Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams

(4/5 stars)

This is another one of those books I'd long heard about and meant to get around to reading at some point. Finally I was at the bookstore to get some gifts and decided to just buy the thing and read it. Since my edition was only 215 pages it didn't take very long. This is the kind of book you could read at the airport while waiting for your plane or in an afternoon at the beach, if you aren't too afraid of people judging you harshly for reading a sci-fi book on the beach.

Anyway, a concern of mine was that this book would turn out to be too British. By that I mean British humor is often so dry and strange that it's hard for people from other countries to understand it. I have to say there probably is some of that stuff I just didn't get, but there was also enough I did get for it to be a hilarious read.

In the universe according to Adams, poetry can be used as a weapon, Earth is demolished to make room for a new galactic superhighway, and mankind is only the third most intelligent species behind dolphins and another species I can't reveal without giving too much away.

As for the story, Arthur Dent is a typical suburban Britisher whose house is about to be torn down to make room for a new road. This parallels Earth's fate as a race of ugly bureaucratic aliens swoop down to announce Earth is to be demolished to make room for a new galactic highway. (The plans were available in Alpha Centauri for decades. Didn't we get the memo?) Arthur is narrowly saved by his friend Ford Prefect, an out-of-work actor who's actually an alien. At the same time, the president of the galaxy Beetlebrox and his lovely human companion Trillian steal a new ship that runs via the Improbability Drive, which seems to cause highly improbable things to happen whenever it's used. The two storylines become intertwined in the search for the Ultimate Question.

The Improbability Drive was the one thing I really didn't fully grasp in this book. The rest of the sci-fi terminology was easy enough to understand if you've ever watched "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" or anything like that. So it's not really a challenging read that way. The real challenged as I mentioned is picking up on the subtleties and nuances I'm sure are buried in there. Some scholars out there I'm sure have broken down all the novel's symbolic elements and all that.

The only real problem I have with this book is that it's too short. I didn't feel like I got a good enough grasp of the main characters, their conflicts, and relationships. Because the book is only 215 pages it seemed like we only got an overview of Arthur, Ford, Beetlebrox, Trillian, and Marvin without delving any deeper. I suppose that will be for the sequels to delve into. At some point I'll have to read those as well. (I haven't seen the recent film version either because I was afraid it would spoil my eventual reading of the book.)

Still, as mentioned this novel is a hilarious read and since it takes so little time to breeze through there's really no excuse to keep putting it off if it's been on your list.

That is all.

Reaper Man

Reaper Man
(A Discworld Novel)
By Terry Pratchett

(5/5 stars)

My second foray into Pratchett's nearly 40-some book Discworld series was just as satisfying as the first. Whereas the first time I read one of the author's more recent offerings "Going Postal" this time I tried something a little older with "Reaper Man." The tagline on the cover read "It's no fun when Death takes a holiday" which could be amended to add "--except for readers of this book."

As the title suggests, "Reaper Man" is about Death, both with a capital and lower-case D. Two stories run throughout the book, finally intersecting at the end. The first is about Death--the Grim Reaper in popular parlance--who is being retired by his masters because Death seems to be developing a personality. With typical bureaucratic foresight, Death's masters have no replacement lined up.

The impact of this is told through the story of 130-year-old wizard Windle Poons. After living a long, dull life at Unseen University, Windle is finally ready to go into the Great Beyond. He finally passes away at his retirement party, but soon finds one hitch: no one is there to collect his spirit. With nowhere else to go, Windle returns to his body and becomes a zombie. Not the mindless, shambling, brain-eating zombies of horror movie fame. Instead, Windle finds true mastery of his body for the first time, giving him super strength and super senses and probably a super odor from decay as well.

Meanwhile, Death decides to see the world and ends up in an out of the way mountain village where he goes to work for the ancient spinster Miss Flitworth doing--what else--harvesting with a scythe. For the first time Death discovers what it means to be alive, experiencing both the triumphs and tragedies of mortality.

Back in the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, strange events are afoot. Without a Death, many other people are having the same trouble as Windle Poon, leading to disastrous consequences. Windle makes friends with a group of the undead that include a vampire, werewolf, and Bogeyman and finds himself at the epicenter of an invasion of snow globes that are the prelude to a far more dangerous enemy.

"Reaper Man" features more of Pratchett's wit and topical humor that make for an easy and fun read even if you're not really into fantasy--like myself. Really, if this book can't make you laugh then you need a funny bone transplant. Yet while it is humorous and fun, there's also a deepness and meaning to it all, which makes it a great book to read on multiple levels. If you can laugh and learn something that's the best of both worlds, right?

