Gurm's Book Corner, part deux

[Gurm]

As promised, here we go again! This week, I'm happy to present my unabashed praise for one book, and my somewhat more reserved praise for another... onward!

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Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart:

You must read this book. Well, ok maybe you shouldn't. I mean, if you're older than about 40, you'll probably just find the dirty words distasteful. And if you're a liberal, you'll probably find the numerous self-deprecating jokes about killing Jews to be in poor taste. So really, Brian Ellis (no offense Brian) just wouldn't find this book funny.

In fact, if you never learned what "satire" means... you'll just find this book to be pretty inane. No real substance, as it were.

But if, like many of us, you're capable of seeing past a fanciful story about how Joe Kennedy keeps his hundreds of disfigured children alive in a horrifying menagerie below his palatial estate on Martha's Vineyard to the real meat of the issue... then this book is for you.

Jon Stewart is my hero.

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American Gods by Neil Gaiman:

I am not often an avaricious man. But by gods, I thought of this idea all on my very own some time ago! Luckily I didn't do much beyond drawing up an outline, because otherwise I would have been resoundingly laughed at by any publisher I was foolish enough to solicit.

Neil Gaiman is entertaining, and spans genres, and has a cool name. But is he really any GOOD? Well yes - but I don't think it matters, and I'll tell you why.

There have, throughout history, been men (and women, and the occasional eunuch) who are of less consequence because of the quality of their work (which ranges from downright bad to excellent) than because of the import of their contribution to their field. Let's take Pablo Picasso as an example.

Nobody wants to look at a Picasso. He was... terrible. I mean, he was a mediocre artist (some might say his pre-cubist works were quite good) who made an important contribution to a movement that advanced art into the modern age. But a 5 year old could have created his cubist pieces (in fact, studies have repeatedly shown that when random crap is shoved together by a five year old or a monkey, but you tell an art student that it's a Picasso, they find all kinds of deep meaning in it... *ahem*).

Let's jump genres to Hemingway. Hemingway is pure torture to read, but he DID SOMETHING for literature that was very important.

Neil Gaiman has DONE SOMETHING for fantastic literature. Over the course of his career he's been an idea-man. He's gotten people thinking. And that's really important.

Now, on to this particular book...

It was really good. I might be biased, because again I had this same idea with a few key differences some time back and never developed it. But it really was good.

The basic premise, summed up succinctly, is that "gods" or deities are all created by belief and empowered thereby. When belief dries up, so does the power of that god. Additionally, gods are somewhat bound by the epicenters of their belief. Zeus and Poseidon are pretty much limited to the Aegean, etc.

But what of people coming to America - a place with no real gods of its own other than the earth itself? Well, they brought their gods with them, their belief creating new iterations/incarnations of those gods here on our side of the ocean.

And what of people's NEW beliefs? People worship money, and television, and fame, and the Internet now. What does that mean? It means new deities... ones which aren't all that fond of the "old guard".

Add a dash of nihilism, a healthy helping of dirty words, and stir... mmm, it's tasty fantasy/thriller stew!

So, what DIDN'T I like about this book? I do have criticisms, despite my pure enjoyment of it - I was glued to it for about a day. (Please be aware it will take most of you substantially longer, this is a LONG book!)

First off, not everyone has to be an anti-hero. It's a trend which is getting a bit old, in my estimation. In this book, EVERYONE is an anti-hero. The villains? Anti-heroes. The protagonist? Anti-hero. Incidental side characters? Anti-heroes. It's a trend you don't even really see while you're immersed in it. This is in stark contrast to other books where you might have some tragic baddies, or an author like Eddings where many a character is a horribly flawed hero but a hero nonetheless.

And all the characters have a ... tiredness ... to them. It lends a real authenticity to the book, to be honest. That and the vivid descriptions of where things are - Gaiman clearly went on some kind of horrible road trip, touring every damn tourist attraction in the central USA, and using it as a location for this book.

