote guest house he is ruminating about his cult under the leadership of someone always referred to as “His Serendipity”. He interprets each and every event in the unwavering context of someone so completely brain-washed that he is deceived about everything.

Mitchell has a clever and often witty way with words. I do worry that his choice of words may be trendy enough that his book might some day be outdated.

Some chapters are manic (think Thom Jones), but not all. There is a somewhat poignant chapter in which a brilliant woman scientist tries to retire to her beloved small Irish (Celtic) island in order to escape being forceably employed by the CIA. This chapter relates to a following chapter about a nighttime radio talk show in an astoundingly clever way.