The last thirty pages or so of the book I thought were really excellent. It's the kind of ending that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Finding an ending that powerful is pretty rare for me and so makes this book well worth reading.

That is all.

The Painted Bird

The Painted Bird

by Jerzy Kosinski

(3/5 stars)

The next edition the publisher prints could use the tag line: If you loved "The Road" you'll love "The Painted Bird!" It's much the same thing: a child wandering through a wasteland witnessing and experiencing violence and debauchery of every variety at every turn. In this case it's an unnamed boy wandering Eastern Europe (most likely Poland) after his parents send him away to protect him from the Nazis and his caretaker dies. For most of the novel the boy is being taken in by or captured by assorted farmers, who without fail proceed to abuse him in a variety of ways.

The content of this book is the stuff of nightmares: a boy getting his eyes gouged out, a man being devoured by a swarm of rats, women being violated in the most brutal fashion by men and sometimes animals. As an American growing up in the Cold War this is probably the first time when I've actually been cheering for the appearance of the Red Army--they at least only brutalize those who have it coming to them.

The title of the novel comes from one of the peasants who traps birds. For sport he takes one of the birds, paints it garish colors, and then releases it into a flock of its fellows. The other birds, not recognizing it as one of them, proceed to tear the poor creature to bits. Such is life for the boy as he wanders around this backward country that except for mentions of guns and bombs seems to be mired in the Middle Ages as almost everyone he meets fails to recognize him as human and tries to tear him apart.

An obvious question one has to ask is how different the peasants are in their treatment of this dark-haired/dark-skinned boy than the Nazis are in their treatment of Jews and other minorities. Really the only difference seems to be the scale. If there's one positive message to take from this it's that we should always look past the paint on one's feathers to recognize the bird beneath.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend this book to most people. It is brutal and terrible. I thought books like "Blood Meridian" and "American Psycho" were about as dark and unpleasant as reading could get, but I was wrong. This is easily ten times more nasty and horrific than anything Stephen King could dream up. What makes it worse is to think that so much of it is probably true--unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists who doesn't believe in the Holocaust. I'm all for free speech and I see what the author's driving at but there's a difference between making a point and gratuitous violence and debauchery. The thought struck me as I was reading that maybe if the Marquis de Sade were writing a novel of World War II this is how he'd do it: savage, brutal, and perverse.

The only ones I would recommend this to are those dreaming up the wars and holocausts now and to come. Maybe it would shock some sense into them. That's probably what Kosinski had in mind.

That is all.

On the Road

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

(3/5 stars)

The farther I got, the more obvious the conclusion that I read this too late in life. Had I read this as a teenager or in college I could have romanticized it like so many other people have. The dream of flight, of fleeing the perceived dreariness of one's life, is foremost the dream of the young who want to escape their parents in order to avoid becoming them. Unfortunately I'm at the phase where I and the people around me are becoming our parents--settling down, buying houses, getting married, having kids--which gives me a different perspective than if I'd read it ten or fifteen years earlier.

And in reading this book there's nothing in it that makes me want to go off on some flight of fancy. As Sal Paradise and his crazy friend Dean make their way from New York to Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Mexico City on four different voyages, there's nothing that to me seemed wonderfully romantic. Most of the time they're dirty, starving, and forced to beg gas money or rides from friends/relatives. Like a couple of overgrown frat boys on spring break they do drink a lot of booze, smoke a lot of "tea," and couple (to use PG language) with a lot of women. At least they had some fun, but couldn't I just stay home and pop in a "Girls Gone Wild" DVD?

By the end Dean has four ex-wives and three children (at least) and his life is in disarray, which certainly isn't much of an endorsement for his way of life. Sal Paradise is better off since he came from a slightly more stable background and thus was a little more grounded in reality. Had there been a sequel Sal probably would have been settling down with the wife, 2.3 kids, and dog in the suburbs while Dean was panhandling for bus fare. What have we learned here? All things in moderation.

What disappointed me in the end was this book didn't live up to my expectations. Where were all the wonderful characters he was supposed to meet along the road? Sure, he meets plenty of people but none of them are fully-developed, flesh-and-blood people, just cardboard cutouts in the driver's seat. Where was all the breathtaking descriptions of the diverse landscape that is America? Instead I was treated to descriptions like this: we passed through New Mexico in the night and in the morning started into Texas. Wow, color me impressed. To his credit Kerouac was the first author I've read (unlike McCarthy, Bellow, and Greene) to not make Mexico seem like the lowest circle of Hell, so he's got that going for him. (Then again, Mexico would be the ideal paradise if all you're after is cheap booze, plentiful drugs, and easy women.)