Gaiman also has some problems with voicing. Often I found myself backing up a paragraph (or entire page) to figure out who was supposed to be narrating. Sometimes I felt like this was intentional, but other times I found myself saying "did you FORGET the quotation marks around that?"

Now, I don't know if it's just this story or typical Gaiman, but things ... don't resolve well. The "climax", as it were, happens. And then Gaiman seems to realize that there are some loose ends, and just shuffles through them before delivering a final ending worthy of a Hollywood production - ironic and amusing and leaving room for more.

(And there IS more, if you like this book then there are at least two more stories available for you - one starring the protagonist that's a novella contained in the "Legends" collection, and one starring some of the side characters that is the new novel "Anansi Boys".)

Anyway, I heartily recommend giving it a read. Everyone would like it if they're fairly well read. If you're up for a challenge, try to figure out which god everyone is BEFORE they get revealed! *heh*

All in all, it's the sort of book that I'm sad to not be reading any more. How's that for praise?

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The Tao of Pooh (and The Te of Piglet) by Benjamin Hoff

Just not as cool as it was the first time through. Maybe I'm older now, or maybe I'm less impressed by Taoism than I used to be. I read this when I was in high school and it made an awful lot of sense and was very cute. Now? Not so much, and I'm somewhat turned off by Hoff's decidedly lacklustre attempts to mimic the writing style of A.A. Milne.

I guess that makes me a real critic now, doesn't it? When I find that a book is substantively lessened by the weakness of its imitation-kiddy-style prose? Too bad - I have a fondness for small stuffed bears that remains unmitigated by the passage of time, and none shall sully them.

But, if you haven't read it, or are intrigued at all by Taoism or oriental thought, or just need something amusing for the train ride... this is an interesting book to have read at least once.

Its follow-up, the Te of Piglet, is both more and less than the first - which is about what you'd expect from a sequel of any merit.

[Jammrock]

You forgot to mention that American Gods starts off so awefuly slow. I think that's a requirement for SciFi/Fantasy books anymore. 50 pages of setup drivel before anything of substance occurs. Of course, having dabbled into writing I realize how tough it is to setup story and characters in a fantasy setting without it. A nasty little paradox.

I'll add one book to the book corner:

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Vinge is quickly becoming the permier "hard science fiction" writer in the industry. His four most recent novels have been nominated for multiple awards, won several of those nominations, and his newest is up for the Hugo award. ADitS is his most praised book, winning the Hugo, Prometheus, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award (it got the Nebula nod, but lost out to Parable of the Talents). ADitS is actually the second book in this series, but chronologically takes place before A Fire upon the Deep, which is my read after The Children of Hurin. So it's safe, and my brother actually recommended, to read this before AFutD. Awards aside, this was my first V. Vinge book--his ex-wife Joan Vinge has published many books, too--and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is immensely complex, spanning 600+ pages of small print. This is why there is a 6-7 year gap between all of his novels, though fans hope that his recent retirement as a professor of mathematics from San Diego State University will speed up publication times. Thus the book has parts which or old school technical. For example, time is not measured in hours or days, as there is no reference point in space, so they are measured in Ksecs and Msecs (kilo- and mega seconds). Space travel is limited to 0.3c (c = spped of light), our fastest broadcast is still radio, and humans have expanded over about 8000 years a whopping 500 ly (light years). Because of the slow travel and talk, each human colony lives isolated from each other. In the time it take someone to get from say, Old Earth to Namqem, the civilization may have reached high technology, blown each other up in a nuclear war, and be back in the stone ages by the time the ship arrives. Making interstellar trading and diplomacy very tricky.

The book involves first contact by a large group of interstellar traders, called the Qeng Ho, with the first non-human race about to reach high technology. The Spiders, because the race looks somewhat like giant Earthly arachnids, live on the only planet in the OnOff star solar system. The OnOff star is named because the star "turns off" for about 200 year, freezing the sole planet to the point that there is no atmosphere left, and then suddenly turns on for about 35 years, at which point the Spiders come out of deep freeze and live/prepare for the next "Dark."

Problems ensue when a second human race, called the Emergents, arrive just behind the Qeng Ho. Not to spoil anything, the fireworks start there.

It took me about 70-pages to really get into this book. There was a lot of setting up to do. Once things got going though, it was a incredible book that I could hardly put down. Vinge's ideas and his complex plots really set him apart from most scifi I have read. He really is a good writer, despite his technical nature that may turn off some readers. There is a good reason why he is a hard science fiction writer.

My recommendation, if you like scifi, or hard scifi, then this is a must read. Otherwise, approach with caution. The book is very long, the story very complex (though not muddled with side plots and characters), but worth the read int he end.

Jammrock

[Gurm]

I too have noticed that a lot of fantasy nowadays has a very slow setup. It comes from the author being unwilling to give away too much too soon, and - this will sound critical, but it isn't, really - not having the talent/wherewithal/particular ability to set the story up "on the run", so to speak.

A good example... and I hate always going back to him, but there's a REASON he's one of my favorite authors... is David Eddings. Eddings gets you into the story, into the characters, and into their world in Chapter 1. Sometimes on Page 1. But then again Eddings "crafts" his books, with extensive background notes and outlines and diagrams and character studies such that he already knows who someone is, how they'll act, what they'll say, where they live, and what that place is like BEFORE he starts writing. So he can expend all of his actual energy during the writing process actually expositing or storytelling, and not doing some long elaborate setup.

I didn't find the American Gods setup to be remarkably long in comparison to other modern works, it's just the trend nowadays. Everyone has to be "mysterious"... which is another one of my criticisms of modern writing of many varieties. The author goes to some lengths to ensure that the book is "creepy" or "weird" or "fantastic", or "mysterious" before they even bother writing the damn story. Let's be honest, folks. If your story is creepy, it's going to be creepy whether or not you spend 2 chapters at the beginning building a "creepy atmosphere".

Again, I digress to Eddings. A book that really gave me the willies a few years back was "Regina's Song". And Eddings isn't even especially GOOD at writing horror/thriller/supernatural fiction. The events and his more than adequate depiction of them all by themselves made it plenty creepy. Could someone like Gaiman or King or whoever make it creepier? Undoubtedly, but my point is simply that it didn't NEED that.

Ooh, everyone should read that too... lemme post another response... wheee!

[TnT]

The Tao of Pooh (and The Te of Piglet) by Benjamin Hoff

I've actually studied Daoism a bit and I have to admit I don't like the Tao of Pooh at all. I haven't read Te of Piglet though.

The best Daoism book is Chuang Tzu translation by Burton Watson. Get the "Basic Writings of" that has most of the best chapters.

[Jessterw]

The Tao of Pooh has always been utter nonsense. Hoff makes the same mistake many Western authors of books on such things do - he tries to adapt it to the Western mindset and it all falls apart.

But maybe it's that I'm overly tired of the hijacking of Asian and/or Oriental schools of thought for mass consumption. It's like the whole feng shui movement.


Own most of the books Jon Stewart has written and Naked Pictures of Famous People is definitely one of my favorites of those. In some ways I liked it better than America.

[Gurm]

The Tao of Pooh has always been utter nonsense. Hoff makes the same mistake many Western authors of books on such things do - he tries to adapt it to the Western mindset and it all falls apart.

Indeed. But it's worth flipping through once, don'tcha think?

But maybe it's that I'm overly tired of the hijacking of Asian and/or Oriental schools of thought for mass consumption. It's like the whole feng shui movement.

Ask three American Feng Shui experts how to arrange your living room, and you'll get three radically different answers. Oops!

Own most of the books Jon Stewart has written and Naked Pictures of Famous People is definitely one of my favorites of those. In some ways I liked it better than America.

Well, he wrote it alone. America was written with a LOT of input from "The Daily Show" staffers/writers, and apparently their jokes just don't translate as well to print as Stewart's do. But I _did_ love America, nonetheless.