I hate to sound like the Grumpy Old Man here, but I can't help it. There was nothing in this book for me. But as I said at the beginning if you're young then it's easy to romanticize this as an entire generation did in the '50s and '60s. And if you're one of those, then rereading it is a wonderful nostalgic trip like slipping into your old leisure suit. But this Grumpy Old Man will keep moving down the road.

That is all.

Going Postal

Going Postal
by Terry Pratchett
(4/5 stars)

A Gather friend suggested after I reviewed Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books that I should give "Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett a try. So since I was at the bookstore with nothing else on my reading list, I decided to give it a try. And I was not disappointed. Pratchett's humorous take on fantasy was just what I was looking for after devouring Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series with its hilarious take on sci-fi.

"Going Postal" is actually the thirty-third entry in Pratchett's Discworld series according to Wikipedia. You might think starting with the thirty-third book in a series is a bad idea, but it's not really a sequel to its thirty-two predecessors, just another book set in the same world. In this case a flat world carried around by elephants on the back of an enormous turtle.

Right, so the book begins with Moist von Lipwig (his real name) being hung for various misdeeds committed throughout his long career as a con artist. But Moist does not die. Instead, he's offered by the local tyrant Lord Veniteri the job of running the decrepit post office system in the metropolis of Ankh-Morpork. Since the alternative is death, Moist takes the job as postmaster.

He soon discovers that death might have been preferable because the post office is a complete mess. Mail has been piled up to the point that most of the building in inaccessible. All the post office workers have fled except for "junior" postman Groat (who is an old man) and his dim-witted, pin-collecting sidekick Stanley--and Mr. Tiddles the cat. Much of the post office's decline is due to the new communicatins system known as "the clacks" which are towers using a sort of Morse code to send messages all over the Discworld in hours. With such instant communication possible, who needs to send a letter?

After Moist's attempt to escape from this job is thwarted by his golem bodyguard Mr. Pump, Moist decides to face up to the challenge of making the post office competitive. Falling back on his years as a con artist, Moist begins to generate public excitement by introducing a new invention called stamps. And wouldn't you know it, soon people are collecting these stamps, including Stanley. Moist's efforts are aided by saboteurs who want to shut down the clacks to put the greedy bankers who bought the clacks system from its naive inventors out of business.

As the post office begins to succeed, Moist expands his operations by hiring more golem workers from the very inappropriately-named Miss Adora Belle Dearheart. In typical fashion for this kind of story, Moist falls in love with Miss Dearheart and begins to take his post office job seriously. But the greedy owners of the clacks don't like competition and will do anything to put Moist out of commission for good.

This really is a very fun read and its messages about technology and corporate greed are pretty much pulled from today's headlines. What makes the book so great to read is that there is a serious message, but the story itself is never told in such a serious way to make it a drag. So you can have a good time and a few laughs and also learn a few things. What else could you ask for from a book? Well, there are one or two things, but let's not be too picky.

Given this is the first one of nearly forty in the series I've read I won't make too many generalizations about the series or any of that. If you want more background on that, go read the Wikipedia page on Discworld or I'm sure there are various groups, message boards, and websites around the Internet to help you. In the meantime I'm going to read a few more of these because this one really hit the spot.

That is all.

The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin

by Margaret Atwood

(4/5 stars)

This is one of those books that may be a challenge for some readers because the narrative is like a jigsaw puzzle dumped out onto a table. Over the course of the book's 500+ pages, Atwood assembles the puzzle piece-by-piece using a memoir, newspaper clippings, and bits of a novel called "The Blind Assassin." This third item includes sidebar sci-fi stories so that we have a story-in-a-story-in-a-story. Needless to say that can make it confusing.

To make some sense of this without giving too much away: Iris and Laura Chase were born to the owner of a button manufacturing company in Port Ticonderoga, Ontario in the late 1910s. Iris was the older, practical sister while Laura was always the odd, dreamy one--and probably the more beautiful of the two. Their mother dies when they're still children, leaving them to be cared for by their servant Reenie and a number of tutors.

But as the Depression hits the button industry hard and their father runs into financial trouble, the only solution is for Iris to marry her father's wealthy rival Richard Griffen. Iris is to be his trophy wife, groomed by his meddling sister Winifred, as Richard begins a political career.

Flash forward to 1945. Iris and Richard are still married, but not happily, and Laura has gone off the grid for years. She returns to learn a terrible secret and kills herself (most likely) by driving off the bridge. (That's not a spoiler because it's the first scene of the novel.) A couple years later, Laura's sole novel "The Blind Assassin" is published by Iris and Richard dies under mysterious circumstances. Winifred uses this to take custody of Iris's child and from there very little happens until the present day when Iris is an old woman in poor health recounting all this.

In the novel-within-the-novel, an unnamed rich woman is having an affair with an unnamed poor man. The identity of these lovers becomes readily apparent for anyone with a lick of sense. (Iris even says in her memoir near the end that we should have caught on long before.) There's another mystery concerning this novel-within-the-novel that I also figured out far in advance.

The dilemma there is that if I figured it out so far ahead of time then it makes the book sound predictable. But if I'd been wrong and the solution had been simpler, then I'd complain about the mystery being too dull and commonplace. Therefore the best option would really be for the solution to the mysteries to be something so far out that no one would guess it in a million years--although then I'd complain about the solution having a deux ex machina ring to it; some people are just never happy.

The make-up of this is challenging and interesting, though certainly not unique. Another Canadian woman did something similar: Carol Shields with "The Stone Diaries" used letters, recipes, and a memoir to tell the story of another Canadian woman who similarly married an older man. "The Blind Assassin" has more soapy twists and turns to make it a better read than that other book, though.

I enjoyed the novel-within-the-novel far more than the memoir parts. Reading about a sick old woman is not pleasant--I could just call up my mother to hear that--and the rest of the memoir seemed pretty pedestrian to me. Woman marries older man she doesn't love, their marriage is predictably unhappy, blah, blah, blah. I have a feeling, though, that readers of the "fairer sex" will be able to better relate to those parts and thus enjoy them far more. I was more interested in the sci-fi element, although that wrapped up unsatisfactorily.

The way the novel-within-the-novel concluded did add some emotional punch to the ending of the memoir. All the loose ends were tied up very nicely at the end, although it didn't quite have the impact of Ian McEwan's "Atonement," which also won the Booker Prize for literature and is also another challenging read that has a really powerful twist at the end.

Still, I'd have to say that if you don't mind puzzles and especially if you liked "The Stone Diaries" then this will be right up your alley.

That is all.

Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five

by Kurt Vonnegut

(5/5 stars)

There are two words to describe this book: weird and wonderful. You could substitute "quirky" for weird if you want, because that's what "Slaughterhouse Five" is: a very quirky, oddball adventure through time and space. And it contains a valuable message if you decide to believe in the Tralfamadore view of things. I rather like their perspective that because someone was alive at some point then they are ALWAYS living, at least somewhere. (Though I suppose it's only comforting when you apply that to good people, because that definition also means that Hitler and other evildoers are always living somewhere too.)

The novel begins with the author struggling to find a way to tell the story of his experience in World War II as a prisoner of war and witness to the firebombing of Dresden, which took more lives (at least immediately) than the atomic bomb. He visits a friend and finally turns in a jumbled-up mess to the publisher.

This jumbled-up mess is the story of Billy Pilgrim who is (or thinks he is) unstuck in time. Because of this, his life is in shuffle mode, so to speak, where he randomly shifts from one point in time to another. At one point he might be standing in a field in Germany during the war, at another he's talking to the Lions club in upstate New York, and at another he's a baby in his mother's arms. Told chronologically, Billy enters the war near the end, gets captured, witnesses the bombing of Dresden, gets repatriated after the war, marries a large, rich woman named Valencia, has a couple kids, runs a successful optometry business, and gets taken to the Tralfamadore homeworld to be put in a zoo with a porn star. Billy even sees how he is going to die.

If the book were related chronologically and if Vonnegut didn't have such a way with language--his sentences lack poetic prose, but have the same quirky, seemingly random rhythm as the plot--then this book wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. The way it's jumbled up forces the reader to keep putting the pieces together, although Vonnegut has a tendency to over-foreshadow some things like the teapot incident. And the style makes reading a breeze because it's very relatable for the average vocabulary--no big words to confuse people.

The only real flaw is the overuse of the expression "so it goes" to mark anytime a person, place, or thing dies. Wikipedia's article on the book says there are 106 references. It seemed like many more. I understand what Vonnegut was going for, but it did get irritating before long.

I should warn you, though, that even if the sentences are easy to read, you do need to be the type of reader who can put up with the quirky nature of the book to read it. So it's not recommended to everyone. If you're up to putting together a puzzle and like a little sci-fi with your literature, then you'll be fine. Maybe you won't agree with Vonnegut and the Tralfamadore's view of the universe--maybe you like to believe in free will--but you should still be able to appreciate what a creative feat this book was and what a great author wrote it.

That is all.